The War to Unite the Planets was six years done, and the victorious Alliance was spreading its control further and further throughout the galaxy. Those who had fought for independence and so bloodily lost had no choice but to live by Alliance law. Some never would, and those few found themselves drifting--flying to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, to the worlds less civilized, some barely settled, where the Alliance might not control their lives. These were hard worlds, and work was where you found it. Those who got buy lived by a simple creed: Any job, anywhere. -- Intro, "Serenity"

Recently, it seems, I have discovered a new obsession, in the form of the Joss Whedon's latest series on Fox, Firefly. Firefly astonishes me as few pieces of television have done since Buffy itself premiered six years ago. To be honest I was iffy about Firefly until I happened upon the pilot for the show, a two-hour movie completed but not aired by Fox (it's scheduled to be shown in late December). Even based on a poorly digitized bootleg of a bootleg, the pilot was amazing, dense, layered, and with characters drawn so well and so quickly I felt like I'd known them for ages. Had nothing come after it, I'd probably consider "Serenity" the best movie I've seen all year. That there's a whole series going on, for now at least, is icing on an already-sufficient cake.

How to celebrate something like Firefly is always a hard question for me. Writing reviews or synopses of each episode seems too derivative. And Fanfiction always strikes me as just bizarre. What I can do, however, is obsessively catalog minutiae. Trivia is a talent of mine. So, as I'm collecting each episode, I humbly offer the following as references for others with an interest in the show. Corrections and suggestions are gratefully welcomed; e-mail me at serenity@gloomyjoe.com.

Contents

• Firefly Injury Scorecard
• Episode-by-Episode Body Counts
• Named Moons and Planets
• Technology Notes
• Notable Quotations
• Links
• Back to Joe's Gloomy Spot

Where would we be without conflict? Darned bored, that's where. Along with regular injuries to the main crew, nothing spices up a narrative like a lot of death. Hopefully mostly deaths of bad guys. Or, in morally ambiguous settings like Firefly's, let's call them worse guys. My count of deaths in the show thus far:

• Serenity: 5. By my count 4 of Patience's crew were killed in the gunfight, and the Fed got killed. Oh, and 1 horse.
• Train Job: 3. Guy Crow (Niska's henchman) killed, one other of Niska's henchmen in the gunfight, Crow himself (sucked into engine, no less, good one!).
• Bushwacked: 52! This crazy deathtoll more than compensates for the utter lack of serious regular cast injuries. You only see 9 or so bodies in this episode, but the narrative suggests a wildly higher body count than that. 16 families on the transport, figure that's about 40 people. Assume the transport's core crew was like Serenity's, so 4-5. About 4-5 MedTechs done in by the guy gone Reaver on the Alliance Cruiser, one guard killed outside Serenity, one more slashed with Mal and the cruiser's captain, and the guy gone Reaver himself.
• Our Mrs. Reynolds: 6. 4 outlaws on Triumph, two guys decompressed at the carrion shop.
• Jaynestown: 2. Mudder who took the bullet for Jayne, Stitch.
• Out of Gas: 0. And, despite that, it's one of my favorite episodes.
• Shindig: 0. But Atherton Wing got a good poking.
• Safe: 1. One of the Grange boys killed in the gunfight.
• Ariel: 8, OR 10. 8 Feds done in (1 by Jayne, 7 by Bluehands), 10 if you count Simon and River's temporary deaths.

