A simple wormhole-watching EVA turns into a nightmare of alternate realities for Crichton...and if he's not careful, perhaps also for those he loves most.

Am I first again :unsure:

This is a bit of a long one, and a bit rambling. Sorry ;)

So much seems to happen even before the opening credit here. We see Aeryn learning English. Find out John is using twice the 'recommended daily dose' of his forgetting drug. Scorpy and Sikozu are getting closer (Yuck!). And then John gets sucked down a wormhole whilst the crew look on in disbelief :o
Roll credits.........

He wakes up on what looks like a small iceberg, surrounded by a sea of swirly wormholes. Weird!

"Time"
"S’up"
"Time"
"Flies"
"Time"
"Bandits"
"Time"
"Wounds all heals"
"Time"
"Rosemary and thyme"

I love that exchange between John and the guy (who John names Einstein), followed by John whipping out his gun and taking a shot which stops just in front of the man and just floats slowly away.

"Either stop pointin' guns at people or get a bigger gun" Good advice there John, but he's never had to give it to himself before ;)

This episode pulls together threads from previous episodes, such as the consequences of having the Pathfinder beacon placed on moya or what happened to Moya when she and the others were pulled in to the wormhole at the end of last season, but does so in a way that you don’t feel cheated, well I didn’t anyway.

Then there are those wonderful, weird and terrifying visions of other possible outcomes to various encounters from Johns past (especially the one where Aeryn snaps John’s neck :fear: ). Or are they just visions? This is where I get confused. They are not really visions. They are ‘Unrealized Realities’ (UR), things that COULD happen, or could HAVE happened. Somehow John’s innocent tinkering with the wormhole knowledge has created these UR, and now he suddenly has the power to move through time? But that’s a bad thing, as he may end up in a UR and get stuck there. Am I on the right track here?

So Einstein has dragged John here to kill him, or at least to see if John can be trusted with the WH knowledge and to be told about the dangers it poses. I love the small smile that Einstein gives John when he says he isn’t a pawn. Like a teacher with a favored pupil. I always think that it may be at this point that Einstein truly decides to let John live.

If it was at all possible, the UR visions get even more bizarre as Einstein starts to weaken and lose control of them. A half Scarran John with his dad (is that Scorpy playing Jack, or Jack as Scorpy?), which is creepy but not nearly as much as the next one which takes place onboard a Moya where Aeryn is Pip, Pip is Noranti, Noranti is Rygel, Rygel is D’Argo, D’Argo is Jool, and Sikozu is Stark (at least I think those are correct!). But the worst bit? Crais embracing John as it is revealed that in this UR, John is a traitor. Einstein barely gets him back this time and tells him the next UR will be the last. It’s up to John to try to influence the UR and the wormhole to get himself back to the correct Moya, at the time he left her.

"Ah, screw it. But I am not Kirk, Spock, Luke, Buck, Flash, or Arthur frelling Dent. I am Dorothy Gayle from Kansas, and you are going to hire more Ancients"

But he makes a mistake. A small miscalculation. When he opens his eyes, he’s floating in space, alone, with a small moon is in the near distance. Look familiar? He slowly turns around and we see a blue and green planet below him. Earth!!!!

”Whoops”

To be continued........

Fantastic episode. Very confusing, but fantastic non-the-less. If anything I think it improves from repeated viewing. I really didn’t expect that ending. It leaves you wanting more, is it really Earth? Where are Moya and the crew? How is John going to get down from space? So many questions.......

Don't really like this one too much but great ending. I watched it again the other day and felt the same way.

I liked Einstein but it just seemed to drag. I didn't like the different versions of reality at all and really hated the idea of the body swaps, sorry I just cringe when I see them.

It is an important episode in many ways and had some good ideas but it just doesn't w**k for me.

Totally agree, Karen, it's a brilliant episode, and the pivot for the whole season.

I love the teaser, it feels so serene with John on his space walk and Aeryn learning English. Of course, being a teaser, you know something's going to happen, but on first viewing I wasn't expecting that :o :lol:

The episode has a very unusual feel to it, I find, almost surreal in a very set-bound British kind of way, almost like a story from Doctor Who or The Prisoner or - dare I say it - Blake's 7.

Like you say, it has the potential to be a very confusing episode and - to a degree - I think it plays on that to up the weirdometer, and it works really well. The alternate realities vary from sinister to downright freaky.

I like the idea of Einstein tracking John's movements, wanting to know why Crichton has been trusted with this knowledge, explaining what happened to Moya previously. And as Einstein probes away at John, so John's understanding of his knowledge crucially develops. It all starts to come together in a very intriguing way.

Still, my favourite lines belong to Rygel and Pilot:

Rygel: "I wouldn't have risen to Dominar if I wasn't good at recognising things before they happen."
Pilot: "You were deposed in a coup led by your own cousin..."

It's interesting that such an important episode was actually designed to save money. Sometimes budgetary constraints force the writers to do some of their best w**k.

Great episode :thumbsup:

I think it is all the more difficult to understand the first time you watch it as there is just so much happening to take it all in.

You can say that again :o

I always think the bits where people from John's past are discussing their feelings/thoughts about him are also some of the most bizarre. It starts out all normal (We love John, Great guy, Intelligent, etc), but ends up in a completely different place. Just what the hell was all that about anyway?

Maybe it goes from what he wants them to think of him to what he suspects they think of him :lol:

:lol: Could be.