Ariel (Firefly episode)

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"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: break into an Alliance hospital on central world Ariel so that he can get a thorough diagnostic of River and the crew can loot the valuable stores of medicine. But River's pursuers are hot on their trail, and they receive some unexpected inside help.

[edit] Synopsis

The episode opens as Serenity heads to Ariel, a central world of the Union of Allied Planets. Inara is due 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. Apparently unprovoked, River suddenly slashes Jayne in the chest with a kitchen carving knife, and Jayne responds by backhanding her.

As Simon stitches Jayne in the infirmary, the mercenary demands that she and the doctor be left on Ariel, suggesting that they might receive a reward for turning in the fugitive siblings. 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 their arrangement 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: if they would help him break into Ariel City's hospital to use its sophisticated equipment to analyze River's condition, then he would show them how to raid the medical stores of the hospital for supplies that will not 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 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.

As Simon presents the plan details in voiceover, Jayne is shown securing the identification, Kaylee and Wash raid a local junkyard and find an ambulance shuttle in repairable condition, and Mal, Zoe, and Jayne struggling ineptly to recite prepared medical assessments for their rushed entrance into the emergency ward. By the time the faux medical technicians have their lines down, Wash and Kaylee have finished their work on the medical shuttle. 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.

In the shuttle on the way to the hospital, Mal voices concern about Jayne might handle himself after getting "a little stabbed the other day". Jayne expresses grudging admiration for Simon's plan and shrugs off revenge. Once landed, the "EMTs" rush into Emergency with their "victims", but as they start their prepared spiel, the admitting nurse absently directs them to the morgue.

In the morgue, Mal starts the revival process for Simon and River, then departs with Zoe for the medical vault. Unsupervised, Jayne wanders off to make a surreptitious call to an Alliance officer, who agrees to pay a previously arranged reward for the fugitives. When Jayne returns to the unconscious Tams, River startles him by rising silently and cheerily announcing, "Copper for a kiss!"

Dressed as a doctor, Simon pushes River in a wheelchair toward the diagnostic ward with "EMT" Jayne accompanying them. As they pass through the post-op ward, 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 berates the doctor for the improper treatment before returning to the task at hand, with a shocked Jayne seeing just how much backbone the good Doctor actually possesses.

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 insubordination, Zoe incapacitates him with a defibrillator. One of the transport coffins is used to conceal the unconscious doctor en route to the medical vault, where they dump him. Mal and Zoe rapidly collect everything they can find from Simon's prepared list, storing it in the coffins.

In the diagnostic ward, Simon puts River under the 3-D neuro-imager, discovering that her brain has been surgically operated on several times. According to Simon, her amygdala had been "stripped", disabling her ability to suppress her emotions. Claiming a sudden change of plans, Jayne leads them away from the diagnostic ward to a rear entrance. While he and Simon argue, River shrieks and starts to babble in fear. The three are then stopped by Federal marshals, who arrest and handcuff Jayne. Jayne first thinks it's for show, but 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 for himself.

Mal and Zoe return to the shuttle with the pharmacological loot, but soon realize that Jayne and the Tams are late. Kaylee discovers unusual Alliance radio chatter which Zoe recognizes as code, suggesting the second team has been captured. The two head back into the hospital to rescue their people, directed by Kaylee's analysis of the hospital floor plan, but then Wash announces arriving reinforcements.

As they are held in a security substation, Simon thanks Jayne for his struggle with the Feds, unaware that he was sold out by his shipmate. River's babbling piques the Feds, who soon move the captives to a holding area awaiting transfer to an unknown party. Handcuffed, Jayne and Simon attack their escorts, managing respectively to kill one and knock the other unconscious. As they argue which way to go, River announces that "It doesn't matter. They're here." Back in the substation, the two blue-gloved men arrive to take custody of the Tams. When the Alliance officer reveals that he and his men spoke with the fugitives, the agents take out a mysterious sonic device. Within seconds, the Feds are bleeding from every orifice and quickly collapse, dead. Unaffected by the device, the agents go to retrieve River themselves.

Several rooms away, Jayne and the Tams hear screaming, and a terrified River runs in the direction opposite the security station. Not far behind them, the Blue Gloves encounter the two marshals Jayne attacked, using 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 by Mal and Zoe. By the time the Blue Gloves arrive, the group has already left.

Inara returns to Serenity to find everyone but Kaylee absent. The engineer gives her a whimsically shocking summary of events just as the shuttle returns with all hands aboard. Simon raves about Jayne's heroism during the escape, but once everyone else has left the cargo area, Mal suddenly bashes Jayne unconscious with a wrench.

Jayne awakens to find himself in the cargo bay airlock with the door open to the quickly thinning atmosphere as the ship leaves Ariel. Jayne fails to convince Mal of his innocence, and finally confesses that he betrayed Simon and River. Mal tells him that doing so was the same as betraying him, and as such Jayne had no place with them. Seeing that Jayne cannot seem to comprehend that, Mal 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, leaving Jayne stuck in the airlock.

In closing, Simon approaches River with a syringe. She asks if it's time to go to sleep again, but as he prepares the injection, he responds that 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".
• The equipment part that Wash throws away in the junkyard is apparently a catalyzer 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".

[edit] Production

Dr. Tam, Jayne, Kaylee, and Malcolm, after their raid of an Alliance hospital. Malcolm's hugging Kaylee was improvised by Nathan Fillion.

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 a Soviet Mil Mi-24 Hind D helicopter. 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]

When the crew returns to Serenity after their successful raid of the Alliance hospital, Malcolm grabs Kaylee from behind and pulls her into a friendly hug. This was improvised by Nathan Fillion, and was left in the shot because Joss Whedon felt it was such a natural movement for Malcolm to make.^[2]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Ariel

• "Ariel" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Ariel" at TV.com
• Firefly Wiki - "Ariel" script
• Firefly Prop Display (including badges worn by the Serenity crew in "Ariel")
• Ambulance restoration - main site
• Ambulance restoration list
• Ariel Ambulance Rescue Group on PlanetFandom