BEN BROWDER: Green Eyed Monster. [laughs] Hi, my name's Ben Browder, I'm sitting here with Tony Tilse, the busiest man in Australian television.

TONY TILSE: Hi!

BEN: And Angus who does our ADR and makes everything sound good. We're looking at Green Eyed Monster, I'm the writer of the piece. [laughs] Who the hell's that guy?

All laugh. [pause]

TONY: Here we are, and we're straight into the story, straight away. There's a little Talyn corridor. And then straight into the command with Claud and Lani.

[pause]

BEN: As we can see right now, Crais is making eyes at John's girl. [all chuckle] It wasn't scripted, was it? Ah, maybe it was. It's interesting, the entire set up of the first act is one giant mislead as to who the bad guy is.

TONY: That's - yeah.

BEN: When we were pitching the piece - or when I was pitched the piece to the writers, what I wanted to do was a piece which focused on essentially human faces away from the critters and monsters and the prosthetics. One, because we could move quicker as we shot it, which meant we could play the drama out. But, also, I thought that the love triangle between Crais and Aeryn and Crichton was an interesting avenue that we haven't really looked at. And it's certainly been playing it in the background for almost a season and a half.

TONY: Yeah. And it's also great to get these kind of stories that are just character based, where it's - we're sort of - we are sort of relying less on effects and the "gee whiz" of what we're doing, but more on the interaction of the characters. And that's what I really liked about this script, was that it was set on Talyn. I guess it reminded me a bit of...oh, I don't know. There's a lot of references, but I guess like Das Boot, you know, how did I get on this boat, stuck in this submarine.

BEN: Yeah, well that was my original working title. I had three working titles. One them was Das Budong, [laughs] was the first one. The other one was All About Aeryn, and then Green Eyed Monster. And I went with Green Eyed Monster, cause, you know, he had a big green eye.

BEN: With Aeryn in the middle.

TONY: [agreeing] With Aeryn in the middle.

BEN: As often as possible, yeah.

TONY: [Echoing thought] As often as possible, yeah.

BEN: Yeah. Which is what it is. And, of course, the fourth member of the triangle/quadrangle, is surrounds as all elements. The CGI on this, is huge, is massive. And it was one of the things that I wanted to do, is I didn't want to concentrate a lot on pulse blast in the script. I wanted to give the CGI department something big to do, and uh...

TONY: Yeah, in fact, it's extremely big because basically we couldn't-

TONY: It is a great moment here [Budong eating Talyn]. It's just-

BEN: See, that's big.

TONY: That's big. That's really big.

BEN: And they did a great job.

TONY: They did a fantastic job with it. But because the Budong was such a complex beast, we couldn't actually - we didn't have the time or the rendering time or the CG budget to actually show the complete Budong in all its glory.

BEN: Yeah, well that's why I hid him in the rings.

TONY: The ring, yeah.

BEN: Yeah, well the rings served two purposes. I put him around a planetary ring because I knew that we wouldn't be able to show the Budong all the time, but I needed him lurking in the same way that you have the ship on the surface in a submarine movie. So, created this mythos that Budongs eat the debris of gas giant rings. So I asked for a ring planet so the Budong could literally be hidden. And then Tony loved the idea of it rising out of the rings.

TONY: Oh yeah, that's right. I always had the image of that kind of idea that when it's chasing it, there's sort of like a shark fin almost effect, that the ice is parting as it attacks. And I think the CG guys really came up with that, really well. Really well.

Ben "sings" "ah! ah!" and longer "aaah!" part towards the end of the intro song. He laughs.

BEN: So, we're back in, and in typical Farscape motif, we're straight into the action. This is one of those things Kemper always stresses when he's hammering on his writers, is move the action forward, move the action forward. In the first pass of the script, I probably had this happening seven or eight pages, and then instead, it happens on page four, page five and just press the action forward and get it going. You know, so the first act is almost a run-

TONY: It is a complete run. And in a way - just going back to kind of the Das Boot, is that the - you know, I really wanted to shoot this on a steady cam as much as possible, because I really wanted that sense of that kind of movement, constantly moving. I didn't want the camera to really stay static, because this ship - until the ship got sort of stuck - and once again we had Marty Lee who was our steady cam operator, who was constantly sort of working all the time on this set. This is a very hot set to work in, with all the lights on. It's surprisingly hot.

