John Crichton (Farscape)

John Crichton is a male character that features in Farscape.

Biography

John Robert Crichton, Jr. was born to Jack and Leslie Crichton and has two sisters, Olivia (his younger sister) and older sister Susan (John is the middle child). He has a childhood friend named Douglas "D.K." Knox, who he helped cheat on his SATs. Jack was an astronaut and as such spent a lot of time away from home, something the young John Crichton grew to resent. However, he still has some very happy memories of his childhood with his father, including his tenth birthday: his father missed it, but woke John up at four in the morning the following day to go fishing. He had a girlfriend named Kim during his teen years, and he attended a high school called JFK. He lost his virginity to, he thought, Karen Shaw, but it turns out it was really his Moya companion Chiana, who traveled back in time and tricked him. His mother died of cancer four years before his Farscape-1 accident and it is implied in one episode that he has always regretted not being there for her when she died.

Eventually, John Crichton went off to college, studied cosmology and astrophysics, and received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. He subsequently followed in his father's footsteps by becoming an astronaut and, with his friend DK, formulated a theory about gravity-assisted propulsion. Shortly before he joined the space program, he decided to propose to Alex, his long-time girlfriend, but just before his planned proposal she told him she was taking a fellowship to attend medical school at Stanford in California, while he was planning to become an astronaut in Florida, so he decided against proposing and they broke up. He joined International Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying two missions aboard the space shuttle as Science Officer and achieving the rank of Commander. He was given the go-ahead to be the pilot on a flight in his experimental module, Farscape One, to test out his propulsion theory. He had a casual relationship with a woman named Caroline for the two years prior to his Farscape accident.

Season One

In the first episode of Season One, John tests his and DK's theory. However, during the test flight, a wormhole appears and John and his module (named Farscape One) are pulled through it to parts unknown. On his exit from the wormhole, he finds himself in the middle of a spaceship dogfight. Prowler pilot Tauvo Crais, the brother of Peacekeeper Captain Bialar Crais clips Farscape One's wing with his spacecraft, causing Tauvo to lose control and fatally collide with an asteroid. Crichton then finds his craft being pulled aboard a large spaceship, where he meets his first aliens. Confusion is his initial reaction and even after the aliens inject him with translator microbes, allowing him to understand what they are saying, he is still bewildered. He eventually learns that he is aboard a bio-mechanoid prisoner transport vessel named Moya, a Leviathan, which has been taken over by its three prisoners (Zhaan, D'Argo and Rygel); they brought him aboard because they assumed his sudden appearance was deliberate and they might be able to utilise such technology to facilitate their own escape. Despite Crichton being unable to help them, they do manage to escape.

It is at this point that Bialar Crais learns of his brother's death, and Crais considers Crichton to have murdered his brother by charging him in his "white death pod", and swears vengeance. Crais' determination to capture the escaped prisoners takes on a more personal twist as he becomes the main antagonist for much of Season One, determined to kill Crichton with his bare hands.

John has to adapt rather quickly to a life with aliens, guns, and space travel, and without chocolate and TV. The last item may be the toughest privation for Crichton, as he's very fond of pop culture, making numerous references to 20th century products, movies, commercials, TV shows, and the like, all of which are hopelessly lost on his friends and crewmates aboard Moya, though John does sometimes try to explain some aspects of Earth culture to them.

Towards the end of Season One, Crichton encounters a mysterious alien race known only as The Ancients. It is this encounter that first gives us a window into Crichton's life back on Earth, as The Ancients try to fool Crichton into thinking he has returned to his home planet with his new alien friends in tow. On the run, Crichton and Aeryn consummate their flirtation. Crichton eventually sees through the Ancients' simulation but this encounter proves to be one of the most important of the entire series. In the following episode, Crichton displays his exceptional, perhaps eidetic, memory, easily confirming a set of lengthy and complex commands that Aeryn remembers due to the brief time she had Pilot's DNA merged with her own. A few episodes later Crichton finds himself captured by a Sebacean-Scarran hybrid Peacekeeper by the name of Scorpius. Scorpius puts Crichton in an Aurora Chair, a torture device that painfully forces victims' memories from their minds and onto a projection screen. During this torture both Crichton and Scorpius are surprised to discover that The Ancients implanted in Crichton some subconscious wormhole knowledge that they intended as a guide to help Crichton get home. But Scorpius has an obsession with wormholes and after Crichton escapes, with a little help from his friends, Scorpius becomes the main antagonist of the show, hunting Crichton across the galaxy.

