Firefly 1-01: Serenity

Episode:

1

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Writer:

Joss Whedon

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Director:

Joss Whedon

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Air Date:

20-Dec-2002

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Firefly's feature-length pilot episode Serenity (not to be confused with the feature-length feature film Serenity that caps the series off).

Actually to be honest I'm not watching anything. I already watched the episode ages ago and I had a first draft of this article written up, just waiting for me to give it a final pass. I'd even written the text down by the 'Next Episode' picture at the bottom. The text said that the next review was going to be "Babylon 5 season 1, episode 4 - Infection", so that helps narrow down when this article was supposed to be published. Seems that it was originally meant to go up a few days before the 21st June 2016. I get distracted sometimes and forget things.

This means I watched Serenity in a more innocent time, before Joss Whedon's fan site Whedonesque.com shut down when his ex-wife accused him of multiple affairs, before he was accused of being abusive to actors, and before Justice League. Though it would've been a couple years after Adam Baldwin helped make Gamergate a thing. Honestly I think it's best I'm getting this done now, before anything worse comes out. Though if I'd just waited a few months later I could've posted this on its 20th anniversary.

Firefly aired its one short season in late 2002, at the same time that Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit season 7 and Angel reached season 4. That means that Whedon had three series he'd created running simultaneously, which is maybe a little much, even if Tim Minear was the actual showrunner of this one. I checked their US ratings, out of curiosity, and if these numbers I got from the internet are correct then all three shows were getting roughly the same viewers. (Then I threw Star Trek: Enterprise on the chart as well, seeing as that was in its season second at the time, and it was roughly the same as well.) But I guess Fox expected more from its expensive space show as it was axed after 14 episodes and they didn't even air 3 of them. Also they aired this pilot episode last!

Alright, I'm going to go through the whole story scene by scene, recapping, screencapping (from the PAL DVDs), and typing whatever commentary I can think of as I go. This article is going to feature SPOILERS for exactly one episode, this one... except I'm also going to mention something from the pilot of Outlaw Star. So exactly two episodes then. But nothing more.

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The episode begins with shaky shots of a chaotic sci-fi battlefield. It's war on an early 2000s TV budget though, so this is the widest shot of people I could get.

It's hard to tell who's doing what to who, but there's a lot of exploding going on and a space fighter flies over to strafe some of the soldiers in the brown coats.

Turns out that geek icon Nathan Fillion is one of the folks in brown and he's the sergeant in charge of this particular group. They're trying to hold out until they get air support but that's kind of hard when a fighter is making a habit of swooping overhead and shooting them all.

People keep dropping dead around him but that's not enough to dampen the sergeant's spirits. He gives a heartfelt inspirational speech, kisses his crucifix necklace, then runs out with his sidekick Gina Torres to get to an anti-aircraft gun and blow their nemesis out of the sky.

I'm still waiting on their character names but we're getting plenty of character traits. These two are the most likely of the group to run out of cover into a hail of bullets and also the most likely to survive it.

Look at that beautiful muzzle flash on that thing. That's genuine that is.

There are a few ways that live action science fiction handles guns. There's the Star Trek/Babylon 5 approach, where everyone's using energy weapon props designed and built from scratch, there's the Aliens/Star Wars approach, where the weapons tend to be real world guns with bits stuck on top to make them look futuristic. And then there's the Firefly approach, where everyone's just running around with unmodified revolvers and shotguns, and our heroes carry modern day Heckler & Koch G36K rifles.

When their ancestors travelled the galaxy to settle new worlds I guess the gun museum starship was one of the ones that survived the trip.

Speaking of Aliens, there's a familiar logo just above the sights of his borrowed AA gun. I suppose it makes sense that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation makes guns, considering how keen they are to get hold of alien bioweapons.

Our heroes succeed in destroying the fighter, but then they find themselves having to dodge the flaming wreckage as well. That's another thing we've learned about them: they're kind of protagonists whose daring solutions often come with complications. The two of them survive and return back to their camp to discover that a shell-shocked soldier called Bendis has survived too! So Sergeant Nathan Fillion gives him another inspiring speech (even though he totally failed to give them cover fire), and they wait for their angels to fly in and wipe the enemy out.

