Firefly: "Out of Gas"

Cafe Society
1

Good: The scenes where they vented the fire into space made if very obvious that there is no sound in vacuum.

Bad: The voiceover intro has gone from colonizing a new “solar system” after the Earth gets used up to colonizing a new “galaxy”. (I believe this episode may have been filmed earlier, so they may actually have changed from “galaxy” to “solar system” rather than the other way around.) This betrays a common sci-fi confusion of scale. “Interplanetary”, “interstellar”, and “intergalactic” are not synonymous, despite what some blurb writers may think. As far as it goes, the most likely location for the newly colonized worlds would be in a number of nearby solar systems. It seems unlikely that all those habitable worlds (or even terraformable worlds) would be in one system; but it also seems a bit grandiose we’d go straight from a ruined Earth to a whole new galaxy. Mainly, though, they ought to settle on one scale and stick to it.

Good: We can see why Mal’s the captain. He gets very focused in a crisis.

Bad: When a spaceship’s engines break down, it doesn’t just stop. It’s certainly possible an internal malfunction could cripple life support, in which case the ship would arrive at its destination with the crew dead. (It would likely also keep on going right past its destination unless the navigational computers were automatically programed to retrofire or fire maneuvering thrusters in order to put it in orbit around its destination.) They seemed to be saying Serenity had just stopped dead in space.

Possible workaround: I don’t know exactly what that spinning engine does. It might be some sort of “space drive”, which operates by somehow distorting space-time in front of the ship–a “warp drive”. Maybe or maybe not possible, but certainly plausible enough even for “real” science fiction, let alone a TV show. If so, I think that if such a drive stopped working, the ship might actually just stop moving, since it was never actually moving relative to space itself, if you see what I mean. However, in a lot of the exterior shots, the ship seems to be using some kind of reaction drive, which implies ballistic trajectories again.

Good: The ship was crippled by an internal malfunction. In Star Trek (all incarnations), ships are invariably menaced by spatio-temporal anomalies and similar technobabble. In real life so far, just about every known loss or near-loss of a spacecraft (manned or unmanned) has been the result of an internal mechanical malfunction, with the odd collision (Mir), and one screwed-up re-entry trajectory as the result of human error–not converting from English and metric measurements (Mars Climate Orbiter).

Good: I like the assorted backstory(ies) and the characterization it gave us.

I suppose some people might find the multiple time-frames and flashbacks confusing. Personally, I like that kind of thing.
I really hope they don’t cancel this show.

2

I should add that I thought it was a really good episode. The “bads” are mainly just nitpicks.

3

This is my favorite series of the year.

It’s also the best science fiction show to be on TV in years. I caught the same nits MEBuckner did, but a science fiction show where the inaccuracies are the exception and not the rule is a breath of fresh air. Star Trek was not science fiction - it was technological fantasy. There was no plausibility, or any internal consistency in the show. Plot holes abounded, deux ex machina gimmicks wrapped up 3/4’s of the plots.

This show feels more realistic. The Serenity just feels like a spaceship, sweat and grease and all. You get the sense of the isolation, the quiet, and the darkness. Great stuff.

4

Given interstellar distances, they would have to have some sort of “warp drive” if they want to get around the galaxy in a reasonable amount of time. The big spinning thing must provide main power to the ship - life support, lights, heat, as well as interstellar drive. You’ll note that the lights went out and they had to use emergency (battery-powered?) lighting. Also, Mal wrapped himself in a blanket while he was all alone on the bridge. The comm system, however, seems to have an independent power source, or perhaps its auxillary power was still working. (In the Star Trek world, they’d have found a way to divert the plasma coils just by pushing a few buttons.)

So when the spinning thing went bust, the ship dropped out of hyperspace and they were just as good as being dead in space. Any residual inertia wouldn’t have made much difference. The shuttles themselves were a long shot - just slightly increasing the (very small) probability that one of them would be found. I think those big engines on the outside of the ship must only work in atmosphere, i.e., they’re jets. We saw in the first episode that it’s quite dangerous to be standing in front of them, lest you be sucked in.

5

Well, that’s one of my nitpicks. They haven’t really been clear if Serenity’s voyages are interplanetary or interstellar or what. That sort of scaling problem is quite common; other TV and movie science fiction/space operas routinely have horrible problems with scale (with the exception, I guess, of 2001: A Space Odyssey).

They noted that the life-support system was supposed to be powered by an auxiliary power system, but the explosion knocked out the auxiliary system as well.

6

I liked this one a lot. Since I’d only been able to see a few episodes (due to baseball interference, mostly), I was glad to see some history of how Mal collected his crew.
Other highlights:

--Jayne's parting comment to Mal before getting on the shuttle:  "Well."   (So very Jayne.  Sentimentality isn't wasted on him.)

