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*[[Joss Whedon]] makes an uncredited cameo in this episode, playing a family member at Tracey's funeral.
 
*[[Joss Whedon]] makes an uncredited cameo in this episode, playing a family member at Tracey's funeral.
  +
  +
* Composer Greg Edmonson stated that he felt the music he wrote for Tracey's funeral may be 'too pretty', as he wrote it not about Tracey's death, but as his personal farewell to the series. (The cast and crew were aware that Firefly had been canceled at this point in the show's run)
   
 
== Quotes ==
 
== Quotes ==

Revision as of 11:30, 10 September 2008

Ep_themessage_sc105.jpg
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Writer(s)

Joss Whedon
Tim Minear

Director

Tim Minear

Airdate

July 15, 2003

Episode chronology
Next episode

Heart of Gold

The Message is the twelfth episode of the Firefly TV series and wasn't aired during the original series run. It is the second of three episodes that were not broadcast in the original 2002 Fox run.

A former Independence soldier who had served with Mal and Zoe returns in a dramatic manner, with a vicious Alliance officer chasing after him for some unusual smuggled goods.

Synopsis

The show opens on a space station, inside of which there are people wandering about in a kind of carnival. A barker extols an exhibit featuring "proof of alien life". Inside the exhibit, Simon and Kaylee stare at a tall, illuminated cylinder that holds a strange and apparently dead creature. The doctor declares that it is a mutated cow fetus, not an alien. Simon uses this moment alone with the engineer to attempt to get closer to her, but once again puts his foot in his mouth when he mentions that the other women he knows are either married (Zoe), professional (Inara), or related to him (River), and Kaylee leaves in a huff. As Kaylee departs, Zoe and Wash enter, the latter declaring that "it's grotesque" before noticing "something in a jar". Wash mockingly tries to communicate with the "alien", Zoe manages to both console and insult Simon. Back in the concourse, Inara tries to convince Mal to let her help fence the Lassiter they stole in "Trash", but Mal insists on keeping her out of that side of the business. Mal checks in with the station postmaster, who passes along two packages along with Serenity's mail.

Jayne arrives to find that his mother has sent him a home-knitted cap, and he proudly dons it. The others observe the hideous headgear with a mixture of amusement and sarcasm. ("A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he's not afraid of anything.") The other shipped item is a huge crate addressed to Mal and Zoe. They open it to discover a dead body.

Flashback to seven years earlier at the Battle of Du-Khang. As a young Independence soldier, Private Smith, calmly prepares a meal behind cover, an Alliance soldier sneaks up on him. Just as the latter is about to shoot, Zoe appears behind him and cuts his throat. While she lectures the boy about stealth, Sergeant Reynolds comes screaming (literally) over some obstacles and crashes into their position. Tracey is injured when the Alliance zeros in on them. Mal and Zoe grab Tracey and their shell-shocked lieutenant and bug out.

Back in the present, the two ex-soldiers puzzle over the "decently preserved" corpse of their former comrade. Hauling the box aboard Serenity, they find a recorded message from Tracey. He apparently anticipated trouble from some unsavory associates, and has asked them to ship his body home to St. Albans.

Back on the station, an ominous Alliance soldier, Lieutenant Womack, threatens first to imprison, then to burn to death the postmaster, who quickly tells the man and his aide who left with the "coffin size package."

On Serenity, Jayne waxes surprisingly philosophical about death to Shepherd Book, who contemplates a modest ceremony for the dead man; Jayne notes that he always gets the urge to 'do stuff' when he sees a corpse he didn't kill, prompting Book to speculate that Jayne likes to prove to himself that he's alive after witnessing death. River arrives to make herself comfortable by lying on the casket. Meanwhile, Mal and Zoe entertain Inara with a hilarious tale about Tracey's antics during the war, such as when he 'stole' an officer's moustache and stuck it on his face. Suddenly, the ship is shaken by a near miss from an Alliance craft. Lt. Womack hails them and demands to board Serenity. The crew mistakenly think that Womack is after the Lassiter. When Womack mentions "that crate", however, Mal realizes he's after Tracey's box, and stalls for time while they take apart the crate to discover what secrets it might contain. Finding nothing, they decide to have Simon autopsy the hapless soldier, but the doctors' first incision causes the "dead" man to leap up and struggle with the gathered crew.

After he calms down, Tracey confesses that he is smuggling illegal internal organs. He was supposed to deliver the implanted organs on Ariel, but he got a higher bid. Unfortunately for him, the original buyers killed the new customer and are now after their stolen "merchandise". Another shot from Womack reminds them of their immediate peril. Wash takes Serenity down to St. Albans, where they try unsuccessfully to elude their pursuer in a narrow snowbound valley. They finally come to rest inside a hidden cave, but the Alliance ship drops explosive charges into the valley to flush them out.

Kaylee gets to know and even flirt with the young soldier whose words mesmerized her earlier. Book does some checking on their Alliance pursuers and discovers some anomalous behavior. He ultimately recommends to Mal that they allow the Feds to board the ship. Tracey overhears some of this conversation and pulls a gun on the crew. Mal expresses disgust at his former sub ordinate's attempt to force them to get him out of his own mess, and orders Wash to call the Feds. As Tracey fires at Wash, wounding him, Zoe shoots the ungrateful man in the chest. Wounded but not slowed down, Tracey grabs Kaylee for cover and heads for the cargo bay. When Mal confronts him about his treacherous behavior, Tracey lays into his former superiors about being "saps". Jayne comes up behind him, and as Tracey turns to shoot him, Mal fires instead, knocking the young man to the ground.

Lt. Womack and his men enter the cargo bay. He tries to cow the smugglers with his Alliance authority, but an unarmed Book arrives to explain why he won't be using that authority, given the pains he's taken to keep his extracurricular organ-dealing activity from the local Feds. Faced with a surprisingly direct threat of death from the preacher, Womack decides to depart, dismissing the "damaged goods" in Tracey's gravely-wounded chest.

Tracey belatedly realizes that Book's confrontation was part of a plan, one that he screwed up by threatening the crew and getting himself shot for his efforts. He asks Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe to really deliver him home this time, then dies. Accompanied by a gloomy music and voiced-over excerpts from Tracey's message, the crew of Serenity solemnly returns the fallen soldier to his grieving family.

Behind the Scenes

  • Joss Whedon makes an uncredited cameo in this episode, playing a family member at Tracey's funeral.
  • Composer Greg Edmonson stated that he felt the music he wrote for Tracey's funeral may be 'too pretty', as he wrote it not about Tracey's death, but as his personal farewell to the series. (The cast and crew were aware that Firefly had been canceled at this point in the show's run)

Quotes

Mandarin Translation

(Special Thanks to BrownCoats.com.)

  • "Well, I'm glad I rated higher than dead Bessie here. Ni gaosu na niu ta you shuang meimu? [Why don't you tell the cow about its beautiful eyes?]" - Kaylee to Simon.
  • "Tell anyone we were here, warn Malcolm Reynolds that we're coming, and you'll wish we'd burned you. Dong ma? [Understand?]" - Womack threatens Amnon.
  • "Tracey, you want to explain what in the tian xiaode [God knows what] you're talking about?" - Mal as he hears of Tracey's plan.
  • "Wo de ma, [Mother of Jesus,] they're comin' close." - Wash pilots Serenity, evading police vehicles.

Episode shooting script