The news over the radio isn't exactly what they wanted to hear though. They're not getting air support. In fact they've been ordered to lay down arms. Serenity Valley has been lost.

Our hero is so utterly shocked by this he just stands up out of cover and stares as the enemy transport ships come down. He doesn't even notice Bendis being gunned down right next to him and doesn't seem to care that he could be next if he doesn't get his head down.

It's over, the Alliance has won, the Browncoats have lost, and his faith has clearly been totally shattered. But he still hasn't been given a name! Bendis has had his name yelled out about 20 times, his sidekick has been called Zoë once or twice, but he's still [Unnamed Nathan Fillion Character].

Cut to space, an indeterminate amount of time later. Zoë, a new character called Jayne, and [Unnamed Nathan Fillion Character] are out in spacesuits, cutting open the hull of a wrecked spaceship to get at the treasures within. This is an important scene, as it reveals that Firefly... is a space series!

It also reveals something else I'd forgotten about: the series is one of the few to avoid applying sound effects to space scenes. It still has artificial gravity and a few other science fiction conveniences, it's not gone full 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it's generally more down to earth than most space shows. There are no hyperspace drives, no aliens, no parallel universes, and there's definitely no time travel.

While the three of them out doing their salvage, their pilot is back on board their own ship, monitoring the sensors...

...and playing with his dinosaurs.

Their pilot acts out a mini-story about a stegosaurus and a tyrannosaur who travel to a fertile new land together, only for the carnivore to betray his friend. That's the Firefly universe for you: you gotta be very careful who you put your trust in, as betrayal can be both sudden and inevitable.

The clue was the teeth. This thing has a mouth like Godzilla.

It takes a confident writer to start a pilot of a serious sci-fi series with one of the heroes playing with his toys and it takes an actor as good with comedy as Alan Tudyk to pull it off. Fortunately they hired Alan Tudyk for the role, so it works fine.

Though he eventually manages to tear himself away from the drama long enough to investigate an urgent beeping sound and discovers that a big-ass Alliance cruiser is dropping by to see what's up.

The pilot (revealed to be called Wash) shuts down his cockpit consoles, while the engineer Kaylee shuts off the lights in the engine room (and then gets stuck hanging onto the ceiling in the dark).

By the way, I really hate that spinning engine core they've got there. I can accept a lot of things about this series, but that rickety spit-roasted assemblage of junk they have is just a step too far for my poor aching suspension of disbelief.

I like the vertical design of the IAV Dortmunder though. You don't typically see a sci-fi ship made out of spiky skyscrapers; it's like the USS Bureaucracy. The Dortmunder is an impressive oppressive monolith of a vessel, all modern and civilized and high-tech, and it sets the Alliance up as being the antithesis of our crew without necessarily being outright evil.

The Alliance was the enemy that the Browncoats were fighting during the war by the way, but that's long over now. The crew still don't want to be caught by them here though, as if they're found stealing cargo that's going to be very bad for them.

Man, I was tempted to mention earlier that the scene of the guy playing with his toys reminded me of Spaceballs... but the Dotmunder's bridge really reminds me of Spaceballs.

The heroes get to work hauling their looted cargo home right under the Dortmunder's nose and it looks like they're going to get away with it, until the Alliance vessel reads the heat coming off their ship. There's no FTL travel in Firefly, so the ship can't warp away, but they can use a fake distress signal from a beacon made out of a coffee can to lure the Dortmunder away.

They detach from the wreck while the Alliance crew are distracted and then fly away with the engines on full burn, serenaded by a guitar and violin. A successful salvage operation!

The crew didn't make any fans here though, as the Alliance officers keep referring to them as 'vultures' and 'roaches' and the captain puts out a bulletin on their ship so that someone else can deal with them. They're clearly on the wrong side of the law here.

The crew gets the lights on to show off their massive cargo bay set, and all is well. Though despite their success [Unnamed Nathan Fillion Character] is clearly a bit miserable. He may have won this battle but he lost the war a long time ago.

That was a decent teaser I reckon. It tells the whole story of where these two come from and what they're doing now, it sets up their crew, has plenty of humour and explosions, and it looks and sounds fantastic.

OPENING TITLES

Man, the last shot of Firefly's opening titles with the spaceship flying overhead and scaring the horses really sums up what the series is going for. Not that we've gotten any horses yet; it's not quite ready to go full western on us.

