firefly : still flying from the writers' room episode 1x17 – 'hero complex'

george krubski executive producer & head writer

Our second episode presented a few interesting challenges. Logistically, this was the first episode with multiple writers. Although Matt and others had input on the final version of “The Big Stick,” the initial draft was almost exclusively mine. In contrast, Davey started this episode, then had to hand off writing duties to Serge midway through. Both did an excellent job with the process, and as the project progressed, these kind of hand-offs would become fairly common, but this early in, there was a steep learning curve. We were very much thrown into the deep end of the pool.

With respect to the content of the episode, we knew very early on that we wanted to be very faithful to the continuity of the television series, but also wanted to demonstrate that we weren’t afraid to act definitively as we moved forward. We collectively discussed the story potential for each of the existing characters and decided that while Niska is a great villain, he’s already killed Mal once, so where can he really go after that? I’m sure Joss would have come up with an amazing twist, but all we could really see was escalation and repetition of the beats of “War Stories.”

The idea that Niska was ultimately a story dead end led us to “Hero Complex”, or at least to part of the idea that would become “Hero Complex.” We knew that Niska was going to die, but the necessary follow-up question was who would kill him? Mal is the obvious answer, but almost too obvious. Also, I think a lot of folks forget that Mal has a chance to kill Niska in “War Stories” and he doesn’t do it. Might be he does it because things are too complicated, but if Mal really wanted to kill Niska, he could’ve done something about it. firefly : still flying – from the writers' room – episode 1x17 'hero complex 1 Take Mal out of the equation and Zoe becomes the next logical choice, or maybe Wash. Simon and Inara were discussed as well, killing Niska to protect River or Mal respectively (at one point, we flirted with the idea that Niska had figured out who and what River was, and was coming after the crew for multiple reasons).

David and Serge were working on this story at the same time that I was writing and editing “The Big Stick,” so while I knew that we were going to kill of Niska, I was a little surprised when they suggested that Jayne be the one to do it. Ultimately, though, it made a lot of sense. Mal is bound by his morals and his code (which find physical metaphor when Niska ties him up), whereas Jayne has no such restraints. As Mal says to Simon in the pilot, if he kills a man, he’ll be standing up, facing him, and have a gun in his hand.

It’s no accident that Niska is stabbed in the back by Jayne.

The idea that Niska is killed by the least likely hero is also, I think, a very Whedonesque turn, sort of echoing the tone of Lindsay’s demise in the “Angel” finale.

Jayne being the killer wasn’t the only surprise Serge and David had in store for me. They wanted Niska to torture the entire crew while Mal watched, helpless. I was initially very resistant, because the idea of the entire crew being tortured made me squirm inside (okay, it was mostly the idea of poor little Kaylee being tortured), but Serge and David stuck to their guns, and they were right, because that’s what Whedon would have done: that magnificent bastard makes us squirm whenever he gets the chance.

My mandate during the torture sequence, however, was that it really needed to tell a story, so things escalate with Niska. I wanted to make sure that each torture feels unique, and progresses in a logical storytelling fashion. Simon, for example, had to be tortured before River so that, for maximum emotional impact, he could know what his sister was going to, and what he was helpless to stop. We had the idea early on that Niska would not be able to break River in the least (after all, she’s been through far, far worse), leaving him unsatisfied and angry. Poor Book (in yet another scene that I wish I could see Ron Glass performing) bears the brunt of that frustration.

And through it all, of course, Mal is helpless to do anything. Poor bastard.

When putting the story together, we’d discussed the idea that Niska tortures Mal between each crew torture (almost like a nice sorbet, to cleanse the torture palette), and that Mal passes out somewhere in there, so that Niska’s carefully orchestrated show of tormenting everyone is lost on Mal, who hasn’t seen the majority of it. While this might have been an interesting idea, we ultimately decided that the idea of Niska not touching Mal was more compelling. At the end of firefly : still flying – from the writers' room – episode 1x17 'hero complex 2 things, when the crew is beaten and battered and Mal doesn’t have a scratch on him, how can he look his crew in the eye?

