Written in a weekend, because some loser people with authority demanded you give them what they wanted. This describes most of my essays, and also, the other first episode of Firefly — ‘The Train Job’. And while compared to my essays, it’s pretty good, compared to the rest of the series, it isn’t. Whedon and Minear had 42 minutes in which to quickly sell the entire Firefly universe to the audience, as well as quick introductions to nine different characters. They just about manage to check every box that they had to — but the result is unfortunately an episode lacking greatly in subtlety.

The crew of Serenity get a job involving a train — a ‘train job’, if you will — from a very nasty, evil, creepy man. They go to steal a bunch of Alliance supplies from a train, but then find out that the supplies were badly needed medicine. Aw. So they give it back. While the story is fleshed out by some excellent dialogue and cute set pieces — especially the thug in the engine business — it doesn’t really manage to escape from being a rather dull and morally straightforward story.

The brooding, sarcastic Mal of Serenity[ftn] has given way to funny happy comedy Mal, at the request of the studio. If Greedo was in this episode, he’d have fired first.[ftn] Later episodes would find a better balance between the two, but ‘The Train Job’ just feels a little out of place when viewed straight after its predecessor. The performances are all up to scratch, but some bits, such as the opening bar fight, feel a little forced. I find it hard to see the Mal we were introduced to in the previous story doing things this stupid. Well, not on purpose, anyhow.

With a first episode like this, some plot lines really suffer — not the least of which being that of Simon and River. In Serenity, they’re fascinating, desperate and reasonably mysterious. Out of their introductory context, Simon comes off as a little whiny, and River, debuting in hotpants and a jumper, as just a random psycho. If it weren’t for these two I wouldn’t be so vehemently opposed to the idea of having this as a first episode. But how anyone could look at this, and then look at Serenity, and say “Yes, this train job business is a much more satisfying beginning” is just beyond me. Pondering on this gives you a good example of how Fox didn’t really want what they’d paid Joss Whedon and Tim Minear to give them.

This is an average episode of television, and a lame episode of Firefly. It means well, and achieves a lot — but all its achievements hide in the background, and the viewer is unlikely to appreciate the subtle world-building underneath the simple plot and slightly cartoony characters.[ftn]

Footnotes

1. For future reference, I’m talking about the pilot episode here, and not the upcoming movie.
2. Or maybe just at the same time, but at a CGI Han. Who knows.
3. Perhaps I’m being a bit too harsh, but I won’t have the chance to properly bag any other Firefly episode.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Sunday, December 12th, 2004. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.