BEN: It's like the Easy Bake oven, that girls had when I was a kid. [laughs] The set itself - like the corridors are lit with five thousand hundred watt light bulbs. So basically if you walk in there with a pan full of dough, you'll have bread at the end of the take.

BEN: And there's the fourth player, right there [indicating Talyn]. He's the pivotal character in so many ways, and he's very difficult to write for. Because, other than having Crais say everything he says, and Crais talking to him all the time, he still has to emote. So, Marty Lee pans up to that central pillar in the middle and he makes a little sound and we go "Oo, Talyn's in a bad mood".

TONY: And here we are, firing our harpoons. Now, the special effects guys actually made these guns to fire. They were fantastic! They did actually fire, and it was great fun to shoot, but complicated. Because, in a way, we had all these sequences where we kind of - in the darkness and we couldn't really see the wall and what-

BEN: And they're really heavy as well! There's a practical reason why Crichton is helping her carry these things, cause they weight a - the things - I'm just holding it steady cause it weighs about fifty pounds. The Tak five torpedo.

TONY: Here it comes. Here it... Whoa! There's the wall. They fire off. [makes soft shooting noise]

BEN: And I was listening to Take Five, when I wrote this. I went "Okay, why don't I just call it a Tak five torpedo? Does that sound techie enough?" I'm terrible with technobabble. [chuckle] Pop culture I can sorta do, but technobabble - I just call Ricky. "Hey Ricky, I need a word for uh..." [laughs] Kemper actually insisted that Crichton fire one. Yeah, yeah. Originally I had Aeryn doing all the action. In fact, I had everybody doing all the action. I was gonna sit on the side and just drink a Cola, iced tea and watch. There ya go. The Budong in the ring.

TONY: Okay, and here comes Laurel and Hardy, I suppose, of the...

BEN: Fantastic. Well Paul had said that he wanted to work with the puppet, cause he hadn't worked with him. And I went "Fine!"

TONY: Fine, yeah!

BEN: It was great, because you get to play this class warfare. That's the interesting thing to me, in writing it, is that even here, they're doing the comedy routine. But there's class warfare going on. There's the owners and the owns. [laughs] Tulskas. You really don't wanna know where a lot of these words come from. [laughs] Tulskas has an origin but I.... [to Tony] Did I ever tell you? Where it come from?

TONY: No. No, no. [laughs] No.

They both laugh.

TONY: For those of you who haven't got the vision of us-

BEN: No, no, no, la-la-la-la-la!

They both laugh.

BEN: Tilse just found out where it came from. [both laugh] The rest of you will just have to guess. [pause] Electromagnetic candy, that was my favorite bit of technobabble that I wrote.

TONY: Yeah. Yeah.

BEN: And Paul played it perfectly. [pause] These guys did a great job.

TONY: They - yeah, it's - and once again this sequence was shot over various days because one angle we shot one day and another angle another day it's...that's what we seem to do in Farscape sometimes. It tends to get fractured a bit. Another great CG moment here. [Budong just missing the pod]

TONY: I really wanted to - I always wanted that traveled down that spine of the beast, and the guys did it for me. That was fantastic, so I was really, really happy. [pause] Here we go. Back on Talyn. Once again, just kind of throwing in sort of that Talyn reference. Just kind of-

BEN: [clears throat] Well here's where we actually get to where things slow down. It just hammers so fast up until this point, has been breakneck. And now, from this point on, we're really getting to start to play with the personal drama, the conflicts, the character stuff. All the stuff that is very difficult to squeeze in while you're running and jumping. Even though it's there, here's where the payoff starts. And it's also where the big mislead starts. [pause] And Crichton is locked out. And he's still convinced that it's Crais. [chuckles] Talyn is messin' with him. Also for those of you at home, may notice that Crichton has a scar? That's because there's two Crichtons, and the one who - Scarface - Dead Crichton Walking - is on Talyn. It's also - the other good thing about this episode, is that we know that one of the Johns can die.

