The "Real" Malcolm Reynolds by DarkLady

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

The "Real" Malcolm Reynolds

POSTED BY: DARKLADY
UPDATED: Thursday, December 12, 2002 07:30
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VIEWED: 4706
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Friday, December 6, 2002 7:07 PM

OK now that I'm done getting over the "ew!" factor of the episode (the ear thing...gah) I'm having all kinds of deep thoughts. Dammit.

Who *is* the real Mal, after all's said and done?

If the theory is true, the real Mal is much how Mal always is, a stubborn, tougher-than-titanium sonofabitch (as my Dad would say). In the midst of immense pain and fear, he didn't break.

Maybe the reality of Malcolm Reynolds is that he is the guy who doesn't break?

Or, did he just not break at all? Is physical torture not enough to get through the outside?

DL

"I'm lost. And I'm angry. And I'm armed."

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Friday, December 6, 2002 7:41 PM

RHEA

Quote:
Originally posted by DarkLady:
If the theory is true, the real Mal is much how Mal always is, a stubborn, tougher-than-titanium sonofabitch (as my Dad would say). In the midst of immense pain and fear, he didn't break.

Well, there are people like that. Some people are just tough enough or pigheaded enough not to bend under whatever load life hands them. I've known a few.

In Mal's case, I'd lean toward pigheaded.

I'd also suggest that one reason Mal doesn't break is that he's seen far worse.

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Friday, December 6, 2002 7:45 PM

DRAUGLUIN

Many poeple who have lived through war are virtually impervious to physical pain. Seems to me maybe our beloved captain is one of them. Good for him, it makes a life like his easier.

_____________
Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

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Friday, December 6, 2002 7:50 PM

KEF

These last two episodes demonstrate something that Joss Whedon seems to like to do - create great characters with real depth, and likability, and then, at some point, putting each of these people into a situation where their "character" is tested to the breaking point . . . and they FAIL. In Ariel, Jayne failed. In War Stories, Kaylee failed. Mal and Wash on the other hand passed. But I'm sure eventually we'll be seeing Wash put into a very different kind of situation where he does fail. All of them will, at some point, I suspect. Even . . . *gasp* . . . Mal.

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Friday, December 6, 2002 8:20 PM

ALLRONIX

OK, let's see...

I did not get to see the full ep (damn cats knocked over my antenna), but let's see...

I drafted up a thread earlier about "what are these characters scared of?" Well, some characters are tough (It's hard to find Inara's weaknesses at the moment), but Mal is a no-brainer. Screw "issues" - dude's got subscriptions.

He's lost it all - the war, his faith, trust in humanity, everything he owned, everyone he knew (save a few like Zoe).

He's blown it all on a second chance. A ship, a crew he will walk into hell for, a hand-to-mouth existance trying to stay one step ahead of the Feds, and survive another day, another job. Zoe, Wash, Kaylee, Simon, Jayne, River, Book, Inara, and Serenity herself - this is all he has, and he is going to hold onto it with all he has.

The worst part is...he knows he'll lose it all again. It's just a matter of time. If he is very lucky, he will not live to see the end of Serenity and her crew. Sooner or later, the Alliance will bring their armies, their civilization, and their facist control over their citizens. There will be nowhere to run in a decade or two.

Malcolm knows he is doomed. The more pleasant option is physical death - bullet, ship accident, sour deal...painful, but that will at least be the end of it. The only other option is to die inwardly - slowly - at seeing his freedom gradually erode and force him into the life of an Alliance slave.

Physical torture? Go for it. It's only pain. It's only one level of it. And death doesn't seem so bad. Hell, he's on borrowed time, anyway...should have been among the dead in the Valley. Doesn't know why he survived, doesn't think he should have.

Maybe this is why he thinks Book's nuts - any God that would have let the facist Alliance win the war, and let someone like him live after seeing hell while so many "good" others perished...Any God that allows must be insane at best, downright cruel at the most likely.

Rip all of it away, and there's a darkness there that is pure, cold, and damn frightening. He is not quite sane, and there's a death wish there - the "I'm going to hell and you're coming with me!" type of death wish.

There is no hell for him worse than that which is within him.

You can't break what has already been broken.

(Mal reminds me a lot of a character I've been writing fanfic about for over a decade, so my understanding begins from that, just an FYI...)

Co-founder of the Evil Writing Crew - causing hell, one hero at a time!

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Friday, December 6, 2002 8:33 PM

KEF

Quote:
Originally posted by Allronix:
I drafted up a thread earlier about "what are these characters scared of?"

Guess we found out what Kaylee's scared of. I haven't seen the pilot ep "Serenity" yet, but I think I read somewhere that she was shot. So maybe that had something to do with it?

