Serenity

After getting past Reaver space, the crew reach Miranda, an unmarked planet in the solar system. They touch down and realize that the planet's population are dead and decaying. There are no signs of war or terra-forming gone wrong, so the crew follow a weak signal to an abandoned lab. There they witness the horrible secret that the Alliance will kill to keep under wraps. The secret that River saw in the minds of key members of Parliment. 10 years ago, a planet named Miranda was to be the perfect world, the perfect society. The scientists that created Miranda placed "pax" (latin for "peace") into the vents that surpressed emotions. Without those feelings there could be no war or violence. However, the "pacts" surpressed those emotions but it also surpressed others. 90% population stopped breeding, eating, sleeping, and finally stopped breathing. They slowly died off. The other 10% became crazed non-humans, they cut their faces and began eating the rest of the population that were not yet dead. Mal decides that the rest of the universe needs to see the evil of the Alliance. He calls up Mr. Universe and decides to broadcast the signal from his planet where it would each over 30 worlds. However, the Alliance operative tracking River has reached him first and Mr. Universe betrays the crew by telling them that they are safe to touch down on his planet. But the Serenity crew knows that the Alliance would try something like this so they decide to bring some friends. They fire on the floating Reaver ships and they end up following the Serenity ship to where the Alliance is waiting. Serenity gets past the Alliance to the planet below, but a couple of Reaver ships were able to get past the Alliance also. Sitting in the pilots chair, Wash gets impaled and the rest of the crew get holed up in a small room that leads to the generator shaft where they need to broadcast the signal. All the while they are pursued by Reavers. Mal goes down the shaft and the rest try to keep the Reavers back until the signal about Miranda is broadcast. The Alliance operative gets past the Reavers through the vents and down the shaft to stop Mal. The Reavers overwhelm the rest of the crew and they try to seek refuge in a hallway behind them. The blast door gets stuck and they have no means of shutting it unless one of them goes out and closes it from the outside. River decides that its her turn to protect her brother, Simon, and jumps through the hole in the blast door. She throws her brothers medicine bag to him and gets carried off by Reavers. Mal kicks the Alliance operative's ass all over the place and broadcasts the signal. River is NOT dead and kicking some serious Reaver ass. She ends up killing all of them and by that time the Alliance cops bust through a wall. The Alliance operative calls a stand down and lets the Serenity crew go. He realizes that he was fighting for the wrong team and helps the Serenity crew out by fixing their ship. The crew bury Mr. Universe, Shepard Book, and Wash and then flies off into space.

Continuity mistake: When the crew are in the cockpit talking about Miranda, Jayne is in the background holding his head with his left hand. 5-6 shots later he is holding it with his right hand. On the cast commentary of the DVD, Adam Baldwin says that he did this on purpose "just to mess with continuity". (01:03:35)

THGhost

More mistakes in Serenity

Mal: Just get us on the ground.
Wash: That part will happen most definitely.

More quotes from Serenity

Trivia: You may have noticed that the man who tries to pull a gun during the opening bank robbery and is later killed out of mercy by Mal looks familiar. It is none other than Glenn Howerton, best known for playing Dennis on the dark comedy series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." This movie was released just a few weeks after "Always Sunny" first premiered.

TedStixon

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: I honestly have no clue why I thought this counted as trivia when I submitted it, but looking back, I think it's a bit of a stretch and probably shouldn't be listed. Maybe if it was his first role it would be trivia, but it wasn't.

TedStixon

I'm OK with it, to be honest - might not be his first role, but I didn't know he was in Serenity, and reading this made me go back and rewatch the scene. It's a grey area, granted, but to my mind trivia encompasses anything that makes you go "huh, didn't know that"!

Jon Sandys

Definitely trivia! Super cool fact I didn't know. He is very famous Now and the proximity of the episodes in similes are definitely relevant.

More trivia for Serenity

Question: Why is River bare-foot so often, especially on a ship that has a lot of metal flooring?

Answer: She has several mental disorders, presumably she finds shoes confining or uncomfortable. It's notable that when she does have footwear it's almost always heavy calf high boots, instead of slippers or more comfortable shoes.

Grumpy Scot

To add; She likes to dance, and being barefoot it's easier to move around.

lionhead

Something I always wondered is when she goes on the heist barefoot at the beginning of the film, none of the other characters seem to notice or care that she's in bare feet. Even her brother, Simon, didn't try to get her to wear shoes.

Answer: The reason is that Summer Glau had severe tendinitis and arthritis in her feet and wearing shoes was painful for her.

LorgSkyegon

I actually got to ask Summer this at Galaxy Con. She said that being barefoot helped her focus on becoming her character.

More questions & answers from Serenity

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