TONY: Yes.

BEN: So I have this brilliant obje- I don't understand why every episode where there were two Johns, we weren't seriously putting him in jeopardy. That's why I stuck him outside the ship! I said "Well, well he can die! The audience will actually buy the fact that Crichton is gonna die. So you want them to think he is gonna die. Is a great thing about splitting two Johns.

TONY: Yeah. And that's - yeah. And that's....[chuckles]

BEN: Well you split two John's and you got a couple of.... Ah, here we are.

TONY: Oh, here we go. This sex scene; which I think we sort of eluded to at the last Farscape conference in Burbank. Re the difficulties of trying to shoot a sex scenes.

BEN: Especially when the actress whose brought in to body double, doesn't know that it's a sex scene.

Both laugh.

TONY: So the rest is up to your imagination.

BEN: She's there in make up, going "They wanna do what? What? I'm sorry, I have to do what? But they"-

TONY: "No one told me it was a sex scene." So there's a director off-set, while they're setting up trying to tell someone to take off their clothes. Oh, what a life!

BEN: [laughing] Here's your job. Yeah, you don't mind taking your clothes off, do you? I don't think Claudia didn't even want to do the insert of the face. She's like [laughs]

TONY: So, yeah, it was all kinds of tricks to do, but that's - it still works, because it really ups the - here it is, it's great look here, boom. That's it.

BEN: You know, Margo did a good job on that scar. It holds up even there.

TONY: It holds up in-

BEN: Margaret is my make up artist. Who did a fantastic job, which I- He's a little depressed. [Re: John]

TONY: He's a bit sad.

BEN: I just - I love this moment. He comes in, he's waiting for the door to not open again and then...aaand, and it opens before he even touches it. Cause Talyn is bugging him, but he wants him to see them together like that.

TONY: In a kind of sprung moment.

TONY: Claud's great. She just - that was fantastic.

BEN: Ah, she's the money, man. And Lani is just fantastic in this. Couldn't be happier.

TONY: Now this is where-

BEN: Yeah, they saved the writers ass, no question about it.

TONY: There she goes. She's facing that triangle and then it kind of starts to change.

BEN: Yeah, the triangle's getting ready to change, isn't it?

TONY: Yeah, gets ready to change.

BEN: Someone else is going to be on the outside of the triangle. [pause] This is an exposition scene. This entire scene, is nothing but exposition. The only thing which holds it together is the fact that John thinks they're boffing each other, and they're looking like they're boffing each other. The audience is looking for all the clues as to what's really going on. And the rest of it is just exposition. Normally we hide it by slamming someone up against the wall. Or running down the corridors shooting something, or fixing some broken part of the ship. But this one, we're just standing here and the personal dynamic and the misunderstanding which Crichton has, and which the audience may have, and - well all of them do, actually makes what is normally an exposition scene into a character piece, and it holds. So we get all this information out in like, two and a half pages.

TONY: Here it comes. Here's the twin pony tails.

Tony chuckles as Aeryn says she has decided to take the neural implant.

TONY: Oh dear. Interestingly enough, I was - there was so much subtext going on here, I was almost worried that you'd miss the exposition because you were so looking for the clues. But, as it turned out, no. It worked out fantastically.

BEN: We did it in such a boring fashion, that you actually heard the words.

Both laugh.

BEN: Plus, you know, you reduce it down to, you know, flying out the ass. You know? It was like-[laughs]

TONY: Yeah. That's - that's, yeah. And there we are. There's John now, he's now the one in the hot seat. And Talyn's just right above his head there, and his little note going-

BEN: He's just up there gloating, look at him. He's gloating.

TONY: He's gloating! You can see him!

BEN: That little sucker.

TONY: He's really gloating.

[Pause while Aeryn follows John into the corridor, wanting John at the insertion.]

