The pilot. Double-sized, as I found out when I thought I was about to wrap up and then it kept going. But that’s fine, I got through it. It’s a pretty good opening for the show. Does all the setup we need, mostly elegantly. I remembered most of the stuff I needed to know, but it didn’t feel like a trudge to get through it again.
One problem I’m gonna have on this rewatch is something that did effect me on the first watch: I don’t like Mal. He’s got the same kind of problem I have with Peter Venkman where he’s kind of smarmy and quippy and “cool” and I just don’t enjoy cool. I like when Mal’s coolness is undercut for comedic effect, that’s great, but he also gets moments of genuine coolness. And pair it with his temper and how he treats people. I just don’t like the guy. I know these episodes (and from my memory later ones) will play up the idea that Mal is not a “good guy” but that’s just a further attempt to make him cool. I’m sure I’ll get more chances to pick this apart, but for now I’m just warning Mal to behave.
Let’s talk about some of the stuff I do like. The production values are pretty good. The ship set looks good (and the ship design is pretty good too), but what impressed me this time was some of the planet-side scenes, specifically the one where they’re in a market or whatever. I just kept thinking about how much better it looked than any planet set they’d visit on an episode of Star Trek airing at the same time. So many extras, so much space. It looked good. Maybe they’re using all that pilot budget on it, but we’ll see if other episodes are as good (certainly they scale it down for the less-centralized planets, with it just being grassy fields and whatnot).
One thing I definitely remembered from first watch is the introduction of the Reavers. It’s just well done, the way the crew’s fear is played up. And they don’t even show us any Reavers in the episode, just their ship. It’s well done. Only one thing I hated about it: when Simon says he’s heard stories of the Reavers, Zoey says “They’re not stories.” The word story does not mean fiction, you idiot. Related to showing what a threat the Reavers are is one of the subversions of cliched scenes the show was good at: when the first villain is taking a hostage and Mal rushes in and casually shoots him in the head because they have bigger problems now, that’s a good bit.
One last thing I caught here was more shaky came and crosstalk than I would’ve expected. I suppose this is the right era for those things to be making their way into television, supposedly to make things feel more natural. I’m don’t mind one of those things. The other one is shaky cam. We’ll see how it goes in later episodes.
