Time travel in Farscape

[Patrick Degan]

This week, SciFi ran what I believe was the one and only episode of Farscape involving time travel, season three's "Different Destinations". In this entry, Chriton, Aeryn, Dargo, Jool, and Stark (still mourning his lost love, Zhaan) are visiting a world where a Peacekeeper hero, Sub-Officer Dakon, had been instrumental in bringing about the end of a siege of a monastary and averting a massacre a half-millenium in the past. At the site of the peace negotiation, Dargo and Chriton are able to actually view live scenes of the event with the use of special goggles which can penetrate a "tear" in the fabric of space/time which exists somewhere within the area of the site but which is never precisely in the same place. Aeryn knows the history backwards, but Jool contemptously dismisses the entire story as pure PK propaganda. Trying to lift Stark's depression by showing him scenes of life, Chriton places the goggles on Stark, which triggers a reaction with his contained energies and transports the Moya landing party to the siege itself, 500 Cycles from their own time.

Their very presence alters the flow of the planet's history. Aboard Moya, Pilot reports to Chiana and Rygel that the language of the planet's com traffic is different from what they had received prior to entering orbit. Back in the past, Chriton desperately tries to explain to Aeryn about doing nothing to alter the timelines, while Aeryn discovers that Sub-Officer Dakon is nothing more than the company cook. They find that their pulse-pistols (though not Dargo's qualta-rifle) are immune to the jamming field set up by the besieging Banaks to neutralise PK weapons, but Chriton insists they not use their weapons to avoid altering the past. An attack is beaten off (in which the PK company commander is killed, forcing Aeryn to take charge), but Chriton discovers that one of the Banaks they have just captured is the general who the ceasefire was negotiated with in original history. Stark uses the goggles to find the tear, and Dargo sends Jool through to the present —which has radically changed; the monastary is a devestated and long-abandoned ruin. The tear vanishes again, leaving the others trapped in the past. Chriton then gets the idea of sneaking the general out of the monastary so that the surrender can be negotiated and the war ended, and secures the general's agreement to the plan. Dressing the general in the female robes and shawles of the nurses trapped in the monastary, Chriton takes him to the wall. But one of the nurses shoots and kills the enemy leader, and destroys the peace effort without knowing it.

Having returned to Moya, Jool is explaining how she and the others became trapped in the past and how she returned to a very different monastary site when Pilot reports the new change of the planet: there is no com-traffic and no artificial power generation registering on the instruments. There are no signs of technological civilisation to be found, but there are signs of very small, primitive settlements scattered across the region of the monastary-site, and that according to the records now available to Moya's databanks, the civilisation which once existed on the planet was decimated in a massive war 500 Cycles in the past.

In a mental conversation, Chriton learns from "Harvey" (the Scorpius pattern-ghost left over in his neurostructure from an earlier mindprobe) the theory of the elasticity of time; that a certain degree of changes can occur without triggering off massive changes in the whole pattern, and that events will tend to "restructure" themselves to what more or less was the normal pattern, but that the greater degree to which actions vector away from the original pattern, the difficulty of effecting restoration increases until it becomes impossible.

Finding their general not only dead but disgraced by being dressed as a female, the Banaks vow to slaughter every man, woman, and child within the walls. Chriton decides that unconditional surrender is the only way to save the situation. He records the truce offer including the pledge of total PK withdrawal, along with an apology for the unintentional humiliation of their general, and convinces Aeryn to have Dakon deliver the message. She knows he will be killed, but since he died in the original history anyway, Aeryn accepts that it is meant to be. Dakon goes to the wall and tosses the lance with the message capsule, and is promptly killed by a Banak arrow. Back in the present, Moya's crew look in stunned horror as the planet now appears to be a lifeless, radioactive cinder suspended in space, its atmosphere burned off long ago.

The Banaks renew the attack, and now Chriton is unable to stop Aeryn from using her pulse-pistol in the fight and "get a ceasefire" her way. With the Banaks breaking through the walls, Chriton has no choice but to fully join the battle himself. The pulse-pistols turn the tide and the attack is beaten off. While in the future, the planet beneath the Leviathan has vanished as if it never existed.

