Out of Gas

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“Out of Gas”
Firefly episode
Image:Fireflyoog.jpg
Character Malcolm Reynolds self-administering an adrenaline shot
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 8
Written by Tim Minear
Directed by David Solomon
Production no. 1AGE07
Original airdate 25 October 2002 (Fox)
Episode chronology
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"Jaynestown" "Ariel"

"Out of Gas" is the eighth episode of science-fiction television series Firefly created by Joss Whedon. Its style is somewhat different from the other episodes, in that it tells its story alternately in the present, near-present, and past timeframes.

After Serenity suffers a catastrophe that leaves her crew with only hours of oxygen, flashbacks show how Mal and Zoe acquired Serenity and assembled their motley band.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The episode opens in the present time with a mournful tune, showing Serenity apparently dead in space. The camera moves from darkened room to darkened room, showing no sign of any inhabitants. Mal falls into frame, collapsing onto the cargo bay grate floor, as we hear a (voiceover) sales pitch for a spaceship. A flashback to the past shows Mal and Zoe entering the as-yet-unnamed Firefly-class ship for the first time. Mal is excited about his new ship, but Zoe is taken aback by the "death trap". Mal waxes eloquent about freedom from the Alliance and the ship's possibilities once they find a small crew.

The flashback pans back to Mal in the present time, bleeding. Clutching his stomach, he laboriously drags a machine part along the catwalk. The camera pans up into the dining room a deck above, to a near-present flashback of the crew enjoying a meal and telling amusing anecdotes from their pasts. Ship's mechanic Kaylee arrives with a birthday cake for Simon. Before the doctor can blow out the candles, a power failure, accompanied by an odd sound, causes Kaylee to start toward the engine room. Just as River quietly announces "fire", a fireball shoots through the passageway. Zoe leaps up to push Kaylee out of the way and gets hit by the leading pressure wave, which also throws everyone to the ground. Mal quickly shuts the rear entrance of the common area. The engine room is engulfed in flames. Simon can't get to his medical supplies because the ship is sealed up. Mal remotely opens the cargo bay doors to blow the atmosphere, sucking the fire out with it.

Back in the present time, Mal continues his journey with the machine part. A door opening leads to another near-present flashback to Simon treating a gravely injured Zoe, while Wash desperately tries to rouse her. A stunned Kaylee tells Mal that Serenity "ain't moving", but Mal prods her to check out the damage. When Wash refuses to leave Zoe's side and man the bridge, Mal drags him away from her and forces him grudgingly to his post. Flashback to the past, where a younger, mustachioed Wash evaluates the condition of Mal's new ship and considers taking the job the new captain is offering him. As Mal and Zoe head off into the depths of the ship, the first mate expresses her general misgivings of the potential pilot — "he bothers me" — but Mal is enthusiastic about Wash's reputation. Mal mentions their new "genius mechanic", and an unfamiliar, unkempt man overhears their discussion and is entertained by Mal's praise.

Back in the near-present, Simon jabs a flatlined Zoe with a shot of "pure adrenaline", and another jump cut takes us to the present, where a lone Mal does the same thing to himself in order to continue his struggle. Jumping back to the near-present, Kaylee despondently tells Mal that their life support is completely disabled, giving them only a few hours of oxygen left.

While Simon muses about suffocation, Inara reflects on her love of the ship. In his quarters, Shepherd Book is anxiously reading his Bible. River stops by to reassure him that they won't suffocate — they'll die from the cold first. On the bridge, an angry Wash snarks about Mal's refusal to accept their doom, pointing out that he deliberately chose a travel path that kept them away from any possible contacts. As they argue, Mal slips in a suggestion to get the attention of passersby that turns out to have a remote possibility of working. When Jayne enters to complain about their wasting air, another cut takes us back to the present, where Mal hauls the machine part toward the engine room as the P.A. system needlessly sounds an alarm about the failed life support and low oxygen levels.

Another jump into the past shows Mal hollering at Bester, the unkempt mechanic, for failing to get the ship underway. He catches the man in flagrante delicto with an engineering groupie who, as she is getting dressed, interrupts Bester's excuses to correct his inaccurate diagnosis. As she emerges from behind the engine, we see that it is Kaylee. When the "genius mechanic" sputters incomprehension, she quickly fixes the problem. Impressed, Mal asks her if she'd like to work on Serenity. She happily runs off to wind up her affairs at home. Bester questions why Serenity would need two mechanics, and Mal ominously agrees. Another jump back to the near-present shows Mal encountering Kaylee, who apologizes for being unable to fix the ship. She tells Mal about the broken catalyzer, which "don't fit no more". Back in the present time, Mal finally reaches the engine room and tries to install the part — a replacement catalyzer — but only drops it into the bowels of the engine.

