[Previously on...]

CLAUDIA BLACK: Hi, I'm Claudia Black, I play Aeryn Sun on Farscape. Hopefully you know that, by this stage. It's Episode four into Season Three. Might recap onto a couple of things that occurred in Episode One, as I think this will be the first commentary of this season, that you'll receive. Aeryn was dead at the end of Season Two, she's brought back to life by Zhaan, who links herself with Aeryn's spirit while Aeryn is inside a pod and she's frozen. This is, of course, to the detriment of Zhaan's well being and also her relationship with Stark. So this sets a whole interesting sequence of events in motion. Zhaan, here, in Wait for the Wheel, is getting increasingly worse. Crichton, in this scene, has found an opportunity to get home through wormhole technology. And currently our ship has been fused with Pathfinder Neeyala's ship - she's a scientist that Crichton's just negotiating with. We're not sure at this point what her intentions are. He's also seen at the end of Episode Three, images from the Three Stooges, which means that within the wormhole, there is knowledge about Earth, and that's why Crichton now knows that he can find a way home, this is the first real link he's had to getting back to Earth. Which throws a whole lot of interesting dilemmas in the mix, for Aeryn, especially because she doesn't know if she'd fit, back on Earth. She doesn't particularly like the idea of going with him, but she'll lose him otherwise. And, there's a lot of tension now, because Zhaan has given her life for Aeryn, and as Zhaan is starting to lose her life in this episode, Aeryn is becoming increasingly more aware of the fact that Zhaan has essentially made such a massive sacrifice for her. And Aeryn's having to really consider everything she does and all the choices she makes, to make sure it's been worth a life. And of course, nothing really is worth a life that's Zhaan's given. And, when Aeryn is brought back to life, in Episode One, she is reunited with Crichton, but decides that she can't afford to let other people die because of her, so she wants to try and distance herself from Crichton. So, they're a little isolated in this episode when we find them. [pause]

This is one of the first signs, really, for the audience that Pathfinder Neeyala's intentions may not be entirely clear.

It's an important relationship for Crichton, and this sows the seeds of technology, which he will start searching for, through the whole of this season, and into Season Four, about wormhole technology. And she is referenced again, further down the line. And the actors playing those two key characters - Pathfinder Neeyala is played by Victoria Longley, who's a very well known Australian actor, very interesting woman - who decided for her character, who looked a little reptilian, that she'd do a special sort of "sss"-sound every time an "s" came up. But, of course, unfortunately, none of the other guest actors did it. So, she just sounded like, as an actor, she had a speech impediment. That was an intentional part of her work, not the way she actually speaks. And Nicholas Hope, who is another beautiful Australian actor, was in a very interesting and important film called Bad Boy Bubbie. Get it out on video, it's a real ride. He plays her sidekick in this, and he returns quite a few times in Farscape, fortunately for us. This is one of David Kemper's favorite shots there, with the rifle. This is a new title sequence for us, they get better every year. [pause]

This episode was written by David Kemper. And he tends to put more science than fiction in, and normally we describe Farscape as being the other way around - more fiction than science. So, these are often the episodes that the fans look forward to, because they challenge the brain a little more. It was pretty dense - the scripts were a little bit difficult to unravel and make sense of, because we don't shoot everything in sequence. So, non-sequentially with Episodes Three and Four together without all the amendments in, it was a little...bit of a brain teaser to get it working on the set everyday and Victoria Longley had a lot of Sci Fi science babble to get out. Now, this particular scene, employs a technique that David Kemper uses...I think, uniquely, on the show. Very difficult on the page, to understand it, but works perfectly obviously, once it's cut together.

[Silence as the scene plays out. Camera shoots back and forth between the two Moya groups.]

So this is quite a sophisticated story-telling technique. It saves us some time, it means that the audience doesn't have to go through the labor of watching both locations - both groups of people in both locations talk through the same topics. So, it's a nice, slick way of producing it.