Chiana takes a pod to where the planet had been, but the closer she gets, the more she encounters "gamma interference". Until suddenly, the planet reappears and the Nebari girl has to act fast to avoid piling into the ground. Back in the past, the Banaks signal that they have agreed to the truce terms and will accept the monastary's peaceful surrender and will leave the resident nurses alone. Stark finds the tear open and the way back. Chriton assures the nurses' leader that all they have to do is open the gates and everything would be alright. The landing party enter the tear and return to the present. Everything appears as before, but something is slightly different. Wrong. Chriton and Aeryn look through the tear with the goggles and, to their horror, see that the Banak leader became enraged that John Chriton was nowhere to be found nor was his pulse-pistol, which wasn't affected by their jamming device. The Banaks slaughtered the nurses and the entire history of the massacre was subsequently covered up in the succeeding centuries, so that what Aeryn learned in school was nothing but Peacekeeper propaganda.

This one and only time travel excursion in Farscape history was a very neat and economical piece of writing which unfolded much more along the lines of classic SF time travel ala Fritz Leiber's Change War stories, The Twilight Zone, Doctor Who, and works by Niven, VanVogt, and Anderson. The emphasis was far less upon the actual mechanism of temporal movement and change and upon the dilemma faced by the characters. Unlike the dreary technobabble wankfests of BragaTrek™ brand time travel, the script offered a fairly self-consistent and concise theory deliverred in plain language and without resort to bullshit made-up particles or radiation —and all in less than a minute of actual script time as well. Furthermore, the script manages to maintain the suspense as to whether the characters will escape the situation by depicting things getting progressively worse as the story moves forward. Finally, the writers showed courage by depicting a less-than-happy ending; avoiding predictability in the way a certain TV franchise long ago lost the ability to even attempt.

Given that we have no other examples, "Different Destinations" offers us our only observations of temporal mechanics in the Farscape universe, which are as followes:

1. The writers appear not to endorse the Multiple Worlds theory. There are no parallel universes, mirror dimensions, alternate timelines in the FU. If the "elastic time" theory offered by Scorpius/Harvey is to be taken at face value, this likens the space/time continuum to an infinitely "plastic" or "liquid" structure, in which eddies or embolisms caused by any changes in time are ultimately "reabsorbed" and do not disturb the currents of events past a certain level.

2. The degree to which a region of space/time is altered by any sort of time change appears to be connected to the scope of its entire event current in universal history. Nothing which occurs on the planet in its present or past appears to have any impact on the history of the universe at large. There are no changes effected to the galaxy Moya subsequently travels in after this episode.

3. All the alterations which occured in the episode were an entirely local phenomena to the planet and do not affect the orbiting Moya or the crew. They observe the changes from their position and retain their memories of events. The only alterations in Moya's databanks are directly related to information on the planet itself, and Pilot retains his memories of having read extracts which subsequently become "unavailable".

4. At one point in the story, the planet vanishes from existence altogether. If we take what Scorpius/Harvey outlined at face value, particularly in regards to the consequences of events vectoring too far from the pattern, it might be inferred that the structure of the universe "reshaped" to eliminate the planet altogether since its pattern became too chaotic to sustain itself. A subsequent alteration reestablished a coherent space/time event pattern and the planet's existence resumed as before.

[NecronLord]

1. The writers appear not to endorse the Multiple Worlds theory. There are no parallel universes, mirror dimensions, alternate timelines in the FU. If the "elastic time" theory offered by Scorpius/Harvey is to be taken at face value, this likens the space/time continuum to an infinitely "plastic" or "liquid" structure, in which eddies or embolisms caused by any changes in time are ultimately "reabsorbed" and do not disturb the currents of events past a certain level.

Oh yes they do. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but they most definitely do.

[Patrick Degan]

Obviously, this occurs in the last season, which I haven't seen and have little knowledge of.

[Xon]

1. The writers appear not to endorse the Multiple Worlds theory. There are no parallel universes, mirror dimensions, alternate timelines in the FU. If the "elastic time" theory offered by Scorpius/Harvey is to be taken at face value, this likens the space/time continuum to an infinitely "plastic" or "liquid" structure, in which eddies or embolisms caused by any changes in time are ultimately "reabsorbed" and do not disturb the currents of events past a certain level.

This doesnt actively forbid Multiple Worlds theory. Just means you cant use a simplistic version of it.

[avatarxprime]

Patrick, I was just wondering how much of the fourth season have you seen? I would hate to add spoilers to this thread that the creator of would not want to see.

[Coaan]

Obviously, this occurs in the last season, which I haven't seen and have little knowledge of.

Iirc, There's five seasons....hence season three is in the middle...

[avatarxprime]

actually there were only 4 seasons.


[rant]stupid sci-fi, how could they do that to farscape only to replace it with some stupid show about giant worms, i mean seriously people. sheesh. ack, argh, gah, bah, dieeeeeeee[/rant]

ok i feel better now

[Coaan]

Ah, shit...that's right...they cancelled the fifth....Bastards!

