Just to make sure this Space Western is fully established as a Space Western, the second episode has the team rob a train, except instead of riding up on horses, they do it on a spaceship. Naturally it can’t all go smoothly, so the team gets separated, and also they find out that the goods they were hired to steal were medicines that are desperately needed by the innocent people.

The team actually avoid the authorities easily enough, but then it’s that moral quandary about the medicine that complicates thing. In spite of Mal spending most of the episode of the episode bickering with his crew, and with River reminding us that Mal means Bad in Latin, Mal makes the right choice and returns the medicine.

The crimeboss guy who hired them, Niska, does come back for revenge in a later episode I think, but near the end of this one they have one of the bits that made me a fan back in the day. Mal offers to return the money Niska gave them to Niska’s big muscle guy, but the big muscle swears revenge until Mal kicks him into the ship’s engine. Then Mal repeats the offer to another of Niska’s guys and that one immediately accepts.

But the most important thing is this: The episode opens with Mal starting a bar brawl on Unification Day. I have to wonder, is that day different on each planet, based on what day it was locally when they received word that the Alliance had won? Or is there meant to be some standard time and date that the Alliance uses? I doubt the relativistic effects of time during space travel will come up in the show, but I’m curious.

The pilot. Double-sized, as I found out when I thought I was about to wrap up and then it kept going. But that’s fine, I got through it. It’s a pretty good opening for the show. Does all the setup we need, mostly elegantly. I remembered most of the stuff I needed to know, but it didn’t feel like a trudge to get through it again.

One problem I’m gonna have on this rewatch is something that did effect me on the first watch: I don’t like Mal. He’s got the same kind of problem I have with Peter Venkman where he’s kind of smarmy and quippy and “cool” and I just don’t enjoy cool. I like when Mal’s coolness is undercut for comedic effect, that’s great, but he also gets moments of genuine coolness. And pair it with his temper and how he treats people. I just don’t like the guy. I know these episodes (and from my memory later ones) will play up the idea that Mal is not a “good guy” but that’s just a further attempt to make him cool. I’m sure I’ll get more chances to pick this apart, but for now I’m just warning Mal to behave.

Let’s talk about some of the stuff I do like. The production values are pretty good. The ship set looks good (and the ship design is pretty good too), but what impressed me this time was some of the planet-side scenes, specifically the one where they’re in a market or whatever. I just kept thinking about how much better it looked than any planet set they’d visit on an episode of Star Trek airing at the same time. So many extras, so much space. It looked good. Maybe they’re using all that pilot budget on it, but we’ll see if other episodes are as good (certainly they scale it down for the less-centralized planets, with it just being grassy fields and whatnot).

One thing I definitely remembered from first watch is the introduction of the Reavers. It’s just well done, the way the crew’s fear is played up. And they don’t even show us any Reavers in the episode, just their ship. It’s well done. Only one thing I hated about it: when Simon says he’s heard stories of the Reavers, Zoey says “They’re not stories.” The word story does not mean fiction, you idiot. Related to showing what a threat the Reavers are is one of the subversions of cliched scenes the show was good at: when the first villain is taking a hostage and Mal rushes in and casually shoots him in the head because they have bigger problems now, that’s a good bit.

One last thing I caught here was more shaky came and crosstalk than I would’ve expected. I suppose this is the right era for those things to be making their way into television, supposedly to make things feel more natural. I’m don’t mind one of those things. The other one is shaky cam. We’ll see how it goes in later episodes.

I’m gonna do it again! I’m gonna watch a science fiction show I dimly remember from my youth again! Only actually, this time it isn’t as dimly remembered and I was slightly less of a youth.

I was over twenty when I watched Firefly, still a child by the standards I hold now, but technically an adult. And by the time I was twenty, I was more discerning about the television I watched, which is why I absolutely never watched Firefly while it was on television. But I heard good things and I got around to it when it was on DVD. I remember liking it! But I also remember thinking it’s one of those things where if it hadn’t been cancelled early, the Internet maybe wouldn’t have been as in love with it as it was. I can’t know if that’s true, but it was the opinion I held. Now, decades later, I don’t even know if the show is held in the esteem it once was. I think people still like it fine, but I’m out of touch, so what do I know? But here’s the thing: I wanted to do another PDR Sci-Fi Watching but also I don’t want to commit to a big project while I’m falling behind on other projects, so a show that got cancelled after a dozen episodes or whatever sounds like it’ll go down smooth.

So what do I remember about the show? Well, unlike Earth-2 or Space: Above and Beyond, which had fled my teenage mind after their cancellations, I can even now remember whole characters, names and all. If I tried, I could probably come up with a general description of five or six episodes even. I even know that the show doesn’t have any aliens for poor little alien-starved me. So this one will not be a font of surprises, but it should be easy, and that’s probably more important.