TONY: Which we haven't really - this is one of the few things, I think-

BEN: We don't do it.

TONY: No, we don't do it at all.

BEN: We do it very seldomly. I actually really love that stuff. There's actually some of that in 407. Here's a plug for next season, folks. In 407 there's a domestic scene, who do you think it involves? Probably not who you think it does. [laughs]

TONY: No, not really, no.

BEN: You're such a monster. [pause] A lot of misunderstanding in this ep.

[Scene plays out. John confronts her about her wish to return to PK life. She doesn't want him at the insertion.]

BEN: I was really unsure on the day, if this scene worked. But it does kind of work. She's great. We had to re-shoot her part, because of the steady cam wouldn't pull focus.

[Tony says something here in agreement, but cannot be heard over Starks' lines]

[Stark rambles on about Budongs]

BEN: [laughs] I don't know why that line tickles me. He's like - he's talking about the people dying in a Budong and he's going "And those Budongs were dead!"

TONY: Oh, here we go.

BEN: Oh, it's an Exorcist reference! The whole lead up is an Exorcist. Rygel's going [mumbling sounds], "my mother sucks what?" and then, the spewing. And there's the vomit which is center piece of the whole episode.

TONY: A great one-take vomit, wanted a great one-take vomit, again. Love the little chunky bits on Rygel's lips too. I really quite love it. Oh, here we go. Always loved this moment here. This is the kind of - this came in during the shoot, this moment. I just felt like a neck to the neck and her thinking his neck. Kind of sorts at a wedding. I felt like this was going to be like, here's the groom in anticipation.

TONY: And there you are, and Crichton's missed it.

BEN: Kemper actually insisted Crichton go after her. That was David. I was gonna have him sitting back in his room, brooding. I couldn't think of anything to do with him. He's already given up. And Kemper said, "No, you gotta get - the hero has to go back!" And I don't think about him as a hero. I think of him as like, you know, here's the guy in a lot of trouble. Yeah, he insisted that Crichton make the effort. [laughs] I don't really know the show at all. I just show up on the day, stand on the mark. [pause] But at least this time we don't see the hand.

TONY: That's right. But whenever we get the Hand of Friendship, we go "there goes the schedule." Cause I don't know what it is, this Hand of Friendship just never works, the way you'd like it to work.

BEN: Even with the steam.

TONY: Even with the steam. It just kind of....

BEN: And this is where I introduced the phrase "Tilse Vision", isn't it?

TONY: That's right. Yes. I think - In the script, Ben had written, you know, with them going to Tilse Vision, which is her travelling through Talyns corridors. And, thanks very much Ben, cause we were on a CG budget, so we had to work out a way to do this practically without kind of using any CG.

BEN: Didn't use it there, though. You ended up just using the CG shots.

TONY: Didn't use it there. We're using that, but right now, she's starts - we start to go into this moment now, where, she's gotta learn to control Talyn. And that's where we end up using-

BEN: Tilse Vision.

TONY: Going back to an old favorite of mine, which is once again, little Handycam videos.

TONY: It's just a moment where - I wanted Crichton to all of a sudden feel like an alien on his own ship. That now the ship was hostile.

BEN: Yeah. And the Talyn DRD's. Remember, they had one rendering where they were sort of benign looking, and they came up with this model that sort of looked like a sea shell, or a turtle. And we said "Nah, it needs to be aggressive, because Talyn's a warship." And they came back with these great DRD's. Ah! Tilse Vision!

TONY: Here it is, yeah. Now once again, we just shot that on Handycam and we just kind of walked a bit in post. Not too seriously, but - I've always loved this moment here.

BEN: This is great.

TONY: Yeah. [pause] Then back to reality, yeah.

BEN: It was beautifully realized. Now, that was in the script.

TONY: That was in the script, yeah.

BEN: Where she sees herself. Beautifully done by everybody, there.

[Aeryn learns to use the long range comms]

BEN: Now, it's really lovely the way this stuff plays out and the sort of innocence Aeryn has in this ep. Don't often see her that way, but you know, Claud really gives her a lot of innocence.

