Malcolm Reynolds' history of injuries... by Goldbrick

FIREFLY EPISODE DISCUSSIONS

Malcolm Reynolds' history of injuries...

POSTED BY: GOLDBRICK
UPDATED: Wednesday, April 14, 2010 10:38
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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 6:49 AM

I was so impressed by Malcolm Reynolds’ ability to bounce back from injury that I compiled a short history of his many, many injuries. We might consider his regenerative powers to be his special skill, on par with Wash's excellence at the wheel, Kaylee's affinity with engines, etc. Perhaps you'll agree after this review:

1) Mal was hit in the side by shrapnel during the war and had a nerve cluster relocated. (According to Serenity the Movie).

2) Mal was wounded by Patience in an undisclosed location of his person, presumably while concluding business on Whitefall. This injury took place prior to the events of the pilot episode. (Ref: Serenity, the pilot episode)

3) Mal was grazed in the arm by a bullet during the second shootout with Patience on Whitefall. (Ref: Serenity, the pilot episode)

4) Mal starts a barfight on U-Day, and once again he's on the losing side. (And Mal has a history of barfights on U-Day.) (Ref: The Train Job)

5) Mal suffers a stab wound in upper chest from Niska henchman Crow’s thrown hooked dagger. (Ref: The Train Job). By the way, Mal remarks to Simon while being sewn up that he’s had “many worse” wounds.

6) Mal is thrown about with accompanying fist blows by Crow. (Ref: The Train Job)

7) Mal picks another barfight by picking the pocket of a slave-trader. (Ref: Shindig)

8) Mal suffers sword wounds, one rather severe, while dueling with Hamilton Wing. (Ref: Shindig)

9) Mal is rendered unconscious by Saffron’s “goodnight kiss” with subsequent hard crash to floor. (Ref: Our Mrs. Reynolds)

10) Mal is shot in the lower left side of his abdomen by the captain of a salvage ship. (Ref: Out of Gas)

11) Mal is tortured to death by Adelai Niska. (Ref: War Stories)

12) Mal brawls with “Yo-Saf-Bridge” resulting in a bleeding, possibly broken nose. (Ref: Trash)

13) Mal is knocked unconscious by Jubal Early. (Ref: Objects in Space)

14) Mal is beaten up by the Operative at first meeting. (Ref: Serenity the Movie)

15) Mal is shot in the back by the Operative near Mr. Universe’s backup transmitter. (Ref: Serenity the Movie)

16) Mal suffers numerous injuries in his final brawl with the Operative, including an abdominal sword wound. (Ref: Serenity the Movie)

As a followup, here are the six episodes in which Mal took no physical damage (but others did):

Bushwhacked (Jayne is jumped by the survivor of the reaver attack).

Safe (Shepherd Book is severely wounded in a shootout).

Jaynestown (Simon Tam is beaten and slashed on the arm by Stitch Hessian).

Ariel (Jayne is slashed across the chest by River, brawls with a guard during the getaway, and finally gets slammed in the head with a wrench by Mal).

The Message (Wash is grazed on the side of his head by a bullet).

Heart of Gold (the single episode in which no one on the crew suffers physical harm).

There were, of course, many other wounds suffered by the crew, such as Kaylee’s bullet wound in the pilot episode, Jayne’s bullet wound while rescuing Mal from Niska, Simon’s bullet wounds (by Jubal Early and the reavers), and of course Book and Wash were killed in Serenity the Movie.

Even if the far future has phenomenally great health care compared to the early 21st Century, it might be for the best that the series was only 14 episodes and one movie long.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 11:46 AM

FLORALBUNNY

Pretty comprehensive, Goldbrick.

You might want to add Jayne's leg being impaled by a Reaver harpoon during the pilot mule chase.

We did a thread way back when which catalogued Mal's scars.
Mal's head has taken quite a bit -- how long until he is punch-drunk?

bun

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 1:12 PM

BYTEMITE

I for one suspect that his shrapneled nerve cluster doesn't remotely represent the entirety of the injuries he may have taken in the war.

