Firefly: A Character Study

It's hard to determine what exactly made Firefly, a show that lasted less than 18 episodes, such an incredible entry into the science fiction pantheon. The dialogue certainly comes to mind, as Whedon's incredible wit is properly infused in each character. Or it could be the aesthetics of the show; the costume design, music, and sets were beautifully integrated, mixing Asian vibrancy with rustic Western tones. But for me, it was the characters. They were what I was looking forward to most when I first saw an unfinished print of the follow-up film Serenity; I remember the first shot of the ship and the long single shot reintroducing the crew. It gave me goosebumps.

There were nine main characters on Firefly, and each of them had a place on the ship and was more than adequately developed. I remember talking with a group about our favorite Buffy characters, and one person stated that no one's favorite character in a show is ever the lead. I disagree, and must only point to Captain Malcolm Reynolds as evidence. Played by Nathan Fillion, Reynolds was a broken man. When the series began, he was an idealistic soldier and a devout Christian. Our first glimpse of him was in a battle scene in which he wasn't going to take loss as an answer. The Battle of Serenity Valley was supposed to be a quick victory for the opposing side, but the fact that Reynolds and his fellow soldiers were holding their own showed how Reynolds and the Independent Army were able to do the impossible, which made them mighty. But only for those brief moments we saw, because it wasn't long the Independents' inevitable loss was to occur.

Six years later, he is the captain of a ship that constantly needs maintenance, and he and his crew are forced to hire themselves out as smugglers to make a living. He lost his faith and his ideals. The only thing he seems to truly care about is his ship, Serenity. Over the course of the series, we see him as a man with conflicted morals; he is willing to lie, cheat, and steal from those he believes are deserving of such treatment, but will put himself and his crew at risk if it means doing what is right for a group of people who truly need the help. For example, he stole medicine from a government hospital because the facility would be restocked before the drugs would ever be missed, but risked incurring the wrath of a crime lord with a penchant for torture when he returned a shipment of drugs that he had stolen for said crime lord to the needy people he stole them from.

But in order to truly understand Mal Reynolds, one must understand what he was fighting for. He and Zoe, who served as his first mate on the ship, both fought in the war on the side of the Independents. The other side was the Union of Allied Planets, or the Alliance for short. The Alliance was an interplanetary government that was trying to extend its reach to every planet in the solar system (before I go on, I must explain that the show takes place 500 years from now after Earth is dead and gone; after using up all of its resources, the human race found a new solar system and subjected the planets and moons to a process called terraforming, making them suitable for human life). The Alliance had been founded on the more developed planets in the center of the system, and they wanted to govern the relatively uncivilized (read: representative of the American Old West) planets on the edge of the solar system. With their rule came their laws, which were not always as practical on developing planets as they were on the civilized ones. Mal and Zoe felt so strongly that, despite the best intentions of the Alliance, the outer planets were better off governing themselves, that they volunteered to fight the bloody and destructive civil war.

The loss made Mal feel like he had lost nearly everything he held precious, and whatever he had left was always in danger of being taken next by the Alliance. This is why he felt so strongly for his crew and his ship; they were the last things that were his, and he would be damned before the Alliance took them away from him.

Up next: the rest of the crew...