This is a new character for us, Jool, who arrives in the previous episode, of Self Inflicted Wounds. And, she's got a high pitched scream that can melt metal, which comes in handy. But, no one's warming to her terribly quickly, at this point. She sheds hair as well. [brief pause] She's an Interon and we don't know much else about her, except that she's very bright, so she's a good companion for Crichton. In each Season, we come across women who could potentially challenge Crichton's affection for Aeryn. But it never happens. [pause]

This is D'argo's new ship, as well. [pause] Well, what becomes D'argo's ship. It turns out that it responds to him better than anyone else. We find out later that it responds to his DNA. It's a ship built by Luxan's, but not for Luxan's. It's the tiniest ship you've ever seen in your life, and Anthony could never sit upright in it properly. [pause] And...later on in the series when we no longer have Talyn at our disposal, LoLaa becomes enormously helpful. It's good for him to finally have a ship of his own, too. You know, incredibly enough, it was the set that we put most actors in, at the same time. It was unbelievable having the puppeteers in their contorted positions on the floor at our feet. Very hot as well. We often don't know what's coming up in the stories. If something's of great importance, David Kemper, if he has a chance, will come and let us know, or someone from the writing department will. But it's normally David and he's very excited about what's coming up and sometimes...it won't happen for whatever reason - it's normally budget, it's often about money - but, he pushes the envelope more than anyone really, in that department, and when people would say to him "No, it can't be done", he'd always ask why. So, often that would happen on Farscape, we would keep pushing the envelope and achieving the impossible. So, when it came to construction of things like these sets - new ships and what have you - construction were often working on the weekends. I don't even know if they were getting overtime for this. But the hours that these guys had to put in to turn around new sets was unbelievable. At one stage, we also had a fire. So, they would always be working around the clock. So, I don't know if Anthony was warned - he probably was told in advance that he would be getting, eventually, his own ship. It adds an extra dimension to the show, visually - it's obviously primarily a visual medium so it's always important to try and have new things for the audience to look at.

This particular set - when our ship merges with Pathfinder Neeyala's ship, I walked in and just thought we were in a disco. It was just sort of flashing lights and you can't really see it here, but they were an opalescent color, the white poles. [pause]

This is Aeryn's sort of final conversation with Zhaan. She can't understand how the Soldier's life was spared and the Priest will die. You're starting to see Zhaan's condition worsen. And...they cut out of this scene a little early. God of timing, as always. But Virginia and I'd had a chat about how we wanted to say our good-bye’s, basically. And we ended up doing one of her ear kisses. Had a little chat - a little science fiction chat - about what our characters would do. It's very hard having contact with the characters that've got painting on, you know, eighty percent of their bodies. You've gotta really, on a practical level, think about how you can communicate physically, with them. Virginia couldn't be around, you know, on a wet set. She couldn't be out in the rain, on location. Kissing scenes, she'd always end up covering someone in blue. It sort of breaks the illusion, just slightly.

[Jool complains about her situation, while Stark works on Moya.]

Jool's character is the only one who survives. We found them back on the planet where Aeryn was frozen. And her relatives, who were in pods, didn't survive. She obviously wants to get home, so she's joined the Moya dilemma of, you know, a group of desperate - she's the only person who isn't an escaped prisoner at this point on - Stark was, in fact, an escaped prisoner, as well. Met Crichton at the Gammak base when they were both interrogated on the Aurora Chair. And he's brought back in this season, to develop his relationship with Zhaan.

This is when Stark really starts to unravel, and his mental state doesn't really improve beyond this point...for the rest of the show. And it starts quite a bizarre relationship that he then has with Aeryn, where he becomes quite obsessed with her. There's sort of a transference that occurs because Zhaan's gone and he now starts to see Aeryn as hopefully a, you know, a worthy explanation for why Zhaan had to die. So, it's quite a sinister arch, begins from here. It's a bit of an in joke on Farscape - a joke that we have at the writing departments expense, that we'll often open up a script and when there's conflict, it'll say "He picks her up and he throws her up against a wall! Slams her up against a bulk head!". There's a lot of conflict on the ship, it's part of what makes the dynamic so interesting, between the characters. And nothing wraps up in a candy-coated fashion at the end of the half hour or the hour. So, at this point I'd say that it's pretty sophisticated, the relationships between everyone, because we still don't trust each other. Aeryn still can't trust what Crichton's gonna do, if he's gonna leave her and go back to Earth. Everyone's priorities are - we're generally pretty selfish characters. So, it's a miracle when there's a positive, loving relationship on the ship. Jool comes in, obviously to provide more tension. And it's a miracle, as I say, when a relationship such as Stark and Zhaan's develops, and Crichton and Aeryn's is always in hot water. And, what changes in this episode, which is coming up shortly in one of the scenes, is the fact that Aeryn and Crichton's roles have sort of reversed. It started in Taking the Stone, an Episode where Chiana is an errant child and they become the parental figures. And, Crichton becomes really irresponsible and childish and Aeryn becomes suddenly very sort of serious, responsible and concerned. And here we see, later on in the Episode, that their roles have reversed emotionally, and Aeryn's now - the stakes are very high for her, and she's starting to unravel and feel so much guilt and the weight of her responsibility now, because of Zhaan's sacrifice. And Crichton is starting to become a lot more sage and a lot more excepting and understanding of what's happening in this weird and wonderful Universe.