[Rygel talks to Aeryn & Crais. Stark begins talking about what he knows about Budongs. Crais talks about going through the stomach. Stark protests.]

BEN: [chuckles] We had to go somewhere, man. I was like "Do we create a blow hole? Do they try to claw their way back out?" At one point, we discussed shooting our way out, but then we disabled the cannon to avoid that. Man, printing to go to these eps with all the little intricacies and pieces, where you go "Now, I can't have the cannon because I can't use the cannon later to ignite the thing, cause I gotta have Crichton out there so the cannon's gone, so we can't say-" You go through option after option after option, and it's really a simple story. We get swallowed by a Budong, we gotta get out. That's the whole plot.

[Talyn appears to be harming Crais, to get his way]

TONY: Oh, okay. This is where it all starts to go a bit wrong. Cause Crais is now, [inaudible]. Carls was great on that set. We had really long corridors to play, but...

BEN: And then Crais is gone. Someone would say "where did Crais go? You gotta explain how Crais left." No, he just walked out! She was busy! It never bothered me that Crais was suddenly gone.

TONY: Gone. No.

BEN: But it bugged the hell out of the writing room. They said "Well you gotta explain.." You know. I'm like "I can't explain everything! It just happens!" This is Farscape, man. Shit just happens. Oh, look. Oh yeah, a little bit of Tilse Vision. Tilse Vision has become a staple word in the writing department and around production as well. So, even if Tony Tilse never directs another episode of Farscape, he will be fondly remembered for Tilse Vision.

[Aeryn and John talk options for stopping Crais and getting things more under control. She tries to tell him about Crais' lesions.]

BEN: Do you think they're still buying that Crais and Aeryn are doin' it?

Both laugh.

BEN: John's certainly buying it.

TONY: Oh, here we go, bumpin' and rollin'. You're getting good with that, man.

TONY: Cause we got to set, and there was a window in the door.

BEN: And it was all predicated on not knowing what was going on inside, right? Suddenly there's a window, so entire scenes had to be re-written for the fact that we can now see what's going on inside the room.

TONY: Yeah. To a lesser extent here, but it really effected how we played the ending.

BEN: Very big in Aeryn's response to what's going on with John being outside. It worked for our benefit - cause we showed up and went "There's not supposed to be a window!"

TONY: No, that's - what do we do now? But, in the end we come to it, and cause we could get Aeryn and Crichton to make eye contact it really actually sort of really added something more to those scenes, which was fantastic.

[Crais wishes John had killed him, and begins screaming from the pain Talyn's inflicting on him]

TONY: [fake whine] I know! We just ran out of time and you know, it just never...no.

BEN: Okay, exposition scene number two. This is the other big exposition scene. It's all about what's happened, what's going on, what are we going to do next. And it's all saved by the presence of that gun. [chuckles] Could've thrown him up against the wall. [laughs]

[John asks Crais what's going on. Crais begins explaining the cybernetic bleed back]

TONY: It's good because it sort of...does not reveal in script too, that we're sort of - at every point there's a mixed reveal that just ups the stakes more. So it sort of - is not the sense that constantly building up-

BEN: I mean, every time that you reveal something that your answering, and the audiences questioned, you wanna try and up the stakes. You either want to ask two questions with a question that you answered, or you want to make the situation that much worse. So, the fact that you thought that Crais was the bad guy but not bad enough, now Crais is not the bad guy, Talyn's the bad guy, Aeryn is in jeopardy, and our situation is even worse because the ship is messed up.

TONY: Yeah. That's - yeah.

BEN: Yeah. So, in a very quiet way, we upped the stakes. Oh. [pause] This is the kind of thing that gets said around my house all the time. My dad would say this stuff when I was growing up. Somehow it just ended up out of my mouth. And then I go I don't think he actually ever said that, but you know, here "I think that weather changes and we keep making the same mistakes." [Both laugh] My dad has a billion things that he says, you know. "You can fight with pigs, you both get dirty but the pigs'll like it." Things like that. Such a country boy.

