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Rygel and Pilot. And in the miniseries that concluded Farscape ’s run, The Peacekeeper Wars (2004), a dream sequence offers a nearly shot-by-shot homage to the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) that not only serves to send up some of that film’s ponderous seriousness, but also aligns the series’ often-suggested concern with human development, even evolution (as noted in “My Three Crichtons”), with the larger science fiction tradition of such development. Such knowing references are a consistent source of humor in the series, help to establish its rather mixed tone, and point up its characteristic pop culture mode of address, even as they also point to the possibility of more serious intentions here.
    In fact, those self-conscious references create the context for a more significant dimension of that address, another level of communication that we consistently encounter in Crichton’s own peculiar dialogue. For it too is full of references to contemporary popular culture, especially movies and television, as we see when Crichton repeatedly refers to his nemesis Scorpius as “Harvey,” after the character of the imaginary rabbit in the film Harvey (1950); when faced with the odd variety of life on Moya he observes, “Boy, was Spielberg ever wrong; Close Encounters my ass” (“Premiere” 1.1); or when he peppers his conversations with mentions of Cameron Diaz, Yuri Gagarin, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial , Dr. Strangelove , Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Star Trek , The Wizard of Oz , and even the poem “Casey at the Bat.” M. Keith Booker suggests that such repeated allusions serve to produce “a sort of dramatic irony in that audiences will generally understand his references, while no one else on Moya has any idea what he is talking about” (163). However, while this sort of allusive dialogue is an important and recurring device, and even part of the series’ cult attraction, it is not simply because of the passing sense of irony it invariably produces.
    What we see in this persistently reflexive manner of speech is an interesting commentary on the nature of communication here and on Crichton himself. Of course, in the world of Farscape the act of communication is usually not itself a problem, thanks to the presence of “translator microbes” that effectively explain how different species can all seem to speak the same language, and that recall similar efforts at explaining such a narrative necessity in other series, most famously in Doctor Who ’s reliance on his Tardis’ translator function. But as Crichton demonstrates, that communication is often at odds—full of slips, confusion, and only partial understanding, as is dramatized when, in “Look at the Princess, Part I” (2.10), he finds himself accidentally caught in a situation where he is betrothed to a planet’s hereditary ruler and slated to be frozen as a statue for 80 cycles simply because he agreed to kiss her (after a fight with Aeryn). Against such a backdrop Crichton’s comments take on an added resonance, as they seem aimed both at himself and also at us . In fact, the impression is that we are accidentally overhearing someone’s thoughts, as he talks to keep himself sane, or that we have by chance tuned in to a kind of message being sent out into the ether that only we can understand. As such, it recalls his introductory commentary wherein he wonders “is there anybody out there who can hear me?” Hearing Crichton, understanding him in ways that no one else in his strange environment can—knowing, for example, that when he imagines himself and Scorpius preparing to fight the Scarrans as the Crash Test Dummies from television safety ads, he sees little hope for survival—we become more than a typical television narrative’s audience. We are effectively invited to share Crichton’s complex situation,