Malcolm Reynolds Part 12: “The Message” – Firefly, Episode 1:12 (Never Aired)

Mail Call in the ‘verse is not as simple as you’d think.

I have this episode in the Firefly 4-Disc DVD set.

After trying unsuccessfully to fence the Lassiter he successfully stole last episode, Mal and the crew collect their mail. One of them is a crate addressed to him and Zoe, and they open it to find a dead body. The body belongs to Tracey, a fellow soldier they met seven years ago at the Battle of Du-Khang. Mal was a sergeant at the time, and tells Zoe to regroup the troops after assuming command from a shell-shocked lieutenant. Mal acts quickly to redirect incoming fire, and saves Tracey’s life.

Back in the now, Mal and Zoe reseal the crate and take it on board Serenity. He listens to a recording Zoe finds on the body – it’s Tracey, asking Mal and Zoe to take him to his family on St. Albans. He’s about to ask Wash to plot a course, but he’s already on his way to the bridge. Mal then turns to Inara and asks if the change will affect her client schedule but she’s tells him that it isn’t a problem.

Mal deals with Tracey’s situation by sharing an old war story with Zoe and Inara, but they’re interrupted by an explosion outside the ship. Mal gets to the bridge and Wash tells him there’s an Alliance Enforcement officer on their tail that made that warning shot. The officer calls them and orders them to prepare for boarding. Mal speaks with him and learns that they’re looking for stolen property. Mal assumes it’s the Lassiter they’re after, but further conversation makes it clear that they’re after the crate containing Tracey’s body.

Mal, Zoe and Jayne search the crate and the body for anything worth the fuss but they come up empty, and Mal tells Simon he’ll have to do an autopsy to hopefully take out whatever it is they’re wanting. They all head to the infirmary, and just when Simon starts his procedure…Tracey wakes up.

After settling down, Tracey tells Mal that he is carrying something – cloned human organs, which are banned by Alliance. The plan was for Tracey to go to a hospital on Ariel and get them removed and his original organs put back, but someone made him a better offer, and Tracey never went to the hospital. When Tracey arrived at the new location, his contact was dead and he was on the run. So he faked his own death and sent himself to Mal and Zoe to get him home so his family would get the money from the organs. What Tracey wasn’t counting on was the Alliance officer closing in on them.

Mal contacts the officer and agrees to meet on St. Albans, but then has Wash try to lose them in the mountains. He shakes the tail long enough to reach a cave, but the Alliance ship starts bombing the area, threatening a cave-in.

On the bridge, Book suggests they meet with the officer and Mal agrees, but Tracey overhears the discussion and pulls a gun on Mal. Mal orders Wash to contact the officer and send Book’s message and Tracey shoots at Wash. He misses, but Zoe doesn’t. Wounded, Tracey backs off the bridge but takes Kaylee as a hostage. Mal catches up with them, gun drawn, and tries to talk Tracey down. Jayne and Zoe, also armed, close in from other directions and cause a distraction. Mal takes the shot, and kills Tracey.

After meeting with the officer, who was running the illegal organ business on the side and saw Tracey’s bloody body as “damaged goods”, Mal makes good on Tracey’s wishes and returns his body to his family.

Notes of Interest:

1) Mal’s savvy enough to know when he’s being pinched by a pickpocket.

2) He’s authorized to sign for mail for his entire crew – except for Simon and River of course.

3) During the Battle, we learn Mal’s philosophy of war: Everyone dies, and even has a bullet sitting somewhere with their name on it. The trick is to die of old age before it finds you. It seems Mal had Tracey’s bullet all along.

4) Even though he took command, Mal made sure that no record was made that would damage the lieutenant’s record. In fact, he’s not surprised in the least that an officer got taken out of commission by fear.

5) Mal’s character really shines during the Battle, where he’s brash enough to tell the advancing Alliance troops where he is even though he’s well aware his side is falling apart. He seems to thrive amidst chaos.

6) He's never heard of the Mona Lisa.

WTF? Moment: Mal turned down Inara’s offer to fence the Lassiter because he didn’t want her to “jeopardize her career”. Is this the same career that Mal’s been disrespecting throughout the series? He even said as much in “Shindig”. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to say he didn’t want her “neck deep in trouble”, or “running from Alliance”? Could it be that Mal’s starting to see her Companion-ship as an asset to his work?

WTF? Moment #2: Mal has another philosophy of war: When you can’t run, you crawl. When you can’t crawl, you find someone to carry you. This sums up the Browncoats in that they’ve lost every battle we’ve seen so far. They’re either retreating, like at Du-Khang; or surrendering, like at Serenity Valley. By the way - Mal gets in a minor victory both times.

But it also sums up Mal’s life since the war. Think about it, he’s got Serenity – a ship that allows him to stay “a little bit farther” away from the Alliance; he’s got Zoe – someone who carried him (or he carried her or both) through the war; and he’s got a crew he has defended and protected repeatedly (and have, in “War Stories”, rescued him). Let’s face it – each member of the crew is either carrying or is being carried by everyone else, and Serenity herself is carrying them all. While it seems he’s been happiest during the war, Mal’s been the most at peace since he found Serenity.

WTF? Moment #3: Kind of makes everything all the more tragic since it was during the making of this episode that Fox decided to pull the plug, doesn’t it?