Farscape (TV Series) Taking the Stone (2000) User Reviews

Very alright!

[kmartin-04101 · 7/10 · 8 March 2024]

Not getting the hate for this episode. Chiana is acting very in character and the plot and dialogue were totally fine, with a fun Rygel b-plot. I liked that Aeryn encourages Crichton to give her her space and the conflict of the society itself makes sense.

Farscape has some very bad episode (the episode before this one was so much worse) and this one had the benefit of giving Chiana some much-needed depth and backstory, and giving us some one-episode aliens with compelling stories to connect with.

I did kind of laugh because Crichton's hair gets spikier and spikier throughout the episode! I actually liked this one.🤣🤣🤣

What the Heck

[johnpwabbajack · 1/10 · 16 May 2021]

This episode is pure cringe and adds absolutely nothing to the series.

Seriously, you won't miss anything at all by skipping this episode, the story is dumb and the "antagonist" is just insipid. I'm genuinely shocked that an otherwise good show would have an episode this bad in it. I know they can't all be winners, but the disparity between this and other poorer episodes is shocking.

Crichton acts at the start of the episode in a way that is completely incongruous with how he's acted previously, which sets the whole thing in motion. Chiana's reaction to this is also out of character, but I don't really hold it against the characters since I personally consider the episode to be apocryphal.

This is bad on a whole other level.

Actually, you might want to watch it just to see how terrible it is.

Very immature writing

[uf-243-912467 · 1/10 · 15 October 2021]

Chiana joins a cult and wants to kill herself, Chrichton wants to stop her, Aeryn talks him out of it, saying "she has to go through it". Of course it ends well, because the script says so. Letting people "deal with their problems" by jumping down a cliff with a slim chance of surviving doesn't strike me as sound therapeutic advice. The episode glorifies suicide and frames suicide attempts while being depressed or under shock to be respected like decisions of a lucid mind. It's stupid and childish writing.

When Do You Ever Get This Much Character in a Sci-Fi Series?

[asrexproductions · 9/10 · 19 December 2022]

Seriously, when has sci-fi ever given this much?

"Taking the Stone" begins with a busy Crichton (Ben Browder) blowing off Chiana (Gigi Edgley) while she's clearly in pain and in need because he's preoccupied with repairing a piece of equipment. Hurt, Chiana runs off to a planet where a group of nihilistic youngsters make risky jumps off a cliff, hoping they're caught by a force field that's possibly activated by taking a stone before they jump. Crichton attempts to apologize and talk some sense into her but Chiana is too hurt, determined to jump because she thinks she has nothing more to live for. Will Crichton convince her that her life is worth living because he cares about her? That's the essence of the episode.

What's beautiful about it is that it illustrates why Farscape works. Watching it the second time around, I cared nothing at all about the stone plotline and it's resolution, and more about how Crichton goes out of his way to save his friend and how Aeryn (Claudia Black) goes out of her way to help because she cares about him. Heretofore we've seen that Chiana stays with our heroes because she knows they're good people and Crichton cares about her, having saved her life in the past. As soon as that seems to have ended, she lays the whole thing bare: logically speaking, why SHOULD they stay together? They don't know where any of this is going. They're being hunted at every turn. Why should they stay? How and why did they even become friends in the first place?

The answer is simple: they stay because Crichton cares about them, and their adventures teach them to care about each other.

This is a universal truth about our existence. Intelligent organic beings NEED each other. They live when they care for one another, and that caring is what inspires people to push through, no matter how hard it gets. Without that, there really is no logical reason to keep going when the going gets tough. We do it because we care about our fellow beings, and that makes all of the difference.

Pretty heady stuff for a show rife with laser guns and alien Muppets, no? ;)

Taking a jump

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 29 May 2012]

As this episode opens something is clearly wrong with Chiana; she tries to talk to Crichton but he is too busy. She proceeds to cut herself open and remove a glowing disc from her abdomen, as she does so the light goes out. She then leaves Moya in Aeryn's prowler; it turns out that the disc showed her brother was alive and when the light went out he died. The crew follow her and find she has landed on a royal burial planet. While Rygel sets about a little grave robbing Crichton and Aeryn search for Chiana; they find her but she is now with a group who look like a bunch of refugees from 'Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome'! She wants to join in one of their rituals which involves jumping off a cliff; some that jump are caught in an energy net but we see one crash to his death. Crichton is desperate to stop her jumping believing that she might have a death wish.

This was another fairly entertaining episode which gave us a chance to see a more emotional side of Chiana; once again Gigi Edgely does a fine job in the role giving a more emotional depth to her character. The youths on the planet were a bit too Mad Max 3 for my liking but that didn't spoil the episode; just made those characters a bit cliché. The cliff jumping scenes were pretty spectacular and even though one death wasn't unexpected it made me wince when it happened. I rather liked the fact that the locals ignored Crichton's advice that would have prolonged their lives, not because I particularly wanted them to die but because it reminded Crichton that he can't always help.