This is a Tony Tilse specialty - with the dry ice on the floor. It mirrors a scene that he did with Crichton and Chiana, in an earlier Episode, where - I think it's actually the first Episode that we see Chiana, Episode Fifteen of Season One, where they're having a little roll in the dry ice instead of the hay. And that's one of the other things about the complexities of the relationships - there's always something slightly perverse in the subtext and in the body language of everyone. D'argo and Chiana had been in a relationship and we find out, in Episode Two of - well, D'argo finds out for certain - in Episode Two of this Season, that Chiana's been having an affair with his son, Jothee. So, they're still having to co-exist on the ship. And, whenever these adversities come up, when they're taken over by a virus, or a bug, or their ship's, you know - a daily event, something like a ship merging with Moya - happens, they sort of have to band together and protect each other. There's a lot of history between all of these people. There's some fantastic special effects in this episode. It's always very hard to do...snakes. And we really weren't sure how the serpent was going to work, especially since on set, we were looking at virtually nothing. Or, the CGI guys running around - the special effect guys running around on set with this sort of rubber snake head on a stick. So, a miraculous result in post production. We always used to try and find a justification for having new outfits, but we don't know where Zhaan's come from. I mean, occasionally we'd get down to a Commerce planet, but Aeryn's not that interested in fashion. But, Virginia Hey and Pa U Zotoh Zhaan were always in fashion and glamorous. [pause]

The show started - when we first started filming, it was at Fox studios and we didn't realize how lucky we were until we were told we had to leave, for Seasons Two, Three and Four. We then commenced a great search to find appropriate facilities and unless they're purpose-built as studio's, they're always going to be less than adequate. Especially in the area of sounds. So, by the end of Season Four, I'd say that about ninety eight percent of our dialogue, if not a hundred percent, for each character, sometimes, were being re-voiced, which is an exhausting process. So, this is all shot in sheds, essentially. Everything you see was sort of packed up and moved out to Homebush Bay, which is where we hosted the 2000 Olympics in Sidney. And that effected things, obviously, because in the year of the Olympics, it forced us to start late for the next Season. Basically we allocated one or two guest sets to different sheds in the compound where most of the facilities were being used by companies to store things. There was a - at the Easter show, which is held at the - on the Olympic site. We have show bags full of chocolates and whatever, so we'd always see these trucks driving past with lots of goodies, and I'd always sort of try and bat my eyelids at the drivers to get some free choccy. It never happened. So there'd be about two guest sets, so construction would sort of tear down the sets once we'd gone through A and B Units on each Episode, and they'd start erecting the next one. Very fast turn around for them, as I said before. So, very noisy. The floors aren't raised, so they're cement and we would often have to build a track because we couldn't get a smooth run otherwise, for the dolly. Steady Cam operators, we used a lot in these corridors, that seemed to be the most efficient way to shoot the stuff.

Here we go again with the Serpent CGI. Tony just told me to just sort of duck. That was all sort of quite technically directed. Most of the time we have a lot of range as performers, as to what we do physically and we're always looking for ways to save time for the director, so we're trying to place ourselves in coverage, or at least limit the coverage so that it doesn't take too long to shoot everything. But once you start incorporating CGI elements - Computer Generated Imagery - you pretty much have to be told where to stand and what to do. The process has gotten more sophisticated, however, so there is a bit of leeway. Keep using the word "sophisticated" a lot, but it is. The production values on this show were incredibly high. It could not have been made in any other country. Perhaps Canada, but it couldn't have been done in America for the same price.

