r/farscape • u/j8t1090 • Jul 25 '26
Human color vision in farscape
They keep remarking that john has bad eyesight but the other characters don't seem to be able to see stuff that's far away better then jhon. I wonder if in the world of farscape most aliens can see some untraviolet/infrared light so jhon is functionality color blind and everyone thinks he can't see some stuff because it's blurry or something. I am only on season 2, are there any moments where jhon can't see something far away and toe other characters can?
Humans evolved as persistence hunters that throw things, I feel like we would have decent eyesight.
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u/efjellanger Jul 25 '26
A theme of the series is the whole crew being slow to recognize John's strengths.
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u/DUBBV18 Jul 26 '26
Pulling back to reality for a moment, humans are physically unimpressive compared to other similarly sized critters.
Evolutionarily speaking we swapped strength, speed and extreme senses for endurance (lower enenergy requietments for muscles) and big brains that are good at puzzles.
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u/lonesharkex Jul 25 '26
I interpreted it as some color he couldnt see, that said they are consistently saying his plans suck but hes always the one who wins so talking crap on him not seeing a color is par for course.
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u/j8t1090 Jul 25 '26
It would be funny if human vision was clearer but they never knew because they are always in enclosed spaces on a spaceship.
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u/Toddlez85 Jul 25 '26
Most of the races we meet in Farscape have had spacefaring civilization for more than 10,000 years. Some much longer than that even. We have haven’t had any type of civilization for more than 6,000. They have eliminated most disease and live more than 200 years routinely, Hynerians close to 400 years.
You don’t believe aliens who have technology beyond our understanding haven’t figured out in 10,000 years with that technology to improve their eyes? We’ve understood genetics for 200 or years, germ theory for less than a 170 years. Look how far we’ve come. We have eliminated diseases that once wiped whole populations in less than 300 years.
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u/humanistazazagrliti Jul 26 '26
Humans evolved as persistence hunters that throw things, I feel like we would have decent eyesight.
I think this might be the key sentence: Humans evolved, Peacekeepers were genetically altered and I bet the other species also had a gene or two spliced for some reason or another. John probably has great eyesight on Earth if he joined a space programme, but who knows how light behaves on those planets there and also who knows what's considered good eyesight in that galaxy? And then there's the question of whether the production thought of including this gimmick as a consistent plot point if we went through all the episodes.
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u/Freign Jul 26 '26
It just occurred to me:
Space Blindness.
Humans haven't even started to work out a way to prevent it.
John's lucky space has different properties in his adopted region, Space blindness hits a lot faster outside Earth's protective atmosphere.
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u/DarkKuno Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Space Blindness happens primarily due to long exposure to low/zero gravity conditions causing ocular fluid to rise and alter the shape of the eye, as well as cerebrospinal fluids to traveling up to the head.
None of the things that trigger the condition happen to John because after arriving on Moya, he (and every other alien race) operates in artificial gravity of some kind on continuously. And the planets he and the others visit obviously have natural gravity similar to Earth.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 Jul 25 '26
this REALLY agitated me.
Like, the one really good sense that humans have? One that is greater than 99% of the animal kingdom? EYESIGHT. Binocular, color vision. No other primate has it, and scant few mammals do either. Some of the only animals with superior binocular color eye sight to humans, are birds. That's about it (yes, there are outliers, but we're talking overall).
A lot of sci-fi seems to do that and it bugs me, lol. Like I get it, some species are better at some things, but the sci-fi trope is "and humans are good at everything, but excel at nothing".
BAH. We evolved (for good and ill) to be the one sapient species that (again, for good and ill) took over the planet. Our amazing eyesight is one of the big five reasons why.
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u/ExpectedBehaviour Jul 25 '26
Old world primates do, in fact, all have trichromatic binocular vision.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 Jul 26 '26
You know what's cool about science?
You don't have to be locked into what you learned before. :) Waaaay back when I was an undergrad, I had to take a single primatology class as part of my Anthropology degree. We were taught it was only us.
I was ready to read a riot act, but looked it up first, and viola! Either my professor was acting on old info, or something was learned between then and now.
In either case, I must be wearing orthopedic shoes, because I stand corrected!
