Farscape/Recap/S02/E15 Won't Get Fooled Again
Season 2, Episode 15:
Won't Get Fooled Again
Crichton finds himself in a strange copy of Earth, populated by the various people and races he's met in his travels living out ordinary lives -- and not acting remotely like themselves -- without anyone seeming to notice. As things get stranger and stranger, it becomes apparent that the only familiar face within this fantasy who might be able to help him is Scorpius.
When Crichton finally breaks free, he discovers that a Scarran is attempting to extract knowledge using a machine designed to Mind Rape the victim until their consciousness collapses and their memories can be examined at leisure. He defeats the Scarran with help from the imaginary Scorpius, who he is able to see in the real world too. In the end, it is revealed that the imaginary Scorpius is a neural clone of the original, who resides within Crichton's mind thanks to a neural chip that Scorpius placed in Crichton's brain during the Aurora Chair interrogations, and it has spent the past year attempting to copy the wormhole knowledge. Once the threat of the Scarran is neutralised, the neural clone deletes Crichton's memory of their encounter in order to keep his presence secret.
- Ate His Gun: Crichton forces the Scarran to do this, as it's his only accessible vulnerable point.
- But You Were There and You and You: only the neural clone of Scorpius has any connection to the "real" person.
- Call Back: especially to Crichton's first encounter with the Ancients, although he also references Maldis and the Delvians
- Camp Gay: D'Argo, for one disturbing scene
- Cowboy Cop: Crais the cop
- Da Chief: Rygel / Douglas Logan
- Enemy Mine: With Scorpius' mental clone, here named Harvey
- Fan Service / Fan Disservice: a scene where Crichton is being sexually propositioned by Zhaan as a dominatrix, Aeryn as a Hello, Nurse!, and Chiana as a fetish schoolgirl, is disrupted by the entrance of Rygel in bondage gear
- Gaslighting: Crichton believes that this is what's happening.
- Guy-On-Guy Is Hot: In that scene with D'Argo. "Chiana wants to watch".
- Hello, Nurse!: Aeryn / Bettina
- Ho Yay: with D'Argo, and, rather squickily, with Rygel.
- Hope Spot: when Aeryn busts into the club and shoots the disco ball, seemingly freeing Crichton. But then she insists that it was Scorpius instead of the Scarrans that was holding John, and wants to know what Scorpius wanted him for...
- Mind Screw: a Mind Screw used as a torture device to make the contents of the mind easier to read.
- Oedipus Complex: Crichton's mother appears in lingerie asking him to define it for her.
- Psycho Psychologist: Zhaan / Kaminsky
- Shout-Out: when Crichton decides between calling the mental clone Clarence or Harvey. Also the title, to the Who song.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Crichton thinks that the fake return to Earth is a trick to make him unthinkingly spill secrets. It's really just to Mind Rape him into quiescence.