Welcome to the weekly TV thread.

The Original TV Score Selection of the Week is a bunch of short instrumentals Guy Gross composed for the 2001 Farscape episode “Scratch ’n Sniff.” None of Gross’s score from “Scratch ’n Sniff” was included by the La-La Land label in its series of Farscape soundtrack albums.

Fortunately, a Farscape fan at a YouTube account called ROOBOX digitally cleaned up and compiled the most memorable cues from “Scratch ’n Sniff.” One of those cues comes from the episode’s cold open inside an alien bar on the pleasure planet known as LoMo. It’s a two-minute instrumental that amusingly brings to mind so many of the acid jazz instrumentals I played when I was a college radio DJ in the late ’90s, like, for example, “Steppin’ Out with the Shifties” by the British band Heavyshift.

Farscape February, which concludes next week at the Couch Avocados column, continues with a few paragraphs about “Scratch ’n Sniff.” It’s the episode where a vacation for Crichton, D’Argo, Chiana, and Jool on LoMo—a trip demanded by Moya and Pilot because both beings are tired of hearing Crichton and D’Argo argue (I’m surprised Crichton never called him “D’Argue”)—comedically turns into a rescue mission to save Chiana and Jool from a sleazy aphrodisiac dealer who wants to sap the Nebari thief and the Interion archaeologist of their “senal glands.” (I still don’t know what the fuck “senal glands” mean.) I first watched “Scratch ’n Sniff” when the Sci-Fi Channel aired it in reruns in either 2002 or 2003. I hated the episode.

I originally thought the resort planet episode was loud and obnoxious filler. I didn’t care for the frenetic editing and pacing of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! when a journalist friend talked me into watching it with her in the theater. “Scratch ’n Sniff” felt like Moulin Rouge! on a resort planet that was actually nothing more than Maroubra Beach in Sydney.

Then about 21 years later on YouTube, I re-encountered “Scratch ’n Sniff” in its entirety during one of Shout! Studios’s 24-hour Farscape livestreams, and it reminded me of Richard Lester’s bizarre The Knack… And How to Get It, which I watched on TCM at some point in between 2003 and 2024. This time I loved it. It was also because I was underwhelmed by both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s “Let He Who Is Without Sin…,” a Star Trek resort planet episode I watched for the first time in 2020 on Netflix, and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Justice,” a similar Trek resort planet episode I rewatched on the same streamer a few weeks after “Let He.”

As a resort planet episode, “Scratch ’n Sniff” is so much more satisfying than “Let He” and “Justice.” (“Let He” was written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe and DS9 showrunner Ira Steven Behr, two of DS9’s best writers. I wanted the dull “Let He” to be a lot better than how it turned out, and Wolfe, Behr, Ronald D. Moore, Alexander Siddig, and “Let He” director René Auberjonois all felt the same way as well.) Trek resort planet episodes always feel like a middle-aged suburban dad’s idea of hedonism and fun. “Scratch ’n Sniff” does not.

Farscape’s resort planet episode has the mivonks to show that booze and Ecstasy (this episode’s Ecstasy counterpart is called “freslin”) are a big part of vacations on resorts and that Crichton—the episode’s hungover and unreliable narrator—and D’Argo don’t mind getting drunk. (I would have hated Farscape if Maurice Hurley, TNG’s second showrunner after Gene Roddenberry abandoned the task of showrunning, was in charge of the show. Hurley came from Miami Vice, and it showed when he inserted unnecessary sermons about drugs into Trek. He would have tacked onto “Scratch ’n Sniff” a speech from Pilot about why it’s wise to say no to drugs.) The episode also implies that Crichton and D’Argo slept together while drunk. I know nothing about “Scratch ’n Sniff” writer Lily Taylor. All I know about her is that she went on to write for the Australian daytime soap Home and Away for six years. “Scratch ’n Sniff” was clearly written by a younger person who was no stranger to raves or outdoor music festivals. It’s less like a Trek resort planet episode and more like Insecure’s Coachella episode. “Scratch ’n Sniff,” which was directed by Tony Tilse and cleverly edited by Wayne LeClos, is also very Australian.

“I think the cheekiness in Farscape comes from the Australian culture,” said Anthony Simcoe, who played D’Argo, to Cinescape magazine in 2002. “Farscape is a really weird mix of Americana, Australian-ness, and a little bit of British sense in it as well. That mix between those three dominant cultures in that show is fabulous.”

That mix shines through in “Scratch ’n Sniff,” whether it’s the Sydney location shooting (which temporarily freed Farscape from the dimly lit soundstages that were home to the interiors of Moya and her volatile offspring Talyn), the Cockney dialogue of Francesca Buller—Ben Browder’s British wife—as a scheming alien named Raxil, the Richard Lester-ness of it all, Crichton’s references to The Ren & Stimpy Show and the Clovers’ “Love Potion No. 9,” or Farscape’s usual kinkiness.

After the Sci-Fi Channel canceled Farscape, I stumbled into a special Farscape: The Official Magazine issue at a comic shop, and it covered the show’s cancellation and its last few days of filming. I’ve held onto the issue all these years. It contains a behind-the-scenes article about the making of “Scratch ’n Sniff.” The article made me love the episode even more. I learned from the article that when Jool did backflips across the floor of the bar, Tammy Macintosh, who played Jool and later took on the role of vigilante Kaz Proctor on the Aussie prison drama Wentworth, did those backflips herself.

“I represented Western Australia in state high school gymnastics when I was a teenager, and I was a dancer professionally for about 12 years,” said Macintosh to Farscape: The Official Magazine, “but I remember after the third take going over to Ben and Fran and saying, ‘You know what? I’m too old for this shit! In future, if I open my mouth, will you shut it for me?’ ”

I also found out from the article that Gigi Edgley was a professional fire twirler, which was why Chiana twirled fire sticks in “Scratch ’n Sniff.”

“I graduated with an arts degree, with lots of trips to the park with bongos, firesticks and chains! The scene was originally written as Chi picking someone up at the bar but I thought that one had been done a few too many times,” said Edgley to Farscape: The Official Magazine. “So I had a chat with Tony and pulled out my fire chains! Hopefully I’ll squeeze my trapeze work in next time!”

“Scratch ’n Sniff” is worth a re-sniff.

Today’s prompt: Do you have a fictional resort you wish you could visit? For example, in the Rick and Morty episode “The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy,” Rick introduced Jerry to the Immortality Field Resort, a popular getaway where wealthy alien tourists can enjoy a consequence-free vacation because the resort is covered by an immortality field. Long before “The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy,” ABC viewers in the ’70s and ’80s were drawn to both the Pacific Princess, a resort that moves, and Fantasy Island, a resort that can send you anywhere in time and space. Meanwhile, I never watched the HBO version of Westworld, but I caught the last half-hour of the original 1973 film version of Westworld on TBS in the ’90s, and it made me never want to go to a resort like Delos. I don’t want to be chased around by an animatronic and heavily armed Yul Brynner.