Ariel (Firefly episode)

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Firefly episode
“Ariel”

Character Simon examines River's brain
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 09
Writer(s) José Molina
Director Allan Kroeker
Production no. 1AGE08
Original airdate 15 November 2002 (Fox)
Episode chronology
← Previous Next →
"Out of Gas" "War Stories"

"Ariel" is the ninth episode of science-fiction television series Firefly created by Joss Whedon.

Hard up for cash, Serenity takes on a job from Simon: help him get a thorough diagnostic of River in return for the opportunity to loot the vast medical stores of an Alliance hospital on central world Ariel. But River's pursuers are hot on their trail, and they receive some unexpected inside help.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Serenity heads to Ariel — a central world of the Union of Allied Planets — to drop off Inara for her annual Companion physical exam and license renewal. The crew chats in the common room about what they might do while there, but Mal enters to announce that no one is leaving the ship, in order to minimize their visibility in this highly monitored bastion of the Alliance. (Shepherd Book has already left for a visit to a nearby abbey.) Apparently apropos of nothing, River suddenly slashes Jayne deep in the chest with a kitchen carving knife, and Jayne responds by backhanding her. She casually defends her attack with "He looks better in red."

As Simon stitches Jayne in the infirmary, the mercenary demands that she and the doctor be left on Ariel, suggesting that they might even profit from the reward. Mal quashes any talk of leaving people behind, but after Jayne leaves, Mal tells Simon to keep River confined to quarters, and warns him that he'll have to "revisit the deal" if she isn't kept under control. Simon acknowledges that his sister is getting worse.

While the crew kills time playing horseshoes in the cargo hold, Wash and Jayne bemoan the lack of work they've had in recent stops. Simon approaches them with a proposal: the crew helps him to break into Ariel City's Alliance hospital to use their sophisticated equipment to analyze River's condition, and he'll show them how to raid the tremendous medical stores of the hospital for supplies that won't be missed, but will net Serenity considerable wealth on the black market. Simon's plan has two phases:

  1. Breach the perimeter using an "official" medical shuttle and fake EMT IDs, smuggling in the medically-induced comatose Tams as deceased patients for the hospital morgue, and
  2. Split up, with Jayne guarding while Simon diagnoses River, and Mal and Zoe stuffing the Tams' then-empty "coffins" with the most valuable drugs they can lay their hands on.

Simon claims that leaving won't be a problem, as the hospital security is geared to keeping unauthorized people out, not stopping anyone from departing.

As Simon presents the plan details in voiceover, we see Jayne securing the identification, Kaylee and Wash raiding a local junkyard for parts and equipment (fortunately scoring a battered but repairable shuttle), and then Mal, Zoe, and Jayne struggling ineptly to recite prepared medical assessments for their rushed entrance into St. Lucy's Medical Center's emergency ward. By the time the faux medical technicians have their lines down, Wash and Kaylee display a freshly painted medical shuttle to get them to the door. Although River is terrified of another comatose trip, her brother calms her with the promise of a diagnosis that will help him dispel her nightmares. He tells her, "It's time to go to sleep."

In the shuttle on the way to the hospital, Mal questions Jayne about his participation, concerned about how he might handle himself after getting "a little stabbed the other day". Jayne expresses some grudging admiration for the plan and, more importantly, the upcoming pay, and shrugs off revenge with a joke about giving the comatose Simon a tattoo. Once landed, the "EMTs" rush into Emergency with their "victims", but as they start their prepared spiel, the admitting nurse interrupts them and directs them to the morgue. Mal and Zoe recover quickly from the surprising ease of this hurdle, but Jayne, unable to adapt as quickly, nearly ruins their smooth entry by spouting his now-irrelevant line anyway. Once past the admissions lobby, the two teams head to their respective destinations.

In the morgue, Mal starts the revival process for Simon and River, then departs with Zoe for the supplies room. Contrary to his instructions to watch over them, Jayne wanders off to make a surreptitious call to an Alliance officer, who agrees to pay a previously arranged substantial reward for the fugitives. When Jayne returns to the unconscious Tams, River startles him by rising silently and cheerily announcing, "Copper for a kiss!" Simon's revival is rather more violent, which Jayne finds puzzling until River is heard vomiting off-screen.

Dressed rather appropriately as a doctor, Simon pushes River in a wheelchair toward the diagnostic ward with "EMT" Jayne accompanying them. As they pass a number of patients in a treatment theater, River insists her brother help a man who she believes is being "killed" by his doctor. When a Code Blue sounds, Simon dashes over to the patient, quickly assesses the problem, revives the man with a defibrillator, and stabilizes him. Simon then turns to the hapless young doctor and berates him for the improper treatment, while River beams at her brother, the gifted surgeon.