[Xon]

Technically it is 4.5 seasons(got canceled half way through season 4).

[Death from the Sea]

Technically it is 4.5 seasons(got canceled half way through season 4).

Wouldn't that make it 3.5??? 4 (seasons) - .5 (of season 4) = 3.5

[SyntaxVorlon]

Given that we have no other examples, "Different Destinations" offers us our only observations of temporal mechanics in the Farscape universe, which are as followes:

1. The writers appear not to endorse the Multiple Worlds theory. There are no parallel universes, mirror dimensions, alternate timelines in the FU. If the "elastic time" theory offered by Scorpius/Harvey is to be taken at face value, this likens the space/time continuum to an infinitely "plastic" or "liquid" structure, in which eddies or embolisms caused by any changes in time are ultimately "reabsorbed" and do not disturb the currents of events past a certain level.

2. The degree to which a region of space/time is altered by any sort of time change appears to be connected to the scope of its entire event current in universal history. Nothing which occurs on the planet in its present or past appears to have any impact on the history of the universe at large. There are no changes effected to the galaxy Moya subsequently travels in after this episode.

3. All the alterations which occured in the episode were an entirely local phenomena to the planet and do not affect the orbiting Moya or the crew. They observe the changes from their position and retain their memories of events. The only alterations in Moya's databanks are directly related to information on the planet itself, and Pilot retains his memories of having read extracts which subsequently become "unavailable".

4. At one point in the story, the planet vanishes from existence altogether. If we take what Scorpius/Harvey outlined at face value, particularly in regards to the consequences of events vectoring too far from the pattern, it might be inferred that the structure of the universe "reshaped" to eliminate the planet altogether since its pattern became too chaotic to sustain itself. A subsequent alteration reestablished a coherent space/time event pattern and the planet's existence resumed as before.

1: We do see other "timelines" and the consequences thereto in the last full season.

4: I believe that the planet changing was due to the fact that because of their meddling, the Landing Party caused the peace process to get held further and further back to the point where war reescalated and eventually in the planets history they slagged, and after some more meddling, completely destroyed the planet.
The entire episode was a sort of literary device to anthropomorphize Moya's crew to the point where they can't fix everything. And to make them multidimesional so that their actions are given consequences.

[Patrick Degan]

1: We do see other "timelines" and the consequences thereto in the last full season.

As I've said, I've yet to see the last season. I trust they don't bung up the concept unlike the Berman Braga monster has.

4: I believe that the planet changing was due to the fact that because of their meddling, the Landing Party caused the peace process to get held further and further back to the point where war reescalated and eventually in the planets history they slagged, and after some more meddling, completely destroyed the planet.[/qoute]

Point four admittedly was pure speculation on my part and based upon the apparent lack of any remaining debris of the planet in that segment.

The entire episode was a sort of literary device to anthropomorphize Moya's crew to the point where they can't fix everything. And to make them multidimesional so that their actions are given consequences.

Actually, it seemed to me that the episode was a literary device to demonstrate that official history never withstands close examination.

[CNS Sarajevo]

Just had to chime in here--this was one of my favorite episodes. There was no easy way out, and even when the episode was resolved,

I can think only one other time travel episode before season 4, "Back and Back and Back to the Future". An alien brings a device aboard Moya that starts causing time shifts. It's repetitive but it's still pretty cool. I liked John's experiment with the mask that he breaks .

The season 4 time travel isn't so much time travel as it is... well... different destinations. You'll see.

[NecronLord]

As I've said, I've yet to see the last season. I trust they don't bung up the concept unlike the Berman Braga monster has.

No, they don't, it's original and difficult to explain.

Incidentally we see a device capable of putting an entire planetery population and their buildings into stasis, and preventing them from interacting with anything else...

[SyntaxVorlon]

Oh and there was the season 1 I think ep where John touches a QS and starts Quantum leaping every time he dies in a violent quantum event.

That was scientifically the worst episode in the series, though it gave me hope that they'll might throw Scott Bakula into a Black Hole.

[kojikun]

Oh and there was the season 1 I think ep where John touches a QS and starts Quantum leaping every time he dies in a violent quantum event.

That was scientifically the worst episode in the series, though it gave me hope that they'll might throw Scott Bakula into a Black Hole.

Thats back and back and back to the future. You mistook the episode. He wasnt quantum leaping or anything, he was SEEING the future of peoples actions.