"Ariel"

Written by Jose Molina
Directed by Allan Kroeker


In which Simon concocts a plan to use an Alliance medical facility to determine the cause of River’s behavior, but things go wrong when one of the crew turns traitor...

Synopsis - Analysis - Memorable Quotes - Observations


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Synopsis

As the episode begins, the crew of Serenity has gathered in the mess to eat and otherwise discuss the upcoming travel plans. Inara, as a Companion, is required to undergo an annual physical, which means that Serenity needs to go to one of the Core planets named Ariel. Wash tries to convince Zoe to go do something with him planetside, just to get some fresh air, but Mal puts the stops on that. As far as he’s concerned, everyone but Inara stays on Serenity until they can get the hell out of the heart of the Alliance.

Jayne is cleaning his gun at the table, spitting on the stock while Simon is trying to eat. Without warning, River takes a carving knife and slashes Jayne across the chest. He backhands River across the room as the others rush over to help him. River doesn’t seem aware of what she’s done, which concerns Mal to no end.

Later, in the infirmary, Simon stitches up Jayne as Mal looks on. Jayne ignores Simon’s presence, and openly advises Mal to turn Simon and River in when they get to Ariel. Mal dismisses the notion, because Simon and River have become part of the crew. But Jayne nearly threatens to turn them in himself, swearing that unless River is off the ship, someone is eventually going to wind up dead.

Mal sternly responds that Serenity is his ship, and none of his crew will be left behind. After Jayne angrily walks out of the infirmary, Mal orders Simon to keep River confined to quarters at all times. More than that, he threatens to reconsider the deal to keep Simon and River on board if Simon can’t keep his sister in check. It’s obvious that she’s getting worse.

Not long after, Serenity lands on Ariel. Inara leaves for her physical, which ought to take little more than a couple days. Jayne and Mal are playing horseshoes in the cargo bay while Wash and Zoe discuss the lack of work recently. Jayne complains that they can’t find work when they’re confined to the ship, but Mal points out that there’s no job worth doing in the Core. That is, until Simon walks in and informs Mal that he has a job for them!

This stuns everyone, so Simon pulls out some vials of medicine and hands them around, explaining their street value as he goes. He explains that there are shelves of those medicines in an Alliance hospital like the one in Ariel City. Getting the medicine from the hospital vault is the payment; the job is getting Simon into the diagnostic ward with River, so he can determine what was done to her.

Simon points out that the hospital would never miss the medicine, being federally funded, and Mal knows that the rim could use it. Simon intends to give the crew the necessary training and intel to pull off the heist. Like most Core hospitals, the one in question has a dedicated security force and a top-notch security system. But once past the checkpoints, movement throughout the building is relatively unhindered.

The plan, then, is to bring Simon and River through the front door. Getting to the door is the first order of business. Only official vehicles are allowed in, but they can’t steal anything or the security will be alerted to something unusual happening. However, the Core hospitals use municipal junkyards to dispose of used vehicles. So they dispatch Kaylee and Wash to find something they can quickly use, which doesn’t take long.

They also need to look like they belong. They send out Jayne to pick up some contraband uniforms and medical equipment. While he’s waiting, he makes a call on the planetary comnet. Jayne also creates the fake badges and ident-cards. Once all of this is in hand, Simon prepares them for what to say when they get through the front door. Mal and Zoe take to the language with a little coaching, but Jayne struggles with his role.

Finally, Kaylee and Wash finish detailing the recovered ambulance craft from the junkyard, and with Mal, Zoe, and Jayne all suited up, everyone looks and sounds right. All that’s left is finding a way to sneak Simon and River past the security. For that, Simon intends to use a drug that will put them into a temporary comatose state. This will allow Mal and the others to pretend that they are bringing in corpses. River is highly upset, but Simon gets her to play along. Their bodies are placed in plastic caskets for transport.

That night, as they fly to the hospital, Mal makes sure that Jayne is prepared to go through with his part of the plan without causing trouble for Simon in the process. Jayne assures Mal that he’s on board, and doesn’t care about Simon, so long as he gets paid. Leaving Wash to watch over their “ambulance”, Mal and the others cart Simon and River into the hospital.

