Out of Gas

Season 1, Episode 9
Written by Tim Minear
Directed by David Solomon
Original Airdate: 25 October 2002

Jayne “Hey, do you have any funny whorin’ stories?”
Inara “Oh, do I ever! Funny and sexy. You have no idea. And you never will.”

REGULAR CAST

Nathan Fillion as Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds
Gina Torres as Zoë Alleyne-Washburne
Alan Tudyk as Hoban “Wash” Washburne
Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra
Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb
Jewel Staite as Kaywinnit Lee “Kaylee” Frye
Sean Maher as Dr. Simon Tam
Summer Glau as River Tam
Ron Glass as Shepherd Derrial Book

GUEST CAST

Stephen Flynn as Captain
Ilia Volok as Marco
Lyle Kanouse as Salesman

CO-STARRING

Dax Griffin as Bester
Roderick L. McCarthy as Lacey #1

SYNOPSIS

Serenity floats idly in space. The ship is empty, no sign of life anywhere. Until Mal drops to the floor. He doesn’t look so healthy. Then somebody talks about buying the ship. Mal flashes back to the first time he showed Zoë the ship. She’s unimpressed.

In the present, but hours earlier, the rest of the crew is laughing and enjoying a great dinner: talking about good times and planning their next trip. They plan to go under the radar and get far away from everything. Then they hear a rumbling and the lights flicker.

Kaylee goes to check it out. Suddenly, a fireball races down the hallway. Zoë pushes Kaylee aside and the explosion blasts her across the room. The crew scrambles to fix the problem. The fire is contained and blown out the cargo door. The group then rushes Zoë to the infirmary. Kaylee informs Mal that the ship isn’t moving. He needs her to figure out what happened.

Mal orders Wash to the bridge, but he refuses to leave his wife’s side. Mal grabs him and tells him he’s going to get the ship going, and that’s not a request.

Flashing back farther, Mal and Zoë interview pilots. Wash, sporting a moustache, takes the job. Zoë says something about Wash bothers her, but she’s not sure what. Moving forward in time, Zoë’s heart has stopped. Simon jams her with some adrenaline.

Back in the present, Mal is alone in the infirmary bandaging up his belly and shooting himself with some adrenaline. He’s not in great shape right now. Flashing back hours again, Kaylee tells Mal the catalyser on the port compression coil blew. The ship is dead in the water and she doesn’t think she can fix it. What’s worse, the main life support is down because the engine is dead. There’s no auxiliary life support either. The crew only has a few hours of oxygen left.

Mal asks Wash if he’s sent out a beacon yet. Wash doesn’t think it’ll make a difference They’re too far out of range. Mal and Wash have an angry showdown about their options. Wash eventually realizes that Mal’s idea will muck up a passer-by’s navigation system, and they’d be forced to stop and dig out Serenity‘s signal before they could move on.

In the present, Mal is still staggering around the ship. Flashing back further again, Mal interrupts his mechanic, Bester, and a young lady “in the act.” Mal wonders why Bester hasn’t fixed the engine. Bester complains that the grav boot is shot, but the young lady says the right couple is bad. She fixes it by removing the couple and plugging the g-line straight into the port pinlock. The engine starts humming again. The young lady turns out to be Kaylee, Serenity‘s new mechanic.

Moving to the recent past, Kaylee apologizes to Mal for not taking better care of the ship. She says they need a new catalyst. Mal says they have to make do. In the present, Mal stumbles around as the alarms sound about the life support failure. He tries to work the catalyst back into the engine when he drops it down a hole.

Hours earlier, and Mal has gathered the troops to give them a straight overview of their problems. He says the crew will split up into two shuttles and they’ll launch them in opposite directions to see if they can find help. Mal is staying with the ship.

After final preparations, the two shuttles depart, leaving Mal behind. He bundles up in a blanket and falls asleep, missing another ship’s radio call about receiving Serenity‘s beacon.

Later, Mal wakes up and Serenity is nose to nose with the S.S. Walden. The captain is quite skeptical about Mal’s intentions, thinking an ambush might be waiting for him. He finally agrees to come onboard and deliver a catalyst.

The Walden crew comes aboard, guns drawn. They’re going to check the ship to make sure Mal isn’t lying. Finding the ship empty, the Walden captain shoots Mal in the gut and says they’re taking Serenity. Mal comes to his feet, gun drawn. He orders the Walden crew off his ship, minus the catalyst they brought over. They leave and Mal drops to the ground…

Mal fixes the engine and attempts to call back the shuttles, but passes out. When he comes to, he’s lying in the infirmary with the crew. He’s confused as to why everybody is back. Zoë ordered the shuttles back and they found Mal in time. They also found a fixed ship.

One last flashback shows Mal with a ship dealer. The dealer is extolling the virtues of one particular craft. But Mal looks across the lot and sees Serenity. He’s sold on it.

TRIVIA

Nathan Fillion is now voicing the opening narration. It’s now as followed: “Here’s how it is: Earth got used up, so we terraformed a whole new galaxy of Earths, some rich and flush with new technologies, some not so much. Central Planets, thems formed the Alliance, waged war to bring everyone under their rule; a few idiots tried to fight it, among them myself. I’m Malcolm Reynolds, captain of Serenity. She’s a transport ship, Firefly-class. Got a good crew: fighters, pilot, mechanic. We even picked up a preacher for some reason, and a bona fide companion. There’s a doctor, too, took his genius sister outta some Alliance camp, so they’re keeping a low profile. You understand. You got a job, we can do it. Don’t much care what it is.”

The episode is Zoë-light due to the fact that Gina Torres got married and went on her honeymoon during the filming of this episode.

CONTINUITY

The compression coil that blows has been referred to by Kaylee several times in the series’ run, most notably in Serenity (Part 1) and The Train Job. It blows in this episode.

This episode reveals how Wash, Kaylee, Jayne and Inara come aboard Serenity.

Again, someone refers to Serenity as ‘go-se,’ a derogatory Chinese term. This time it’s the commander of the ship that arrives to aid Mal, while in Shindig it was Atherton Wing.

River knows the fire is coming before it happens.

GOOFS

In the flashback scenes, Mal’s coat sleeve is torn/mended, even though this is long before he was shot by Patience’s man on Whitefall.
During the first flashback, someone drags a cable on the floor of the cargo bay away while Mal is showing Zoë the ship for the first time.

In the birthday cake scene, one of the candles is lit and then unlit and then lit.

Although costume designer Shawna Trpcic says that Zoë’s cord necklace is symbolic of her marriage to Wash, Zoë is wearing the same necklace in the flashback scenes even before she meets Wash.