And, all of these girls had a long time in make up to get these looks working. It was an incredible make up that Gigi Edgley's wearing there, who plays Chiana. I, at one stage in Season Four, had to get into that make up myself and for some reason, they thought we were the same size, so they tried to squeeze me into her stunt doubles' costume. [chuckles] Yeah. That was an experience. So I said "I'm afraid you're going to have to make a costume for me, from scratch." And what you realize, is that all of these departments have been hired to make us - all - everything look it's best. So the sets, and us in particular. So, wardrobe is always designed costumes that suit the individual. So they had to slightly re-design the Chiana costume to suit me.

D'argo's make up went through some changes. From Season One to Season Two especially, in his costumes. We're always trying to find ways to make Anthony more comfortable. We didn't have any proper air conditioning out at Homebush in Season Two, and at one point, in the middle of summer, it was about thirty five degrees Celsius, which is almost a hundred I think or maybe even over, I don't know the Fahrenheit conversion - but Anthony actually collapsed and was rushed to hospital. And was heavily, heavily dehydrated. So, we had to start setting up some protocols for people. Put some thermometers up on set. We had some Robbie the Robot style air conditioning portable units and Anthony had a chair set permanently next to one of them. And he would always go and cool down, and lift up one of the flaps of his costume. And he had an expression - two expressions - "D'ar-going up" and "D'ar-going down". And "D'ar-going up" was getting him ready for camera and "D'ar-going down" was obviously stripping off all the parts of him that weren't attached to his make up, so that he could walk around in a pair of flip-flops and board shorts, with the top half of him still in D'argo. So, these guys went through a lot.

Tammy here, I think, her make up would have been at least two hours if not three. That's not her hair, it's actually joined to - the front part of the hair was joined to the appliance. And the back of it, I think, was a - no, actually...I'm trying to remember, because she went through several phases with her make up. Everything's a work-in-progress. We don't have time - we have make up tests, but in order to get the actors in and ready to start shooting, they pretty much have to do it as they go. So they would have brought Tammy in for one or two tests, put her on camera, to have a look - to see how the colors were all matching and then, pretty much, it's developed as we shoot. So if any notes come down from the producers or the Network, the Creature Shop will start refining the make up. Jennifer Lamphey who ran the normal make up department, actually designed that particular make up. Normally it's all done through the Creature Shop. And there is a distinction, which not many people understand - The Creature costumes - normally when you see a rubber face, the costumes have been done by Lou Elsey, Dave Elsey's wife in the Creature Shop. These however were, I believe, designed by Terri Ryan. But most of the time it was Lou Elsey's work. So, later on in the Season, when we see more Scarrans, they're all Lou Elsey's work. [pause]

Again, us sort of being told to sort of look at something, fire at it for a minute, and then run away. Tony used the digital camera - I don't think anyone else ever did. For mobility's sake...[giggles]...we always thought the budget - oh no, I - I should say in Episode Two, "Suns and Lovers", of this Season, was the first time we saw the use of digital camera, but it was a broadcast quality digital camera. Not a tiny Handycam. Which we were using in this case. He uses it often to indicate another creature's perspective or point of view. And obviously, everything looks quite depressing in the off-line, which is before the post production comes in, and then it's all graded so that it's synchronized. So that it all blends in.

[John & Aeryn have just killed the serpent. Zhaan's disappointed.]

This is probably a re-use of a CGI shot. [Moya spinning in the wormhole] We always try and save our tokens for other scenes, when we may need extra CGI.

This is an on-set practical effect, all that steam coming out, all that Co2 in front of Anthony's face. That unit started to grow, actually, when we realized the benefits of trying to get practical effects on set, because the CGI component is expensive and very time consuming.

Us and our funny little helmets and space suits. These were actually a nightmare for the stand by wardrobe girls to attach all the time. The silver band at the front had clips which attached to the neck piece, which attached to the main outfit. And in the summer it always had to be undone pretty much every take, so there was always a huge pressure to get everything in the first take.