Interestingly, I read the script to Objects in Space recently, and the nerve cluster thing is actually first revealed there, when Jubal Early hits him, fails to incapacitate him, then knocks him out another way. I always thought Joss pulled that one out of no where for Serenity, turns out he'd been planning it for a while.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 1:22 PM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I read the script to Objects in Space recently, and the nerve cluster thing is actually first revealed there, when Jubal Early hits him, fails to incapacitate him, then knocks him out another way. I always thought Joss pulled that one out of no where for Serenity, turns out he'd been planning it for a while.

As Spock would say, fascinating.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 1:27 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Mal's head has taken quite a bit -- how long until he is punch-drunk?

Zoe(deadpan):"You mean he's not ?"

-F

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 3:23 PM

PLATONIST

Adding to the list because this is the most interesting post I’ve read this month:)

Mal takes a beating in the "Better Days" comic from Inara's client. He's all cut up and bandaged at the end.

In Heart of Gold, no crew member gets physically harmed, yes, but Mal takes an emotional lashing from Inara, when she says she needs to leave. He doesn't seem to bounce back by the time of Serenity, though. Physical wounds heal, emotional wounds, not so much.

Joss and Nathan have both said their favorite thing to do was beat up on Mal, like a spanking boy, so it is quite likely if the series would have continued we would have seen more of the same miraculous physical recovery coupled with emotional devastation, especially for Mal.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 3:41 PM

ZZETTA13

Lets not forget he survived as U S paratrooper private Ryan during WW2 in “Saving Private Ryan”. At least he was still alive when Tom Hanks left him and also…….. countless pink slips from F*><.

The captain is resilient. Castle should write a book about him.

Z

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 3:47 PM

UNABASHEDVIXEN

Also, Nathan himself was hurt in the BDM, because he kept actually falling on his face for the shot when he's on the platform with the Operative. Joss says on the commentary he noticed Nathan's cheek was getting bruised and swollen and they had to break from filming.

*
People before profits

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 3:50 PM

NCBROWNCOAT

Falls from a roof in Outing Riley.

Almost gets absorbed by an alien and suffers another abdominal wound in Slither.

And Nathan actually gets killed in....

White Noise: The Light. And it was a marvelous open eyed death scene. And he still saves the day.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 6:44 PM

BYTEMITE

UnabashedVixen: bruised heck. I heard Nathan just about gave himself a concussion.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 7:17 PM

RIVERDANCER

Interesting indeed. I'd noticed before how Mal suffered barely unscathed, especially in the movie, but hadn't thought of the full extent.

Please forgive my tendency to correct:

Quote:
Originally posted by Goldbrick:
Mal remarks to Simon while being sewn up that he’s had “many worse” wounds.

I do believe he says 'plenty' worse. That could mean he had several, or 'many' worse wounds, or it could mean he's had one or two that were far worse than this one.

Quote:
Hamilton Wing. (Ref: Shindig)

Atherton.

Quote:
Mal is tortured to death by Adelai Niska.

And he lost his ear, which was reattached and showed no visible damage.

Quote:
shot in the back by the Operative

Though I would think the real injury there came from falling first onto the railing, and then onto the floor. The weapon used by the Operative was a sonic blaster, a smaller version of the weapons we saw the Alliance using in 'Ariel,' which seem designed to knock someone down and possibly wind them, without doing any real damage. I think there are at least some members of the Alliance who prefer more humane weapons and methods, despite the inhumanity we see from them as well.

Mal also gets socked in the face by Shepherd Book in 'Those Left Behind'

He does take a lot of punishment. Most of the crew seem to. Really, it seems like most characters in most forms of entertainment take more punishment than most human beings could be expected to survive.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 8:38 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

After TTJ barfight, his hand could use a weave, but he declines Simon's offer.