Despite all the preparation, there’s not even a slight reaction to their arrival. They’re told to take the bodies to the morgue, where they quickly give Simon and River the counter-agent to the drug they were injected with. Mal orders Jayne to take them to the imaging room as soon as they’re able. They have fifty minutes.

As soon as Mal and Zoe leave, however, Jayne walks out to the nearest comnet and calls the Alliance agent that he had contacted earlier, while waiting for the medical uniform drop. He advises the agent that he has the fugitives, and that he’s prepared to turn them over as per their agreed reward.

Jayne gets back to the morgue just in time for River and Simon to awaken. He tosses them clothes and orders them to move. Meanwhile, Mal and Zoe take the now-empty caskets towards the medicine storage vault. Unfortunately, they attract the attention of a pompous doctor, and wind up having to knock him out.

Jayne and Simon, dressed as doctors, wheel River through the recovery ward. As they pass by one particular man, River predicts that he’s going to die. Simon disputes it, but sure enough, the man starts going into arrest. Despite needing to keep a low profile, Simon rushes to save the man, and berates the intern that couldn’t solve the problem himself. River is pleased to see Simon in action, but Jayne is more conflicted.

They finally get to the neuro-imaging room, and they get River into the diagnostic chair. As Mal and Zoe fill the empty caskets full with stolen medicine, Simon instructs the imaging computer to display River’s brain structure. After a quick study, Simon determines that her skull was opened and her brain was intentionally incised. The amygdala was stripped, which eliminated River’s emotional filters.

Before Simon can learn more, Jayne tells him that the plans have changed, and they need to meet with the others out the back door in five minutes. Simon concedes, but River knows something is wrong. Jayne orders Simon to keep River’s mouth shut, and he leads them to the back entrance. They are immediately confronted by the Alliance agent and several federal marshals. As Simon and River are taken away, Jayne asks about his reward…only to wind up in cuffs himself!

Mal and Zoe make it back to the “ambulance” with their stolen goods, and begin wondering where the others are. Simon, River, and Jayne are taken to the security substation inside the hospital, where Jayne is more than a little ticked at being stuck with Simon and River. Mal has Kaylee check for any security alerts, and sure enough, they determine that the others have been picked up by the feds. Since they can’t come in through the front door again, Mal finds out how to sneak through the back door.

Simon, River, and Jayne are informed that they are being taken to a holding area until they are retrieved. Of course, along the way, Jayne and Simon manage to overpower their guards, though Jayne is forced to kill one of them. Outside, Wash and Kaylee direct Mal and Zoe through the hospital towards a back way into the security area, when they notice an Alliance ship setting down nearby.

By the holding area, Jayne and Simon argue about which direction to take, now that they have a fighting chance. Jayne figures that they ought to shoot their way through the security substation, but Simon and River want to run. But before they can decide, River informs them that it’s too late.

In the security substation, two men in dark suits and blue gloves arrive to retrieve the prisoners. When they find out that the security agents spoke to River and the others, they pull out a device that causes immediate blood hemorrhaging. Jayne and the others hear the screaming, and they all decide that running is definitely the right option. As they rush blindly forward, being led by River, they hear the blue-gloved men killing the guard that Simon had left alive during their escape.

River leads them to a locked blue door, and Jayne tries to break the lock with the butt of his gun. As the blue-gloved men are about to catch up to them, someone shots open the lock from the other side. Of course, it’s Mal and Zoe. By the time the blue-gloved men show up, everyone is safely out of the building.

Later, in Serenity’s cargo bay, Kaylee welcomes Inara back with the gossip about their little hospital adventure. As Mal orders Wash to leave Ariel, once they are certain they weren’t followed, they determine that Simon got all of the information he needed. Simon gushes over Jayne’s help in getting them away from security, and to everyone’s surprise, Jayne shows a bit of humility over the whole deal. Mal asks Jayne to help him unload the stolen goods, while the others go about their business. As soon as the others are out of sight, Mal knocks Jayne out with a wrench to the face.