I think Jool's got a pair of - a comms device wedged between her boobs there. This was sort of the beginning of a lot of cleavage on Farscape. By Season Four, you're pretty much knocked in the eyes by the amount of boobs showing. [pause] Which also means that that the actors who have a lot of flesh exposed, will be the least likely to be close to practical effects. They're like little charges of fireworks, really. We've had a few incidents on set. A few instances where - one in particular where someone took a proverbial bullet for me. One of the squibs didn't fire, we didn't call cut, the actors on set (myself included) weren't aware that the squib hadn't fired, and it was triggered by a stuntman - he had a trigger in his hand, would press the button and he would self-fire. And this particular time it didn't go off and as I helped him come up from the ground, the squib fired and almost went onto me, but not directly, and, someone took it right in the face for me. One of the head guys from effects, Lou Stephenel. He was fine, fortunately. Very close to his eye. But that stuff happens all the time. So, we have sort of lots of safety protocols. We always have an on-set nurse who's hired to try and tend to those accidents as quickly as possible to minimize long term damage. I also got hit in the face, accidentally, by a very heavy door in the last two weeks of shooting Farscape. They actually put it on the goof reel. [light heartedly] I didn't think it was very funny. I don't think anyone did. It was quite a blow, actually. I was very lucky that I didn't bruise too badly. There's always stuff going on. Apparently, the worst hours are the hours just - as the sun's coming up and as the sun's coming down. When everyone's tired at the beginning and end of every day. There's some fireworks there in the background. That also means noise. So where ever you see practical effects like Co2 or fireworks, that means that the actors have definately had to re-voice all of their dialogue. And you can't just re-voice lines where there's noise over them. Normally, you have to blend it in so that the lines on either side don't sound like they - don't make the ADR lines sound like they stand out, like a sore thumb. Here is a Scorpius clone scene. These got madder and madder. They're some of my favorite parts of Farscape, actually, because they were such an imaginative realm, for these two guys to play in. And, you know, anything goes really, in these scenes. The outfits, the film references.

That's actually Homebush Bay, that's outside one of our studios. You can see the red roof on the left hand side of the screen. And those gates. There were just sort of rows and rows of sheds. And we occupied...I don't know, about eight of them, I think. And the water at Homebush Bay was pretty toxic. We used to see men in white suits walk down to the water with test tubes, and take a sample of the water and put it in a sort of Esque(?) and lock it up and walk away and...they were always testing. I think factories around there, in the Sixties, that used to make Agent Orange, and what have you. And there's that, whatever that power pole is, behind us, and there's a prison, and...what else? [giggles] It was a fantastic area, and it was really funny, 'cause when they were doing the Olympics, they dug up - there's like a swamp. You go over this bridge, and there's this swamp before you turn right, to head down to where our studios were on the water. And, it stank! There was this horrible sulphurous miasma that used to come off it every morning and the evenings, most especially in summer. And apparently they wanted to make everything look pretty for the tourists when they came out for the Olympics, so they dug up all this landfill and made these sort of...pyramid shaped mounds or hills, which they then covered with grass. And apparently, it was supposed to obscure the tourists view of Silverwood Prison, which lay just behind where we were filming. And in doing so, they uncovered the stench. The Bog of Eternal Stench.