Does he not get whacked about battling the survivor at the end of Bushwhacked?

Does sticking himself in the heart with adrenaline count in OoG?

He has an ear removed in War Stories.
He gets beat a bit by Niska's henchman while Zoe tells everybody not to help him.
And Jayne whacks him in the wounded gut "Hey, wife soup."

He did seem to battle a bit with nekkid Tracey.

He gets decked by Simon in the BDM. After surviving the crashlanding of the mule in the cargo bay.

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Tuesday, April 13, 2010 7:30 PM

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

The film added a tidbit of showing a scar in his chest at the location where Crow threw the blade into him in The Train Job.

Alas, while that was cool, it didn't jive with the fact that in "Trash" he was nude, sans scar.

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Tuesday, April 13, 2010 9:31 PM

REENACT12321

Don't forget the concussion, shrapnel and emotional scarring he took as Captain Hammer as the deathray exploded on him and killed Felicia Day.

"...we need a hood ornament..."

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Tuesday, April 13, 2010 11:10 PM

THESOMNAMBULIST

Originally posted by Bytemite:
[

Quote:
Interestingly, I read the script to Objects in Space recently, and the nerve cluster thing is actually first revealed there, when Jubal Early hits him, fails to incapacitate him, then knocks him out another way. I always thought Joss pulled that one out of no where for Serenity, turns out he'd been planning it for a while.

That's Joss through and through. Nicely observed Bytemite

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Wednesday, April 14, 2010 9:11 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I read the script to Objects in Space recently, and the nerve cluster thing is actually first revealed there, when Jubal Early hits him, fails to incapacitate him, then knocks him out another way. I always thought Joss pulled that one out of no where for Serenity, turns out he'd been planning it for a while.

Early and the Operative both like to touch Mal's "nerve cluster". That is a perverted fascination because that-nerve-cluster-of-painful-paralysis does not actually exist in human anatomy books. I'm a curmudgeon about it -- Joss Whedon needs to move the script along and he goes all J. K. Rowling and makes facts up. That's okay for Buffy/Angel/Harry Potter, where magic rules, but not so much so for science-fiction. If the script is going to be real, then go for the big laugh and paralyze Mal by punching him in the balls (

ultimate dirty fighting -- hitting below the belt ). Mal can take it 'cause he is tough.

Here are the "nerve cluster" lines from the Firefly Script for "Objects in Space" Written & Directed by: Joss Whedon.
I think they're funny.
www.twiztv.com/scripts/firefly/season1/firefly-110.htm

Start of ACT TWO
INT. RIVER'S ROOM - NIGHT
River is lying in her bed. She senses something, pulls the covers over her head.

INT. FOREDECK HALL - CONTINUING
Early looks around the hall. No one around. He holsters his gun, moves back to the hatch, puts his helmet in there and seals it shut.

He comes back into the hall and Bumps into MAL, who's headed back to the dining room. Mal is completely taken by surprise -- and Early is a blur, a little bit ninja as he pops Mal in the throat to keep him from screaming, gets in close and punches a #nerve cluster# in Mal's back, Mal pushes him off and swings, connects only glancingly --

INT. WASH AND ZOE'S ROOM - CONTINUING
Zoe stirs - - is something going on upstairs?

INT. FOREDECK HALL - CONTINUING
Early slams his foot into Mal's face, slamming the back of his head into his own ladder, Mal starts to drop -- and Early shoots forward, GRABS him by the shirt, keeping him from falling.

INT. WASH AND ZOE'S ROOM - CONTINUING
Zoe rolls over. Nothing.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, April 14, 2010 10:38 AM

BYTEMITE

Probably the "nerve cluster" being referred to is the one that makes getting kidney punched hurt like a bitch. It's in the right area. Sometimes the surprise of the pain can be enough to stun someone, if done properly it can feel a little like getting kicked in the balls.

Nothing like induced paralysis, though, but then maybe that's just something with the Operative's technique. :)

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