When Jayne awakens, he realizes that he’s in the airlock section of the cargo bay doors…and the outer doors aren’t closed. Serenity is slowly leaving atmosphere. Mal points to a hand-comm in the airlock with Jayne, and then accuses Jayne of calling the feds. Jayne flatly denies it, but Mal doesn’t believe him for a second. He calmly informs Jayne that as Serenity breaks atmosphere, the resulting lack of air pressure will suck Jayne through the outer doors.

Finally, Jayne apologizes for turning Simon and River in, but Mal isn’t finished. After all, by turning in someone on Mal’s crew, Jayne was acting against Mal himself. As Mal walks away, Jayne asks him not to tell the others why he’s dead. Finally, Mal relents and closes the outer doors…leaving Jayne in the airlock for a while.

Meanwhile, in River’s room, Simon walks in with a syringe. River is worried about what might be inside, but Simon hints that it’s a way to treat her condition...and maybe even cure it.


Analysis

With this episode, the mystery surrounding River’s condition finally boils to the surface, and the results are both stunning in their implication and oddly disappointing. While the revelations about River show the promise in the growing series mythology, the intrigue that takes place in this episode doesn’t offer too many surprises.

The fact that Jayne decides to turn in Simon and River is no surprise. Ever since “The Train Job”, he’s expressed his disgust for Mal’s apparent soft handling of the two fugitives, and he’s threatened to turn them in more than once. So after having the traitor aspect of this episode discussed so openly, it was disappointing to have Jayne be the one to turn them in.

Yet even with this disappointment comes the joy of character development. We get to see some layers to Jayne here, especially once he’s set himself to turn them in and he has to deal with Simon’s heroic and giving sides. The look on Jayne’s face, after Simon saves a total stranger simply because he can, speaks volumes.

The best part about Jayne is his apparent simplicity. He knows that he’s not the most educated man in the world, and he’s at peace with that. But that doesn’t mean that he’s unwilling to learn or grow. His mercenary life, if at the core of his being, should have led him to take advantage of Mal’s kind nature by now. But Jayne gives Mal a loyalty of sorts, and it’s within that understanding that Jayne doesn’t understand Mal’s attitude at the end of the episode.

Mal’s reaction to Jayne’s betrayal would have been understandable, regardless of the order in which the episodes were aired. Even though everyone knows that Jayne is fairly ruthless and a constant personal security concern, the relationship between Mal and Simon took a distinct turn in “Safe”. It might have been nice to see that episode air in the proper place in the sequence, but in this instance, having it come just before this episode underscored the fact that Mal considers Simon to be part of the crew.

The best part of this episode, however, is the focus on the mystery of River’s condition. This is another aspect of the series that would have benefited from the proper episode order, but we get to see some interesting twists here. Before Simon can even diagnose River’s condition, we learn something potentially interesting from her attack on Jayne.

While in a sense, her actions could have been precipitated by Jayne’s behavior towards Simon, a closer inspection of Jayne’s shirt reveals that he is wearing the “Blue Sun” logo where River attacked him. We’ve seen references to “Blue Sun” since the beginning of the series, but there hasn’t been a very good explanation for what it is.

Simon’s exploratory found that River’s amygdala had been stripped down, forcing her to feel every emotion without the benefit of natural filters. Given her apparent new psychic abilities, this surgery makes sense. It all points to a secret project within the Alliance to develop some kind of modified human able to read minds and provide intelligence.

We know from “Safe” that River is highly intelligent. What if the Alliance uses it’s state-sponsored school system to determine which children are candidates for this black project, after which they are offered spots at the Academy? There, they could experiment as needed to produce the perfect intelligence agents...abnormally intelligent, telepathic, and psychic. It would give the Alliance a means to control anything it wanted.

The question is, what could possibly exist that would require such a measure? There’s little threat that the Independents will manage to develop the technology and support needed to mount a successful insurrection, so what else is there? The answer, it seems, might lie in the secret of “Blue Sun”. Whatever it is, it’s considered enough of a danger to Alliance security that special agents are dispatched to kill anyone with knowledge of what River might know or be.

