Mal's word no good?
POSTED BY: jewelstaitefan
UPDATED: Sunday, October 14, 2007 03:26
VIEWED: 18720
PAGE 2 of 8
Mal did the right thing....case closed.
Wash's "report" that the sheriff told him that the hill folk sometimes "take people" was met with Mal's response..."now they got themselves a doctor." He knew right then that Simon & River would be safe...while he attended to emergency needs of Book.....First rule of triage ( or leadership)...make sure the victim will live, then move on to the next dying victim.
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I understand you guys trying to compare this to the War Stories decision, or the Message exchange between Mal and Book, as well as when Zoe confronted Mal about the Lilac reaver victim, and others. But I don't think they compare - at no time does Mal give any indication he's going back - I feel he was certain that he would not return.
If you want to try, give me some quote or indication that he was exen considering going back for either Tam BEFORE Book was recovering.
I find all of Mal's decisions to be reasonable, without others explaimng for him (or for the script). This is the one exception, and it's at crosscurrents with the Mal of the rest of this body of work.
It doesn't seem like a "character flaw" or "study" or anything - fter the rescue, they all seem unaware the statement was even made!
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I think that Mal's moral status is absolutely the through-line of the series, and at any given moment, he could do something unequivocally good, unequivocally bad or (usually) equivocally...a bit of both.
I think that in "Safe" he pretty much told Simon to run off and play in traffic, and he was relieved when, as Mal saw it, the hillfolk solved Mal's fugitive problem for him. It would be too much, even for Mal, to actually sell out the Tams and collect the reward (he was so angry at Jayne in Ariel precisely because Jayne gave in to the temptation Mal felt), but if the decision were taken out of Mal's hands...
Things sure blew up fast when Mal did something he knew he shouldn't have. Compare it to the Buffy episode where Buffy says, "I told one lie! I had one drink!" and Giles says "And you were very nearly devoured by a serpent. In that situation, 'I told you so' seems beside the point."
Then, unpredictably, Mal had to give first priority to taking care of Book, which re-directed Mal's attention so he didn't have time to re-think leaving Simon and River behind. When the immediate crisis was over, then everybody else guilted him into going back (and, as Mal says, Jayne welcomed the chance to hang out of a shuttle and shoot people).
If I didn't love Simon anyway, I would after Mal's version of "Hey, I'm sorry I almost got you and your sister killed" ("Your talent for alienatin' people is near miraculous") and Simon's impeccably civilized version of ripping off Mal's leg and beating him to death with it: ("Yes. I'm very proud.")
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Quote:Can you give some quote or indication that he definitly did NOT intend to return?
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
But I don't think they compare - at no time does Mal give any indication he's going back - I feel he was certain that he would not return.
If you want to try, give me some quote or indication that he was exen considering going back for either Tam BEFORE Book was recovering.
Quote:Again, proof? Keep in mind - these aren't the kind of people to sit around discussing their feelings and motives... not bringing up the "we won't leave" line doesn't mean that Simon can't figure out that they had to leave to save Book. Simon's not dumb.
It doesn't seem like a "character flaw" or "study" or anything - fter the rescue, they all seem unaware the statement was even made!
Anyway, even if Mal did think about leaving the Tams behind and changed his mind after Book recovered (I see no evidence for this, but if you insist...) that's still a character study, and well within Mal's personality. He threatened to throw Simon out an airlock in the pilot, but didn't.
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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
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From the Official Companion Vol.1. Just 'cause I love this scene.
Mal: Well, look at this. Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?
Zoe: Big damn heroes, sir.
Mal: Ain't we just. Sorry to interrupt, people, but you all got something of ours, and we'll be needing it back.
Patron: This is a holy cleansing. You cannot think to thwart God's will.
Mal: Do you see the man hanging from the spaceship with the really big gun? Now I'm not saying you weren't easy to find, but it was kinda out of our way and he didn't wanna come in the first place. Man's looking to kill some folk, so it's really his will y'all should worry 'bout thwarting. Gotta say, Doctor, your talent for alienating folks is near miraculous.
Simon: Yes, I'm very proud.
Mal: Cut her down.
Patron: The girl is a witch!
Mal: Yeah, but she's our witch. So cut her the hell down.
I agree that Mal thought River and Simon were safe with the hill people momentarily since they would value the doctor's skills. He was taken aback to find them arriving just in the nick of time.
JSF, I think you'd find all the evidence of Mal defending his promise and statements that Simon is part of the crew if we could see the scene where he has to argue with Jayne about going back. 
Watched all the vid's? Stuff out on loan? You are our kind of people, JSF.
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Holding 'till the Captain gets back.
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
If you want to try, give me some quote or indication that he was exen considering going back for either Tam BEFORE Book was recovering.