There's nothing all that special about Firefly's credits sequence, it mostly follows the Buffy and Angel template of showing off clips of each of the characters, but the choice of music is a little out of the ordinary. One thing that Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, Space: Above and Beyond, Stargate SG-1 etc. have in common is a dramatic orchestral main theme. Even Lexx and Farscape have one, though they weird it up a bit.

Firefly, on the other hand, has a kind of bluegrass country song as its theme, with lyrics! It's a song called The Ballad of Serenity and it was sung by blues singer Sonny Rhodes, who died just a few weeks ago. It's one of those songs that basically gives away exactly where the hero's coming from.

"Take my love, take my land,
take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free.
You can't take the sky from me."

That's everything we know about [Unnamed Nathan Fillion Character] summarised in one paragraph.

ACT ONE

Act one begins with the crew inspecting their loot. Man, look at that light flaring out. TV series typically tried to avoid that, but Firefly was going for more of a 70s look and they deliberately got some mid-70s lenses with older coatings that were more likely to produce artefacts like lens flares.

The captain notices a logo on the other side of one of the bricks and flips it around quick before anyone else sees. Turns out that this was a job for a guy called Badger and now that it's done he's eager to get rid of the loot ASAP.

Meanwhile the episode's eager to give us some snapshots of characterisation, and we learn that Kaylee's irrepressibly cheerful and Wash and Zoë are married! Plenty of married characters in sci-fi, but not many that start off that way. (Fox didn't want these two to start that way either, but Whedon put his foot down.) We also hear about the 'ambassador', Inara, who'll be meeting them on Persephone, once she's finished making an honest living.

Cut to Inara having sex.

Turns out that the captain was speaking ironically, as Inara sleeps with people for money! Except in a double subversion, this really is an honest, respectable job in the Firefly universe, at least for a well-educated 'companion' like Inara.

This wasn't the first Inara by the way, as Rebecca Gayheart had the role for about a day before Morena Baccarin took over. The reason she was replaced was Whedon didn't think she had the right chemistry with the others.

Once Inara's client's time is up she pulls a curtain open to reveal a cockpit! This is actually her shuttle and she has the training to fly it. She also gives us a crucial piece of information before the scene's over: their ship is called Serenity. Not Firefly.

Man look at that city! Not bad at all for 2002.

This is the planet Persephone by the way, though you probably guessed that from the text. It's not well explained (or even that important I suppose) but all the planets in the Firefly universe are close enough together to fly between without going into Ludicrous Speed, and there's a lot of them. The core worlds are all civilized and sci-fi like this, the outer worlds are less so. They're as close to resembling Earth as they could make them with their futuristic terraforming technology, but the people that are living there now are forced to make do with whatever they have.

One thing I like about this scene is that when the episode cuts to the next location the name 'PERSEPHONE' stays on screen, and '- EAVESDOWN DOCKS' is eventually appended to it, making it clear that these two places are on the same planet.

Also look how many extras they've got here! Star Trek: Enterprise was in its second season at the time, but it was never able to make other planets feel as real as this (possibly because they had to spend a lot more money on bumpy foreheads).

The crew disembarks, with Wash driving off to get supplies on this awesome ATV, called the Mule. I hope he's careful though, as a mysterious hand has reached out to grab onto the front (it's more obvious in motion). Seems that he's in danger of running over someone from the production crew.

I love that this outdoor area is actually a part of the spaceship set, so Wash can drive right out of the cargo bay. The camera could've gone from out here all the way, into the cargo bay, past the infirmary behind it, and through to the passenger quarters at the back in one unbroken shot if they'd ever wanted to.

Oh they're picking up passengers as well by the way, to gain them a bit of respectability and earn a little extra cash. Their need for funds is indicated by Kaylee saying the ship needs a new compression coil and the captain saying they'll have to make do. He also mentions he wants a shiny hat, but that's not on the cards either.

So Kaylee's going to stay behind to meet potential passengers (and to keep people from just walking into Serenity and taking stuff I hope) and the other three are going to see their old friend Badger to get rid of the stolen cargo he sent them out for.

Unfortunately they're a bit late, as a bulletin's gone out about their escapade. Doesn't point directly at them, their ship wasn't identified, but it does reveal that their salvaged goods are marked. Also that's a great looking digital paper effect, they did well there. It's even got a bit of a shine to it when it picks up the light.

