By Jonathan Klotz | Published 39 seconds ago It’s an undeniable fact that spaceships are cool. Even the poorly designed Ark One from Peacock’s The Ark has redeemable qualities, though from the outside looks like a five-year-old bashed Legos together. The most iconic image from Star Trek isn’t Kirk, Spock, or Worf; it’s the Enterprise. As cool as the different versions of the Enterprise are, they fall just short of the creative twist on spaceships found in SyFy’s Farscape, which turned the crew’s ship into an actual character on the show. Moya isn’t just a ship. Moya is alive. See Moya in action in our video version of this article. Moya Is A Living Ship And Has A Full Character Arc A member of a species known as Leviathans, Moya is absolutely massive, with no official size given. Common fan estimates made by comparing her to the Peacekeeper’s navy are over twice as long (1,542 meters or 5,059 feet) as the Enterprise-D (641 meters, or 2,103 feet). During the entire run of Farscape, fans see maybe a quarter of the massive network of corridors and rooms that exist inside the Leviathan. Size doesn’t matter, though, because what makes Moya so great is that she grows and changes alongside the ragtag crew. She goes from a timid and frightened ship in the pilot episode to unloading the deadliest weapon in the galaxy in the show’s series finale. Moya Is A Slave When We Meet Her, Later Becomes A Parent As with the rest of the initial crew, including Crichton, Rygel, Ka D’Argo, and Zhaan, Moya was a captive of the Peacekeepers. Abducted as a youngling, Moya was forced into servitude as a transport ship. She was also forced into bonding with Pilot, the symbiotic alien that helps Leviathans fly through deep space. This resulted in a life of pain until later, when they were allowed to bond naturally. You know Farscape is built differently when the ship is also a fugitive on the run from the law. The Pilot’s den aboard Moya Ka D’Argo, trying to wipe out remnants of the Peacekeeper’s tech onboard Moya, takes out a shield and thinks nothing of it. He didn’t realize at the time that the shield was keeping Moya from giving birth, and soon, Moya gave birth to a Leviathan/Peacekeeper vessel hybrid. She requests Aeryn Sun name the new vessel, and Aeryn chooses Talyn, after her father. The pregnancy and birth of Talyn is a weird series of episodes in an already strange show. It gave Moya a whole new set of problems to deal with as a parent, which is a very strange thing to say about a spaceship. No Other Sci-Fi Ship Experiences Grief Farscape may look goofy on the surface, but underneath is a show bursting with emotion and flawed characters trying to overcome personal tragedies to make it a universe that doesn’t care if they live or die. Moya may be a giant bioorganic spaceship, but she isn’t spared suffering when Talyn is killed. Related: Gritty 90s Thriller Is A Smart, Sexy, Ultra-Violent Revenge Movie Viewers realize how much she’s changed from the beginning of her journey with Crichton when the normally scared, passive, and pacifist alien asks the crew to kill a rogue Leviathan. It’s attacking every Peacekeeper she comes across, including desecrating the remains of the half-Peacekeeper gunship Talyn. Moya on Farscape The Enterprise-D never had to try to understand the grief of being a parent who lost a child. Serenity didn’t have to deal with a sullen and moody kid. The Millennium Falcon never rebelled against Han because he hurt its feelings. Farscape’s bio-organic vessel ran through all of those emotions on its way to becoming the best spaceship in sci-fi . Farscape creator Rockne S. O’Bannon didn’t invent living ships, he just perfected it. Many amazing novels and movies had explored the concept already. Notable examples include the Blackhawks and Voidhawks in The Night’s Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, Tyranid Hive Ships in the world of Warhammer 40,000, and even Farscape’s contemporary, Lexx (though that one was much squishier than Moya). Even Star Trek: The Next Generation briefly touched on one of sci-fi’s best tropes in “Tin Man,” and then never again. Farscape Turned Star Wars Dumbest Moment Into An Amazing Moment Beyond being a massive ship and the only crew member that everyone on board actually likes, Moya has the ability to “starburst.” This is the unique way Leviathans travel enormous distances. By shifting into a one-dimensional form, when viewed, it appears to be made of light; the organic alien ship can accelerate beyond the speed of light. The problem, and this is where Pilot comes into play, is that exiting a starburst is entirely random due to space-time dilation and requires a complex series of mathematical equations that Pilot can intuitively handle, more or less landing Moya exactly where they wanted to go. Sometimes. Star Wars: The Last Jedi wasn’t the first time a sci-fi franchise turned jumping into hyperspace into a weapon. Farscape did it years earlier by turning the initial starburst into a weapon, though one that would gravely injure, or even kill a Leviathan if done, say, in the hull of a Peacekeeper ship. It was done to save a mother’s life and foil Scorpius before he finally gets the wormhole knowledge from Crichton’s brain. Talyn’s final Starburst Unlike in Star Wars, the mechanics of starbursting aren’t forever warped to create a dramatic moment; it’s three seasons’ worth of knowledge and understanding about how Leviathans function that result in an incredible moment combining triumph and tragedy. A beloved character, and the less beloved Crais, make a fateful decision, one that cannot be undone. Farscape will never get the recognition it deserves compared to Star Trek , Star Wars, and even Battlestar Galactica, but the little Australian series that could gave sci-fi fans countless memorable characters unlike anything else on television at the time. The fact that one of the show’s best characters is Moya, a spaceship, is nothing short of incredible. Related Topics: Source: https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/scifi/best-sf-ship.html