This was a really interesting scene here, with Aeryn and Pilot, because it's having to - you know, it's real tough love. Her having to sort of inflict sort of pain on Pilot to get him going. And, Tony Tilse, David Kemper and I used to talk about it afterward, that it was a really interesting turning point to see her have to play two roles of warrior and mother, really. People have asked if I've actually made physical contact with Pilot, here. The answer is absolutely not! In the first Season especially, if you ever went anywhere near the creatures, you know, there'd be shouts from everyone from Henson. They cost more - Rygel cost more than all the actors put together. There are millions of dollars worth of RND that went into making creatures like Rygel. And they have what's called a skin - a prosthetic skin - which gets changed over every couple of months, depending on the wear and tear. And it's a full skin, that has to be...you know - they run the foam, and then they have to re-paint it to match what the skin looked like, before hand. And the other reason why I wasn't kicking Pilot in that scene, is because there's actually a person - a live person - inside that body of Pilot, as well as four people below us, operating the arms. And then to the side, there was someone doing the voice of Pilot and someone doing - operating the mouth and eyes. So, it took a lot of effort, but it was definitely worth it. I think that - Pilot grew on me more and more, every Episode and every Season. Every sensitive scene that we had to do together, I just thought he was the most glorious creature. Not so glorious in the scene, in "The Way We Weren't", when he was choking me to death. That was done in a combination of shots. We just got one of the claws, I placed it to my neck. Generally, when you're doing fight scenes, that sort of choking motion - the actor who's being choked will place the hand somewhere comfortable and make the hand tense up the muscles in the hand to make it look like they're resisting the torture. We then cut to a very daggy shot of my legs sort of dangling off the ground, sort of flipping around a little bit, like a dying fish out of water. And then we cut to the shot where I sort of fling back, out of shot, off of sort of sand box or something, and then we cut to the shot where the stunt double repeated it, I think. Or maybe I did it all, I can't remember if we used a double. More often than not we didn't use stunt doubles if we could help it, because the production value's always higher if you can see the actors face. It was a real evolution for me, doing Farscape, because I'm a Tomboy in spirit, but physically, really quite uncoordinated. So, to be playing a warrior, I mean my dad rang me at once and said "I've just bought the DVD's of Farscape and I was watching one of your fight scenes and you had a bit of a limp wrist." So, I always sort of wait to see what dad said with my fight scenes before I'd give myself a pat on the back. We're all pretty hard on ourselves, actually, as actors. We all took ourselves - well, not ourselves - but took the work very seriously, and we always reminded how lucky we were, when guest actors would come on, and they'd see the sets and the costumes and everything. And, not only were we lucky to be working at all, we were lucky to be working on a show where we had so much scope to be, you know, to use our imaginations daily and to acquire all these incredible technical skills. I mean, we've really spent more time now, on the set, than most directors in our country. So, it's been an incredibly valuable experience. Normally, when it's looking like a scene's going to have to be re-voiced, because there's exterior noise, there's trucks driving past, or birds in the roof, or, you know, when the sun was out, the roof would creek, and when it was raining, obviously, we heard that. And there's Co2 and fireworks as I was mentioning earlier, that's going to mean ADR. But sometimes, the recordist will say, "You know, if you raise your level a bit, vocally, we might be able to get it." In that scene, just there, there was no way. I mean, when you had the Co2 going, these incredibly loud blasts - it's like the fire extinguishers, basically. That's what they used to use on set, just under our, you know...just a little right or left of us, they'd be shooting you know, this really loud Co2. I mean, it was incredible on the ears, and as much as those guys shouted in that scene, there's no way they were gonna get away with the original recording of sound. It's every sound recordist nightmare, this show. Apparently one of the criterion for sound awards, is how much recorded sound is useable, in the final product. And [chuckles] no one was gonna get any awards for that, that's for sure. We have though, recently, received sound awards for Farscape, having said that. We do an incredible job in post production. And on set obviously, but hardly ever useable.

[The crew plans out their final ideas for getting out of the wormhole]

This is sort of the beginning of the end, really, for us all. Oh, here's a prop which we haven't used since Episode One, of Farscape, Season One, where Aeryn has to manually fly the ship. It always looked like a combination of a Ouiji board and a Nintendo game. Everything gets sort of sprayed gold so that it's instantly Moya'ed. [pause] Here we realize that someone's gonna have to operate the controls to separate the ships, and in operating them, they are expendable. Here, Aeryn the warrior, is vying for her position to do the honors, because she just can't take the guilt anymore of other people suffering or dying because of her. And Zhaan talks them around here, and explains, quite reasonably, that since she's dying anyway and her condition is so badly deteriorating, that she should be the one to do it.

[Zhaan says her good-byes]

Now Zhaan was an incredibly popular character on the show, as you would all know. This was actually Virginia Hey's choice, to go. And as much as the producers didn't want to let her go, they honored it. She put in incredible hours in make up and she was tired. She needed a rest. And while she brought so much grace and beauty to our program, we understood that she needed to do what she had to do. And we were lucky enough to have her back for some guest work, as a special guest. And I know the fans were deliriously happy to see her back. And, yeah, she was an incredible addition to the Farscape crew, and obviously there from day one. So it was - good-byes are always horrible. And what you see there on set, was probably infused with some real emotions. [pause] We really call the audiences' bluff, actually, because up until this point and especially in science fiction - it's a genre where everyone can be exhumed - there's always a reason and an excuse, and a way of bringing people back. But, in this instance, Aeryn had been killed and came back, but Zhaan gets killed and for months the fans were convinced that she'd be coming back to life, and she didn't, so it was a huge shock, when it happened.

