Inara's secret.
POSTED BY: peacekeeper
UPDATED: Saturday, June 6, 2009 20:50
VIEWED: 50550
PAGE 14 of 16
As an extension to the subject of "I'm a Big Girl Just Tell Me" here are my intrerprations to the different reads River makes of crewmember secrets in OIS. I know it's not the thread topic, but it helps gel Inara's statement a little more when taken as a part of a greater whole of crew karma.
Simon: "I would be there right now" Simon secretly regrets his choice to save River. If given the choice again he'd certainly do nothing different, but he longs to be a respected surgeon and secretly wishes to have it all back. He hides these feelings of regret from everyone.
Jayne: "I got stupid the money was too good" This one is obvious, Jayne is hiding his betrayal of the Tams from the crew. Mal knows what happened and Simon heard about it from River, but Jayne still hides it from everyone else.
Book: "I don't give half a hump if you're innocent or not! So where does that put you?" I believe Book was an operative during the Unificaiton War and did some terrible things he regrets. When you place his words into the terrible mean context of his delivery (almost snarling) the impression of an evil act is evident. Whatever he did during the war, he regrets and hides it. His guilt forced him into a holy life in an attempt to atone.
Zoe & Wash - In this scene they believe themselves to be alone. River feels their deep and secret love for each other.
Inara - "I'm a big girl, just tell me" Hashed and re-hashed in this thread. Inara is learning she is terminal from a doctor on Sihnon.
Mal - "None of it means a damn thing" Could be any number of things, but in the vein of secrets this is an interesting quote indeed. When I think about it, I believe whatever happened to cause this quote, happened after the war ended. Prior to Serenity Valley Mal is filled with fire and purpose. The delivery of the line relates an emotional vaccum.
Kaylee - Hey why is Kaylee here? Good question. It was revealed to me that in the scene where Simon delivers his lime to River, there is a clue about Kaylee. Joss relates that Kaylee wears all her emotions on her sleeve. In the film when Jewel delivered the line "I ain't had nothin twixt my nethers weren't run on batteries" she delivered it softly and sideways at first until Joss called cut and said that Kaylee would never hide such a thing. That's why she declares it openly. In the OIS scene Kaylee stares blankly at River with a rather dead un-kaylee like expression. The reason for this is that Kaylee has no secrets to hide and River therefore psychically sees a blank slate.
The deliveries of the lines are also important:
Simon - Sad and whistful
Kaylee - Nothing
Jayne - Stupid and direct
Book - Hostile
Inara - Firm and direct
Mal - Emotional Vaccum
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Hmm... Book. I hear the Operative theory a lot. I just don't have enough facts to know what his secret is.
He certainly knows a lot about Operatives, and there does seem to be something dark in his past, that he might regret.
How old is Book? 50s? The Unification War started about 12 years before the movie. Are CIA agents still active in their forties, or do they tend to retire early because it's a dangerous occupation and they slow down too much?
Maybe he could still be an Operative, but from an earlier conflict than the war.
But I don't know... Operatives seem to be something that was invented for the movie, when they couldn't use the series villains, like the Hands of Blue, because of various legal entanglements. If Inara's secret wasn't retconned (and judging by The Message shooting script it wasn't), then I don't think Book's would be either.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
Kaylee - Hey why is Kaylee here? Good question. It was revealed to me that in the scene where Simon delivers his lime to River, there is a clue about Kaylee. Joss relates that Kaylee wears all her emotions on her sleeve. (...) In the OIS scene Kaylee stares blankly at River with a rather dead un-kaylee like expression. The reason for this is that Kaylee has no secrets to hide and River therefore psychically sees a blank slate.
I have a different theory on that, which I divulged a good while back:
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=4&t=31398
In the audio I analyzed (at the start of OiS, before River wakes up), you can hear Kaylee say: "In some distance I meant to say I was pretty shake up, before." In short, my theory is that Kaylee's 'dead' expression is a spill-over from Kaylee's emotional shock in War Stories. So, basically, Kaylee is doing *exactly* that: wearing her emotions on her sleeve! And that's what River picks up.
--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Ooh, that's intriguing. Later in the episode, Kaylee does have an important part in the discussion when she reveals River's ability with guns. That would tie in nicely.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Before one of the cons, Ron Glass asked Joss to give him some inside info to tell the fans who were always pestering him about Book's secret. So Joss let him tell the con that Book was a dirty cop, who took the name of the man that he wronged. It was supposed to be made into a comic book, but kind of got put on hold when Dollhouse started. Here's more info here:
http://screenrant.com/sheperd-book-serenity-fans-rejoice-brusimm-3409/
Great thread by the way, loving all the new info - waiting for the new fic to come of it too!