Meanwhile, Mal and Zoe, on their way to the supplies room, are intercepted by a doctor who questions Mal. When he starts into a tirade over Mal's apparent insubordination, Zoe steals up behind him and employs her own defibrillator in a rather unorthodox manner. One of the transport coffins gains another use as they take the unconscious medic to the drug storage room and dump him. They rapidly collect everything from Simon's prepared list that they can find.

In the diagnostic ward, Simon puts River under the 3-D neuro-imager. He discovers that her brain has been surgically operated on, multiple times. Her amygdala has been "stripped", supposedly disabling her ability to suppress her emotions. "She feels everything. She can't not." Jayne claims that a change of plans now requires that they leave quickly out the back way. While he and Simon argue, River shrieks and starts to babble in fear. "They come out of the black. They come when you call." She tells Jayne, "Your toes are in the sand." (Jayne makes a typically scatological response.) The three swiftly make their way through the hospital, but are stopped by Federal marshals, who arrest and drag off the Tams. The marshals handcuff Jayne as well, who thinks it's for show, but he quickly learns that the Alliance officer plans to reward him not with cash but with an arrest for aiding and abetting the fugitive siblings, keeping the reward money himself.

Mal and Zoe return with the pharmacological loot, but soon realize that Jayne and the Tams are very late. Kaylee discovers unusual Alliance communications ("on the official 2-6-2") about "ducks", which Zoe recognizes as code, suggesting the second team has been captured. The two war veterans head back into the hospital for another battle to rescue their people. Directed by Kaylee's analysis of the hospital floorplan, and urged on by Wash's announcement of arriving reinforcements, they make their way toward the security substation.

Simon gushes thanks over Jayne's struggle with the Feds, not knowing he was sold out by his shipmate. River launches into an extended Christmas-morning metaphor, with stolen presents, ending by telling Jayne, "Don't look in the closet — it's greedy", which unnerves the secret traitor. As two marshals take the captives to a holding area, a still-handcuffed Jayne brutally attacks them and, with a little help from Simon, manages to kill one and knock the other unconscious. When Simon and Jayne argue which way to go, River tells them, "It doesn't matter. They're here." Back in the substation, the two blue-gloved men (last seen in "The Train Job") arrive to take custody of the Tams. When the Alliance officer reveals that he and his men talked to the fugitives, the "Hands of Blue" take out a mysterious device that appears to emit a high-pitched sound. Within seconds, the Feds are bleeding from every orifice and quickly collapse, apparently dead. The Hands of Blue are unaffected.

Several rooms away, Jayne and the Tams hear screaming, and River begins her ominous litany, "Two by two! Hands of blue! Two by two! Hands of blue!" She runs off in the opposite direction. Not far behind them, the Blue Gloves encounter the two marshals Jayne attacked, and they use the sonic device on the living one. With the sounds of screaming still approaching them, Jayne and Simon follow River's flight until they reach a locked door. As Jayne fruitlessly tries to open it, the lock is blasted from the other side. Mal and Zoe have arrived to help them escape.

Back on Serenity, Inara returns to find everyone but Kaylee absent. The cheery engineer gives her a whimsically shocking summary of events just as the faux medical shuttle returns with all hands aboard. Mal slaps Jayne on the shoulder with an oddly-edged quip about Jayne getting his "big payday", echoing Jayne's earlier implication that his share of the medical supplies bought his "bygones" with the Tams. Simon continues to rave about Jayne's heroism during the escape. Once everyone else has left the cargo area, leaving Mal and Jayne alone to stow equipment, Mal suddenly bashes Jayne unconscious with a wrench.

Jayne awakens to find himself in the outer cargo lock with the door open to the quickly thinning atmosphere as the ship leaves Ariel. Jayne utterly fails to convince Mal of his innocence, and finally confesses that "The money was too good! I got stupid!" Mal lets him know that betraying any of his crew is the same as betraying him, and, seeing that Jayne cannot seem to comprehend that, turns to leave. When Jayne plaintively asks Mal not to tell his shipmates the truth about his betrayal, Mal finally relents and remotely closes the outer door, saying, "The next time you decide to stab me in the back, have the guts to do it to my face." He departs, leaving Jayne stuck in the cargo lock.

Later, Simon approaches River with a syringe. She says, "it's time to go to sleep again", but he responds, "No, mei-mei. It's time to wake up."

