Serenity Lies to Us.

My favorite TV show is 2002's martyred Firefly.  It was presented out-of-order, in the Friday Night Death Slot, by a network that clearly didn't understand what it had, but did let the show's writers and producers do a competent job.  Nearly all of the actors have gone on to have long and successful careers.  It was killed just as it was beginning to develop a following in spite of the horrible support the network had given, and that following quickly grew--sufficiently that the showrunners were given a chance to make a feature film 3 years later.   My thesis is that feature film, as likeable as it is, does not make sense in the context of the rest of the show.

 Almost everything in here is a spoiler.  If you haven't watched the show or the movie, and I urge that you do, don't read this essay until you have.

 There are a number of big screwups--killing off two of the main characters being the least of it.  Another is that the writers seemed to feel that a lot of the movie's viewers would not have seen the TV show.   That resulted in a lot of valuable movie time being spent in exposition.  But the most important is that the central plot element--the origin story of the Reavers and River Tam's connection to it, makes no sense.   As two separate stories, it makes perfect sense, but tying them together as they tried to was simply a mistake.

 I regard the entire movie as Retcon: Retroactive Continuity, meaning, in this case, significantly rewriting the story so that two unrelated back stories share a single plotline.  This was a mistake. 

The alliance, and most likely their corporate benefactors, especially the Blue Sun Corporation, have done and will continue to do a lot of shady things, and they have a staff of secret agents to defend them.   Some version of this is likely true of most powerful governments in our world too, and lots of good stories can be written about them.  They need talented operatives to do this work, and the unnamed "operative" is one of them.  I am virtually certain that River was being recruited and trained to be one too.  I'm pretty sure that Reverend Book was also an operative during the war, although perhaps not as high-level as the Chiwetel or River characters are.

 Similarly, I am comfortable with the story that the Alliance accidentally created the Reavers.    It makes sense, especially since we're aware that they've been learning how to fiddle with people's attitudes and self control with chemistry.  I find it profoundly unlikely that River had anything to do with this, or that The Operative did either.  It does make sense that those who are guilty of creating the Reavers would like to cover up their involvement, and might even use an operative or two to interfere with word getting out.   But I am profoundly skeptical that they would have gone so far as to bury a secret codeword into a trainee operative.

Why do they want River so much?  This secret is sold to us as the central premise of the movie.  They don't want the secret leaking.  Why would they give the secret to a not-yet-fully-trained operative?   I can't think of a single reason, and I can think of lots not to.  If you need for her to know for some reason, there's no reason not to wait until she's been sufficiently brainwashed to be as loyal as the Chiwetel character.   It's mission-specific info.  When the Chiwetel character learns the truth and realizes that he's been brainwashed, he flips.  "No longer their man" as he puts it.   

The answer is that they accidentally put a senior member of the Alliance in a room with River, and she apparently read his mind and found out about Miranda.

That said, central to the show is the message that the Alliance is incompetent.  They are massive, powerful, and most of all boring, and over and over they prove that one part of the administrative state has no idea what other parts are doing.   The operative has figured this out.  But he is

It is tragic that the show was cancelled when it was.  A decade later, the internet was advanced enough that rebooting a show like this would have been easy.  I put forth the example of "The Expanse", which was cancelled by SciFi, but brought back to life a few years later because Jeff Bezos personally liked it.  The actors were mostly all still available and pretty much looked as they had earlier.  Similarly, Serenity was released only 4 years after the show was cancelled.  They had to build a new set, and improved CG and budget made a real difference--and Summer and Jewell were both under 25.  But ten years after the movie, one of the actors had died, and the two that were purportedly teen-agers could no longer pull that off.    The story would have to explain the passage of so much time.

 Animation makes it much more possible to play these games.  Voices change almost as much as physical appearance, but AI voices are getting so good I think this could be faked now.   I hope the new show can pull it off.  I say: put it into the timeline between the show and the movie.  I think there are as many as three plausible years in there. 

Ranking Episodes of Firefly

 My favorite TV show is 2002's martyred "Firefly".  They did 14 episodes, one of them a double-length Pilot, and a feature movie.  The movie was good, albeit disappointing.