I agree with you there - he doesn't. But I that's not Mal - that's Joss. The whole point of the episode is that, while the Tam's real family deserted them, their "new" family didn't. The fact that Mal gives no indication one way or the other is, IMO, merely a dramatic invention used by Joss to underline the the point.
mrben
"Carpe Aptenodytes"
http://www.jedimoose.org
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Malcolm Reynolds is clearly wired to do the honourable thing, regardless of the risks involved. As stated above, he made his choice to try and first save Book's life, calculating that Book's danger was the greater immediate peril. Think about it: Reynolds knew, to a great degree of confidence, that the Tams were kidnapped, but he didn't necessarily have any reason to believe that the Tams' lives were necessarily forfeit. After all, if the Tams were kidnapped, ergo, not killed on the spot, then there was no reason to assume their lives were in immediate danger. On the other hand, Book needed immediate medical assistance, or he would surely die. So, I think it's obvious that Reynolds made the correct decision to first attend to Book, and defer taking his chances saving the Tams.
A truly worthy leader is able to quickly ascertain the meaningful variables in stressful situations, and Reynolds did indeed, in this instance, swiftly and correctly calculate priorities, even including the risk of taking Book to an Alliance facility, based on Inara's input that clearly weighed against his own prejudices. If such actions are not the hallmark of a great leader, then I candidly admit that I don't know what makes for the stuff of a great leader. That Reynolds can make the right choice in the face of having to contend with a situation (an Alliance facility, no less) that is personally humbling to his own self, speaks to me of strong leadership. And, redundantly, Reynolds does indeed go back to rescue the Tams.
And, note, please refer to the movie Serenity, where Malcolm Reynolds takes River back to his ship after the 'altercation' in the Maidenhead. Why does he not leave River asleep in the bar and get on with his life? The answer is not explicitly given later in the movie when Jayne asks him about it, point blank, but we all know about the honour of Mal's intentions, right?
Belief in those intentions is what the second seas... er, movie, Serenity, was all about.
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I haven't read all the posts but has anyone mentioned that Mal specifically states that they don't know where Simon is, only that he is kidnapped. To go for Simon and River could take minutes or hours or days... Book did not have time to wait that long for medical treatment.
Sure, Mal could have gone looking for Simon but there was no guarantee he'd find him in time. If however he went to the Alliance they were guaranted to find them and I assume they felt even the Alliance wouldn't be so cold-hearted as to refuse medical treatment.
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And if someday on some little piss-ant moon/My hand is a little too slow, or my aim a little bit off/At least I’ll go down fighting, not lying abed surrounded by quacks - "Sir Warrick" by Geezer
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This has been a great thread, but a couple things that haven't been mentioned yet I'd like to bring up:
When Mal tells Simon "We won't leave without you," I think the point of this, both in-character for Mal and as a literary element from Joss, is to indicate that Mal understands Simon's reluctance to leave the vicinity of the ship is in self-defense, so to speak, and to explain to Simon that Mal's request that he go into town is not an INTENTIONAL effort to trick him into being left behind. I don't necessarily take it as a promise that "no matter what happens, we won't leave you." It is something of a throwback to the Pilot: "You don't know me very well son, so I'll explain this once. If I ever shoot you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed." Simon and Mal almost never agree, and they don't like each other, but from the first there was always candor between them. (Except for when Mal tells Simon that Kaylee is dead, but practical jokes, no matter how warped, don't count as deception, per se. And it was hi-larious.)
Furthermore, while Simon was CREW (with River's status being more akin to Simon's pet than anything else, in those early episodes; i.e. "you keep her out of trouble and clean up after her and she can stay, you she's YOUR responsibility, not MINE"), Book was a PASSENGER. The captain of a ship has an even higher responsibility to his passengers than he does to his crew; their safety is paramount. There is a thread throughout later episodes that Mal worries about Book and Inara's safety before that of crew members; there is that "feel" to his comments when he sends everyone away in OoG, and also during the Reaver attack in the Pilot.
All in all, I think Mal's honorable nature is one of the critical parts of the show. Let us remember that, though we may not like to admit it, usually our adversaries and enemies know us in many ways better than anyone, and in the Pilot, Badger pegs Mal perfectly: "Man of honor in a den of thieves." (Contrast this to Jayne's always assuming that Mal was playing an angle with the Tam's, and it's an interesting commentary on who knows him better. But I digress...) There aren't a lot of absolutes in FF, but this is one of them, so in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary, I think Mal should get the benefit of the doubt that he planned to go back for the Tam's, at least to TRY.
"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right!" -Jayne Cobb quotes Shepherd Book
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This is going off topic, but its to do with Safe.... We never get to find anything else out about Book's ident card.
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