Badger here is played by the scene-stealing Mark Sheppard of Battlestar Galactica and Supernatural fame and he's making a decent attempt to nick this scene as well. He also stole the role itself from Joss Whedon, who was originally going to make a cameo here.

Turns out that Badger's decided not to pay them and take the marked cargo off their hands, and that's partly because he just doesn't like [Unnamed Nathan Fillion Character]. He doesn't much like the way he looks down upon him, like he's better than him. A man of honour in a den of thieves. In the captain's defence I suppose it's hard not to feel a little bit superior to someone when he's the one with the tie but you're the one with the shirt.

Badger does do us a favour though, as he identifies the captain as being 'Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds'. He finally has a name!

Meanwhile Kaylee meets a shepherd (preacher) called Book who's looking for a good ship to travel on. Doesn't care about where he's going because how you get there is the worthier part.

Jayne's pissed off that they're walking away from Badger without getting getting paid, but Mal knows the three of them wouldn't have survived pressing the issue in the heart of his lair. But they do need to get this cargo sold or else they can't afford to keep the ship running, so Mal feels that their best hope is to sell the goods to an old associate called Patience over in Whitefall. She shot Mal once but he feels it wasn't personal and she probably doesn't hold a grudge.

Hmm, Serenity seems a little too bright for its environment in this shot somehow. I feel the shadows should be darker. I guess they didn't have all the time in the world to fine-tune it, especially when they were busy adding that Imperial Shuttle from Star Wars on the left.

They get their last two passengers on board and then Inara's shuttle docks into the hole in the side. I'm sure I'm the only one who ever wondered about this, and you can barely even tell, but I checked and yes they did render Serenity with both of her shuttles present in the teaser, even though Inara's shuttle should've been gone. That's not the weirdest thing though. The ship's entire design has changed.

Seriously, look at that picture up there for a bit, get a good mental image of how it looks, then scroll down to see how it looks once it reaches space.

ACT TWO

I had no clue about the two different ship designs until it was pointed out to me, I never noticed, but now I can't unsee it. This one's the curvy upgraded model, but it's the older angular model you see most of in the opening credits and it even made it onto the cover of the box set.

You can see proper comparisons and read all about this on the 3D modeller's own website if you're curious. Here's some trivia for you, the modeller's name is Pierre Drolet and he also built the NX-01 Enterprise for Star Trek: Enterprise, the Orville for The Orville and the USS Shenzhou for Star Trek: Discovery, plus a whole bunch of stuff. He's done a lot of models.

Anyway Zoë's a bit concerned about the possibility of their three guests discovering their secret looted cargo, but seeing as it's behind a wall Mal's not that worried. Plus he's come up with an excuse for why they're switching destinations to sell the loot at Whitefall. He explains to them all that the Alliance has ordered them to go take a short detour to drop off medical supplies so they'll be a little late.

The crew and passengers get together for a sit-down meal later to eat the actual real food brought in by Shepherd Book. Mal doesn't let Shepherd say grace though, as he's not on good terms with God after Serenity Valley. By the way, they're using chopsticks here as Chinese culture is strong in the Firefly 'verse, despite Asian representation being a little weak. That's why they always switch to speaking Mandarin whenever they feel the urge to curse (as opposed to just making up sci-fi swearwords).

Kaylee's obviously into one the passengers, a rich city doctor called Simon, which Jayne finds amusing. But Jayne and Mal disagree about the crudeness of Jayne's sense of humour and eventually Mal wins out and gets him to leave.

Inara doesn't eat with them, so Book goes to bring her some food. She was expecting a lecture on her wicked ways, but he's not actually all that preachy. Turns out that Inana's got an arrangement with the crew: she gets to ride with them to planets and rent their shuttle, and they get the benefit of her respectability, which allows the ship to dock at places that otherwise would want nothing to do with them.

Mal stops by his own room to show off how the set has running water, a toilet, and toilet paper. That's something Captain Kirk and Han Solo never had! But then he's called away when Wash uses the classic 'captain, you'd better come down here' line over the intercom. Always handy for when you want to keep the audience and your boss in suspense!