Season Two

Early in Season Two, Crichton starts hallucinating visions of, and eventually entire conversations with, Scorpius. He learns that while he was strapped into the Aurora Chair, Scorpius implanted a neural chip into his head. This chip contained "Harvey", a neural clone of Scorpius himself, which has been slowly influencing Crichton and searching through his memories in an effort to get at the hidden wormhole knowledge. This plot device allows an interesting connection between hero and villain to form while only rarely having the two actually meet. As a result of the neural chip, combined with the stresses of constantly being hunted and being cut off from Earth, Crichton's behaviour during Season Two grows more erratic and unpredictable and he finds himself adapting to his new life aboard Moya. It must be said that a lot of his acceptance of his fate is due to his feelings for Aeryn Sun (see below). Towards the end of Season Two, the control of the neural clone starts getting stronger and stronger and at times can even fully take over Crichton's mind and body. Harvey saves John on several occasions, but it eventually kills Aeryn in a dogfight while trying to fulfill the imperative of returning Crichton to Scorpius. An attempt to find a surgeon to remove the chip ends in disaster, for while the surgeon is eventually successful, the mission results in Crichton being left with aphasia on the operating table as Scorpius arrives to steal the neural chip and attacks the surgeon, possibly killing him.

Season Three

Season three opens as Season Two ended, with Crichton still on the operating table. It quickly emerges that although the neural chip has successfully been removed, a neural clone still remains in Crichton's head. The surgeon, who had only been momentarily stunned, restores him to normal speech, but John wants to die because Aeryn is dead. Zhaan then uses most of her life energy to revive Aeryn, causing Zhaan to be near death. She gives her life soon after to restore Moya after colliding with a Pathfinder ship inside a wormhole. A few episodes later, Crichton is "twinned" by another alien. This "twinning" is explained as the splitting of Crichton into two identical beings; neither of the Crichtons can be called a copy and neither is the original; they are both equally John Crichton. This proves to be an unhappy development for John Crichton (both of them) and he often argues with himself and each Crichton resents the other, who each sees as a clone trying to move in on his life.

Eventually, the crew of Moya is split across the two Leviathans, Moya and Talyn, and are separated from each other. Each ship has one Crichton. Aeryn begins a romantic relationship with the Crichton on Talyn. The adventures of one of the crews proves to be far more dramatic than the other and the Crichton on Talyn ends up dying while successfully fighting to prevent wormhole knowledge from falling into the hands of the Scarrans. This breaks Aeryn's heart and she decides to retreat into Peacekeeper stoic acceptance.

When the survivors of the two crews are reunited, Aeryn is very cold to the remaining Crichton, unable to process her grief at his death with the fact that he's still alive and therefore could die again. Then the surviving Crichton, at the urging of the dead Crichton via a deathbed message recorded by Stark, formulates a dangerous and risky plan to stop Scorpius from utilising the wormhole knowledge he obtained from the neural chip, completing the job begun by the dead Crichton.

Crichton later led his crewmates into a dangerous, seemingly suicidal situation to stop Scorpius. As Season Three ends the crew of Moya starts going their separate ways, and Aeryn Sun breaks Crichton's heart as she leaves for good. Just after she leaves, he learns she is pregnant and he begins to pursue her, but Moya is swallowed by a wormhole, and Crichton, outside Moya on his module, is abandoned with little fuel and no supplies.

Season Four

Season Four opens with Crichton having been saved by boarding a dying Leviathan (he's at the ancient Leviathan graveyard), with nothing to do to occupy his time but work on his wormhole theories, using his own blood as ink for his equations. It is also during this time that Crichton goes somewhat mad. Eventually he finds himself reuniting with the crewmembers of Moya and they eventually return to Moya, reuniting with Aeryn Sun, who is dying of heat delirium. However, her life is saved by Scorpius who in return requests asylum and safe passage onboard Moya as he has fallen out of favour with Peacekeeper high command. Scorpius also injects Crichton with something that he says will remove Harvey from his brain, which appears to be effective. The role of the head Peacekeeper chasing Moya and her crew is assumed by yet another higher-ranking officer, Commandant Grayza. He also picks up another traveling companion, Sikozu, who quickly becomes close to Scorpius.

Halfway through the season, Crichton finds his way back to Earth -- for real this time. He finds his loyalties torn but as Commandant Grayza sends an assassin to Earth the resulting chaos and carnage shows Crichton that he has unfinished business back on Moya. Earth has already been severely changed by his return and its exposure to his alien friends, but he voluntarily gives up the life he has dreamed of back on Earth and returns to Moya and his life of being chased. This sacrifice follows on from the sacrifice of the other Crichton in Season Three, giving up his life and his happiness in exchange for what he sees as his duty.

A few episodes later Aeryn Sun is captured by the Scarrans and we learn the one thing that Crichton values more than his duty - Aeryn herself. He goes to Scorpius and makes a deal to give Scorpius everything he wants about wormholes in exchange for Scorpius' help freeing Aeryn. Scorpius agrees and the unlikeliest of alliances is forged.

