The Worlds of Farscape (28 page)

Clark concludes, “Sentience is then an important part, but still only a part, of consciousness” (v).

Sentience, especially in higher beings, tends to move beyond mere sensation and into the realm of the less tangible, wherein defining and differentiating sentient qualities becomes more difficult to codify. Some critics believe that sentience reflects an emotional response to stimuli, rather than an instinctual or even intellectual one; when an amoeba diverts its path to avoid unpleasant stimuli, it does so because a sensation has directed an instinctual response. In humans, and in other science fiction life forms, unpleasant stimuli can also prick an emotional response; this, it may be argued, is a sign of sentience.
⁴
Wallace I. Matson argues, “we [humans] can do some things that a discrete machine cannot closely imitate. This fact suggests what should hardly surprise us, that sentience should be in some important and intimate way related to these abilities” (116). For Matson, sentience is functional, though the word “functional” hardly captures the subtleties of his argument.

In “The Measure of a Man,” the Starfleet tribunal sets three criteria for determining sentience in Commander Data: intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness, qualities that, for some (if not all) intents and purposes, are not a bad place to begin when considering the nature of sentience. Similar notions abound through science fiction thought. Dawn M. Robles, specifically discussing constructs of artificial sentience, writes, “It would seem that with the beginnings of mechanical inventions man has seen the possibilities for a creation in his own image much like the biblical Adam, a being created of the tools of man which contains or achieves a spark of life and thus sentience” (68). This “spark of life” has often been directly connoted to consciousness and/or self-awareness, a notion Matson strongly objects to:

The objection stems from the mistake of thinking consciousness as something that explains behavior causally. Inferences from overt behavior to the possession of consciousness are not inferences from effect to cause. This cannot be because consciousness as such never
does
anything [86].

In “The Measure of a Man,”
Enterprise
Captain Jean-Luc Picard, acting as Commander Data's counsel during the hearing, hammers Commander Maddox, as expert witness, on the definition of consciousness. It is easy, Picard argues, to define intelligence and self-awareness; it is less simple to distinguish who—or what—possesses consciousness.

In examining differing notions of sentience, it is interesting, though ultimately not surprising, to see constructs of “space” continually infiltrating the discussion. Providing an example of sentience, Clark recounts that it takes a certain type of intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness in order to determine, for instance, that a specific type of paint possesses particular qualities. Clark hypothesizes that a type of paint on a wall is both red in color and matte in finish. Clark suggests that it takes a particular type of mind in order to
distinguis
h that the paint is both red and matte; to
know
that the paint is both red and matte; and to
grasp
the significance of both of those things: “Recall the special role that locations play in solving that puzzle. To sense something as both matte and red, one must sense matte at the same place-time as red. The location of one feature must be identified with that of the other” (110). In using concepts of “location” as a nexus for understanding sentience, Clark begins to highlight a methodology for comprehending sentience in terms of spatial dynamics. Tuan has already laid the groundwork for this, when he writes, as quoted above, “Home is an intimate place. We
think
of the house as home and place, but enchanted images of the past are evoked not so much by the entire building, which can only be seen, as by its components and furnishings, which can be touched and smelled as well” (144). By connecting the concept of “home”—an ideology, not a solid object—to touching and smelling, to sensation, Tuan is directly connoting place to sentience. John Gillies raises the same connection:

According to modern phenomenology, the body is made for earthly space, as—in an immediate sense—earthly space becomes manifest through the perceiving and feeling body. Bodies not only perceive space or things-in-space through any combination of their five senses, but their very design—their “handedness,” their slightly uneven bifurcatedness—orientates and situates them qualitatively within space and fits them to manipulate things-in-space [57].

It is our senses that enable us to comprehend space. It is our
sentience
that enables us to comprehend place. As Christoph Rehmann-Sutter observes, “The inclination needed to see a place is an
expectation
of the observing subject to become involved in an autonomous
space of meanings
” (176, italics original). In other words, walls build a house; sentience makes a home.

Of course, limiting the definition of sentience to one construct, no matter how complex a construct “home” is, also limits the many facets connected to notions of sentience. It is not the intention of this article to do either. Sentience can be understood by space, but cannot be defined by it. Nonetheless, for
Farscape
, this raises an intriguing interrogation: what does it mean when one's home has actual sentience?

Humans reside in their bodies, and human bodies possess sentience, but they are not homes. Homes, as we have seen, are social constructs, built by desires, yearnings, memories, and experiences. What does it mean, then, when the home itself has desires, yearnings, memories, and experiences? What does it mean when the home itself is an active participant in the construction of the home as well as, and alongside, the self? Indeed, we are all active participants in the construction of the self, though we are not the only participants. But a homeplace that is an active participant in the construction of the homeplace? That surely is new.

Simonsen writes, “Socially lived space depends on material as well as mental constructs—and on the body” (7). In this case, Simonsen is talking about the human form, but for Moya, no such need exists. As a sentient being, Moya is capable of securing her own material needs and providing her own mental constructs. She has her own memories and experiences with which to imbue her own walls and self, constructing identity for both homeplace and self all at once. Moya may not even need a pilot, though, once bonded, they become interdependent upon the other. Sigurd Bergmann suggests, “One of space's most beautiful characteristics is its limitedness. The limitedness of space represents at the same time a condition for the uniqueness of organisms and for that of places” (14). Sentience would seem to overcome this sense of “limitedness.” The ability to think, to be self-aware, to engage in conscious desire, to be mobile and to move wherever she feels is necessary or advantageous, would seem to allow for as much “limitlessness” as those who dwell in the homeplace enjoy. Moya has freedom. Moya can move around. Moya, it seems, can quest.