Then we get this ridiculous camera move that starts in Mal's room, pulls back to reveal a ladder, then climbs the ladder with him! There's a cut before he gets to that third image however, as these rooms weren't actually connected on the set. There's a bit of wall at the top of the top of the ladder to make it look like he's climbing into the corridor set, but he's not. Still, it does a great job of showing how it's all connected on the fictional spaceship. One thing they never show, however, is how he got all his furniture down there through that tiny hole.

Anyway, turns out that Wash was calling his captain to let him know that one of their passengers just tried to send a message out to an Alliance cruiser! Mal races down to the cargo bay and finds Simon, the doctor that Kaylee likes, looking very suspicious. So he sends him down with a punch. Simon's a Fed!

But then Book comes in and reveals he's got the wrong man...

No it's not Book either, it was the third passenger, Dobson, who sent the call, and he's just given himself away by holding a gun at them. I knew Simon wasn't the Fed, he's in the opening credits!

Dobson reveals he's actually here to arrest Simon, which gives Mal a moment of relief, until he realises that Dobson doesn't trust any of them. Dobson definitely doesn't believe Mal's story about being ordered to deliver medicine to Whitefall and he's arranged for an Alliance ship to come and dock with them.

 Just then Kaylee pops out to see what's up in the cargo bay...

... and takes a bullet in the gut. Book takes Dobson down skilfully and efficiently, but then refuses to let Jayne finish the job and kill him, standing his ground even with a gun pointing at his chest.

Simon tells Mal that he can save Kaylee's life, but he won't do it unless they get him away from the Alliance. Mal digs his heels in, even with Inara telling him to make a deal, but there's only so long he can stand to leave Kaylee crying in pain and he eventually relents. This has not improved his opinion of Simon any however, as he was willing to let her die just to save himself.

Simon starts surgery, with Mal and Inara's help. Meanwhile Jayne watches from outside, proving that the ship's thug is not actually a total bastard. Or maybe he's just bored.

Some people have noticed a bit of a similarity between the crew of Serenity and the crew of the Betty from Alien: Resurrection, which was also written by Joss Whedon. I think Jayne really is a lot like the character Johner, except slightly less likely to put a knife into his friend's leg for a joke. Incidentally Firefly was shot in the same stages that Alien: Resurrection was filmed.

Anyway once the business of saving Kaylee's life is done with, Mal decides it's time to see what cargo Simon's brought with him. He kicks the lid off to reveal...

A naked Summer Glau in a box!

Why do I feel like I've seen this before somewhere? Oh wait, I've figured it out! This shot's in the opening titles of every episode when Summer's name comes up (rotated around to better fit the frame). This episode actually aired last when the series was first shown on Fox, so viewers had months to wonder what that was about.

Oh plus the exact same thing happened in Outlaw Star a four years earlier. Honestly though, this happens enough to be an actual trope.

ACT THREE

Mal assumes that Simon's shipping a sex slave, but he's startled when she suddenly wakes up and Simon runs over to comfort her.

The truth is she's Simon's sister. His brilliant genius sister River, who was experimented on by a government facility when she was 14 and driven quite mad. He paid for people to smuggle her out in cryostasis and now he's trying to get her far away from the government as the two of them have become wanted fugitives.

The crew discuss the situation, voices get raised, and eventually Inara gives Mal an ultimatum: if he kicks Simon and River off the ship at Whitefall then he can say goodbye to her as well. He doesn't back down.

Meanwhile they've got a kidnapped federal officer on board and they have no idea how much of his message actually got out to the Alliance. That means it's Jayne's job to interrogate him and learn what the Alliance knows about them.

Dobson reveals that the Alliance knows everything. Jayne's not as dumb as he appears though and he's well aware he's bullshitting. As long as Dobson doesn't rat on them they'll be safe. Dobson's got a proposal though: he'll get Jayne enough money to buy his own ship if he'll turn on Mal.

Cut to another vessel approaching. But it's not the Alliance cruiser, it's a big rusty old shark spaceship putting out a lot of radiation. The only people in space to be dumb enough to run a ship without core containment like this are... Reavers! Not to be confused with Mass Effect's Reapers.

ACT FOUR

Reavers are bad bad news: the absolute monsters of outer space. They're so mean that just a description of them could push a series' rating certificate up a notch. They're so vile that I should be giving you a content warning for the next paragraph.