I think that's the first time we ever seen Pilot cry.

And here's where we see as I mentioned earlier, the role reversal, between Aeryn and Crichton. Normally he'd be the one who's out of control, who's not accepting the situation as it lies. Sort of loses her warrior way, for a minute and refuses to accept that Zhaan's gonna make another sacrifice. [pause] And here, Stark loses his soul mate. They have their moment of connection.

[Zhaan presses the controls to release Neeyala's ship]

And there she goes.

[Zhaan flows out with the ship, and the ship disengages from Moya.]

This was all shot in one sequence. Tony just basically told us what he needed. What we should be looking at. What was happening every couple of you know, seconds or minutes. And Paul's stuff here, was obviously shot on a different day. Probably on a B Unit day, in the corridors.

[Zhaan bows and looks on at the crew]

Just a blue light flashing on set to link us to the CGI component. [pause] And what's great about Farscape is, you have a few moments of reverence....and then we've got work to do. Up we get. They've gotta do their part now, to get themselves free. [giggles] There's the Nintendo game. So glad we got a close up of that. Oh, and lurch acting. We're always having to sort of throwing ourselves up against bulk heads, and Ben and I found that the best way to make it sell was sort of bash into each other. That way we created some kind of isometric force. Not terribly solid. I mean, the bulk heads are wood underneath and then padded with a sort of like a foam that's then painted gold or silver or bronze. And that's why it's always best to bash up against Ben, cause he's a softer place to land.

[Various locals in Moya, all quiet]

I'd say that Command, especially from that angle, is one of the most visually stunning sets that we have. It's the first set I think that Ben dragged me onto on the first day that I arrived to Fox Studios. He said "Come on, come have a look at this" and I said "Well, I'm supposed to go in for make up tests" and he said "No-no-no! You gotta come have a look at this!" We barely knew each other. He was so excited about it. He took me out there and he - he could understand - he had a better understanding than I did of what it was going to look like eventually. But, there was just sort of the skeleton and these beams coming across and all these construction workers sitting around in singlet tops, sweating away. And, you know, unceremoniously sort of either resting or doing their thing with hammer and nails. Very surprised with the finished result, I have to say. Amazing, amazing design by Ricky Ayers, in Season One. [pause] I think the first set that I saw completed, was Command - my first Scene that I ever shot on Farscape was on Command. And, I'd just been flown in from the set of Pitch Black up at Warner Brothers in Queensland. Turned up, got sort of thrown into my costume, and you know...[giggles]...walked onto set and I really was overwhelmed. I didn't know what I was in for, and it was probably quite a big scene - I think it was the one where we were also using that prop - the Nintendo Ouiji board thing. Pilot was up in a separate shed, and I remember when I was first doing a scene, someone said "Oh, you're going up to work with Pilot! Oh he's beautiful, beautiful!" And at first I was surprised. Beautiful wasn't an adjective that I would have applied to the image that I saw, because he was an alien, and like everyone else, I grew to love these other species, all these other creatures.

[Tag] This is our first....sinister moment, together.

[Stark explains his feelings]

I think Aeryn needs to hear this as much as he needs to say it.

[Stark would appreciate Aeryn's hovering.]

So, the bitter sweet - the scalpel with the good advice.

[chuckles, speaks while laughing] Originally, this scene was scripted, to have Ben, sitting in one of Zhaan's outfits. And I don't think Ben could quite rise to it. Probably wasn't the best image to have our hero sort of draped in a blue veil. But a very touching scene, none the less, and her quarters sort of burnt out, there. [pause]

Lord knows how much it cost to get that footage from the Three Stooges. [pause] That's CGI effect, I think, with the screen up on the wall.

We use this kind of Reservoir Dogs thing a fair bit in the Scorpius/Crichton scenes. And they're often a great way to end an episode.

END OF COMMENTARY.