“You’re talking to Serenity.”
By Matt Fowler
We’re doing the impossible, and that makes us mighty. IGN wasn’t covering TV back when Joss Whedon’s beloved space western Firefly was airing on FOX (infamously out of order, incomplete, and with little fanfare/support), so we’re spending this summer taking a loving look back at the 14 shiny episodes. We’ll be reviewing Firefly episodes on Thursdays; follow along with us by watching the episodes on Netflix, Amazon, Blu-ray, DVD or on iTunes.
For more on IGN TV’s summer flashback reviews, click here.
“They didn’t want her here, but she couldn’t make herself to leave. So she melted. Melted away. They didn’t know she could do that, but she did.”
Alas, we’ve come to the end of Firefly’s stunted, disjointed run. With an awesome finale that actually was aired on FOX (though still not the last episode they would air – that would be the two-hour pilot they had initially shelved). And fittingly, the series ended with a big River showcase. Which I was happy to see as her arc, aside form Mal and Inara’s unrequited longing, was really the standout story on the show. So much so that the movie focused almost entirely on her condition, the secrets she possessed, and the Alliance’s hunt for her.
Here, in “Objects in Space,” we opened with both the Mal and Inara tension and River, who was experiencing a new form of discombobulation that made her imagine crew members speaking cruel truths to her – and even made her see one of Jayne’s guns as a random tree branch. So the discussion of “What to do with River?” was once again brought up and while Mal was ruminating on the Tams’ fate, a bounty hunter (partially inspired by Boba Fett, said writer/director Whedon) named Jubal Early (Richard Brooks) snuck aboard the craft and started making his way through most of the crew, incapacitating them with brutal skill and confounding them with his oddball brand of loquaciousness.
Like the three previous episodes, this episode utilized a tremendous guest character. But not so much here that Early totally stole the spotlight, though he did take up a fair amount of room. As a confident, perceptive and overly-curious man (often waxing philosophic about the “substance of things”), Early was the perfect foil for the equally perplexing River, who surprised everyone by getting out ahead of Early’s schemes off-screen and devising an intricate plan to incapacitate him.
Here also, the crew learned about River’s expert closed-eyed precision with a gun back during the raid on Niska’s space station. A moment that actually sort of benefitted from the botched way FOX aired the episodes. Because during the original run, “War Stories” aired right before this one. So River’s crazy assassin persona was more pertinent than ever and viewers actually didn’t see the three episodes in between when she, and Kaylee, acted like the events in “War Stories” episode didn’t happen.
“Objects in Space” though did continue the sort of – shall I say – more mature path that those three unaired episodes seemed to be on. Containing moments that I’m not sure how they’d planed on getting away with on network TV back then (turns out they didn’t have to for the episode that weren’t aired, of course). But I’m speaking specifically of the Mal nudity in “Trash” and the scene in “Heart of Gold” when the villain forced the whore down on her knees to, presumedly, perform oral sex on him in from of a large crowd of angry, torch-wielding villagers.
Here, in “Objects in Space,” while nothing graphic ended up occurring, there was a downright terrifying scene between Early and Kaylee involving the threat of of rape. A conversation that scared Kaylee to her core as Early promised her that her body would be forfeit if she didn’t obey him. And that he could find “all unseemly manner of use for it.”
The key to River’s character, after having revealed that she’s a brainwashed assassin, was to have her come through in a pinch. To cleverly use that trait to the show’s advantage and not sit on it when times got tough. The show didn’t last long enough for suitable “ground rules” to be established for how River’s personal brand of Deus Ex Machina’ing would come about, but here, in the one big moment of the show when it was used, it was done superbly.
And driven, underneath, by River’s sadness over hearing everyone else’s concerns for her. So her wrath took the form of a ghost ship. Faking her powers such to make Early believe that she’d possessed Serenity. And while she didn’t mind-meld with the ship or anything telepathic like that, the way she spoke to everyone separately via Early’s ship certainly gave her a God-like presence.
By the end, after Early himself was turned onto an object in space (to return, very much alive, later on in the Firefly: Leaves on the Wind comic series), the crew settled back into their stations while Inara brushed away Mal’s hand as he went to reach for her busted lip. The danger both their lives were just in wasn’t enough to draw them back together and so the show actually left things with Inara still set on leaving and the crew not knowing about it. Which ties firmly into the film that would come three years later.
“Objects in Space” was an exceptional episode, made even more memorable perhaps by the fact that it stands as the show’s final, seasonal bow. So while it may not have closed out the show the way fans wanted (fortunately, there was a big movie), it had enough going for it that it landed as a solid bookend. The extreme focus on River, who’d never gotten to shine quite like this during previous episodes, was also paramount here. As was the inclusion of Early, who proved to be an incredibly interesting and unique adversary.