As Zoë puts it, "If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh and sew our skins into their clothing and if we're very very lucky, they'll do it in that order." So... that's probably not going to happen in the pilot episode, but the crew all look suitably tense regardless. Even Jayne's terrified and he's been giving Mal shit all episode for backing down against Badger's room full of goons earlier.

Everyone reacts to the threat in different ways. Simon goes to be with River, Jayne goes to be with his guns, and Inara goes to get her mysterious syringe. This implication being that it's a suicide kit, but if the series continued the truth would've apparently turned out to be darker. Well, assuming the writers could've ever convinced Fox to go along with the episode. I'm kind of glad it never gets followed on up either way. It's the one silver lining to the series being cancelled.

For some reason the two ships seem to be moving very slowly in relation to each other despite the incredible speed Serenity must be going to make an interplanetary trip, but I guess it's all relative. The Reavers eventually drift on by and Serenity continues on to Whitefall.

Mal goes down to the infirmary after the scare to check on Kaylee, then has a discussion with Simon up on the cargo bay catwalks. There aren't a whole lot of corridors inside Serenity, so you gotta chat where you can.

He confronts the doctor about the fact all their lives could be ruined because of that Fed they've got tied up. It's something that's got to be resolved somehow, but he doubts he has the guts to do it. Then Mal tells Simon that Kaylee is dead.

Simon runs down to the infirmary in horror, and finds Shepherd Book standing by her bed. Then Kaylee waves to him.

That has to be the cruellest joke a TV writer has ever played on his audience, though it's also hilarious and it helps break the tension.

Sadly it doesn't work as well as it could've done, as like I said, this was the last episode aired. But anyone who's seen anything by Joss Whedon knows how fond he is of making you love a character just so it hurts more when he kills them off. (I'd list examples, but that would be a whole lot of spoilers). Plus he's been wanting to give a character from a show's opening credits a surprise death in the very first episode since episode one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Everyone in the cockpit's having a good laugh about it anyway and it's nice to see Mal and Jayne actually getting on with each other for once. Up to this point it's seemed like they could barely stand each other, with Jayne thinking Mal needs to show some backbone and Mal thinking Jayne needs to shut up.

That's a really nice shot. You can tell it's the older angular Serenity model though because the base under the curvy engine room bit is a solid block instead of being two separate prongs.

Mal gets in contact with Patience over the vid screen to discuss this cargo he's got and finds her to be very agreeable. She doesn't even try to haggle down his price. So yeah, she's planning to shoot Mal again and they all know it. They're going to meet her at the rendezvous point anyway though, as she has the money they require and they're going to get it one way or the other.

Meanwhile their captive Fed is cutting through his bonds and working on his escape.

ACT FIVE

Mal and Zoë arrive at the rendezvous point to meet with Patience, and things are playing out pretty much as Mal expected. She's brought the cash to show that she's ready to make a deal, as expected, and she has snipers hidden in the hills ready to kill them, as expected. Curse their inevitable betrayal! Fortunately Jayne's silently taking care of them.

Now it's Mal's turn to prove that his merchandise is as advertised and he pulls out the sample he brought with him. Turns out that their salvaged cargo is actually foil-wrapped rations, each bar enough to feed a family for a month. Hope they're going to keep a few, they sound ideal for emergencies.

There's a bit of tension here over whether Jayne's going to snipe Mal and take the Fed's offer, due to where his sniper scope is pointing. But he's ultimately loyal to his captain and things go pretty well. Sure Zoë ends up taking one to the vest when the bullets inevitably start flying, and Mal's clipped in the arm, but they win the gunfight without even needing cover thanks to some sniper assistance from their guardian angel.

Patience does find cover though, taking shelter behind her horse.

So Mal removes it from the equation with a bullet. Somehow I did not expect the protagonist in a US sci-fi series to kill an innocent horse.

Speaking of horses, one of the problems people have with Firefly is that it wants to be a sci-fi series and a western at once. These people they're not just riding horses, they're straight up dressed like cowboys! With cowboy hats. It's even got a western soundtrack.