–Mal showing some muscle with Wash: “I’m not askin’. I’m tellin’.”

–Gina’s dislike of her future husband when she first sees him.

–Mal’s choice of the Serenity over others in the Used Spaceships Lot (or whatever it was called).

I hope this stays on the air for a while.

7

If they use some kind of inertia-less drive then they should stop dead when the engine breaks down. And depending on what kind of mechanism prevents them from becoming red smears all over the back of the ship when they suddenly move quickly it could also cause them to come to a dead stop. It’s hard to say what’s wrong when you’re dealing with magic-tech.

That was only the second episode I’ve managed to catch (something came up every other time it was on) and I really liked it. The pilot hooked me but this episode made Firefly a no-miss show for me.

8

There was supposed to be a two-hour pilot, which hasn’t been shown yet; I wonder if that’s the source of the flashback scenes about the crew coming together.

Overall, I like this show a lot; somehow it’s nice to have a captain who doesn’t sound like he went to Oxford. (And since Farscape seems to be kaput, and I’m having trouble being interested in Enterprise…)

I would have like to have heard the rest of the preacher’s stories about monastic life. Interesting character.

9

I read an interview with Joss Whelan somewhere, and he talked about this episode. The flashbacks are NOT from the pilot - they are new footage shot for this show. Apparently, in the pilot episode (airing Dec 20, I think), the crew is already together, but the ‘stragglers’ on board aren’t there yet, and the pilot episode show how they pick them up (the doctor, the preacher, and the autistic girl, I guess).

I read that they’ve bought three more scripts for Firefly, but I have no idea how many episodes are in the can already. I’d guess that we’ll get at least a full half-season before they decide whether or not to pull the plug, so we’ve probably got at least 8-10 more episodes to look forward to. Hopefully, it will find an audience before then. Damned baseball.

10

There have already been a few nitpickable tech moments, but I can’t really get bothered about it. The characters are so wonderful, and interact so well with each other, that it doesn’t matter. The show is not a platform to display amazing technology, the technology is only there to round out the setting.

I liked the fact that they broke down because something broke! Wow, a broken part, in an old used sorta junky spaceship. No readjusting this, no diverting that, no magical fix, just a broken part, and you need a new one. Such are the dangers of space travel.

I loved the introduction of Kaylee (mechanic) I really didn’t see that coming (so to speak). “engines make her hot!” :smiley:

11

My favorite part was Kaylee describing what was wrong with the engine to Mal. “This part’s supposed to go here, but it doesn’t fit anymore.” “Well, make it fit.” “Can’t. It’s broken.” I thought that was a real poke-in-the-eye to Star Trek and all it’s technobabble.

As for wether they were still moving after the accident, I don’t know one way or t’other, but even if they still had foreward momentum, they were on an extended voyage that probably included several course corrections. When the engine died, even with inertia, they were likely to just sail off into the darkness until the fell into some distant sun a few centuries later. When you’re out in the middle of a vacuum with no reference points and no destination, it doesn’t really matter if you’re at a dead stop or moving at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Pretty much amounts to the same thing, in the end.

Incidentally, it wasn’t the auxilliary power that got destroyed, it was the auxilliary life support system. I’m guessing all the important systems have independent back-ups, so they still had communications and some lights.

As for the voice-over at the beginning, I can’t say it bugs me too much since I’ve missed the first two to three minutes of every episode since the premiere. Until they say something about in the actual show itself, I’m not going to call it out as an error.

12

Personally I really like this show. The big problem I have is that they seem to be juggling to many main characters. They are trying to make the whole crew main characters, and most of them end up with one or two lines at most. Most of them are sterotype carichatures, more than characters. Jayne got more developed in his episode, but the rest we don’t know anything about. If someone is going to be a mystery, like the girl, thats cool, But they seem to be going to slowly in character development for me to be really happy. I also hope they stuck mostly with the stop-off of the week format, and don’t get into a ‘crew vs the big bad alliance every week’ format, but I have a horrible suspicion that’s where it’s headed eventually.

13

I don’t mind the large cast so much. A lot of the characters haven’t had a chance to be developed yet, but there have only been a handful of episodes so far. I kinda like the anticipation, wondering when we’ll get an episode that features the preacher, or explores the background of the doc and his sis. Mostly, though, I’m looking forward to when the big, season long story-arcs start up. Just hope the show lasts that long.

14

The fact that the ship looked dead in space is actually accurate. I always hated those shots of ships flying around, with stars whipping past in the background. Do you know how FAST you’d have to be going to see stars that are lightyears away visibly moving across your field of view?

If you took a video of a spaceship going even a significant fraction of the speed of light, it would still look like it’s standing still against the starry background.

