Mal takes on a train heist, but discovers that he may have picked the wrong criminal act to get involved in.

The first episode of Firefly, or rather the second try at the first episode of Firefly considering that this is essentially a second pilot after the first one was deemed unsuitable by Fox. Now, I don't know what that says about the original, as this isn't really anything very special. It's not bad (this is Joss Whedon, and you can spot his touches), but it is very much what you'd expect from a pilot, and as such doesn't provide any great enthusiasm on the part of the viewer.

The first 10 minutes really suffer badly from pilot-itis, feeling the need to introduce every crew member in turn, make people spout dialogue like 'Look, you're here as a medic, so deal with your mentally unstable sister until we need you' and generally setting things up in as heavy-handed a way as possible. It's a shame, and though most pilot episodes suffer from this, there should be a way round it by now. That said, when Angel started it had the same thing via Doyle.

While it's trying to introduce the crew (which it does quite well, in the main), it's also trying to move along the plot, which in this instance is very basic, as you can probably tell from the synopsis above. Mal is asked by a nasty criminal type to steal something from a train, but it's only after he's taken the goods that he realizes it's vitally-needed medicine. Now, this could be where Firefly stands out from other shows of its kind, but it needs a hero in charge, so you know Mal will return the goods even if a couple of members of his crew think he shouldn't. The thing is, once you've set up the premise of the show, there's not much to the heist itself. It happens quite quickly, then within 10 minutes Mal has handed back what he took. There's not really any plotting in between.

Now, that's not entirely a bad thing. We've got the measure of the show, we know who the rough diamonds and the shining lights are, and it's already fairly clear which characters might be irritating or unnecessary. Now, I trust Joss Whedon to have strong ideas, and because of that I believe that we don't know as much about the crew as we think. From the evidence here, Nathan Fillion should make a good lead, as he's got plenty of cool charisma, but none of the others really stand out yet. Okay, so a lot of that is down to lack of development time, but I'm sure there were more instantly likeable characters than that in Buffy when it started.

So overall, I liked this opening episode. There's definitely a lot of room for improvement, but that's hardly a crime, and I thought in the main it was well-written with some fun little touches, nice jokes and well done effects. This could build into a pretty good show, but we'll have to see in the weeks to come. In the meantime, my main suggestion is to lose some of its Western trappings, such as the opening titles. I don't think the idea of a lawless, wild frontier really needs ramming home quite as much as it is in the show.

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