Tony laughs.

BEN: It's fantastic. [laughs, pause] Well, I'm still convinced that they're doin' it. I don't know.

[Aeryn fights Crais returning to the helm so soon. She insists he rest. He ignores her. She wonders why no one ever listens to her.]

BEN: Did Claud add that line?

TONY: I think she did, yeah.

BEN: "Get the writing department down there, the actors are changin' the lines!" Good ad lib. I was trying to encourage people to ad lib so I wouldn't be responsible if it went wrong. [laughs] It's just that some things are better created on the floor than they are created sitting behind a computer.

TONY: Yeah. Because you're actually in the physical space of the set and action in the physical moment of what's going on, that you do - you sometimes reveals limitations and sometimes reveals some strengths. But it's - yeah.

BEN: Ah. Ahem. When I first pitched this moment, I was told "They can't do that!" They couldn't figure out how it was gonna get to the point where Stark would stick his arm down Rygel's throat. It makes perfect sense! Just swallow the comms chip! The what? I just made that up. It's such a great - [laughs] Paul's reaction. I just really wanted to see that happen. I really wanted to see someone just shove their arm down the puppets throat. Ah. I re-wrote this scene about thirty times. I knew it needed to be here, but I didn't know why. I couldn't figure out what the scene was. I swear, I re-wrote it thirty times.

[Aeryn confronts John about his behavior. She calls him a drannet. He doesn't know what that is.]

BEN: And the drannet is the representation of why they don't understand one another. Cause what you're saying, is there's still - she's an alien, he's a human. Or, she's Sebacean and he's an alien, depending on which way you want to look at it. And not to mention the fact that they're men and women and communication is difficult at the best of times. Thrown in the intergalactic mix. [pause, clears throat] But I think you needed that scene between Aeryn and Crichton. I just wasn't sure how to do it until I was just sitting there going, alright, "quit being a drannet" and him going "I don't know what a drannet is", badda, badda, badda. [pause] And if you want to know what a drannet is, you can just keep waitin'. [laughs] That's Cesium fuel guys, not cesium. Cesium fuel. Cesium and water would explode and cesium fuel needs an ignition source. It's an alien fuel source! There's no such Earth thing as cesium fuel. It's a Peacekeeper fuel and it has to have an ignition source. If you just threw the cesium and water together, you got a big explosion. [chuckles] Ice from the rings. It's so convoluted! The whole plot of like how it all comes together. See, we just wanna get it out! But no, you gotta get the Budong to eat some ice. It was even more complicated in the writing room. Kemper's solution I think, was "You're gonna paint the asteroids up.." and yadda yadda yadda. He couldn't figure out why the Budong would eat the asteroids. I go "they just eat things, man!" [laughs] They gotta eat somethin', why not rocks? Ah, ships, rocks, anything in their way.

[Aeryn and John talk Taks.]

BEN: Classic Aeryn line: "Big enough."

BEN: And there's the rope, leading the ignition source. You know where John's goin'. Come back, and here we are, Act Four, on the run.

TONY: Here we go, on the run. Here we go.

BEN: Always Act Four on the run.

TONY: Big inter-cut sequence. Here we go. Lots of things happening. [pause] This is sort of getting the 2001: A Space Odyssey reference here.

BEN: Wow, we should go back through and track through all the references.

TONY: You flipped that shot. Slide down. Sort of give it more sort of surreal feel to it. Climbing up.

Tony and Ben chuckle.

BEN: "Cause we're candy"

TONY: This was a shot I always wanted to do. It was really hard to pull off. I wanted the idea that sort of the beast under the surface, chasing them.

BEN: So it just began as a light, yeah. Cause you didn't get your fit.

TONY: That's right. And I wanted the eye and I wanted that sort of - that's the nature of the beast.