This bit is just a collection of technical trivia. I know Joss has said it's not sci-fi, and you shouldn't look too hard at the technical gimcrackery that serves as a backdrop to the story he's telling. But consistency in a world is a key thing that keeps me with a story over time (Star Trek at this point is so self-inconsistent I've given up entirely). Plus some of the techy stuff is kind of fun. In no particular order:

• Air in Space. For the first time I'm aware of in science fiction television, there is none.
• Cortex. The 26th Century Internet. Used for 2-way realtime communications, reference, news, wanted posters, probably porn as well. "Waves" are messages sent across the Cortex. Waves can short, interfering with the recipient's communications. "Dedicated source boxes" apparently enable greater control of or more unfettered access to the Cortex; they have to be ordered, and apparently individuals each have their own (young Simon wanted one at the start of Safe).
• Firefly Class Vessels. Approximately 40,000 of them flying. (Bushwacked) There are two ways onto the Bridge (Our Mrs. Reynolds). Don't look like much, but known for their reliability (OMR)
• Blood. "A human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems." --River, Safe. Wonder if vampires count as 'adequate vacuuming systems.'
• Personal Identification Most people carry ident cards which are scanned in a handheld device. Not clear how much information they hold. (Safe) However, in secure settings like police stations and hospitals on rich worlds, people are scanned directly as they pass through security doors. Simply passing through the door of a security facility can be noted on one's permanent record (Safe); however, scanners require vital signs to function (Ariel).
• Gravity. Hard to say exactly how antigravity works thus far. Ships' engines are probably at least partially gravity-based (see "engine components," in this section). Serenity clearly has artificial gravity, and it can be turned on and off at will (people float into the airlock, and gravity switches on at the same time as air is pumped in). However, gravity is not part of basic life support, and stays on even when the engine fails and back-up life support is unavailable (they clearly had some power, still, though; lights were on as well). Chandeliers can hover, too.
• Terraforming. Terraforming is highly labor intensive and highly dangerous, and at least some of the companies that carry it out aren't necessarily particular about whether that labor is willing. "Terraforming crews got a prodigious death rate." (Shindig) While you can get a world close to earth-that-was in terms of climate, atmosphere, and gravity, they all have "quirks," including odd diseases and peculiar smells, that affect life on them.
• Ceramics. Mud is valuable! It can be 5 times stronger than steel, and half the weight. Serenity has several ceramic components.
• Landlock. Gadget that prevents ships from taking off. Probably a beam or field, perhaps that nullifies antigravity. A world's central port control will impose a landlock at the behest of authorities like magistrates.
• Post-Holer. Farm implement used for digging holes for posts. (N.B.: River uses it as a metaphor for Simon, whose purpose is as simple and as clear.) Safe.
• Noah's Ark. According to River, a problem, unless you consider it an early quantum state phenomenon. "Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammal on the same boat."
• Telofonix. A telecommunications company on Ariel. Slogan: "A new way of seeing."
• 3D Imager. FINALLY some technology to get excited about. Creates an instantaneous, live three dimensional scan of an entire human body, revealing any internal system for diagnostic purposes. Found only at major hospitals on Core worlds. The scan is projected above the patient, and defaults to being on a 1:1 scale. Can be manipulated from a console, or the scans can be moved and examined using a cool gesture based interface that treats the holographic images as real objects. Simon referred to it as a 3D Neural Imager, but presumably that was because he intended to use the general purpose scanner specifically to get a view of River's brain.Ariel
• Medicine-Miscellaneous. Companions have their own medical facilities, and their own medicines, including immunization packs (Serenity). Many drugs remain rare and expensive. Wonder if there are HMOs in the 26th Century. There is a chemical that induces a temporary death-like state. There are three common ways to revive someone whose heart has stopped: Pulmonary stimulators, cardiac infusers, and cortical electrodes. (Ariel)
• Weapons. Most of the weapons in Firefly's universe are projectile based, which makes them reliable, although they do require air to fire. (Our Mrs. Reynolds, e.g.) We've seen a couple of other weapon types, too.
  • Alliance cruisers are equipped with powerful beam weapons capable of slicing a ship to pieces (Bushwacked). Ship-to-ship weapons seem relatively rare, though; commercial ships (even ones on the sketchy side of the law) don't have them (Train Job), and neither do Reaver ships (that we've seen).
  • Feds on Core worlds carry sonic rifles, which can knock people down without making holes in them. As a result, they're not much use on locked doors. (Ariel)
• Engine Components.
  • Grav boot.
  • Grav thrust.
  • Compression coil (at least one, on the port side).
  • Right couple (optional; tends to gum up works, Kaylee doesn't like 'em.)
  • G-Line.
  • Port Pinlock.
  • Catalyzer (subcomponent of compression coil. Seems trivial, but the engine don't run without one.)
  • You can make bad wine with Serenity's engine, too. (Shindig)
  From a continuity perspective, worth observing that Kaylee bugged Mal about the compression coil in "Serenity" and "The Train Job," and sure enough the catalyzer on it eventually blew in Out of Gas.

