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Firefly
Episode 1.05, "Out of Gas"
Written by Tim Minear
Directed by David Solomon
Air Date: 10.25.02
Check out our double shot review with Ultra Magnus' Review and Hollyfeld's Review.
Up until now, I guess I’d considered Firefly a lot better in theory than in practice. While I loved the premise and the characters, two of the four episodes so far had left me just this side of entertained. The other two, however, were pretty good. And now there’s "Out of Gas," undeniably the best episode so far. And I’ll dare say by a good margin, too. This was definitely one kick-ass hour of television.
The first thing we see is the Serenity drifting idly in space. Then Mal drops to the floor, severely injured. It appears that he’s alone on the ship. Right out of the gate, a great start. But then it gets really good. Through a series of flashbacks - both to the relatively recent past and the more distant past - we find out not only the events that led up to the current predicament, but also those that led to the Serenity’s crew coming together. It’s the privileged glimpse at the origin of the series that we sorely missed out on by Fox not airing the actual pilot. At the same time, though, I wouldn’t have wanted to see this particular episode sooner. Any earlier, and it wouldn’t have had the same emotional weight to it.
Some of my favorite moments included the introductions of Jayne and Kaylee. Jayne was simply a crook who double-crossed his pals when Mal offered him a better deal. Kaylee, meanwhile, was doing the flagrante delicto with Serenity’s original mechanic when Mal happened to walk in. Having the benefit of being flat on the floor at one point, she easily diagnosed the engine problem and fixed it in no time. And then there was the hiring of Wash (with a really bad mustache) and how Zoe always had a bad feeling about him. Now that’s funny.
Most of all, I just really enjoyed the way Minear intercut the different time periods. I always give extra points for non-linear storytelling every time. But eventually we learn that there was a technical problem with the engine. No more power equals no more air. And since they were taking the road less traveled there’s nobody around to help them out. Mal eventually orders the crew into the two short-range ships while he stays behind just in case anyone does hear their distress beacon.
Someone does, of course, (or else this would have been the series finale) but they're not the friendliest of people. Seeing that Mal's alone, the captain of the group shoots him in the gut. Despite it, Mal does manage to pull his gun on them and get them to leave. We're finally caught up to the present now, as Mal falls to the floor, severely injured and still alone.
Before passing out, he does fix the engine and restore life support. Though he fails to make it back to the helm and radio the others, he wakes up hours later in the infirmary with the crew around him. Zoe finally came to and ordered the others to go back to Serenity. The last thing we see though is one final flashback - a salesman trying to push a ship on Mal, but he’s got his eye on the one across the yard. You can guess which one that is.
All in all, a nearly flawless episode. Once again, Minear delivers.
Episode Rating: 9.5 out of 10.
- Ultra Magnus almost thought this would have made a cool series finale if everyone had actually died. Almost.
Let's time-twist again, like we did last summer! It's another stand-alone episode of Firefly, and here I am, really late this time (but nothing compared to my backlogged Angel reviews), telling you that yeah, it's pretty darn good. And last week's teaser looked pretty darn mediocre, so again, the theory that the quality of Firefly's episodes is inversely proportional to the quality of its teasers is proven flawless logic.
"Out of Gas" is a particularly downbeat episode, actually. It begins with a drop of blood flowing out of Captain Reynolds, and then his nearly passed out hide on the ship's deck. Then it goes back in time a bit to when he first bought Serenity. Then it goes forward in time a lot, but not as far as where we were in the beginning of the episode, to a birthday celebration for the ship's doctor. Then there's a huge honking explosion. Then everything gets bad.
The mind-flips and time-slips continue throughout the entire episode, showing us how the original crew of the Serenity first got together. Mal and Zoe met during the war, but here we see the introduction of Wash, looking like he's at a casting session for a seventies porno movies, and Zoe's initial, bad impression of him. Then, we meet Kaylee, having lots of sex. Frankly, I'll bet that's the way we'd all like to meet Kaylee - she comes across so innocent, doesn't she? Anyway, whilst flat on her back she manages to fix a part of Serenity that Mal's original mechanic doesn't even seem to recognize, so he hires her, untrained, on the spot. Somewhat daring, but I can buy it. Then Inara comes on board, flaunting her clout, and we see a somewhat harried first encounter between her and the fearless Captain (we'll see how fearless in a little bit). She manages to finagle her way out of Mal's original asking price for her living quarters, but also notes that she sided with the Alliance with the war. Mal responds, in one of my favorite Mal lines thus far, "A lot of whores sided with the Alliance." Zing. And oh yeah, there's Jayne, who was actually about to shoot up Zoe and Mal before they offered him a better deal. I love the way they treat Jayne on this show - he's a very useful guy who just can't be trusted. When Mal sends him with Inara on a lifeboat in the second half of the episode, he makes sure to tell her essentially that Jayne would be useful in a fight, but not to trust him as far as you could throw him.
But that's just in the past - here in the not quite present, the huge honking explosion has thrown out of whack a very small part which, while not being huge or even expensive, is absolutely necessary for the ship to run. If the ship doesn't run, then there's no artificial atmosphere. And what little they already had was sucked out the airlock when they put out the fire. Oh yeah, Zoe may be dying, too. So everyone's worrying about suffocating to death - it's a good thing River's there to tell them that that isn't going to happen. They'll freeze to death first. What a ray of sunshine.
Mal tries everything he can. Kaylee simply can't fix the part, so he has Wash put out a distress beacon. But since they mapped out a course to keep them away from shipping lines, the odds of anyone getting it are slim to none. In my favorite exchange (I'm a geek), Mal tells Wash to amplify the signal by putting it through another device on Serenity. You know, the kind of technological fix-me-up you see on every episode of Star Trek. "Yeah, you know, if we combine this and this, we can do something that's never been done before which will miraculously save our skins - aren't we smart?" Wash of course, gives a long speech about how this won't work, because it will bury their beacon beneath so much other information that it'll just waste even more time of a potential rescue ship. He does it anyway.
Mal evacuates the ship of the rest of its crew, deciding to stay behind in case someone does come by, so he can call the escape pods back. Sure enough, someone does come by. And sure enough, they have the part. And sure enough, they shoot Mal and start to hijack the ship. Then Mal picks up a pistol and tells them to get off the ship. They do.
Again, we have the most annoying aspect of Firefly so far- the extremely easy ending. These guys have gigantic high-powered weapons to take over a ship with only one crewmember, shot in the gut, with no atmosphere to speak of. This guy is dying on various levels, with only a pistol to his name. And Mal forces them off the ship. What's more, their ship leaves Serenity alone. Does this make sense to you? We've got AK-47's, this one guy's got a pistol. RUN!!!
Or, even if you can buy that they simply don't want to risk being shot, I have a hard time understanding why they didn't just wait for Mal's atmosphere to run out, so all they had to do was walk-in in an hour or so, eject his corpse, and take Serenity for themselves. Yeah, of course Mal miraculously manages to fix the ship, but how could the hijackers have known that - the odds were so far against him it borders on ridiculous.
So, everything turns out more or less okay, with Zoe and Mal in the sick bay, the ship fixed, and a flashback to the very beginning, when Mal chose not to buy a good ship, but Serenity instead. Kind of sweet really.
All in all, a solid episode - long on suspense, medium on humor, short on plausible climaxes, which of course doesn't ruin the hour of programming but does detract from it. It's an annoying trend, frankly, but it doesn't keep me from giving "Out of Gas"...
Episode Rating: 9 out of 10
- Hollyfeld wishes he was Serenity's original mechanic.
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