Well now, the reason we never see it again may be why they don’t just land on a Core planet each week, build something cool then take it to the fringe worlds and sell it. The Alliance tightly regulates what can be taken from Core worlds & sold off-world. Our guys are committing crime. They thought they could do this one time, for this one particular crime, plus they had Simon’s expertise showing them which junk yard contracted with the hospital. Remember, our guys never thought they could get into a hospital and steal really valuable medicine. It may also have never occurred to them there are junk yards where you can find almost complete flying machines to fix up (Kaylee: “Ooh, sychronizers!”). Even then, doing it on a regular basis would surely attract unwanted attention. If Mal had his way, they’d probably never land on a Core world. It’s too dangerous, for the potential pay-off.
This whole episode was one big caper, but as a bunch of renegade criminals, you can’t pull off the same caper each week, and not expect to get caught.
Exam gloves are indeed less dorky than dishwashing gloves. But that must be one bizarre magical sonic baton if the gloves protect the Blue Hand Man Group when no one else has to contact the thing for it to kill them. It must be a matter of the BHMG being immune to whatever it emits/does, but holding the concentrated form would still be too much for them.
NE Texan, good observation about the strengths/weaknesses of Simon’s plan. It’s always good when we can pin plot holes up on the character who came up with the plot!
Going off on a bit of a tangent, I really like the exam chair thingie of the future that Simon uses to look at River’s brain. No creepy, claustrophobic tubes in the future? No huge-ass magnets and techs running for cover before they turn on the machine? Weee! And I thought the bit where Simon can reach out and turn the display was also very cool – a good looking effect, and one that I’m sure doctors would want to have if the technology was available.
Whenever I saw the gloves, I was reminded of Rorshach’s line in The Watchmen: “I’m not stuck in here with you; you’re stuck in here with me.” I always thought that the gloves were not so much for their protection as for everyone else’s protection, a la Rogue in the X-Men universe. There’s not really any evidence for it, but I got the feeling that the gloves kept the blue-hands focused on their job, instead of spacing out like River does whenever she picks up psychic residue from something. I also got the feeling that she was being groomed to join their ranks - perhaps in a different capacity - and that eventually she would have ended up wearing the blue gloves, too.
As for the ambulance thing, I’ll admit that it’s implausible – but it’s not impossible. Kaylee showed us her ability to get a ship running without its vestigial parts in “Out of Gas”, and we’ve already come up with enough vaguely political/economic reasons that the parts might be sitting around with no customer.
To ram my point home further, I have a 386 at home that’s missing its RAM, and another sitting next to it that has only a CPU, motherboard, and RAM. Once assembled into a coherent whole, I could probably use it to check my e-mail, if I really wanted to. Could I sell it? Probably not. Would it be worth shipping anywhere? Definitely not.
It’s not a big deal. But we also don’t have to defend every aspect of the show. It’s good enough to survive little flaws, and there are a few flaws in most episodes. In my opinion, the flying ambulance was a flaw. How did they get that huge fuselage back to Serenity? Wouldn’t that whole thing have been rather conspicuous, especially since the Alliance apparently has sensors and checkpoints everywhere? Do you know how huge of a job it would have been to get that thing looking the way it did with just two people working on it? And it seems to me that if a core world is that locked down, you’d think flying transportation would be more scrutinized than the doors of a hospital. It’s hard to imagine the Alliance has a blind spot that big where you can just paint up a vehicle and fly it into a secure facility.
Anyway, this was still one of the best episodes of the best science fiction show to ever air on television. I just thought the flying ambulance subplot was weak and unbelievable.
[quoe]If you look hard enough you can magnify any “we didn’t bother explaining every damned detail” situation into a “the writer fucked up” situation
[/quote]
[simpons]“Whenever something happens that we cannot explain, we say a wizard did it.” [/simpsons]
I got the feeling that they were version 1.0 of the project River was involved in - they are efficient and have the baton of death, but despite the craziness, River’s mimicry, weapons proficiency, and possible extrasensory capabilities mark her as having more in her future than blue gloves. Perhaps the BHMG are a seperate branch of the same mutilated braintree. But their curious lack of emotion indicates that they and River had different majors at the Alliance’s Academy du Freak. Both times we’ve seen them, they are played very flatly by the actors. The gloves emphasize their disconnectedness from their environment. Compare this with River’s stripped amygdala and in general out of control emotions, not to mention her tendacy to run about barefoot, touching, testing, and generally absorbing her environment at all times. This doesn’t seem to be cause and effect - River wants to touch things, rather than being distracted after touching them. The BHMG don’t seem to want anything other than River. (I wish we had enough episodes to find out what happened to the rebel group Simon funded in order to rescue River. )
It’s possible that forcing the candidates to experience a cyclone of emotion is merely a precursor to either teaching them how to shut down emotion or forcing them to choose to eliminate emotion prior to donning the gloves, but that doesn’t explain why the Blue Men can’t do things which River can. River would not have needed to ask who had spoken to the captives - she would have known. And it’s not desireable for your perfect soldiers or-what-have-you to lose abilities upon becoming blue handers. So, she’s either an upgrade or another breed. My gut tells me River was intended to become something infinitely more scary than the Blue Men. She is Rorshach in this example.
