I remember when this firecracker of a season finale originally aired in the UK, just before Christmas 2000. I was blown away, and still am more than 20 years later.
Season 2 had already given us such a strong collection of episodes, developing the John/Aeryn romance, the Scorpius neural chip arc, and the bond between the characters. It all seems to lead inevitably to a showdown like Die Me Dichotomy, but the episode manages to be more than the sum of its parts, bringing all these elements together into something really special. The agony of Aeryn's death, made all the more brutal because it's at the hands of the man she's only just admitted to loving, is a real gut punch of a moment and storytelling at its finest. The acting is superb from all the cast and sells the emotion of this moment and the aftermath brilliantly. And the epsiode isn't even over at that point. We have the double cliffhanger of John being left with his brains hanging out on an operating table, robbed of his powers of speech and knowing he's responsible for the death of the woman he loved. It's powerful, heartbreaking stuff, all the more so because there really wasn't any certainty about what was coming next. My memories of the time were of a really long wait for season 3, during which we didn't know whether Aeryn was dead dead or just sci-fi dead. What a climax to a great season 2.
I've rewatched the episode more times than I can count over the years and it still holds up. It is paced brilliantly, so engrossing that I'm always caught by surprise at how quickly we get to the final moments. Farscape would have many great moments and episodes after DMD, but for me this was the high point of the whole series. This is not just television sci-fi, but dramatic storytelling in general at its absolute best. My highest recommendation.
Season 2 had already given us such a strong collection of episodes, developing the John/Aeryn romance, the Scorpius neural chip arc, and the bond between the characters. It all seems to lead inevitably to a showdown like Die Me Dichotomy, but the episode manages to be more than the sum of its parts, bringing all these elements together into something really special. The agony of Aeryn's death, made all the more brutal because it's at the hands of the man she's only just admitted to loving, is a real gut punch of a moment and storytelling at its finest. The acting is superb from all the cast and sells the emotion of this moment and the aftermath brilliantly. And the epsiode isn't even over at that point. We have the double cliffhanger of John being left with his brains hanging out on an operating table, robbed of his powers of speech and knowing he's responsible for the death of the woman he loved. It's powerful, heartbreaking stuff, all the more so because there really wasn't any certainty about what was coming next. My memories of the time were of a really long wait for season 3, during which we didn't know whether Aeryn was dead dead or just sci-fi dead. What a climax to a great season 2.
I've rewatched the episode more times than I can count over the years and it still holds up. It is paced brilliantly, so engrossing that I'm always caught by surprise at how quickly we get to the final moments. Farscape would have many great moments and episodes after DMD, but for me this was the high point of the whole series. This is not just television sci-fi, but dramatic storytelling in general at its absolute best. My highest recommendation.