Serenity

Mal and his crew take paying passengers aboard on Persephone, among them the young doctor Simon Tam, who is hiding his sister River from the Alliance in a cryo box. A spy on board and a Reaver chase turn the trip into an ordeal.

Six years after losing the battle of Serenity Valley, Malcolm Reynolds gets by on smuggling and salvage. In the opening, the crew loots a drifting wreck and is caught by an Alliance cruiser. The haul – crates of rations stamped with the Alliance seal – is now hot goods.

On Persephone the crime boss Badger backs out of the deal. To earn at least something, Serenity takes on paying passengers: Shepherd Book, a man named Dobson and the young doctor Simon Tam with a conspicuously large crate. Inara returns from a client.

On the way, Dobson is exposed as an undercover Alliance agent hunting Simon. In the scuffle Kaylee is shot, and Simon saves her life – on condition that Mal doesn’t turn him in. The crate holds his sister River in cryo-sleep. Simon rescued her from an Alliance facility where she was experimented on.

On the moon Whitefall, Mal wants to sell the goods to Patience, an old acquaintance who once shot him. Meanwhile a Reaver ship is on their tail – men who have turned into savages at the edge of space. A daring manoeuvre gets them away, and Mal decides Simon and River can stay.

The two-hour pilot was Whedon’s way into the series. Fox rejected it as the opener for being too slow and only aired it in December 2002, as the last episode. Watching it first explains the crew, the Alliance and the Reavers from the start.