While many of the revelations in this episode simply confirm what was already known or inferred, it’s the overall picture that’s beginning to form that makes this episode work. If River stands at the center of the series mythology, at least in the first season, then it’s very likely that the crew of Serenity is going to find out something startling about the true situation in the Alliance.

The question is…which side would they ultimately choose, if that’s what it takes to survive?


Memorable Quotes

SIMON: “River, you have to eat. It’s good. It tastes like…it’s good.”
JAYNE: “Smells like crotch!”

JAYNE: “What’s the point of coming to the Core if I can’t even step off the boat?”
MAL: “You could have got off with Shepherd Book at the Bathgate Abbey. Could have been meditating on the wonders of your rock garden by now.”
JAYNE: “Well, it beats just sitting.”
WASH: “It is just sitting!”

WASH: “So, two days in a hospital? That’s awful! Don’t you just hate doctors?”
SIMON: “Hey!”
WASH: “I mean, present company excluded.”
JAYNE: “Let’s not be excluding people. That’d be rude!”

RIVER: “He looks betters in red…”

KAYLEE: “Figures. First time on a Core and what do I get to do? Look through trash. Couldn’t he send me shopping at the Triplex, or…ooooh! Synchronizers!”

MAL: “The patients were cynical and not responding and we couldn’t bring them back.”

SIMON: “What about cortical electrodes?”
JAYNE: “Oh! Uh…we forgot ‘em!”
SIMON: “Let’s try that again…”

MAL: “Pupils were fixed and dilapidated…”
SIMON: “Dilated!”

MAL: “Now all we need is a couple of patients.”
SIMON: “Corpses, actually. For this to work, River and I will have to be dead.”
JAYNE: “Huh! I’m starting to like this plan!”

RECEIVING: “What do you got?”
MAL: “Got a couple of DOAs. By the time we got there…”
RECEIVING: “Take them down to the morgue.”
JAYNE: “We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient!”

WASH: “How much did we get?”
MAL: “Enough to keep us flying.”
ZOE: “Can we fly somewhere with a beach?”
WASH: “Maybe a naked beach?”
ZOE: “Oooh!”
WASH: “Aaaah!”
MAL: “Cut it out!”

KAYLEE: “Oh, hey there, Inara! How was your check-up?”
INARA: “Same as last year. What’s going on here?”
KAYLEE: “Oh, let’s see. We killed Simon and River…stole a bunch of medicine, and now Zoe and the captain are off springing the others that got snatched by the feds. Oh, here they are now!”

MAL: “Hey. How was your thing?”
INARA: “As advertised: lots of needles and cold exam tables. I heard you had some excitement.”
MAL: “Oh, nothing much. Lots of running around. A little gunplay. A couple of needles.”

SIMON: “Oh, I brought some medicine. Do you remember why we went to the hospital?”
RIVER: “Time to go to sleep again.”
SIMON: “No, mei mei. It’s time to wake up…”


Observations

- It’s good to see some of the wealthy planets lately…it really underscores the difference in economy.

- After “The Train Job”, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to bring up the value of basic medical supplies…

- So the Alliance is essentially socialistic. That fits what we’ve seen thus far…

- It would have seemed a little too easy to find a transport that could be made into an ambulance, except that Simon mentioned that the hospital discard their older vehicles in municipal junkyards!

- Jayne was gonna say them words, one gorram way or another!

- Nice how Jayne seems to think vomiting is a sign of “being OK”…

- So smiling in Alliance hospitals is suspicious activity?

- You’re telling me that not one security camera managed to catch Simon doing his “resident doctor” act?

- That diagnostic imager was damned cool!

- That fight with the security guards was good and brutal…just goes to show how similar Simon and Jayne can be…

- Cool weapon that those blue-gloved agents have…I wonder how they work…

- Gotta love the look that Mal gives Jayne when he pounds him with that wrench!

Overall, this episode took the ongoing mystery surrounding River and brought it to the next level, and at the same time, gave the audience a glimpse of where the series might be heading. Jayne’s betrayal was not so much a surprise, but Mal’s response was more than sufficient to make up for it.

I give it a 9/10.


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