As with many of our first season episodes, the early drafts of “Hero Complex” were far too long (we may get to see some of the sequences that were edited out as bonus content, but I’m not sure if anyone has viable copies anymore). There was a lot more stuff with Jayne running amok on the yacht, and a lot of it was good fun (who doesn’t want to see Jayne kick a little butt?), but, ultimately, it was complicated, and action in Firefly is generally, well, simple. At one point, for example, I think Jayne escapes Ana’s room by kicking a hole through the wall. Personally, I think the idea of him trashing her stuff as a lesson is a bit more in keeping with his character.

There was also a whole separate set piece in the middle of the episode where Ana has the crew deliver her to her home on Sherwood (this is preserved in a reference to the planet of Sherwood). In some drafts, Niska sprung his trap at the estate on Sherwood, while in others, Ana asked the crew to take a second job, bringing her from Sherwood to her the family yacht. (Although the concept was stillborn, when I was still trying to “protect” the crew from torture, I had the idea that while Niska is torturing Mal, Wash, Zoe, and Jayne, Ana is having an almost Mad Hatter-esque tea party with her new “friends”). Ultimately, however, Sherwood was cut to a mere reference because the episode was running long.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a bit about Ana. One of the original story ideas pitched when our project started rolling involved the introduction of Niska’s daughter (“Anastasia”), so we knew from the start that she’d be involved, but there was a lot of discussion about what type of woman she would be. Before the story started to take shape, there was the possibility that she would be much more of a femme fatale-type, as openly deadly and dangerous as her father. There was also some discussion of her being very close to insane. Ultimately, however, she turned out to be an earnest young woman who might be manipulative and scheming, but not evil. She’s inherited her father’s intellect, but not his utter lack of scruples.

I thought it was also important to have a dynamic like this (a father-daughter “villain” combo) in our episodes because so much of Firefly is about family. In particular, a number of the episodes in the second act (from “Ariel” to “Objects in Space”) address family in some way (“Heart of Gold,” “Trash,” and “The Message” come to mind), so you’ll see the theme of family reflected in a lot of our first season episodes.

Because there’s so much going on (and because this was one of our early episodes, and we still had a steep learning curve), I’m not sure how much of the nuance of Ana Gurick comes across. Ana is a good woman in a bad situation that’s gotten out of hand. I don’t think she wants to kill her father, but he’s become increasingly unstable and obsessed with Mal (what is it about Mal that makes folks hate him so?), and is becoming a danger to all around him. If we read between the lines, there’s the implication that Ana’s mother killed herself in response to Niska’s obsession (and failing business), further complicating things. firefly : still flying – from the writers' room – episode 1x17 'hero complex 3 Ultimately, unlike Niska, who simply wants to torment Mal, Ana wants to be friends with the crew but cannot because of circumstance. Had the project continued, we would have seen more of Ana, possibly as early as Season Three, definitely by Season Four. I don’t think it makes it into the final draft in any clear way, but there was a lot of behind-the-scenes discussion that the Guricks (Ana’s mother’s family) are politically influential in the Central Planets. That was something we definitely planned to play with at some point.

Another character who bears some mention is Badger. When putting things together for project, we sort of started referring to S1 (season one) as “the year Mal works for Badger” and S2 as “the year Mal works for Mingo and Fanty.” We all wanted to see Badger back, and since his relationship is going to fall apart by the end of the season, we needed to start that decline as quickly as possible.

When Badger conspires with Ana against Mal, this is the first in a series of escalating betrayals culminating in some very, very ugly business in Season Two. Of course, in-depth plot development aside, we also wanted to get Badger into things again so that River could mess with his head a little bit more, which is always a lot of fun.

I’d like to close out this commentary by talking about the ending a little bit. A lot of the episode revolves around the idea of Jayne sort of trying to be Mal (and idea which clearly does not end well), and in some ways, this is a “sequel” of sorts to “Ariel,” so we wanted to end with something strong between Mal and Jayne. Initially, we had the whole crew sort of putting Jayne on trial for his actions, but there was too much talking, and it fell a bit flat. It was also a little out of character for both Jayne (to explain himself to everyone) and Mal (to listen to everyone’s opinion on his boat), so we trimmed it down to a Mal-Jayne scene.