Rather than simply cataloging an endless list of favorite quotes from Firefly thus far, this section will attempt to be somewhat brief, and hold to a specific topic. For a first attempt, I'm thinking philosophy. All of Joss's work (and just try convincing someone who doesn't watch Buffy of this) works on many levels. And through it all I tend to sense a coherent, very stoic sort of worldview. One that resonates well with my own gloomy outlook on life.

Philosophy.

"I'd sure love to find a brand new compression coil."
"And I'd like to be king of all Andinia and wear a shiny hat." Kaylee and Mal, "Serenity"

"Wheel never stops turning Badger."
"That only matters to the people on the rim." Mal and Badger, "Serenity"

"Once you've been in Serenity you never leave. You just learn to live there." Zoe to Simon, "Serenity"

"Still don't think it's a good spot sir. She still has the advantage over us."
"Everyone always does. That's what makes us special." Zoe and Mal, Serenity

Mal and Simon, last lines of "Serenity." This is one of the purest evocations of the Firefly worldview. It was this snip of dialog that completely won me over to the show and the world.
Simon: I'm trying to put this as delicately as possible. How do I know you won't kill me in my sleep?
Mal: "You don't know me son, so I'm going to say this once. If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me. And you'll be armed."
"Are you always this sentimental?"
"I had a good day."
"You had the Alliance on you. Criminals and savages. Half the people on the ship have been shot or wounded, including yourself. And you're harboring known fugitives."
"Well, I'm still flying."
"That's not much."
"It's enough."
Simon leaves, Mal sits on the bridge of the ship alone, fade to black.

"You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you. " Book, "Jaynestown"

"Don't you ever stand for that sort of thing. Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back." Mal to Saffron, "Our Mrs. Reynolds"

"How we treat our dead is part of what makes us different from those that did the slaughtering." Book, "Bushwacked"

Kaylee: "Is that him?"
Mal: "That's the buffet table."
Kaylee: "How can we be sure unless we question it?"
Okay, this has nothing to do with philosophy at all, but I think it's hilarious, and, hey, it's my obsessive website. (Shindig)

"I'm not running off. I don't know what you got in your head but I didn't do this to prove some kind of a point to you. I actually thought I was defending your honor and I never back down from a fight."
"Yes you do, you do all the time."
"Well, yeah. But...I'm not backing down from this one." Mal and Inara, "Shindig"

"You sanguine about the kind of reception we're apt to receive on an Alliance ship, Captain?"
"Absolutely. What's sanguine mean?"
"Sanguine. Hopeful. Plus, point of interest, it also means bloody." Zoe and Mal, "Safe"

"But I understand. You gave up everything you had to find me. And you found me broken. It's hard for you. Everything you had." River, to Simon, "Safe"

"Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?"
"Big Damn Heros, Sir."
"Ain't we just!"Mal and Zoe, "Safe"

"You know, it's all very sweet, stealing from the rich, selling to the poor..." Wash, "Ariel"

"What are you taking this so personal for? It ain't like I ratted you out to the Feds."
"But you did. You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me. But since that's a concept you can't seem to wrap your head around, then you got no place here. You did it to ME, Jayne. And that's a fact. Jayne and Mal, "Ariel"

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Links A few links to other sites worth seeing. Fox's Official Firefly Site The main Firefly Fansite, FireflyFans.net And a site devoted, probably not prematurely, to saving the show, Firefly: Immediate Assistance

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