In the near-present, Mal assembles the crew to order them to split into two groups and take each shuttle in opposite directions to try to find some help, however unlikely the possibility of success. With four per shuttle, he decides to stay behind in case someone is caught by Wash's beacon. Wash rigs a big red recall switch on the bridge so Mal can call them back. Inara objects to Mal's apparent desire to "go down with your ship", but Mal is simply refusing to accept defeat. A flashback to the past shows Inara's introduction to her future quarters and "office", one of Serenity's shuttles. In response to Mal's bargaining tactics, Inara confidently announces that he'll rent her the shuttle, at a discount, in order to gain some respectability, helping him in his own, less licit business. Back in the near-present, when Inara pleads that "you don't have to die alone", Mal responds, "Everybody dies alone." Wash also appears to want to say something about their departing without the captain, but Mal deftly turns his attention back to his injured wife. As Mal seals off the ship compartments, the crew silently departs in opposite directions on their desperate missions.

Sometime later, Mal is awakened by a salvage ship attracted by Wash's beacon. When Mal opens the door to get the catalyzer, the skeptical captain holds a gun on him while his crew makes sure there is no ambush awaiting them. Cut to a flashback in the past, where Mal and Zoe are held at gunpoint by three bandits, one of whom is Jayne. Mal and Zoe engage in clever banter with the bandits, with Jayne providing the first example (within the storyline chronology) of his own limited wit. When Mal realizes how effective Jayne was at tracking them, he and Zoe encourage the gunman to switch sides and join their crew. Jayne casually shoots one of his former partners and holds the other at gunpoint while he negotiates for his new job. Back in the near-present, after the salvage crew gives the signal that they're alone, the captain likewise casually shoots Mal in the gut so he can steal Serenity itself. While the captain barks out orders, however, Mal finds a hidden gun and pulls it on the captain, ordering him to leave the catalyzer (as originally agreed) and to get off his ship. As soon as his ship is secure again, he collapses onto the cargo bay grate floor, as shown in the opening scene.

Back in the present time, weakened and injured, Mal manages to drag the new catalyzer out of the engine bowels and install it, starting the engine again. He slowly makes his way to the bridge, but collapses again, short of the recall switch. As he hears the voices from the various flashbacks, he gradually comes to in the infirmary, where the crew is bustling about. A prostrate but conscious Zoe welcomes him back to awareness. She takes responsibility for ignoring his orders and returning to Serenity — fortunately, since he never sent the recall — but she promises not to do it again. As Mal drifts off again, he asks if "you all gonna be here when I wake up?", and Book assures him so. The episode closes on a flashback to the past, during the spaceship salesman's pitch, which turns out to be for a large yellow rocketlike vehicle. Mal ignores him as his attention is drawn to a beaten-up Firefly-class spaceship across the shipyard. He falls in love.

[edit] Allusions to earlier episodes

  • In this episode, the ship is crippled by the failure of the catalyzer on the port compression coil. Kaylee mentioned that this part needed fixing twice before: in "Serenity", when she asked Mal to buy a new compression coil for the engine, and in "The Train Job", when she complained that "somebody won't replace that crappy compression coil".

[edit] Foreshadowing

  • River's ability to sense the approaching fireball before anyone can sense it alludes to her psychic abilities, most notably seen in "Objects in Space". As frequently happens, her utterance has two interpretations; Simon assumes her "fire" is a reminder to blow out his birthday candles.
  • At the end of the episode, Jayne questions the genuineness of the incense in Inara's shuttle. In Serenity, Inara tricks The Operative with a flashbang disguised as incense.

[edit] Trivia

  • Serenity's recorded life-support alarm, spoken in both English and Chinese, suggests the prominence of the two major cultural influences of the Union of Allied Planets, the United States and China of Earth-That-Was. Curiously, however, the Chinese spoken is not Mandarin, the official dialect of China, but Cantonese, a dialect spoken primarily in the south of China (including Hong Kong), and in "Chinatowns" (such as those in San Francisco and Toronto).
  • The t-shirt that Jayne wears contains the Chinese words; zhandou de xiaojingling, which means 'the fighting/militant elves.' This shirt was also seen in; 'Safe' and 'War Stories'.
  • According to the DVD commentary, Alan Tudyk (Wash) took the big red "recall" button from the Serenity set and presented it to Joss Whedon, telling him that if Whedon managed to get the series renewed, he could press it to call the cast back.
  • Also according to the commentary, Gina Torres (Zoe) was written out of the bulk of the episode because the filming took place just after her marriage to Laurence Fishburne and they were away on their honeymoon.
  • During the scene of Inara's introduction to Serenity, she lays out her terms, including "complete autonomy" (which Mal routinely ignores by barging into "her" shuttle), schedule assurances to allow her to keep appointments (an ongoing struggle during the series), and, lastly, that Mal stop calling her a "whore" (which he nevertheless frequently does to irritate her). The only term he apparently observes is that she doesn't "service" the crew.
  • The salvage captain is the second person to refer to Serenity as a "pile of go-se" (dog excrement), the first being Atherton Wing in "Shindig".
  • In chasing the unharmed salvage crew off his ship and keeping only the catalyzer, Mal again enforces a business agreement that the other party attempted to cheat on, even after Mal regained the upper hand, as he did with Patience in "Serenity".
  • In the scenes showing the "dead-in-space" Serenity, a cloud of debris is floating near the ramp; jettison that was spaced when the ramp was opened to smother the original fire.

[edit] References and external links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
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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