BEN: Well, we got an awful lot for our money. Cause the only scale in this piece - everything is contained. The only scale is the CGI scale, which is what I wanted them to do, which I hoped they would get jazzed about. And we knock the puppet out. And they did a great job. Oh, yeah, this wall. This rubber wall, man. I kept telling them "Nah, we can do it, we can do it!" They kept goin' "It's too big, it's too big!" "No, we can do it, we just put up a big rubber wall!" And we did. [laughs]

TONY: We did. So we suspended sort of - yeah.

BEN: Well I spent like three days on wires.

TONY: Yeah, you did.

BEN: And hiding a lot of them with the blackness as opposed to blocking them out.

TONY: And we shot it two ways. We shot it with the wall free-standing, up. And then the wall on the ground and suspending you down, to kind of get rid of the gravity effect, in sub shots.

[Stark waffles on whether he's ready or not. Aeryn & Crais realize Talyn's awake and not responding. He finally decides it's time. John arms the Tak.]

BEN: There was a bit of re-arranging in the order there, wasn't there?

TONY: Yeah, there was, yeah.

BEN: To make it work. Yeah.

TONY: But just to get the tension going and to just kind of - yeah.

BEN: There's an ADR line. Angus sittin' back here smiling, going "Man, we did good ADR on that". We get these things called writers lines. If you look really really close, you go "he wasn't saying that!" The writers stuck that in to make things clear. [laughs] Or Angus suggested in post. "You know, you could say this."

[Aeryn looks to the open hatch]

TONY: This is where she sees the open door.

BEN: Yeah. [pause] Of course...it's all getting ready to change and he's gonna lie to her. [pause] Man, it's a big little episode, isn't it?

TONY: It is.

BEN: To be so contained, there's a lot of big elements.

TONY: I forgotten sort of how huge it was, it's just...

BEN: Well, yeah, we did it in time though, man. Ten days.

TONY: Yeah, almost ten days.

BEN: Oh, whoa, we lost half a day with the steady cam. We did it in ten days.

[Aeryn and Crais talk about Talyn's feelings towards John.]

TONY: We sort of kept raising the bar for ourselves, each time. We were always trying to outdo what we did last time.

BEN: No, that's you raising the bar. See, I'm trying to simplify, make little small episodes and you're going "Yeah, and then we could do this!" [both laugh] Wait til you kids see 408. There's a preview coming up of 408 which is the episode - 407! 407 is the episode I wrote this year, and Tony directed that as well. It's a smaller, simpler piece than this.

Both laugh.

TONY: Here she goes. Down looking for...

BEN: And see, Talyn's lying to her! Look! There's the lie.

TONY: There you go. There's the lie, there's the lie. I think it was the scene - there's one moment of Crichton outside the -

ANGUS: The flash thing.

TONY: The flash in there, that you can see through it. There.

BEN: That was the tail end of a baby we killed. (Personal note: He does not mean an actual baby!!)

TONY: That's one of the babies - I was gonna say, there's one scene out there, with Crichton doing "little pig, little pig, let me in". I think that - I'm not sure it'll be on the deleted scenes for this DVD. But...

BEN: But it oughta be. Anytime I can recite a nursery rhyme. [deep] "Little Pig, Little Pig, let me in!" [high] "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!" [deep] "Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll bbbbbbbblow your house in!" It didn't make the cut, man. How the hell did that happen? That's good!

TONY: Good, we got the reflection shot on her. This is where the window actually paid off. It was written like - she had to see through the doors, to kinda get a-

BEN: With Tilse Vision, but with actual windows there, they could make eye contact and he gets to hear her as well.

TONY: Yeah, and it really helped that...

[Brief pause]

BEN: It's interesting, with this script. It's also - the final moment is a moment where we don't kill anybody. We don't kill anything. It's a quiet moment.....that resolves the problem. I like those moments.

TONY: Yeah.

BEN: And just give 'em to Aeryn, give 'em to Claudia Black and they play.

[Aeryn shows Talyn what it's like to need someone.]

TONY: And the editor, Martin Conner sort of come up with this sequence that really didn't change too much when we saw it. It was really...

BEN: Yeah. The writer; this guy's a schmaltzy bastard to write stuff like that. Okay. We sort of resolved the problem. We haven't actually resolved it yet, it's getting there.