Together Crichton, Scorpius and the rest of Moya's crew rescue Aeryn Sun. However, in the process Scorpius is himself captured, and Crichton abandons him to his fate. However, Harvey is now resurrected -- Scorpius lied when he said he was getting rid of Harvey. Instead, he made Harvey dormant, and loyal to Scorpius, with the provision that if John betrayed Scorpius, Harvey would reemerge from dormancy. Harvey tells Crichton that everything Crichton knows has been transmitted to Scorpius, and Scorpius will now tell the Scarrans. Crichton realises that he must now risk everything once again to save his mortal enemy to prevent the Scarrans from learning about wormhole technology. Once again, Crichton sacrifices his and his friends' safety in the cause of his principles. He arguably had had no intention of fulfilling his promise to give Scorpius wormhole technology. In any event, when Scorpius is rescued, Crichton makes a deal with him to forgive the wormhole technology promise if he destroys a plant (bird-of-paradise) that is particularly important to the Scarrans. Plant destroyed, the Moyans flee the Scarrans, and send Scorpius (and Sikozu) to join the Peacekeepers. However, the Scarrans are now bent on traveling through a wormhole to conquer Earth and gain control of the bird-of-paradise flowers that they need. Crichton then destroys the wormhole connecting Earth to his part of the galaxy, eliminating his own route back to Earth.

Finally, with all the danger seemingly passed, Crichton and Aeryn find time alone together. Aeryn tells him he is the father of her child, and Crichton proposes to her. Immediately after she accepts, she and Crichton are apparently killed by an alien craft.

The Peacekeeper Wars

Though Crichton and Aeryn had in fact been crystallised they were quickly reconstituted. They learn that they are on a planet of Eidelons, an ancient race with the power to influence peace. As galactic war breaks out between the Sebaceans and the Scarrans, Crichton once again risks everything for what he believes in as he does all he can to get the Eidelons into a position to use their powers to end the war. But ultimately he is forced to do what Scorpius has always wanted him to do and he uses a wormhole weapon to enforce the peace.

He activates a black hole that tears apart the Eidelon's planet, above which both the Scarrans and Sebaceans are fighting each other. He tells the commanders of both fleets that he is more than prepared to let the wormhole weapon swallow up Moya, its crew and his and Aeryn's new child, all in the name of forcing a peace treaty. Ultimately the commanders of the fleets agree, after both fleets are destroyed and only Moya and the two flagships are left and Crichton deactivates the wormhole weapon and peace is restored.

Overview

Personality and attributes

John Crichton is a man of principle and conviction and is prepared to risk and sacrifice himself and his friends for what he believes in. One of the "twinned" Crichtons dies during Season Three, the other risks everything by taking his friends on to Scorpius' command carrier at the end of season three, during season four he voluntarily gives up the happiness of a life on Earth that he has longed for since the first episode of season one and at the end of season four he once again risks himself and his friends, this time to stop the Scarrans from getting wormhole technology. But also during season four we learn that there is one thing more important to him than his principles and his beliefs, and that is Aeryn Sun. His love for her proves to be his ultimate driving force and even during Season One it is possible to see the start of these feelings as he takes more risks for her than for any other crewmember.

He is a naturally upbeat man, constantly making jokes and looking on the bright side. Part of this is narrative necessity, after all a TV show in which the main character spends most of his time weeping in the corner would not prove to be a hit, but we also learn that in the early episodes his hope for the future is the main thing that gets him through the day. Later this hope takes second place to Aeryn and this central relationship becomes a major focus of the show.

Crichton habitually gives people and things nicknames, some affectionate, some derisive. He often refers to Chiana as "Pip", Zhaan as "Blue", Rygel as "Sparky", "Spanky", "Fluffy", "Buckwheat", or "Guido," Scorpius as "Grasshopper", "Leatherface", "Nosferatu" or "Bob", Sikozu as "Sputnik", the neural clone as "Harvey" (a reference to Harvey The Rabbit), D'Argo as "D", Noranti as "Grandma", and his own personal pulse pistol as "Winona" (named after Winona Ryder, who had just starred in Alien Resurrection). He also taught a DRD the 1812 Overture and painted it red, white, and blue with the number 1812 in black, later treating this DRD as a sort of pet.

Powers and abilities

He also is a very intelligent man and despite the advanced technology of his new surroundings he often proves to know and understand more theoretical physics than most of his companions. Even if it did take him, as he complains in one episode, ten minutes to figure out how to open a door on board Moya.

Notes

• John Crichton was portrayed by actor Ben Browder.
• The character is likely named after author Michael Crichton, whose full name is "John Robert Crichton, Jr." or former NASA astronaut John Oliver Creighton. However, his name also puns with that of the android Kryten from the BBC science fiction series Red Dwarf. Additionally, there is a British noble family named Crichton (Creighton before ~1800) with at least 6 generations of men named John.
• Along with Michael Shanks' character of Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1, Browder's Crichton has been hailed as one of the sexiest male characters in science fiction.
• The character John Crichton is from North Carolina and was born there. Ben Browder who portrays John grew up in North Carolina as well.
• Ben Browder's character in Stargate SG-1- Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron Mitchell was a United States Air Force pilot, while in Farscape he was an IASA astronaut.

Appearances

• Farscape:

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