Serenity/Fridge

• I was spoiled for the part of Serenity when Wash dies. Then I listened to the commentary, and Joss pointing out that he wanted to make it absolutely clear to the audience that the heroes might die. Not to mention it's consistent with the highly cynical universe. Not only was it subverting Contractual Immortality, but it was also subverting a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • I didn't actually get all of the signifigance of the final scene between Mal and River at the end of the movie until a few years after seeing it. Specifically, as Mal is telling River about love, she is curling up in the copilot's chair, wrapping her arms around her knees, in a Fetal Position Rebirth - exactly like she had been shown in the very first scene she appeared in in the pilot, except in this case, she's awake, clothed, sitting up, and calmly smiling, while in the pilot she'd been u exactly unconscious, naked, lying down, and awoke screaming. The contrast and the symbolism - that River's struggles in the series and movie have led her to take a hand in her own destiny instead of being a helpless, gibbering wreck, was beautiful and so very subtle.
  • Whoa. That's brilliant. You just blew my mind.
  • And, for another commentary-inflicted moment: why does River "want to hear" Mal say his piece? Because hearing is what normal people do, instead of reading minds; plus, she's overjoyed to be able to understand without her crazy getting in the way.
    • For a long time, I didn't quite get why River learning of what happend on Miranda sent her crazy. After reading a post Serenity drwho/firefly crossover where River is pretty much sane however, I finally understood: River didn't just learn of what happend, she felt what happen to every person and it shows how strong River really is that it didn't kill her.
    • River would have only been seven when Miranda happened, and while she might have had some kind of power even before she went to the Academy, I doubt she'd have felt it strong enough to kill her, if she felt it at all.
      • I'm pretty sure the above troper is talking about when she feels the echoes of the disaster after they land, not when it actually happened.
        • It may actually be both. Remember that in the series, Simon's exam establishes that River has no emotional filters. Essentially, her problem is the exact opposite of a sociopath's: she has *too much* empathy. If she were to unwittingly pluck the Miranda secret from a high ranking official's mind -- not just hear about it on the news, but be exposed to it, unwillingly, in its totality -- it's not hard to imagine that it could overwhelm her mentally and emotionally, especially when you consider the torturous situation she lived in at the time.
  • On my third viewing of Serenity, I realized that not only does the Alliance avert the typical SciFi Card Carrying Villainy, but they're actually a much greater threat because of it. Anyone with half a brain can see that people like Emperor Palpatine or Grand Moff Tarkin are incredible assholes and should be resisted. And even if they do manage to cow the populace into staying in line, the populace will be exactly that, cowed into staying in line and not deviating from their predefined role when really, in order for a society to prosper, people need to be free to change and evolve. But with a set up like The Alliance, people won't really realize what's going on until after they are affected by it; who cares if some little girl gets her brain cut up as long as its for "The Greater Good" (provided, of course, that it's not their sister getting her brain cut up -- but by the time that happens, it'll be too late).
    • This! For the whole series, the incentive is to say "Yes, the Alliance was mean to River, and their officers are a little humorless, but their goal is for everyone to live in a shiny democratic utopia free from want, and the Mal's goal is effectively for everyone to live on mudballs ruled by petty dictators and thugs. Then the Big Damn Movie happens, and Miranda strikes everyone as completely in character for the Alliance, and puts things in perspective.
    • In the end, it's not so much about Good vs Evil as it Law vs Chaos.
  • An in-production version, as well: Joss and Gina Torres are talking about Zoe's talk with Mal during the ending scenes, and one of them mentions how Zoe's summation of Serenity's status applies to her as well. Nathan overhears this and wonders audibly how he managed to miss that one...
  • A solo River taking down an entire army of Reavers (who don't even have the disadvantage of fear, or of hesitance at attacking a little girl) seemed a little unrealistic (if awesome) even for her. Then the Alliance arrives direct through the wall and makes the backdrop even more campy. It took me a few viewings to realize the connection: River won partially because the Reavers who hadn't gotten in the room yet were suddenly attacked from behind by the approaching Alliance troops, splitting their attention.
    • Bear in mind that River was probably designed for such a purpose.
      • The Reavers are a result of an Alliance experiment to create a perfect world gone horribly wrong; River is the result of an Alliance experiment to create a perfect soldier to fight the Reavers gone horribly wrong. The Alliance just will not learn their lesson, will they?
      • Aren't both of these examples of their projects Gone Horribly Right? They wanted a world perfectly at peace? They got one. They wanted a psychic commando? They got one of those, too. Even the Reavers can be seen as 'without sin'. There are no criminals among them, no coercion, even. Every last one of them is a perfect manifestation of their inherent nature, as innocent as a scorpion. They are not evil, which was exactly what the Alliance was hoping for. The twist is that they are _also_ simply too dangerous to be allowed to exist.
  • All of this ultimately validates Mal's warning: "...sure as I know anything, I know this: they will try again." The experiments on River as well as Miranda are proof that they will continue to try to make people better. They will not stop.
    • Yes, yes, YES! And to that, let me add this other beautiful piece: the climax rolls around and the Operative confronts Mal. This exchange follows:

