Our heroes on Moya are a family. A found family rather than a biological family.
I am thinking about fathers in Farscape because my biological father died recently. I wasn’t close to my father because he was a distant, cynical man. On my other Web site InsertPhilosophyHere.com I wrote that what I learned most from him was how not to be. But here, I want to explore a theme in Farscape about fathers that resonates with me.
Crafting this video, I realized how strongly the theme of fatherhood runs through Farscape. Almost immediately we meet Jack Crichton, an astronaut, but one not shot through a wormhole. And he’s one father bookend to the original series, the other bookend being John Crichton who becomes a father at the very end of Peacekeeper Wars.
Jack is an archetype of a good father, a bigger than life hero <it’s being son of who you are > He’s so much an archetype that the Ancients emulate him to win Crichton’s trust and then to help him later. The real Jack does get reunited with his son and we get to see a glimpse of family bliss, until a Skreeth ruins it. But Jack is a good man and a loving father. < phone to moon > Jack is what anyone would want for a father. No doubt, the younger Crichton will also be a great father to his child.
Of course, Farscape is too real to be all sweetness and light, so it also shows the other sides of fatherhood. But there is a theme and that theme is distance, one I knew well with my father.
Rygel is a father, but a distant one and that was true before he was deposed.
D’Argo is also a distant father, but not by choice. He clearly loves his son, but when D’Argo is finally reunited with his son, he is a distant father, as I mentioned in my video on D’Argo.
None of the other male Farscape characters are fathers. Not Crais, not Braca, not …. oh dear, what a thought.
Everyone who exists has a biological father, so everyone on Farscape does too. Crichton’s father is the most significant, but second most would have to be Crais’s father. My video about Crais talked about how it was his father’s choice to sell Bialar and his brother into Peacekeeper service that defined Bialar’s life. < the recruiter is here >
Zhaan mentions her father only once, that he was a liberal thinker imprisoned by the same conservative Delvian regime that imprisoned her. D’Argo’s father, Laytun, is also mentioned only once, when D’Argo identifies himself to the Luxan spaceship. Scorpius’s father is, of course, a Scarran, who we only briefly see in a flashback, and he understandable hates his father who raped his mother. The only other father who’s even mentioned is Aeryn’s.
< Name him Talyn >
Sincere people can disagree on whether the person who claims to be Talyn Lyczec is actually Aeryn’s father. The events on Valldon are clearly a trap set up by Zhalax Sun to take vengeance so I’ll side with that not being Aeryn’s real father. It’s more likely that, as hinted at, part of Xhalax’s punishment was she was ordered to execute Aeryn’s father.
As you know, I’m a believer that Farscape will continue, and all hints are that the revival will focus on the relationship between father John Crichton and son D’Argo Sun Crichton. We can be confident that Little D will have responsible, caring parents, something everyone deserves but not enough get.