The finale was decent, and I do love the moment where Jayne stops Mal dead by saying that if Mal had killed Niska last time, none of this would have happened, but something was still missing. Although this moment clearly showed the difference between Mal and Jayne – and why there’s a need for both kinds of men – we were once again indebted to Matt Engstrom for providing the final spark by coming in and polishing things up a bit in the eleventh hour. He was the one who hit on the idea of the final moment, where Jayne looks at his reflection, spits on it, then cleans his knife, which, I think, perfectly sums up where Jayne is at the end of the episode.

firefly : still flying – from the writers' room – episode 1x17 'hero complex 4 david elmer producer & writer

“Hero Complex” was an episode with which I was very heavily involved on a conceptual level. I have previously commented on the episode, but with the decision to re-release our Virtual Firefly work and expose it to a new generation of Browncoats, I am revisiting the episode to offer some updated thoughts on it and the process of creating it.

As we sat down to conceptualize and discuss the episode, the initial plan was for me to help co- write it with another one of our Writers, Serge Simard, and, as co-writers, he and I were given pretty much free reign in conceptualizing and crafting the story based on a few key decisions which were arrived at as part of a series of brainstorming sessions and approved by George, our Head Writer:

• The return of Adelai Niska (last seen in Season 1’s “War Stories”)

• Revisiting Badger’s interest in River

• Giving Niska a ‘proper’ send-off by eliminating him as a lingering threat to our crew

• Introducing the idea that Niska had a daughter

However, in the middle of this process, there were a number of real-life issues that cropped up with me that meant that I would be unable to help Serge write the episode as originally planned, although I remained heavily involved in the development of the episode as a Story Consultant, providing a number of suggestions that helped shape the final draft of the episode.

Three of the most important aspects of the episode which came about directly as a result of suggestions from me were the creation of the character of Niska’s daughter, Anastasia “Ana” Gurick (Niska), the decision to have Niska torture every single member of Serenity’s crew while forcing Mal to watch - an idea that our Head Writer, George, was very reluctant to sign off on, but one which I felt was absolutely critical to maintaining the story integrity of the project and remaining true to the kind of storytelling for which Joss Whedon is himself famous, which was one of the principal driving mandates behind the project as a whole – and the decision to reprise the scene from the episode “Shindig” where Badger meets River for the first time and she imitates his accent by calling him a “sad little king of a sad little hill.

I completely understand why Gwek was reluctant to let us go ahead with Niska torturing all of the crew while Mal watches, but am also very proud that he eventually realized the wisdom in the decision and allowed us to do it despite how uncomfortable the idea of Niska subjecting characters like Kaylee, River, Zoe, and Inara to torture is as a concept because, without that aspect, the story would really not have been the same. firefly : still flying – from the writers' room – episode 1x17 'hero complex 5 We knew very early on that we wanted Niska to have a daughter, but I really owned the process of actually coming up with her character, to the point that I actually came up with her name based on my own personal life, naming her after my Russian-born (adopted) sister. I also initially created a very complex process by which she would willingly lead our crew into her father’s trap, but only after having convinced them to assassinate him.

River referring to Badger as a “sad little king of a sad little hill” is one of my absolute favorite ‘River-isms’, and I was therefore very keen on the idea of giving the two characters another opportunity to interact and therefore reprise and pay homage to said line. However, there was some lengthy discussion as to how to actually make that happen, which led to the use of the sale of the Lassiter as a ‘macguffin’ and a way to also begin to set up Badger as a clear threat to the crew, something which Joss himself introduced in the canonical comic “Those Left Behind” (and which we later adapted as our Season 1 finale), which led to him being directly responsible for handing the crew over to Niska.

Returning to Ana Gurick for a moment, I wanted the character to be slightly duplicitous but ultimately noble, which is why I wanted to set up a situation where she willingly led them into her father’s trap after having convinced them to assassinate him, and why I initially pitched the idea of having them take her on as a passenger and ferry her to a friend’s estate on the planet of Sherwood (an idea that ultimately ended up being discarded), where Niska’s forces would ambush the crew in a scene that I wanted to be a homage to Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and the scene in which Imperial troops ambush the Rebellion’s Strike team on Endor, and regret that those scenes were discarded, although I ultimately had to give in to the streamlined storyline of having the crew take her directly to her family’s Yacht, which is where Niska’s ambush occurs in the final draft, a compromise I’m ultimately satisfied with even if I would’ve preferred to have seen things play out as I originally conceptualized them.

George has previously mentioned that Serge and I surprised him by suggesting that Jayne be the one to send Niska to his ‘Maker’, but, as I’ve previously said, all of that was 100% Serge’s idea.