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:The audio work you've done is certainly worthy. I read your post from 2007 but I'm going to take issue with some parts of it. Namely that the voices at the outset do not, I believe, bear upon the secrets she feels from the crew. The voices represent a jumble of thoughts/feelings/expressions of crew members with whom she feels at home and are mutually exclusive from her psychic journey through the ship. She wakes when she picks up Early's "We're all just floating" because he doesn't belong. I am though more interested that you claim there was another Early statement in the audio breakout: "Aren't you listening..?" This flys into my long held feeling that she woke because she sensed Early's ship come into range and suddenly felt the presence of a stranger.
Originally posted by asarian:
In the audio I analyzed (at the start of OiS, before River wakes up), you can hear Kaylee say: "In some distance I meant to say I was pretty shake up, before." In short, my theory is that Kaylee's 'dead' expression is a spill-over from Kaylee's emotional shock in War Stories. So, basically, Kaylee is doing *exactly* that: wearing her emotions on her sleeve! And that's what River picks up.
Then as to the "why" behind Kaylee's blank slate look, I don't see it as being connected to any emotions of Kaylee's at all. That rushing sound you hear before River senses the secrets is the clue of transition. If I consider the other characters and their quotes, they don't exist as extensions of anything felt, they exist as secret thoughts within which are contained emotions. It only makes sense to me that River was reading Simon's secret thoughts and with Kaylee there was nothing to sense, thus the blankness. I guess people are going to have differing thoughts and analysis can go as deep as anything. I recall book discussions in English classes where all sorts of interprations to things were proposed, many of which could not co-exist.
Maybe this is just one of those things that can mean whatever people want it to mean.
I do like the fact that Joss continues to be the "master of misdirection" in the Simon/Kaylee sequence. They were actually talking about his time as a doctor when River looked at them so we are logically led to believe that River was reading surface thoughts, which isn't true. Joss is the misdirecting king, truely a master storyteller.
If you like this subject something else might interest you: Look on the DVD for the deleted scenes (All but one are canon btw) and there is a sequence from Our Mrs Reynolds where River is acting crazy around her brother. Mal and Saffron approach. Saffron looks to River and says something polite like "It's good to meet you" River regards Safron for a moment then her expression changes to hostility and she declares "You're a Liar!" The crew look to each other akwardly at River's supposed lunacy and Mal leads Saffron away. When I think about OIS I see this sequence far differently:
Mal: "Saffron this is River. River meet Saffron"
Saffron: "It's nice to meet you"
River looks to Saffron
-Rushing Sound-
Saffron: (insert creepy psychic statement)
River: "You're a liar!"
Crew looks around akwardly, Mal leads Saffron away.
It's scenes like that which show to me how deeply Joss's mind goes.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Oh Crap. Darn Darn Darn. I very much wanted to see Book be an Operative during the war. I suppose a Dirty Cop works well enough and explains why he knew Womak's stripes in the episode The Message, but an operative would know such things too.
Originally posted by Katesfriend:
Joss let him tell the con that Book was a dirty cop, who took the name of the man that he wronged.
The operative theory made for a perfect fit to these clues:
-The alliance vessel put him into the ER as quickly as possible without question. This makes sense for an operative, but a former cop is much weaker.
-He told the barker in the Evestown docks that he "Wasn't a Grandpa". Being an operative requires absolute commitment to the alliance, there is no room for a family.
-His knowlewdge of how the operative in the movie was going to sneak up on Mal "Saddle up to you and smile, then hit you when you're weak" again its a weak argument to say a cop would know how the operative would think, but a former operative absoutely would understand the thought process.
I guess I'll settle for the cop background, but I'm going to state openly that it isn't the best use of story. It feels more like a subject Joss hadn't been thinking about and then just gave Ron something offhand to placate fans.
A final note of bitter regret, my fan film was up until now going to reference Ron Glass as an operative. At this point I'm going to delete it outright to play it safe.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I'm missing something here.
Yeah - for some reason my message didn't appear, sorry. I'd write it again but I can't remember what it was now :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I think any problems Inara might have could probably be solved by the top 3% surgeon and medical doctor in the 'verse. Especially now that he won't be too fixated on his sister.
Just a thought.
http://www.swyzzlestyx.com/index.html
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME