Read Online The Worlds of Farscape by Sherry Ginn - Free Book Online

intelligence, and to gain acceptance in the upper echelon of civilizations,” goals which would have been familiar to Russian leaders from Peter the Great to Dmitri Medvedev ( PKW) . As S.M. Plokhy points out, when dealing with the Soviet Union,
U.S. and British diplomatic services ... had a long tradition of treating cultural difference between the two sides as evidence of [the U.S.S.R.’s] inferiority ... it was customary to suggest that they displayed Oriental features, torn between extremes of humanity and cruelty. They presumably inclined towards tyranny, possessed a peasant mentality, were disorganized, and could work only in short bursts of frantic activity [64].
    The Scarrans are viewed similarly. Scorpius/Harvey dismisses them without the crystherium utilia flowers as “simple, brutish creatures” (“We’re So Screwed, Part III: ‘La Bomba’” 4.21). Like the Soviets, the Scarrans are all too aware of this perception. As Staleek says, “at the peace table, we know how we’re viewed: brutish, ignorant” ( PKW ). Such errors in judgment were to prove costly in both fact and fiction.
    Like the Soviet Union, the Scarran Empire’s apparently overwhelming strength protects a debilitating secret. For the Soviets the secret was a shrinking economy and industrial base which was unable to maintain both arms production and domestic growth, and finally incapable of doing either. For the Scarran Imperium it is the species’ reliance on crystherium utilia , without which they apparently devolve, at least intellectually (“La Bomba”). Scarran territorial expansion is predicated on establishing and maintaining lines of supply to crystherium production points, and the destruction of the crystherium mother plant at Katratzi resulted in the Imperium being forced to abandon an entire sector of space until a new crystherium supply could be established (“Bad Timing” 4.22).
    It is in the escalating arms race between the two empires, however, that Farscape ’s Cold War allegory blossoms. Like the Soviet Union, the Scarran Imperium seems to have concentrated its efforts towards building up its conventional forces, and as Scorpius reveals in “Losing Time” (3.9), this has been largely successful: “By latest estimates, Scarran warriors outnumber Peacekeeper soldiers ten to one ... if and when they attack—we will lose....” 3 Added to this numerical superiority is the undeniably superior individual toughness and physical endurance demonstrated by Scarrans as individuals, who are naturally resistant to pulse blasts, possess greater physical strength, have the ability to project a heat ray that is devastating to Sebaceans, and even lack external “mivonks”! 4 Likewise, the Soviet soldier was “considered a superior adversary prepared for the most demanding of combat circumstances” (Hertling 20). In either case, the foe is formidable.
    In response to these advantages, as the series opens the Peacekeepers are investigating several possible avenues of weapons-research: potential bio-weapons like the intelligent virus in “A Bug’s Life” (1.18), creating hybrid Leviathan warships (“The Hidden Memory” 1.20), and, of course, the possible military applications of wormholes (“Nerve” 1.19). Though the subject is never directly addressed, it seems logical to assume that the Peacekeepers have found themselves unable to match the Scarran quantitative advantage, and are therefore seeking a technological superiority which will counterbalance—or preferably negate—the Scarrans’ conventional one. At a minimum, Peacekeeper High Command is seeking a weapon capable of deterring a Scarran attack through the threat of devastating retaliation, a strategy that bears more than a little resemblance to the nuclear stance of the United States and NATO in Western Europe.
    Faced with a similar