Objects in Space

"Objects in Space"

"Objects in Space" is the fourteenth and final episode of the science fiction television series Firefly created by Joss Whedon.

Serenity encounters a ruthlessly professional bounty hunter, Jubal Early, who will stop at nothing to retrieve River. But River, feeling unwelcome on the ship, takes a novel approach to escaping from the long arm of the Alliance.

Synopsis

The show opens on a shot of Serenity flying by a planet marbled with colors. The camera zooms into the ship and through its passages to end focused on River, who lies in bed listening to not-quite-audible voices. She arises and takes a walk through the ship's rooms and corridors, encountering her shipmates in varied conversations with each other, apparently not noticing the silent girl. Simon and Kaylee are relaxing in the common room, the doctor telling the mechanic an amusing anecdote about medical school. River suddenly "sees" them looking at her, with Simon telling her that he'd "be there right now", apparently implying she is responsible for taking him away from his successful medical career. (As the anecdotal story immediately continues without any suggestion that the two are even aware of River's presence, this seems a way that River experiences others' unspoken thoughts.) Finding Jayne and Shepherd Book in the kitchen, she "hears" Jayne repeat his confession to Mal about selling out the Tams on Ariel, and Book "mutter" an angry but cryptic statement. River continues to wander the ship, experiencing its environment. She is moved by the sound of ocean waves as Zoë and Wash passionately kiss on the nearby bridge. Above the cargo bay, as Mal and Inara discuss her impending departure, they seem to express their frustrations over their unrequited relationship psychically to River, rather than to each other in reality. Apparently fleeing the intense emotions, River runs down to the unoccupied cargo bay, where she spots a tree branch.

River holding the "branch"

Picking it up, she sees herself on leaf-strewn ground, and holds the branch like a gun, telling herself "It's just an object. Doesn't mean what you think." Suddenly, the real world returns, and she is holding a real gun while the crew surrounds her in a panic, trying to get her to drop the weapon. Mal takes the gun from her and discovers it is loaded and ready to fire. "No touching guns!" Mal says, to which River sadly replies, "No touching."

Somewhere in space, a silent stranger in a small spaceship examines an alert describing fugitives River and Simon Tam, the former wanted alive. Back on Serenity, the crew discuss the dangers of River's presence on the ship. When Zoë muses whether River has ever handled a gun, Kaylee reluctantly tells everyone about her experience during their assault on Adelei Niska's SkyPlex, when she was unable to shoot the attackers, and how River easily and blindly killed all three men with three shots. Simon takes affront to Kaylee's implication that his sister isn't human, but the crew finally discuss the possibility that River has paranormal abilities that, coupled with speculated assassin training from the Alliance and her apparently tenuous grip on reality, could prove fatal to them. They are unaware that the entire time they're talking in the dining room, they have secret listeners. Above the room, on the hull of Serenity, the mysterious bounty hunter is tapping into their discussion. Below the room, just above the cargo bay, River gracefully stands on the catwalk railing, taking in their worries and fears about her.

Mal decides to sleep on the matter, and the crew breaks for the "night". Kaylee follows Simon out as he goes to "check on my assassin", and she apologizes for having to point out the danger River presents. Simon, however, is more sad than angry, believing his sister feels that Serenity is "more home to her than any place she's been". He openly admits his regret at not practicing medicine (using the exact words that River "heard" earlier) and tries not to blame it on River herself, but on her unknown experimenters. Just as Simon and Kaylee move toward their first kiss, Book inconveniently passes through to bid them goodnight, and their potential passion is once again thwarted.

In the quiet of ship's night, the bounty hunter steals aboard Serenity. He runs across Mal and quickly knocks him unconscious, dropping him into his cabin. He then locks the sleeping crew in their cabins. He surprises Kaylee in the engine room. Using an odd combination of philosophy and terror, he forces the frightened girl to submit to being tied up. Next, the menacing intruder literally drops in on Book, disabling him instantly with a brutal kick to the head. Simon hears a noise and arises to check on his sister, who is not in her room. Suddenly he is attacked by the stranger, who addresses him by name. The two men engage in verbal sparring. The bounty hunter, Jubal Early, waxes imaginative on the nature of things while he demands to know where River is. Simon responds with adroit questioning and manages to maintain his wits in the face of the brutality implied in Early's conversation.

With Simon mockingly "helping" in the search, Early checks out the cargo bay and shuttles. When Inara foolishly tries to use her own emotional discernment to appeal to the bounty hunter, he smacks her across the face for her trouble, knocking her to the floor and splitting her lip, then locks her in her shuttle. The two men finally arrive on the bridge, where Early settles on a direct threat, announcing loudly to the ship, so River can hear wherever she may be hiding, that he will kill Simon if she doesn't reveal herself. River replies in an oddly echoing voice with no obvious source. She tells Early (and incidentally to her friends as well) about how she was unwanted on the ship but couldn't bring herself to leave, so she simply "melted away" into the ship itself. "I'm not on the ship. I'm in the ship. I am the ship."

