"Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand. I don't care I'm still free, you can't take the sky from me. Take me out to the black, tell them I ain't coming back. Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me......There's no place I can be since I found Serenity, you can't take the sky from me."
Firefly is set five hundred years from today in a new planetary system after humanity abandons "Earth That Was". Under the leadership of Malcolm Reynolds, a renegade who fought against the new unified central government (the "Alliance"), the crew of the Firefly-class vessel Serenity struggles to survive any way they can. They fly between the border planets to keep away from the Alliance and below its radar. This series was described as a "science fiction western" but is different from other space-based shows as it features no aliens.
(For stations and individuals seeking the intended air order of the series as specified by creator Joss Whedon, as opposed to the order Fox originally aired them or that they are informing stations is the order they should be shown in, see here)
Each of the crew members has a special role:
Malcolm Reynolds holds the duty of Captain - he is a defeated soldier who opposed the unification of the planets by the Alliance to no avail. He strives to keep all his crew members on task and Serenity flying safely, while trying to make a living and do the right thing...in his rather flexible moral framework.
Zoe (aka The Soldier) is extremely loyal to Reynolds as she served with him during the war and owes her life to him. Zoe has the strength and experience to take command of the ship, if necessary.
Wash is Serenity's pilot (and Zoe's husband) - unassuming, self-deprecating, and calm with a sense of humor. Kaylee is the ship's mechanic - an experienced engineer who keeps Serenity flying.
Inara is a 'Registered Companion,' most easily described as a high-priced courtesan or geisha. She is also the person with the highest social standing on the ship and acts as the crew's Ambassador.
Jayne is the muscle of the crew. A tough, uncultured Mercenary, unpleasant and offensively direct, but loyal to those on his crew...usually.
The newcomers are:
Simon Tam is the Doctor on Serenity and comes from a wealthy family and has a privileged upbringing. He has spent his life savings and future to save his sister, River.
River (aka The Fugitive) was experimented on by the government. Her psychic visions (a result of the experiments) are taken at first as babble by the crew but they slowly come to realize that there's more going on than what shows on the surface.
Book or "The Shepherd," is a wise minister who knows far more about military matters and battle tactics than a man of the cloth should, and his past is shrouded in mystery.
The crew of the Serenity are in for a gunfight when one of Inara's companion colleagues asks for their help. The Serenity crew defends a bordello from a gunslinger who got a prostitute pregnant and now intends to collect...
An old war comrade of Mal's and Zoe's, Tracey, mails his corpse to them. He also leaves a message asking them to deliver his body to his family. Some men claiming to be with the Alliance are on the trail of the body and ...
Saffron (from "Our Mrs. Reynolds") returns - after Mal breaks up her current gig, she convinces him and the crew to help out with a "perfect crime" that isn't. The crime: go to Bellerophon and steal a criminal's prototyp...
Jealous of Zoe's relationship with Mal, Wash insists (thanks to a bit of scheming) that he go with Mal to try to sell some of the medical supplies the crew stole from the Alliance. In the middle of the deal Mal and Wash ...
When the crew stops at Ariel to drop Inara off for a medical exam, Simon hires them for a job - smuggle Simon and River into a hospital so that Simon can find out what the Alliance did to River. The plan goes off without...
In a delirious state after Serenity's engine explodes, draining the ship of its oxygen supply, Mal has a series of flashbacks about how he came to own Serenity and form his crew.
Serenity sets down at the mudder colony of Canton where it turns out Jayne is a hero for having dropped a bunch of money there years ago that he and his partner Stitch stole from the local magistrate. The drop was uninte...
While completing a job on a backwater world, Mal is married to a village girl without his knowledge. The girl, Saffron, gets onboard and the crew does not find her until they're already in the air. Mal is not sure what t...
On a planet, Simon is kidnapped by locals who need a doctor, while River is threatened with burning as a witch.
On the planet Persephone the crew are contacted by their old "friend" Badger the ruthless crimelord to transport some goods on behalf of a local lord. While at a ball to arrange a transport job with the lord, Mal defends...
On a salvage mission aboard a drifting colony ship, the Serenity crew find signs that the crew were killed by the cannibalistic Reavers. They find one survivor, but things take a turn for the worse when an Alliance ship ...
Summary: Serenity continues to travel through space conducting illegal runs across the star system, which is under the control of The Alliance. A powerful and fearsome mobster named Adelei Niska demands that the crew of...
Summary: After a flashback to Zoe's and Mal's days in the wars six years previous, we cut to the modern day where the Serenity crew is running a salvage operation on a deserted ship and are forced to flee with the cargo...