And in Objects in Space
I think Jubal is another product of or escapee from the Program. His reactions to the ship, to objects in general, and his reading of people seem intended to echo River’s, only twisted and dark. (For example River is afraid of guns not because she’s afraid of hurting herself (she can use one just fine), but because she’s afraid of hurting others. Jubal likes that part.)
This side of Simon comes out most obviously when River’s safety is at stake. Makes me think of Mal’s line in the pilot, just before he opens the frosty box, when he says “Let’s see what a man like you would kill for”. Simon’s behaviour in this episode really backs that up - he would do anything to protect his sister. He hasn’t killed anyone yet, but I wonder if he would have had to if the series had continued…
This is one of the few theories I’ve heard from other people that I actually came up with on my own. It took four or five times’ watching “Out of Gas” to hit on it, but it was something about her response to Simon that first made me think about it:
Which brings up an interesting point: The Blue Hand Group didn’t get homicidal until the Fed mentioned that River had spoken to him. What happens when River talks to you that makes the bad guys decide you’ve got to be liquidated?
I’m assuming it’s some sort of operational security measure, to ensure that there’s no official mention of River anywhere, for future Simons to latch onto. If not, we’d hear about Badger dying, and a bunch of other people. We’ll probably know more after the movie.
Simon is wanted dead or alive according to the people who captured him. They said something allong the lines of “We need the girl allive, they weren’t so clear about you” to Simon. I susspect that Simon is seen as a good bargaining chip to keep River under control, if they were both captured, they could be played off against each other to get full co-operation. If River doesn’t coopperate Simon would get hurt for instance.
Maybe the gloves of blue are just affraid that River might give information about their activities so they kill anyone River speaks to. I susspect if the gloves of blue opperation was made known to the general population of the core worlds it would not be allowed (note how River and Simon’s parents believe River was just at a great achademy, and how the parents have enough power to get Simon off minor charges when he was trying to rescue River.) If what happened to River ever get’s out heads will roll for sure.
Alternatively, they want to get their hands on Simon to figure out eactly how he got River free of the “academy” and who helped him do it. In the pilot, he makes mention of an organization that contacted him and helped free his sister, which I’m guessing is a sort of underground railroad dedicated to opposing the Blue Hand Group and helping their victims.
Me too. I was so proud, I’m not usually the figuring-out type. And when we get to Objects in Space, I’ll have more to say about it! We’ll probably never know, but you have to wonder what the hell Inara is doing on Serenity at all.
Obviously, there are times when they just didn’t think it through. In this case, though, I think it’s another example of something that doesn’t seem logical, but does in fact happen, here and now on Earth. Consider the enormous amount of equipment – vehicles, electronics, industrial equipment – that’s simply junked in the U.S., when it could theoretically be fixed up and shipped to a Third World country where people would really appreciate it. Hell, we throw away stuff that still works, just because it’s old.
The only thing that bugged me about this episode was the hoary old cliche about knocking somebody unconscious: Mal whacks Jayne with a big wrench, Jayne comes too later and is apparently okay. There’s a good chance of simply killing somebody that way (though Jayne might not be very susceptible to head injuries); it’s really hard to reliably render somebody unconscious through blunt force trauma without giving them a fractured skull. This is such an old cinematic and tv convention that I can hardly blame them for using it.
Don’t know if anyone else thought of this, but I think they should have played a version of the Hero of Canton in the airlock scene whenever Jayne asked Mal not to tell everyone what he did. In fact, they should play that tune every time he does something badass
(No, I’m not a big fan of character themes, why do you ask? )
It does bother me a bit when people get karate chopped on the back of the neck/head, or smacked with a flashlight or something. I studied martial arts and nobody ever taught me the back of the head knockout move. I did learn the hit someone in the head with the intent of seriously damaging/killing them move.
What also bothered me a bit was not only did Mal knock him out with a wrench, but he timed it so Jayne would wake up while they were still in atmo, so he & Mal could have their talk.
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