Personally, I don't see an issue with people out on the frontier doing what they can to avoid using fuel, batteries and anything else they can't produce themselves, and horses don't require either. Plus it's not like everyone in the series dresses like a cowboy, just the ones that want to. (Though really Mal and company should probably dress more like pirates, seeing as they live on a ship.)

Mal takes his money without executing Patience, which means they can finally tick 'sell the loot' off their list of problems! Unfortunately both of their other problems return to haunt them at the same time as the Reaver shark ship's approaching the planet and their Fed's broken loose.

ACT SIX

By this point Dobson has beaten an unconscious Book enough times to establish that he's a bad person we should hate and has taken the most convenient innocent he hasn't already shot yet at gunpoint.

Simon leaps from the railing and has a bit of a fight, but the situation ends much as it began, with Dobson holding a gun to his sister's head. Simon's also got a gun and he must know that Dobson's not going to intentionally shoot the person he came here to get, but he's not about to take any chances.

Mal on the other hand doesn't give a damn and takes Dobson down with a single shot on his way up the ramp without even breaking stride. He and Jayne then have to throw the body out while the ramp's closing up, with Mal nearly getting crushed by the airlock door on the way back in. Hey, this means they get to keep all Dobson's stuff!

Now that the gunslinging team have completed their action scene it's Wash's turn to be the hero and evade the incoming Reapers and their rusty shark ship.

Mal and Inara have been trading insults and showing a general disdain for each other all episode, but now that things getting very real, Mal puts their game aside for a moment and tells her to get the passengers onto her shuttle. If they get boarded she's to take off and head to the nearest town.

She's not keen on leaving them to die (leaving him specifically), but he clearly cares about her a lot and he wants her to be safe. Maybe he cares about their passengers too, maybe he doesn't, but asking her to save them means that she has to also save herself. It's not like she can say no.

I like Kaylee's sign by the way. It's a very practical way to indicate what room is hers. Though really her room is the engine room and Jayne makes himself useful by carrying her up there. Book decides to tag along too, instead of going to Inara's escape shuttle with the others.

They need to do a little modification to get Serenity to pull a Crazy Ivan and go to full burn and Kaylee's not really mobile at the moment, so Book and Jayne have to be her hands.

Jayne has a great 'you've got to be kidding me' face here when step 1 of Kaylee's instructions has him opening a box full of messy wiring.

There's a slight glitch in the matrix here, as Wash's yoke vanishes at one point, leaving him steering the ship with empty hands. The commentary reveals that they pulled his chair back to get a better shot and didn't realise that they caught him miming.

Anyway, Serenity doesn't have any weapons on her (not that we know that yet), but what she does have is engines that can flip around.

The ship performs a 180 degree spin and flies back the way it came, firing up the space drive to ignite the air behind them. Not to destroy the Reaver ship, just to get away.

Wash claims that this is a trick the Reaver ship can't do, but we just saw it do it! It had to flip around 180 degrees when it approached the planet, as it'd been coming in with its thrusters pointed forward to slow down. Doesn't seem like it can do it right now though, as Serenity is able to make a clean getaway. I suppose the Reavers are going to have to go Reave someone else I guess.

And Serenity's going to go hit a fuel station next as they're nearly out of gas. That's fine though, as they have the cash.

There's still a few more scenes to go before the episode's over though.

Book returns to Inara's lair of curtains to confess that the last few days have shaken up his world view a bit and he's pretty upset. Simon goes to see River, who admits she didn't think he'd come to save her. And Jayne tells Mal the reason he didn't betray him earlier is because the money wasn't good enough. This time.

Then the episode ends with Mal offering Simon a job as ship's medic, as he's damn good at it, and he and his sister wouldn't last long on their own. Of course they're fugitives so that just paints a big target on the Serenity crew's heads, but that's the kind of ongoing threat a television series needs!


CONCLUSION

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Firefly was blessed with two pilot episodes, which is arguably too many for a series that only lasted for 14 episodes. The reason for the false start is that Fox looked at this episode and thought 'no, this isn't going to get people to watch our show, you're going to need to scrap it and start again'.