The Operative: "A lot of innocent people are being killed in the air right now."
Mal: "You have no idea how true that is."

• • • In other words, the Reavers themselves are innocents, victims of the Alliance's experiments who can't help what they became. If that line is any indication, Mal is not placing any blame on them for what they're doing even though Wash was killed barely half-an-hour ago, if that. The only people to blame for the events of the movie - events which include a chain that seems to be leading to their inevitable destruction are the Alliance themselves.
• First viewing: Wait - Simon knew all along that River was designed to be a mind-reading assassin? But he played dumb during the series, even when the crew's life might depend on it. What an outrageous retcon! Also, it's completely out of character for Mal to abandon Simon and River. Second viewing: Oh, so that's what was eating Mal about the Tams....
  • In fact, this is an important bone of contention later on after River rips apart the bar. Mal gets pissed at Simon because he wasn't telling them everything he knew about River's conditioning, and it really comes out when he confronts Simon after the brawl.
  • The series itself takes on a very interesting new light if you go through it with the mindset that Simon was fully aware that River was a psychic but that he was trying to hide it from the others. Everytime he talks about River and her "awareness" he seems confused and hesitant and uncertain - not because he doesn't know what happened to her, but that he is aware of what happened and that he's trying to keep a lid on it and not sure how to do so.
• At the end, River is shown both doing some electrical repairs on the ship and taking over Wash's role as pilot, skills she didn't show prior in the movie. Except that A) she's a genius who takes to difficult subjects like anyone else does to breathing, B) she's living on a ship with a genius mechanic and a genius pilot, and C) she's psychic! It would be ridiculous if she didn't pick up some skills from Wash and Kaylee!
  • I was about to come here and say this too, but you beat me to it! During the whole series, she's been surrounded by Kaylee and Wash, and probably hearing their thoughts constantly while she does maintenance and while he did the piloting, she was learning everything on the way. She was probably also likely picking up little hints and pointers that she didn't already know about gunfighting from Jayne (what she didn't already know from the academy that is) and probably even some leadership skills from Mal, and also some medical knowledge from her brother. The girl is a freaking Jill-of-All-Trades!
    • Determinator. She picked up being a Determinator from Mal. See River go from a gibbering wreck at the end of the movie when the reavers attack, to, well... One Waif Army. Pudding, proof, enjoy.
    • And from Simon. The entire crew's made up of determinators but the only one as big at is as Mal, is Simon.
• Another one here. Remember after River was triggered by his programming and created a brawl before stopping, and then Mal and Zoe are trying to decide what to do with her after that, knowing she's dangerous? Well, right after that, River has a conversation with Simon (sort of) where she says "They're afraid of me. Well, I'll show them. Oh, God." Newsflash - she is not referring to the crew of Serenity alone - she's also referring to the Alliance, who are becoming desperate to capture of eliminate her before she reveals their secrets. Talk about powerful dialogue with multiple meanings. I mean, damn, Joss - just, damn!
• I've come to the theory that the entire war between the Alliance and the Browncoats wasn't about simply becoming a 'monopoly' in the 'Verse. (After all, with better medicines alone, the Alliance could have launched a 'hearts and minds' offensive with their better technology). What, then? Miranda had become a launching point for an entire fleet of Reavers. From at least one instance, there's reason to suspect that it might "catch" (ie, the Stockholm Syndrome making that one guy 'join'). If they left the Independent worlds be, they'd stay free but also disorganized- and either die piecemeal or actually provide 'reinforcements' for their push on to the Core Worlds. Someone in command simply found a pretext to take action. (Probably not out of loving concern for the outer worlds, but out of a sense of self-preservation).
• You would think that after all a self-confessed Complete Monster like The Operative has done to Mal and his crew, he would have earned himself the mother of all gruesome deaths, like being fed feet-first to the Reavers or something. At first, I had merely thought of Mal sparing The Operative's life as just another of Whedon's many subverted tropes, namely in this how case the good guy always has to kill the bad guy. Okay, Mal showed him the truth about the Alliance, but was that really worse than killing him, really? And then it hit me: a complete loss of faith really was the worst thing Mal could think to inflict on someone. Because he would know, he suffered the exact same thing at Serenity Valley! Bravo, Mister Whedon. Bravo.
  • There's a deleted scene that makes this more explicit, where the Operative asks Mal how he was able to keep going after Serenity.
• When the Operative asks Mal what his sin is, Mal replies "Hell, I'm a fan of all seven. But right now, I'm gonna have to go with wrath." This seems like a snarky Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner -Which is probably what Mal intended it to be- but if you think about it, wrath really is Mal's sin. Most of his actions in the movie were motivated by anger, first at Book's death and then at the knowledge that the Alliance had wiped out an entire planet and created the Reavers attempting to make people "better". Even in the series, while Mal has mostly resigned himself to the Browncoat's defeat, he still hates the Alliance (and depending on your interpretation of his faith, God) for the war. Had Mal not cut him off, "wrath" is what the Operative would have told him.