And, for people used to travelling in hyperspace between stars, dropping out of hyperspace WOULD be ‘standing still’. For all intents and purposes, for the rest of your life it would seem like you’re just sitting in one spot, even if you were going tens of thousands of miles per hour.

15

Good stuff. I don’t care about the nitpicky sciency bits, so I can ignore the whole galaxy vs. solar system problem. Mostly, I’m into the characters and the adventure. And there is plenty to love about both.

I liked when Mal injected himself with the adrenaline. I don’t have enough medical background to know whether this was a good move (I suspect it was not something Simon would have approved of), but it doesn’t matter - Mal’s not a doctor. All he knew was the shot got Zoe going again, and he knew he needed SOMETHING. So what the hell.

Overall, this episode was a bit heavier than I’d like for a Friday night (I tend to prefer the jokey fun ones), but it was pretty well done. * Serenity * is grungy and lonely and creaky, which is a nice change from the sterile cruiseships-in-space that you see elsewhere. And my favorite part: Kaylee’s “Sometimes, a thing gets broke can’t BE fixed!” A far cry from deflecting power from the secondary fibertronic relay, to reverse the polarty of the negatron field emitter. It’s broke. It don’t fit. We’ll need a new one. And there’s no technobabbly way around it.

And they talked about death. A lot. Which is what real people would do in a situation like that. But it’s not what you usually see from Sci-Fi, because they’ree characters are too busy running around and miraculously making it all better.

Please PLEASE keep this show on the air!

16

Really enjoyed the episode, for many of the reasons cited above. Question: Is it just me, or did Mal and the others use a lot more colloquialisms this time around - more “ain’t’s” and “fixin’ to” type of language (I don’t recall them actuall using “fixin’ to” but you get where I am going…). I don’t mind it, I just noticed it.

Also - I enjoyed more on Kaylee’s background - the play on the clice where the flaky engineer is too busy shtupping was funny to me…

17

Kn*ckers: Right, they talked about death, and were frightened by it, unlike in Trek shows where the captain bloodlessly orders the self-destruct sequence.

Due to my VCR running out of tape, I missed the last few minutes of the episode!

I saw Mal’s ambush in the cargo hold, then the first part of the Jayne flashback, where Mal and Zoe were tricking Jayne into betraying his employer.

Then, nothing. What happened next?

18

Good episode. I fear for it as the rumbles of trouble have already started. Wow, our cute mechanic was quite the ho in the past.

19

elf6c wrote:

I think calling her a `ho’ sort of misses the point. They seem to be taking pains to destigmatize female sexuality. She’s still that same girl. A man in her same situation would not be faulted for getting laid.

Fiver wrote:

It wasn’t exactly a trick. They offered him a better deal, because they realized that he was talented.

In spite of the issues that have arisen about Jayne’s loyalty, I personally don’t doubt it. He’s a big puppy. Sometimes he growls, and you know damn well he could tear somebody’s throat out, but when Mal gets mad at him, he tucks his tail between his legs. He’s loyal and subservient, and probably wants nothing more than to be rubbed on the belly and told he’s a good boy.

20

I’m not sure I quite remember what order everything happened, but I’ll try to get it right -
They (clearly) succeeded in getting Jayne, by offering him better pay and a room of his own.

Back on * Serenity * , the other ship’s captain shoots Mal in the gut and tries to take over the ship, but Mal pulls a concealed gun, and orders the other captain and his crew to leave the new catalyzer part and get off * Serenity * . Which they do. He then picks up the new part and carries it down to the engine, but just as he’s trying to fit in in place, he drops it. After a commercial break, he reaches it out from under the engine, hooks it up, pushes the Magic Lever of Life, and the engine starts turning again. Yay!

He then has to get back to the cockpit and push the Red Button of Calling Back the Shuttles, but he passes out just before he reaches the button. Oh no!

The next thing we see is Mal waking up in the infirmary, all bandaged up, and surrounded by his Faithful Crew. Zoe’s on a bed at the other side of the room, Wash is sitting up with an IV in his arm (I never figured out what happened to Wash…). There’s some touching dialogue, and Mal asks if he called them back. Zoe says no, he didn’t, but she made them turn around anyway. Jayne argues that the other shuttle would have gotten back sooner, but Inara has screwed it up (it smells like incense, which he takes to be a mechanical problem). Kaylee congratulates Mal on fixing the ship, and Simon orders everybody away so Mal can rest. He asks if they’ll be there when he wakes up, which, of course, they will.

Then we’re back in Flashback Mode, and we see Mal on the Used Spaceship Lot, being shown a great big, snazzy looking ship by a smooth-talking Used Spaceship Dealer. Mal’s attention is drawn away from him, though, to an awkward, grungy old ship on the other side of the lot. It’s * Serenity * .

The End.

As I said, I might have gotten some things out of order there, but that’s the jist of it.