In the engine room, River's voice comes over the intercom, reassuring the bound Kaylee and asking for her help in a task. Meanwhile on the bridge, Early is openly skeptical about River's claim, but her voice returns to reveal uncanny knowledge of the bounty hunter's own weaknesses. River's verbal probing and her own brand of otherworldly conversation, aided by Simon's wry humor, gradually convince Early and the others that she's managed to accomplish this strange, paranormal feat. She sends Kaylee, now free, off on a mission to unlock the cabins. Zoë prepares an assault, but River insists, "No touching guns." Asking Mal to trust her, she directs him to move quickly as Serenity's lights go out.

On the bridge, River continues her distracting banter with Jubal, relentlessly tweaking the hidden instability of his mind. He finally realizes the source of her arcane knowledge. "You're not in my gorram mind! You're on my gorram ship!" The camera moves in on Early's spacecraft to show a very corporeal River, giggling as she plays with the controls. But she reassures the frantic bounty hunter that she will go with him. She compares her own dangerousness and instability with his, and she weighs the hearts of her shipmates with her words about not belonging with them, and that her departure will allow them to get on with their lives. But Simon can't allow his beloved sister to give up, so he attacks the man, who shoots Simon in the leg, ultimately disabling him. The bounty hunter starts his EVA back to his ship, but finds Mal outside waiting for him. Mal blithely pushes him off to drift away into space. River happily returns from the solo spacecraft, welcomed by her captain.

Later in the infirmary, Simon directs Zoë as she patches him up. Just outside, Mal and Inara start and fail again to deal with their implicit affection. In the cargo bay, Jayne mocks Book's failure to defeat Early, despite "all them years of priest trainin'", when Book expresses regret at not being able to do anything to help. Kaylee and River play jacks while Kaylee relates a sexual anecdote from her past. River picks up and examines the bouncing ball, with its swirling, multicolored surface, likely "doing the math," and the camera pans down through and out of the ship to show Serenity sailing off into space. The show ends on Jubal Early, tumbling through space: "...Yep... Here I am."

Allusions to earlier episodes

• Several references are made to the events in "Ariel". River "hears" Jayne's confession to Mal ("I got stupid — the money was too good"). Jayne complains about not wanting River on the ship, and Mal menacingly asks him, "Is that the direction you want this conversation to go in?", alluding to Mal's nearly throwing him off the ship (out the cargo bay in atmosphere, in fact) at the end of the episode. Jayne also tries unsuccessfully to get sympathy from the crew for River's knife attack on him early in that show. Finally, Jubal Early mentions to Simon that he's been "tracking you since the Feds were tipped off on Ariel."

• Kaylee finally tells Mal and the crew about River's shocking talent for gunplay demonstrated in "War Stories".

Foreshadowing

• In the opening scenes, River "hears" words from her shipmates that they are not actually saying, as if reading their minds. In addition to some painful thoughts about her impact on their lives, she picks up a mysterious thought from Shepherd Book: "I don't give half a hump if you're innocent or not! So where does that put you?" It is unclear who he is thinking about — River, Jayne (to whom he is actually talking), or someone else — but it clearly communicates a very un-Shepherd-like menace.

• As Whedon points out on the episode's DVD commentary, Early, having secretly assessed the crew from their conversations, takes down Shepherd Book the same way he handles ex-soldier Mal — quickly and brutally — providing another tantalizing hint of the preacher's hidden nature. Early confirms this later when Simon challenges him about "beating up a Shepherd", to which Early replies with an amused snort, "That ain't a Shepherd".

Trivia

• The crew finally openly discusses the possibility that River has psychic abilities.

• Jubal Early was a Confederate general in the American Civil War, expanding on the civil-war theme central to Firefly. In the DVD commentary Whedon says he named the bounty hunter after him upon hearing Nathan Fillion claim that he was a distant ancestor.

• According to Joss Whedon on this episode's DVD commentary, the inspiration for the episode was drawn from the existential novel Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre and much of the dialogue between River and Jubal is a tribute to Whedon's admiration for this book.

• Early's ship bears some resemblance to Star Wars character Boba Fett's ship, Slave I. Fett himself is also a skilled Intergalactic bounty hunter.

References and external links

• Firefly — The Complete Series DVD set (ISBN 6308024716)
• "Firefly" Objects in Space at IMDb
• TV.com: "Objects in Space"
• Firefly Wiki - "Objects in Space" script