Firefly: Safe

“Dear Diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy. Then I got kidnapped by hill folks, never to be seen again. It was the best day ever.”

We begin in flashback, with a brief exterior shot of a big posh house. It seems that that Simon and River are so posh that they grew up on the “Tam Estate”. The visual style of the house, inside and out, and including their father’s costume, is essentially late nineteenth century, with just a few nods to the future. It’s such a contrast to the way scMi-fi television used to depict the future, with bland corridors and “futuristic” clothes. Alien and Blade Runner introduced the idea that future styles can be retro, and the result is a fab-looking sci-fi Western aesthetic like this.

There’s a lot of Mandarin this episode, more so than usual. Then again, there’s a lot of swearing, and I’d imagine that Fox are rather more relaxed about swearing in Mandarin than swearing in English.

There’s an interesting scene in a bric-a-brac shop, with Inara and Kaylee revealing that swans are considered rare, and perhaps not found at all on any world that’s within reach. I’d imagine that a bunch of faraway worlds would be restricted to only certain animals from Earth- domesticated animals, pets, parasites and not much else. No swans.

Kaylee’s falling out with Simon is interesting, too. These two characters are pretty much the ones who symbolise their respective social classes, and everything which happens between them can be understood in those terms. Interestingly, it’s the working class character, Kaylee, who is romantic and imaginative, while Simon is neither.

It’s interesting to see shots of River doing an Irish dance juxtaposed with shots of the gunfight. Both sequences have a sort of beauty, but neither ends well, as Shepherd Book is shot and badly injured while Simon and River are kidnapped by nearby villagers.

Mal is eventually forced to seek medical help from a nearby Alliance facility in order to get medical help for the Shepherd, and here the mystery surrounding him depends even more. Why does the sight of Book’s “ident card” immediately cause the Alliance soldiers to immediately agree to Mal’s request with no questions asked? It’s becoming very velar that there’s a lot to be revealed about the Shepherd’s past.

At first, it seems as though Simon and River have reached a safe and friendly community, and even River feels safe, becoming more and more lucid. Unfortunately, and shockingly, her display of telepathy leads the villagers to denounce her as a witch. This is evidently not a future dominated by reason, as the villagers’ seventeenth century clothing might perhaps have told us.

Fortunately, she and her brother are rescued at the last moment as Mal returns. There’s an interesting exchange in the final moments as Simon asks Mal why he came back to save someone he doesn’t even like. Mal’s reply is typical: “You’re on my crew. Why are we even still talking about this?”. It’s this sort of straight-up decency that means you can’t help liking the character, for all his flaws.