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Saturday, December 7, 2002 5:26 AM

LIVINGIMPAIRED

Quote:
Originally posted by Allronix:
Rip all of it away, and there's a darkness there that is pure, cold, and damn frightening. He is not quite sane, and there's a death wish there - the "I'm going to hell and you're coming with me!" type of death wish.

I think you may have somehthing with the rest of your post, but this part is way off base. Typically a person with a death wish does not fight very hard to live, but Mal does. He could have stayed on that table and waited to be rescued. But instead he stood up and overpowered a goon that--by the way--hadn't been tortured for hours like Mal had. That is a will to live. In fact Zoe even commented on it after she rescued Wash. Mal was keeping Wash alive, because Wash wouldn't have made it. If Mal had some secret desire to die and take other people down with him, he would have just let both of them die. Furthermore, even after Wash was rescued, Mal hung in there, knowing that there very well might not be a point to it.

So what is Mal afraid of? Losing his freedom. Which basically boils down to losing Serenity. As for the Alliance taking over everything--well technically, they already have. It's just that away from the core, their control is looser. And that's where Serenity stays. And if the Alliance ever tightens its grip, Mal'll just move farther out. It's a big 'verse.

________________

MAL: Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?
ZOE: Big damn heroes, sir.

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Saturday, December 7, 2002 6:25 AM

ALLRONIX

Ah, yes...and he still had something to fight for at that point. He was fighting for Wash's life. His ship and crew were ok, and that still gave him a reason to hold on, at least until they were safely out of range.

Take Serenity and it's crew away - once he loses that, the death wish asserts itself. ("Out of Gas")

Co-founder of the Evil Writing Crew - causing hell, one hero at a time!

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Saturday, December 7, 2002 6:33 AM

LIVINGIMPAIRED

Quote:
Originally posted by Allronix:
Ah, yes...and he still had something to fight for at that point. He was fighting for Wash's life. His ship and crew were ok, and that still gave him a reason to hold on, at least until they were safely out of range.

Take Serenity and it's crew away - once he loses that, the death wish asserts itself. ("Out of Gas")

Where exactly does Mal exert a death wish in OOG? He went to extreme measures to cling to life in that episode, so that he could repair Serenity. I really do not understand where you are getting this death wish thing. If you could back up your points with examples, that would be great.

________________

I mean, let's say you did kill us. Or didn't. There could be torture. Whatever.

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Saturday, December 7, 2002 7:00 AM

ALLRONIX

Staying put on the ship when the chance of rescue was slim to none. He seemed prepared to go down with it, IMO. **shrug**

And fighting the baddie last night. He starts staggering up to the guy, knowing that the other fellow is stronger and has the means to kill him. Still, it appeared to be "I'm taking you with me." Maybe it was just the gut reaction of "oh shit, he went nuts instead of breaking" (Fillion was creepy and brilliant, BTW).

So long as he has his ship and crew, he's ok. Take those away, and a real creepy streak starts showing.

Co-founder of the Evil Writing Crew - causing hell, one hero at a time!

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Saturday, December 7, 2002 7:14 AM

LIVINGIMPAIRED

First of all, staying on Serenity in OOG had several practical purposes. The crew was an odd number. Any shuttle Mal left with would have had one more person to support, and would have had a disadvantage over the other ship with only four passnegers on it.

Furthermore, someone had to stay on the ship in case the distress call was answered. And--lucky them--it was. If Mal had not stayed on Serenity, the pirates would have come to an empty ship and claimed it as thier own. Meanwhile, the whole crew, stranded in the shuttles, whould all have slowly died.

Finally, everyone, and I mean everyone, on that ship believed that this was the end, and they were all going to die. So whether Mal died on Inara's shuttle or on Serenity is simple a matter of Geography. Besides, Mal loves Serenity. I think, if he had to die, he'd rather die there. Once again, the name of the ship is not a concidence.

Oh, and as for War Stories, if Mal had wanted the baddie to kill him, he would not have told Zoe, Jayne, and Wash to shoot the bad guy.

________________

INARA: Mal, you don't have to die alone.
MAL: Everyone dies alone.

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Saturday, December 7, 2002 9:29 AM

RAULENDYMION

I am not really sure if I would say that Kayle failed. My reasoning is as follows: she never actually claimed to be proficient with a gun, but she was willing to try. Granted since she was put in the kill or be killed situation and didn't react (I seem to recall she could have shot a guard without him seeing her) she failed in that respect, on in a strict moral sense their is no distinction between acting and failure to act. It just seemed to me that she didn't have the killers heart, granted this is a weakness, but it is not an unexpected one because as we have seen in the past even though she enjoys working on machines and is often covered in grease, inside she is warm and delicate, such a person would BY their charcater have a hard time taking the life of another. So basiclly she failed in her moral duty to pretect herself and the ship, but failed BECUASE of her character.

