Farscape/Recap/S02/E19 Liars Guns and Money: A Not So Simple Plan

< Farscape‎ | Recap‎ | S02


Season 2, Episode 19:

Liars, Guns and Money, part 1: A Not So Simple Plan

After learning that his son Jothee is being sold in a lot of slaves, D'Argo wants to go and rescue him, but Zhaan insists that Moya search a seemingly uninhabited part of space instead, believing that they'll somehow find the late Stark. Amazingly, they do find Stark, alive and well and with a plan to save Jothee. Stark's plan is to rob a Shadow Depository (a black-market bank) using codes and schematics that he acquired by crossing the Depository's architect to the other side; with the take, they'll be able to buy Jothee's son and the rest of the slaves in that lot (mostly Baniks, like Stark) from those who are selling him.

When the others refuse to rush in without a game plan, D'Argo does exactly that on his own and is quickly captured by the security forces, but this was part of Stark's plan: when Zhaan goes to the Depository while posing as a potential client (with Chiana, Crichton and Aeryn posing as her employees), she claims that D'Argo was testing security for her, and goads the Depository's owner, Natira, into giving her a guided tour of the facility.

The plan is for Zhaan to make a short term deposit in one of the vaults (which function like giant safety deposit boxes: request yours and it's brought to you), but among the items she deposits is Rygel, cleverly concealed. Rygel sneaks out of Zhaan's vault and scrambles the recall codes so that when Zhaan later decides to make a withdrawal, the vault summoned belongs to someone else and is full of currency. The plan almost goes off without a hitch, until Scorpius arrives: it's his vault they are robbing, so that Stark can get revenge for his torture in the Aurora Chair. Scorpius is also a "close friend" of Natira, and once it is discovered that Moya's crew are present and in the middle of a robbery, he offers to clear her considerable personal debt if she can help him capture Crichton. Despite the heavy resistance from security, a clever attempt to hack Moya's computer systems and the neural clone in Crichton's head making it difficult for him to resist Scorpius, the crew manage to escape with the currency.

But as they head for the slave auction, the currency is revealed to be anything but dead, harmless gold...