Farscape/Recap/S01/E19 Nerve

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< Farscape‎ | Recap‎ | S01


Season 1, Episode 19:

Nerve

Aeryn is sick, and only a Sebacean tissue sample can save her, so Crichton and Chiana use Peacekeeper identity information, uniforms and weapons, along with Aeryn's Prowler, to infiltrate a Peacekeeper Gammak Base and retrieve a sample from the medical stores. They discover that Gilina is working on the base and she helps the pair to find what they need. As they get ready to escape, Crichton is exposed as a non-Sebacean by the base commander, Scorpius. While Gilina helps Chiana to retrieve the tissue sample, Scorpius places Crichton in the Aurora Chair and uses it to extract information from his mind.

In the breaks between sessions in the chair, Crichton is locked up with a Banik slave named Stark, who has the ability to help the dying to cross to the other side and has been in the Aurora Chair so many times that it has driven him insane. During the interrogation of Crichton, Scorpius discovers a hidden memory: an encounter with the Ancients that Crichton doesn't remember, in which the Ancients placed advanced wormhole knowledge inside Crichton's subconscious that will guide him and help him understand the science of wormholes for himself. For Scorpius, this is a boon: wormholes are his obsession, and the entire Gammak Base is devoted to research on creating and manipulating them.

Captain Crais arrives to collect Crichton but is denied by Scorpius, who knows that Crais has been violating orders in his pursuit of Crichton. Meanwhile, Gilina causes a diversion -- a reactor overload -- that gives Chiana the chance to escape the base and get the tissue sample back to Moya so that Aeryn can be saved. Base security cannot determine who caused the diversion, but Scorpius suspects that Crichton knows and puts him back in the Aurora Chair...