[edit] Allusions to earlier episodes

  • The two blue-gloved men and River's litany of "Two by two… hands of blue... two by two... hands of blue..." first appeared in "The Train Job".
  • Strangely enough, the part that Wash throws away in the junkyard is apparently a catalyser for a compression coil, the very same part that broke in "Out of Gas".
  • Jayne is tempted by money and betrays Mal. In the pilot episode "Serenity" Jayne commented that it would be an 'interesting day' when the money is good enough to betray Mal.

[edit] Foreshadowing

  • Jayne is not the only mercenary tempted by the sizeable reward being offered for River and Simon's retrieval, as will be seen in "Objects in Space".
  • Simon making River sleep alludes to his ability to make River instantly fall asleep by speaking a "safe word", as he does in the movie Serenity.

[edit] Trivia

  • River apparently has a grudge against the Blue Sun Corporation, as evidenced by her attack on Jayne's "Blue Sun" shirt. The Hands of Blue in pursuit of River may or may not be related to Blue Sun.
  • Simon puts River to "sleep" — or as River precociously recites, "suspend cerebral, cardiac, and pulmonary activity in order to induce a proto-comatose state" — in a manner reminiscent of (but apparently not identical to) her original arrival on the ship in pilot episode "Serenity". This general tactic for eluding the seemingly unsophisticated (or uncaring) authorities will be used yet again in "The Message".
  • The Alliance officer cheats Jayne out of his reward money, but is in turn killed (along with his men) by the Hands of Blue. Not only does this demonstrate that some members of the Alliance are less principled than Serenity's smuggler crew, but also suggests that the mysterious powers behind River's captivity will stop at nothing — killing anyone who even talks to the Tams, even Federal marshals — to prevent any exposure of their activities. (The connection between the Hands of Blue and the Alliance proper — if indeed there is any connection — remains unknown at this point, although in the comic book Serenity: Those Left Behind, they are referred to as 'independent contractors').
  • Inattentive viewers often assert that, when Jayne is apprehended, the officers handcuff him and moments later the handcuffs disappear. However, what actually happened was that the officers had only attached the cuffs to one of his hands, not yet securing the two together, when Jayne attempted to escape. The cuffs are still attached, they are merely only on one hand and not easily seen.
  • Mal, Zoe, Wash, and Jayne use falsified badges to sneak into St. Lucy's. Their fabricated (and in Wash's and Jayne's cases, purposefully designed to be funny) names are:
    • Mal: "Miles Arixoen, M.D."
    • Zoe: "Q. Kumamota, R.N."
    • Wash: "E. Norma Sclevages, R.N."
    • Jayne: "Kiki LaRue, R.N."
  • As River lies on the Holoimager and the scan of her body appears above her, the Blue Sun logo can be seen in the hologram. This suggests the Blue Sun corporation stretches further than previously suggested (i.e. beyond simply food/drink, clothing) and may be directly involved with the Alliance considering that the Ariel hospital was supposedly "Alliance funded."
  • The t-shirt that Jayne wears during the episode contains the Chinese word yong, which means 'soldier' or more commonly 'brave'. This shirt also appears in the episodes; "The Train Job", "Shindig" and "War Stories".
  • The medical shuttle that appears in the episode and is used to ferry the main characters back and forth from St. Lucy's is built from a 2/3 scale model of Soviet helicopter, the Mil Mi-24 Hind D.
  • A group of fans has bought the scrapped medical shuttle (from a scrapyard in Mojave, California), and are in the process of restoring it, hoping to show it on the Firefly convention circuit.[1]
  • In the last scene of the episode, River is drawing Matryoshka dolls, a popular (though not traditional) Russian handicraft.

[edit] References and external links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  1. ^ Fans of sci-fi 'Serenity' follow their bliss, news.com June 19 2006
The Firefly series
Episodes Serenity | The Train Job | Bushwhacked | Shindig | Safe | Our Mrs. Reynolds | Jaynestown
Out of Gas | Ariel | War Stories | Trash | The Message | Heart of Gold | Objects in Space
Spin-offs R. Tam sessions | Serenity: Those Left Behind | Serenity
Characters Derrial Book | Jayne Cobb | Kaylee Frye | Malcolm Reynolds | Inara Serra
River Tam | Simon Tam | Hoban Washburne | Zoe Washburne | Minor characters
Terminology Moons and planets | The Alliance | Blue Sun | Unification War | Serenity
Reaver | Browncoat | Firefly slang | Companion
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