Jack Crichton
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| Farscape character | |
 |
|
| Jack Crichton | |
|---|---|
| Homeworld | Earth |
| Race | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Affiliation | IASA, Earth |
| Portrayer | Kent McCord |
John Robert "Jack" Crichton, Sr. is a fictional character on the science fiction television series Farscape played by Kent McCord. He is a retired astronaut and the father of John Crichton.
During his time in the Uncharted Territories, Crichton would often think of his father. In his first year, he would sometimes record his thoughts into a tape recorder, usually addressing Jack in his recordings.
A member of the Ancients took on his form when conversing with John Crichton. Initially this was to fool John while studying human reactions (for a possible colonisation of Earth). Following John seeing his true form, the illusion was retained for unknown reasons (it certainly made costuming and makeup simpler, but there was little plot-based reasoning).
Around a cycle later, John would again encounter a false image of his father. This was the result of a Scarran interrogation device which presented Crichton with increasingly erratic and irrational imagery in order to break his mind.
A cycle after this incident, John again encounters the Ancient in the form of his father. Assumedly, this Ancient took the form of Jack to make Crichton more comfortable as they worked together to keep wormhole technology out of the hands of the Scarrans. "Ancient Jack" was eventually killed by Furlow who had hoped to sell the wormhole tech to the Scarrans.
Crichton would finally see his real father again, about a cycle later, though this time he encountered Jack when he was younger in 1985. Crichton soon discovered that his presence in the past had altered history and that Jack was now to command the tragic final flight of the space shuttle Challenger. Crichton and his friends did what they could to fix the timeline, while John avoided any unnecessary contact with his parents. It seems, however, that Jack later caught a glimpse of his grown son shortly after he had rescued the younger 1985-John from a burning house.
When John and the rest of Moya's crew returned to the present, they discovered that they were still in Earth orbit, now in late 2003. John and Jack reunited on Moya, though John was hesitant at first, wary of yet another Ancient-created, or similar, illusion. John accepted that he had finally returned home and he along with the crew of Moya spent some time on Earth. During their stay, John was distressed to learn that Jack now had a nationalistic, isolationist attitude toward the other nations of the world, due primarily to the September 11 terrorist attacks. In spite of their differences, John eventually convinced his father that to support a unified globe, knowing it was their only chance if they hoped to face the challenges of the galaxy Crichton had already faced.
Months later, Crichton would contact Jack one last time. With the Scarrans on their way to attack Earth, John decided to collapse the wormhole linking Earth to the area of the galaxy near the Uncharted Territories and Tormented Space. After landing a transport pod on the Moon, John used one of its communicators to dial Jack's house. They wished each other good bye and Jack expressed his pride in John and all he had done before they closed the line.