Or can she? A quest, after all, is designed both for leaving the homeplace and for transforming it as well. Moya can never leave her homeplace because she
is
her homeplace. Space is as empty to her as it is to the other inhabitants of her own biomechanoid realm. Space remains the void. Venturing into it changes nothing about Moya, neither as sentient being nor as homeplace. Moya's only other option, then, in altering homeplace is to allow others in, to become inhabited. It is, in many ways, a conscious choice by Moya to allow the others to remain on board. She wishes the change, as much as they need it.

Because of the nature of this relationship, Moya becomes a being who “depends upon her crew (as they depend upon her) for survival” (Battis 42). Battis recognizes the need for homeplace for the crew to survive here, and indirectly suggests that Moya needs to be recognized as homeplace in order to survive. Homes, after all, are where families dwell, and it is the familial bond that makes the home. It is worth revisiting Lavigne's take on the familial bonds at play in
Farscape
: “If Moya is the mother, Pilot is the father, and both are completely subject to the whims of their children” (59). This reflects the need Moya has for her “offspring.” Without them, she is no longer homeplace; she just exists, an empty vessel adrift in empty space.

De Beauvoir, describing the relationship between mother and fetus, notes, “[The mother] possesses [the fetus], and she is possessed by it” (520). Just as Moya possesses her crew, she is possessed by them. This possession is manifest of a need Moya has, a need brought on by her sentience. A house is a house, a domicile with walls, a roof, a porch. A home is a social construct, created by sentient beings who have a need for it. Moya is both, a home and a sentient being, and thus she herself creates the need for her self to be homeplace. Sentience, in this case, is thus not freeing, but limiting. The ability to engage in emotional response divorced from intellectual processes results in Moya taking in the crew who then use her as homeplace, a relationship—like fetus to mother—more parasitic than symbiotic. They need her, but she needs them more. Moya provides her crew succor, shelter, a unit for creating familiar bonds. But they provide her with purpose and identity. Without them, her sentience would be for naught.

As both sentient being and homeplace, Moya is, ultimately, neither. While the refugees of
Farscape
make Moya their home, their connectiveness to the concept of homeland remains, in a large part, with their originating destinations. As Tuan notes, “Attachment to the homeland is a common human emotion” (158). For the characters of
Farscape
, their attachment remains disjointed at best; Moya will always be their other home, a forge of their identities, but never the crucible in which they were spawned. Conversely, since Moya is homeplace, she can never fully be one of the crew; Battis notes this when he writes that Moya “has no definitive voice of her own, and is constantly being overridden by other characters” (11). Her opinion matters less because she is, in the end, not one of them. The crew inhabits her space; the space that Moya occupies, a space that, in another sentient being, would normally need to be navigated around by the other identities surrounding her, instead becomes the receptacle of these other individuals' own identity struggles. Ruth Salvaggio, writing about the distinctly bifurcated nature of women's bodies, suggests that “understood in these spatial terms, [it] makes her body a kind of ‘space-off' since she is at once separate from others and in between—at once ‘here and elsewhere'” (275). In other words, Moya is here and not here; Moya is everywhere, and nowhere.

In the conclusion of “The Measure of a Man,” Captain Louvois, the judge advocate hearing Data's case, ultimately rules in his favor. As she says in her judgment:

It sits there looking at me, and I don't know what it is. This case has dealt with metaphysics, with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent, nor qualified, to answer those. I've got to make a ruling—to try to speak to the future. Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We've all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul? I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have! But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose [“The Measure of a Man”].

Perhaps, then, this is the best possible definition we can accord for sentience: “the freedom to choose.” In this instance, sentience is given to Data—it is not proscribed to him at birth—but, then again, like Data, sentience as thus understood is not proscribed to any of us. The “freedom to choose” is something we all must attain and earn, something that tends to grow the further we wander from our own originating homeplaces. Moya, however, lacks the freedom to choose—at least the freedom to choose to be anything other than what she is. Without those who dwell within, without the notion of homeplace, Moya's sentience is lost. She has freedom, but, ultimately, she has no choice. The crew fulfills her own identity fashioning in ways that she will never reciprocate for them. It seems, in the end, that an empty home is an unhappy home—and if the homeplace is sentient, then it knows how unhappy it is.

1.
Of course, Zhaan was imprisoned for killing her lover to keep him from turning Delvia over to the Peacekeepers. This marks the end result of socioeconomic disenfranchisement—now compounded by legal disenfranchisement—that Zhaan asserts in the first episodes of the series began with her quasi-heretical views.

2.
Moya does land on terrestrial space on occasion, notably in the second episode of the series, “I, E.T.,” but is largely depicted as a spacefaring organism.

3.
The X-Men universe also features a race of whale-like, spacefaring creatures called the Acanti that are sometimes enslaved as transport vessels by a malevolent force called The Brood. The Acanti are sentient and intelligent, communicating through psionic “songs,” or sounds. The Acanti may have been a major source for Moya's Leviathan species, but the Acanti are wholly biological, where Moya is biomechanoid, and once freed from the Brood, generally choose not to exist as transport vessels or homeplace, whereas Moya, once her control collar is removed, still functions primarily as both of those things.

4.
Psychobiologists have, of course, studied and considered the possibility of emotional responses in higher functioning animals, such as grief over the loss of a close familial bond amongst chimpanzee groups, but such research is beyond the scope of this current study.