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Saturday, December 7, 2002 9:42 AM

DARKLADY

I think his going down with the ship had more to do with what you mentioned, that without the ship Mal doesn't feel there's a reason to live. If Serenity dies, so does he, and he was gonna be there until the bitter end.

That seems more a will to fight than a death wish to me.

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Sunday, December 8, 2002 10:22 AM

TWIRLIP

Quote:
Originally posted by LivingImpaired:
So what is Mal afraid of? Losing his freedom.

Sorry, but I don't get that at all. I haven't seen nor read Serenity, so I reserve the right to be proven wrong and then to deny everything and claim y'all misunderstood me all along and that that's what I really meant, so cut me some slack.

But it seems to me that the only thing Mal is scared of is outliving his crew.

I just watched Saving Private Ryan on TV about a month ago-- a movie in which, coincidentally, Nathan Fillion plays a small part-- so this is fresh in my mind. Mal has a lot in common with Captain Miller from that film. Remember the scene in the church where Miller is talking to Horvath late at night? He gave a great speech about how you have to figure that one man's dying in war saves the life of ten, maybe even a hundred others, "and that's how simple it is." Then he says, "Do you know how many men I've lost under my command? Ninety-four." And in that instant, you know that he carries the weight of every one of those men with him. None of the rationalizations can change the fact that he's been responsible for ninety-four deaths.

Mal was a sergeant in the war. He's surely led dozens of men, maybe hundreds, into battle. He's probably watched most of them die.

I'm just guessing here, but I'll bet the only thing that scares Mal is the prospect of having to bury yet another man or woman under his command.

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Sunday, December 8, 2002 10:48 AM

LIVINGIMPAIRED

Quote:
Originally posted by Twirlip:
Quote:
Originally posted by LivingImpaired:
So what is Mal afraid of? Losing his freedom.
Mal was a sergeant in the war. He's surely led dozens of men, maybe hundreds, into battle. He's probably watched most of them die.

I'm just guessing here, but I'll bet the only thing that scares Mal is the prospect of having to bury yet another man or woman under his command.

First of all, were're both right.

You make some very perceptive observations, and I believe they have weight. So Mal's afraid of two things. But really, I'm right too, and once you've seen "Serenity," I won't even argue with you when claim to have agreed with me all along. :)

________________

Say, don't I know you from beating the crap out of you?

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Sunday, December 8, 2002 2:42 PM

DELVO

As far as the death wish is concerned, there is some evidence for it in that silly mindless sword escapade. But that whole thing was so out of character and so stupid and crazy that I don't count it as the real him. Everything else about him's been pretty "survivalist".

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Sunday, December 8, 2002 5:24 PM

LADYILA

I think the appeal of Captain Mal (besides being good-looking) is that he is the one you can count on! His relationship with Zoe is beyound a romanatic relationship, I think they both found someone they can trust and depend on completly, and that is a special thing.
Everybody want someone like this, someone who you know will be there and do what ever it takes to save you!

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Monday, December 9, 2002 2:18 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Who is the "real Mal"?

What I saw was a "berserker", someone who was completely in the realm of killing the enemy. I don't know how Mal survived the battle of Serenity, but however he did, psychology tells me it was a very rewarding response- after all, it got him out alive.

What is Mal afraid of??? I don't think he trusts concepts like "freedom". It was concepts that probably got him into thw war in the first place- ideas like justice, fairness, freedom, God... I think he's afraid of HIMSELF. Whatever dragged him into that hell... and it was his own choices that did... is to be feared.

As far as a death wish is concerned, many ppl who survive terrible circumstances when others have died do suffer from "surviror;s guilt".

BTW, my dad was a prisoner in the Ukraine tin mines and a Siberian labor camp. I didn't find the ear scene or the torture particularly gruesome. It happens every day, we're just sheltered from it.

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Thursday, December 12, 2002 7:30 AM

GROOVYAL

I wouldnt call Mal a brainless suicidal who is trying to get himself in everykind of mortal danger.
This man has seen quite a lot and he knows he can handle most of the situation, no matter how hard it can be. Every time he is in this "if i die i want you to die with me" is simple survival instict. He had no choise when he tried to attack this big torture fellow, the other option was to lie on the torturetable and watch the guys killing him. You can definetly see that he is a very experienced leading charachter. He never let somebody down and he inspires loyalty, we all know what happens if someone does break this loyalty - airlock scene -. He is perfectly aware of the mortal danger he is but he is used to it, due to the war.

and this "kaylee-failing-issue". Her reaction was perfectly right. She is this "small-town-sweet-little-girl" kinda woman, she isnt outstandingly smart nor courageous, she is just good at repairing engines. she gets very easily overwhealmed by a stress-situation, which basically had happend. She seems like a little child thrown into this whole "gangster" milieu.

And about the weaknesses of Inara. She has one. She seems to have feelings for Mal, but she has to surpress them.

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