• Fridge Horror
  • When the tape is broadcast at the end, it goes to every single receiver in the galaxy. Think how many young kids must've been innocently watching tv and suddenly they see a woman being horribly raped to death instead.
  • Think of all the terrorists, criminals and militants that just saw the broadcast and figured out an awesome new way to spike a planet's drinking water.
    • Fortunately, without absurd amounts of funding and a nigh impossible secrecy status (pretty much the sort of thing that only a planetary government or far greater could institute), it's impossible to use the Pax in such a way that it could get past the point of no return by the time it was discovered and stopped.
• Some subtle references: not for nothing is the name Miranda used. Some of the bulkheads on the Alliance ship are more explicit: C-57D. And what are the reavers, but monsters from the id? O brave new world, that hath such people in it... - cjlr
• The operator goes on about the fact that Mal is “not the plucky hero, the Alliance is not an evil empire, etc.” He promptly gets royally pwned because he forgot that Inara is not the damsel in distress. -Leahweird
  • "And that's not incense." That move with the flash-bang probably greatly incensed the Operative.
• Here's some possible Fridge Horror: Along with Haven, the Operative also ordered everywhere that had sheltered Serenity or had a connection to the ship destroyed. Depending on how extensive that order was (and, let's face it, The Operative was going all out with his mission so it was probably far-reaching), it may have included killing off all or most of the crew's allies from back in the series. Friendly old Warwick Harrow? That loveable Space Jew from "The Message"? The whorehouse with the baby from "Heart of Gold", bearing in mind that The Operative freely admits he sometimes murders children? No reason to think they may not all be somewhere on the video feed...
  • The Operative says he's leaving them "no ground to go to" and Zoe tells Wash to alert anyone who's sheltered them after a heist. It's much more likely the Operative simply wiped out the people who're known to have given Serenity shelter until the heat's off; none of the three you mentioned did that. Plus, bit of a difference between him attacking known hives of scum and villainy and attacking ranking, high class members of the aristocracy and a public institution like the post office.
    • Of course, he has full Alliance backing, and, therefore, a severe case of "diplomatic" immunity. He could walk down a city street and shoot everybody in his path, if he thought it would help bring in the Tams, and never do a minute of jail time.
    • Public opinion still matters. An unnamed person slaughtering, again, high class, ranking members of the aristocracy on a core world, especially with Alliance equipment is going to be extremely counterproductive to keeping things on the downlow.
    • He'd probably be assassinated himself if he did anything to draw public attention to his activities. He did point out to the scientist at the start of the film that his concern was with keeping secrets not the secrets themselves. That means part of why he was chosen for the job would likely be because he can assassinate discretely. Not that the end of the film was particularly discrete in terms of the tactics being used in the local area, but it would have been acceptable given the location - the back of beyond with no local populations to witness what was happening (except the Reavers, who weren't officially acknowledged by the government in the first place).
• Fridge Horror: As Serenity makes its way through Reaver territory, Mal tells Wash to turn off the intercom to spare the crew from hearing the agonized screams of the Reaver victims. One crewmember, however, cannot only still hear the screaming, but can feel the reasons they're screaming.
  • Also, River/Reaver.
• Spoilers for the movie. A few items of fridge with the Pax and the reavers.
  • First, why would a drug designed to make people peaceful instead turn them into the reavers? For the same reason addicts have to be careful when they quit. Alcohol, for example, is a depressant that stops the brain from functioning. The brain of an alcoholic has to spend its time in overdrive just to stay functional. Remove the alcohol and it takes some time before the brain steps down to normal; the result is hallucinations, delirium, fevers, seizures, convulsions, sometimes death^[1]. A percentage of the population of Miranda developed a tolerance to the Pax^[2], then went into insane overdrive only after the Pax was removed.
  • Every brain reacts differently. For example I get wide awake from sleeping pills and tranquilizers induce an aggressive panic.
  • Pursuant from the first; what if the reavers are treatable? What if you flooded a ship with the Pax. Would they revert to normality so long as they're receiving treatment?
  • Also pursuant to the first; how do the reavers make new reavers? Mal spouted some psychological bullshit, but what if they're carrying stores of Pax?
    • It's much more likely that they simply had a bad reaction. Not all drugs affect people the same way. For example, Ritalin is, in fact, a stimulant, and it only helps kids with ADHD because their brain chemistry is such that the same chemical that would make any other kid hyper, makes them calm.
    • And even that isn't true all the time. This troper has ADHD and was given Ritalin at first since it was the most popular/well known drug at the time. The results were... less than positive. Drugs work differently in each individual brain because exact science isn't an exact science. Certain basic types are most likely to be affected by the chemistry of a drug in the intended fashion and those outside that type have totally different reactions than intended, but even within the basic group there can be minor differences between individuals that throw off the intended effect. This is why not all drugs work for everyone, hence different doses and different brands with unique formulations... and much much trial and error finding out which is the correct permutation for the specific individual being given the medication, a process which can take a year or more in the case of psycho-effective drugs (which the Pax likely was considering how it seemed to function). The fact that the Alliance didn't take this most basic of pharmaceutical principles into account when deploying the Pax (apparently without sufficient testing, otherwise the .01% anomaly should have been found) means someone decided to keep the Idiot Ball as a pet when they put the project in motion.
    • Who says they make new Reavers? It's been, like, 10 years since Miranda. The Reavers we see could just be the Reavers still alive from when the Reavers were initially created. There's no reason to believe they have any method of creating new Reavers, because there hasn't been enough time passed to assume that when these Reavers die out, the Reavers won't simply be gone.
    • Not all of their victims become new Reavers. Only some of them do, and the rest they just eat or rape or make trophies out of.
  • Or, scary version, they did know about the .01% chance of inducing Chronic Ax Crazy Disorder... and decided to use the Pax anyway, knowing full well what could happen. After all, it's a classic tactic to win followers by creating an outside danger and then "protecting" people from it. The Alliance wants those in the Outer Rim to come and live under them in the Core... notice how the Reavers tend to stick to the Rim?
• Kinda of an icky bit of Fridge Logic came to me regarding the reavers during the fight in the sky over Mr. Universe's world. I recall hearing someone comparing the Reavers coming out of the clouds to an indian party riding around the hillside. Which got me thinking...if you remove any sense of political correctness or sensitivity, Reavers do make a dark metaphor for the indian as portrayed in Western cinema- the omnipresent savage force hidden on the edge of the frontier that might raid a small settlement and kill/rape/abduct whoever they found there.
• In a deleted scene at the end of the movie, the Operative makes the parallels between him and Mal obvious by asking Mal how he was able to keep living after the battle of Serenity Valley. Mal's response is "If you're still standing there when that engine starts, you never will figure it out." This sounds like a simple threat, but it's actually the answer to his question - the only way to go on is to "keep flying," not to let yourself get stuck.
• The last line during the death scene of Shepherd Book. I just realized that I misheard this one every time I've watched the movie, and have frequently seen it misquoted. I heard something on this time through that I'd never heard before. The subtitles don't include the word 'her' but are otherwise word for word reproduced here.

Book River! (Who isn't there)
Mal (To Doc) C'mon! (To Book) Hey!
Book (Continuing)I don't care what you believe, just believe in... her.. Whatever sh...

I'd always heard it (and seen it quoted elsewhere) as "I don't care what you believe in, just believe it" and missed the fact that this changes the meaning of the entire quote. Possibly because there was a lot of dust in every single room that I've watched the movie in before.

• A small one: after the bar beatdown, River is very upset at the idea that Simon might put her to sleep again. Now remember the scientist at the beginnning saying that most of her mental conditioning was done in her sleep, and that the Alliance would probably want that to happen when it was convenient for them rather than her, and the reason for the "safeword" might not be what Simon thought.

1. ↑ Not necessarily all at the same time
2. ↑ and probably experienced an Apocalyptic nightmare as, for no reason, everyone around them started laying down and dying.