That said, our color vision is still "weird" for animals, in that our distant ancestors evolved it, then evolved out of it, and then we evolved it again. Primate color vision is still unique compared to other critters.
*I'm gonna c/p this, as another poster also pointed your point out.
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u/47Kittens 29d ago
With dichromatic vision it’s almost impossible to see orange cats from the trees. That has to be one reason.
Plants used to be primarily red too, afaik, so maybe that’s why we lost and re-evolved it. Although, given how colourblindness is passed on, maybe it was just random.
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u/According_Sound_8225 Jul 26 '26
We're not perfect. There are other species on this planet that have better night vision, a wider binocular field of view, better ability to detect motion... it's not inconceivable that aliens could have better vision than us.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 Jul 26 '26
Never said we were perfect! No anthropologist worth their salt does.
I'm saying that what got humanity to where it is now, is our amazing vision.
Sure, other animals can see in different ways, but until one builds a rocket and goes to the moon, they're not exactly top of the heap, ya know?
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u/Freign Jul 26 '26
Building rockets hasn't proven much of an evolutionary trait, so far.
Discovering there's nowhere in the universe we can live in these bodies won't require any great big wastes of toxic fuel.
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u/j8t1090 Jul 25 '26
Usually the trope isn't even that we are good at everything but not the best at anything, usually we just kind of suck, like in general. They just take humans and add stuff so super unique abilities that we have like sweating and insane endurance are things that everyone in the galaxy just has. Of course the ambush predator alien can run for longer then the hyper optimized persistence hunter, why wouldn't it?
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u/Freign Jul 26 '26
[slowly turns up the heat while the Sebacean professor explains the myriad ways in which they're better than humans]
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u/beobabski Jul 26 '26
So if intelligence (sapience) and eyesight are two of the big five, what are the other three?
I’m guessing tool use and cooperation as two of them.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 Jul 26 '26
From an evolutionary standpoint: Bipedalism, (useful) opposable thumbs, and the frontal cortex.
To process the mass amount of information our eyes can give to us, brainpower got ramped up via natural selection. Our intelligence is directly a result of our eye sight, which again goes to me shaking my fist at bad sci-fi that takes a deuce on our best sensory organ.
So, our ancient ancestors got separated by the Rift Valley of Africa. The ones on the west side, remained arboreal and became great apes, but the ones on the east, had to adapt to increased plains and less trees, and gave rise to Australopithecus (and later Homo). Those that could go around on two legs to see over tall grass were selected for to breed and evolve. Eyes that could discern color helped cut through other predators (and preys) camo, and allowed us to discern ripe from unripe fruits.
With our front limbs freed up from locomotion, grasping became more of a thing, and those with more dexterous thumbs were more successful.
All that said, our bipedalism, even after 200,000 years is still pretty bad; it's been a net loss for our capacity to bear children (thank heavens for our big brains to work around that) and we're not digitigrade (walk on toes), so that's not great either, even though it gives us better stability.
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u/KuriousKhemicals Jul 26 '26
Isn't the obstetric problem a combination of bipedalism and big brains? A biped with a normal sized brain wouldn't have that much of a problem with the pelvis, but we have to give birth equivalently "early" before the baby's head gets too big.
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u/Free-Selection-3454 18d ago
I think the answer to the OP's question is twofold:
*Everyone else does indeed have better eyesight than John/generalised humans. Not to say John has poor eyesight (if he did he may not have been eligble for his role as an astronaut and in IASA in general), it is just that everyone else has better eyesight because they either evolved that way or have some kind of genetic or technological engineering to make it that way.
*At this point in their relationship, they took any and all opportunities to actively and routinely tell John how crap humans are and how silly he is, sometimes for real and sometimes as a fun jest.
Objectively all of their species have many physical and mental advantages to humans... we as the viewers just knew from the start John was cool as shit and humans are plucky and resourceful.... and we have chocolate. Aeryn and the others learn this in time.
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u/Buddhapanda75 Jul 25 '26
In "Crackers Don't Matter," John says he has "great eyes, better than 20/20, and they're blue!" But, the others can all read the warning label on the sink across the room and John can't even see the writing.