Hello everyone and welcome to the latest edition of Firefly catchup, this time looking at episode 12, The Message. We started off with an eccentric in a top hat declaring that he has proof of life on other planets. It actually made me realise that this was something I never considered when watching the show. I just presumed that there were aliens as we were travelling around all of these different planets far in the future. I even thought that we have seen aliens in background crowd scenes…they must have just have been very extravagant people.

After seeing Simon once again put his foot in it with Kay-Lee (damn it Simon!) the main plot of the episode kick-started with a very unexpected delivery. No, it wasn’t Jayne’s hat which he wore with pride for the rest of the episode; it was the dead body of one of Mal and Zoe’s old army associates. The flashback was unexpected but effective as it helped us to better understand the relationship they had, but that was nowhere near as unexpected as when half way through the episode the guy sat up to reveal he wasn’t actually dead! It really made me jump. My reaction was almost as great as Wash’s. Why did nobody tell him?

The guy wasn’t really a villain, he was just a bit of an idiot. I didn’t really like him, especially when he was creeping around Kay-Lee as I have (maybe foolishly I don’t know) bought into her and Simon finally being a couple. I don’t need this guy swooping in and ruining it! The actual villains were bent police who came way too close to setting some random dude on fire. I loved how Book stood up to them at the end and just called them out. He may be the most under-rated bad ass on the show. In the end the guy (I think his name was Tracy) died so they ironically delivered the body to his parents like he asked in the recording that he never meant as true. I liked how they played it over the end scene as well. It made for a touching ending to another enjoyable episode.

DD Rating: 7.75/10