TONY: It's gonna blow stuff.

BEN: You know, but reason prevails with Talyn, this time.

TONY: There he goes. In he comes. She opens the door, he's in. I always thought [inaudible] cause it sort of...whoa! There we go. Another big CG shot.

[Brief pause]

BEN: And Rygel's going the whole time "No it won't work, no it won't work" and then he takes credit. [both chuckle] Rygel's such a cool character to write for, man.

BEN: That's a bit scary.

TONY: That's a bit scary.

BEN: Now that you mention it, it's a bit scary. You guys'll have to wait for next year for the [laughs] to understand why that's scary.

TONY: I've always like that look, though.

BEN: I like this moment, here. I like the use of the mirror there.

TONY: Yeah, it's always mirrors in sets.

BEN: Well, especially on Talyn, when he's alive.

[Crais gives Aeryn the chip with Talyn's "creativity" on it]

BEN: Yeah, we never did nail that down. There was a suggestion that we nailed down exactly what happened. In ADR even, there was a suggestion from some people that we nail it down and I just liked the fact that it's not quite so clear as to exactly what happened. Because, she's going to say what happens, here. It's better if it plays on her. [pause] And it's the second domestic scene. Or the third domestic scene, of the piece.

[Aeryn tells him nothing ever happened between her and Crais, not that is should matter]

TONY: It's also the - this is sort of where the other John Crichton and Aeryn sort of get it together, really.

BEN: Yeah, well this was the - the brief for my episode was, you know, where I had to end up was those two starting their relationship. So, them saying essentially yes to the relationship, and this was the scene that sets them down a path. And the episode itself is about Aeryn realizing she needs him. Cause I had to overcome the hurdles that had been placed in their path for, what, two and half years of saying no when it seemed obvious they should say yes. And so, it was her realization that she keeps coming back. [pause] And I love the window! We played the window so seldom after that, but I liked the idea that Crichton was sleeping in a cubby hole, that looked out onto space. I like the idea that that's where he was and that's where they'll end up. I mean, you know, he's got this- Look, he's so working the girlfriend thing. This is a, you know - hey, come see my etchings. [pause, laughs] The writing staff all went "uuuugh! You can't say that!" I go "I'm gonna say it, man!" [Re: point of reference star named Aeryn] "Because I'm schmaltzy and I'm proud of it!" Well, it's just, you know, that moment. That sometimes you say things that you can't believe you said, but you said 'em cause you're just so damn obsessed and in love and all that other jazz.

TONY: And then I sort of - and I also really - to catch a thief, the fireworks moment, you know. Cary Grant.

BEN: Yeah, you crossed genres, there, man.

TONY: I know! Well that's exactly right. I thought, oh, I really want that star to go supernova at this point and time, you know.

Both laugh.

TONY: That was a little concession-

BEN: That's overkill, man!

TONY: That was concession to supernova. It - I don't know, we just couldn't help ourselves.

BEN: But you know, it does have give you the kind of, you know, Jimmy Stewart...Frank Capers feeling they were trying to get, trying to capture with the whole series. It's a Frank Caperesche kind of life. It's a wonderful life at the other end of the Universe. All that death, destruction, mayhem and torture, that's just part of it! But that little star just makes it okay. All these people worked on the show. Hey, thank you.

TONY: They were all fantastic.

BEN: Jen Lamphee. Matt Ford. Matt Ford? [laughs] Ah, they did a great job.

TONY: Once again, a great bunch of - yeah. We can't do it without them.

BEN: Hey, we had a good time though.

TONY: We did.

BEN: But it was scary as hell. Thank you Tony, for saving my ass.

TONY: It was fun to do. Like I said, I've always enjoyed that sort of - the Crichton/Aeryn stories, that relationship. It's always been fun for this show. It's always fun to play that relationship against this sort of big backdrop which is, you know, the sci fi universe. You know, it's Farscape universe, you know, it's fantastic.

BEN: Yeah, well, Tony. Thank you.

END OF COMMENTARY.