Fox had a few problems with the episode, like there wasn't enough people getting shot, and the pacing was too slow, but one of their biggest issues was how grim it was. Seems they didn't like that the protagonist is kind of a miserable dick whose one moment of joy comes from tricking someone into thinking their loveable engineer is dead. I can kind of see where they're coming from there, especially if they wanted a fun, pop culture dominating hit like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think there's plenty of fun in the episode though, plenty of Whedon quips, it's just a bit... darker. There's also a lot more guns I noticed. Guns weren't all that popular on his earlier series, probably due to their tendency to end elaborate martial arts sequences before they've begun, so this is a definite change of pace in that regard.

The episode sets up that this is a story about people who lost The War and don't feel like they have a place in this world anymore. The evil Galactic Empire defeated the Rebel Alliance... depending on your point of view. You could also see them as Union vs Confederates, especially given the western theme, though I think putting Zoë on the side of the Independents helps limit the comparison. Really it's more like the American War of Independence I guess, except things went differently for these colonies.

It also sets up that the crew need money to keep the ship flying and honest work isn't getting them compression coils or strawberries. In fact dishonest work isn't even getting them what they need, so we're able to sympathise with them even though they're the bad guys, and have fun with their criminal capers. Not that they really do anything bad in this story (the Fed that Mal gunned down had shot Kaylee, beat up Book, and had a gun to a teenage girl's head, so he'd forfeited his 'being alive' privileges) and Badger makes it clear at the start that they're criminals with lines they won't cross. Well, except for Jayne.

I can spot two big obstacles that could prevent people getting into the episode: the space western setting and the way characters get a mite poetical in their way of speaking. If you can't buy into the fact that someone somewhere might have reason to ride a horse and wear a duster 495 years in the future you're going to bounce right off this. Even though it made a special effort to show a beautiful sci-fi city at the start to show that they have them too! And the dialogue is a folksy variation on Buffy-speak that could drive a person crazy having to put up with it for a full two hours. Especially if they're already pissed off that this quippy style of dialogue has spread to other shows and movies. Naturalistic, it ain't.

Personally though I can't get enough of it. One of my biggest issues with TV and movies is dull dialogue, if I'm not being entertained by the wordplay I tune out, so this is exactly what I crave. It's why I'm such a fan of Steven Moffat's Doctor Who stories as well. The story also shares its fondness for being playful with expectations even though it's a fairly simple tale at heart. A simple story with a lot of characters.

Firefly got a bit ambitious with its characters as there are nine regulars all on the same tiny ship, and only two of them have buttons to press in a crisis. That's like the Buffy and Angel casts combined! I've been watching a few series recently that have left me wishing that more of the cast had something to do (Enterprise, Discovery, Doctor Who), but no one feels extraneous here. I mean they took cheerful innocent Kaylee out of the picture for a few minutes due to her gunshot wound and suddenly everything went to hell! They're all strong, distinct personalities with their own world views, and Mal is right there in the centre, being pushed and pulled by all of them, no matter how stubborn and miserable he tries to be. I understand why Fox executives wanted to lighten the guy up, I wanted him to lighten up as well... over the course of several seasons.

When it comes to production this is pretty much as good as you get for 2002 sci-fi television, even though they were actually aiming for a retro look. The series' distinctive cinéma vérité, shaky cam, snap zoom style had started to infiltrate a lot of live action productions around this time, Battlestar Galactica being the series' most obvious successor, but it was still kind of innovative here and it's held up pretty well. It's cheating to go for a look that was dated to begin with, but it worked (even if it does make it look a little cheap at times). Plus the soundtrack, the visuals, the actors... they nailed it in every department. Well except for the ship model changing radically between shots and Wash's invisible steering column.

The episode has its flaws, for one thing the climatic Reaver threat is pretty disconnected from everything else, and I wouldn't call it one of the greatest episodes of television ever, but as pilots go it's pretty damn good. In fact this is probably the best of Joss Whedon's pilot episodes I've seen, ahead of Angel's City Of and, uh... I guess Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Pilot would be third place. Buffy and Dollhouse didn't start so well. It definitely works a lot better than Alien: Resurrection. I suppose that's one benefit of having the creator and writer also be the director: if they're any good, you get exactly the right interpretation of the words on screen. It's just a shame that he's been a bit of a disappointment as a person.

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NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-fi Adventures, things are getting serious on Babylon 5 again, in A Tragedy of Telepaths.

If you've got any opinions about Serenity (the episode, not the movie) then you're in luck as I've got a comment box down there you can type into. Share your thoughts.