 If you haven't watched the show, do it.  Watch the episodes in order, most importantly the Pilot first.  Fox aired them out of order, and that was one of the things that damaged the show's popularity.  There are several spoilers in here.

 

Best Episode: Out of Gas.  This episode was full of flashbacks, many of which explained who members of the crew are and how they came to be part of Serenity's crew.  It's only best by a tiny bit.   The one real error is that Wash set up a call back button, but Mal never uses it.  The plot would make more sense if he had pressed it, and only a few lines would have to change.

Pilot: The initial, double-length episode is only in second place by a nose: it's also one of the best.   It's actual name is the same as the ship: Serentity.  It has several scenes from the battle that gave the ship its name.  We meet everybody, including several of the baddies.  Reverend Book, now aware that he's on a pirate ship rather than the Tramp Steamer that he thought he was boarding, expresses misgivings, which are completely gone by the next episode.

Ariel: Inara needs to go to a central planet for her annual medical certification, and Doctor Tam comes up with a job for the crew to do at that site.   We learn a lot about Jayne, a really lot about River and "The hands of blue".

Objects in Space: a Bounty Hunter attempts to capture River, but River turns the tables on him.  The bounty hunter was a terrific character, and River and Simon are at their best.  River goes from being a character that made the rest of the crew nervous, to being a full fledged part of the crew, that everybody loves--almost as much as they all love Kaylee.

 

The Train Job.   The "second pilot".  It was written quickly, over a weekend, and the network foolishly ran it instead of the real pilot.  It's a pretty good episode, but it fails to do a lot of the exposition that the pilot did so brilliant.  It has a bunch of very likable scenes, such as when the goon is pushed into the running engine and when the captain realizes that he's doing his theft right under the noses of a whole troop of Alliance soldiers.

Safe.   The doctor and River are kidnapped by hill people, who need a doctor.  I really like the world building that this episode does.   It almost ranks with the best episodes.

 Shindig.  while trying to make a deal for some goods to transport, Captain Reynolds gets crosswise with a local oligarch and is forced to fight him.  There's a lot to like about this episode, but it's in the bottom half only because there are others that are significantly better.

Jaynestown.  We learn a little about Jayne and his history.  While he is mostly a crude, money grubbing thug, he does care about things.   We see a lot of the character of various characters.

War Stories.  A great episode in a lot of ways.  Niska, from the earlier Train Job episode, is back and he's angry.  River is starting to recover, presumably with the aid of the treatment the Doctor was able to devise following the episode in Ariel, and we start seeing a little of what the alliance wanted to turn her into. 

Our Mrs Reynolds.  Christina Hendricks plays an interesting character--who seems like an incredibly naive young woman but turns out to be a highly cynical and skilled thief.

Trash.  Christina Hendrick's character is back.   It's a more straightforward episode and it does a little world-building, and it is a great episode overall, but it's definitely in the bottom half.

The Message: Mal and Zoey's army buddy shows up with a secret.    It's got a fulfilling but very sad ending, compounded with the fact that the actors had just been informed that the show had been cancelled

Heart of Gold:  Inara's old friend hires the crew to deal with a thug.   The plot shares a lot with the Clint Eastwood movie "Unforgiven".   It's the archetypical horses and spaceships in the same scene episode, although there are others.  Mal goes full Indiana Jones and chases down a hovercar with a horse.  

Bushwacked.  This is probably the most disappointing episode.   The crew comes upon a colony ship that had been attacked by Reavers, leaving behind a virus that infects the Serenity and the only survivor.  

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 I rank the movie in the bottom half of this list.  It's a good movie, and it explains some important stuff, but I regard a lot of the plot as inappropriate Retcon.  I'd rank it above "The Message" and below the YoSaffBridge episodes.   I wish they had told more or less the same story with three or four regular episodes, and not tried to do the exposition: most of the audience were already fans, and at least 1/3rd of the movie was wasted on that.  River is now almost a human being, as well as being something considerably more, Simon and Kaylee end up together, and it looks like the Captain and Inara are right on the edge of the same thing.   Wash and the Preacher were killed, only because the authors felt the movie needed the weight of that, not because it added to the story.  Mr Universe is a character that should have either been left out, or had a stronger story arc.  The Operative is a great character and I think his arc was just about right--but should have been spread over three or four episodes.