Having said that, though, it was definitely a suggestion that I immediately recognized the brilliance of because it not only gave us a perfect way to get rid of Niska that didn’t contradict what happens in “War Stories”, but also fit perfectly into the way Jayne had been characterized. It also allowed us to use some of my original story ideas for how Ana figured into the crew being captured by her father by having him be the one to accept her assassination contract.

Although I wasn’t able to actually help write the episode myself, I had enough confidence in Serge’s ability as a writer and storyteller to trust that he’d be able to adequately convey the ideas and story threads that I’d come up with, and am quite proud of the final product, which I personally think is one of the best scripts we came up with in the course of the project and which I feel very strongly would’ve been highly approved of by Joss Whedon and the other individuals involved with the actual series had we ever been fortunate enough to show it to them. firefly : still flying – from the writers' room – episode 1x17 'hero complex 6 matt engstrom producer & staff writer

My takeaway from the creation of “Hero Complex” was that sometimes, as an editor, your first reaction is the wrong one. After “The Big Stick” was released, a first draft of “Hero Complex” landed in my e-mail inbox, and on first read, I frankly thought it was a mess.

Perhaps this was due to my not having been involved at all in the planning stages for the episode. Perhaps it was because George's 'Big Stick' (he he) was in such good shape on first read that it immediately spoiled me. The first draft of “Hero Complex” was too long, too complex, kind of weird in parts, and had way too much action. I just didn't really “get it” from how it read on the page, and if I wasn't getting it our readers wouldn't get it. It just seemed like a set-up, a sprawling action sequence, and then Niska gets killed, with no larger message, heart, or point.

I got back to George after reading it and summed up my first reaction as “This thing needs to be scrapped and rewritten.” I really didn't see a way to work with what was there. I honestly couldn't even edit it because I wouldn't even know where to start.

George told me that he'd work on it over the span of a week or so, and that he'd get back to me later.

I got the second draft, and what George did with the episode was fantastic. It still needed a little work here and there, but in reading it I could now see the episode in my mind, and once again the characters would speak up and suggest alternate lines or different reactions. I imagine because George was involved in the planning of the story, he knew better what it was supposed to be about, and was better able to refine the story, the characters' interactions, and make “the point” more readily apparent to a fresh reader like me.

So ultimately I was wrong. There was enough there in the first draft to create a good episode, and turning a blank page into something workable is the most difficult part of writing. My gut reaction was not without worth, as I'm sure it allowed George to edit the episode as extensively as he did. The lesson for me in watching the first draft transform into the second was patience and temperance, and doing the best you can as an editor working with what is already there on the page. Again, editing is easier than writing that first draft.

The episode really hits its stride in the torturing sequence. Each crew member needed to “shine” as sick as that sounds. We needed to see the “real yous” in their being tortured, as Shan Yu is quoted in the mythology of the 'Verse. firefly : still flying – from the writers' room – episode 1x17 'hero complex 7 Wash and Zoe are tortured as husband and wife, Wash begging to take the place of his wife. Zoe, presumably since we don't see, takes the torture like the badass she is, while Wash wants to protect her as her husband. We admire Wash for his courage, even though we know Zoe is the stronger of the two.

Kaylee passes out early. Poor girl. The violence, terror and pain is just too much for her mind to process.

Simon is defiant and strong, until he believes he can still protect his sister, and only then does he allow himself to scream.

River is unimpressed with her torturers. She's been through much worse.

Book seems to egg them on, appears to revel in it, and enjoys being the better man.

Inara feels nothing. She weeps, fearing she will never feel again.

In a sick way, the torture sequences are like a poem of sorts. Short, brutal, and powerful. They needed a rhythm, each one building to the next, like movements in a symphony. The sequences were suitably disturbing, but I felt they could be ramped up a bit through how the characters reacted to the pain and humiliation. And less is more, not only to retain the television friendliness of the time Firefly aired – a bar that keeps being lowered or raised depending on the strength of your stomach.

It's hard to remember most of my little edits, but I do remember some of the changes I made to the torture sequences, because sick stuff tends to stick in the brainpan. I loved the idea of Book literally “turning his other cheek” to his torturers – it was a powerful end to his torture sequence, and makes Book victorious in his suffering. Plus, it's a pretty badass thing for a Christian preacher to do, and shows he's the real deal. For the second episode in a row, we do show he is obviously something more than a preacher. This doesn't seem to be his first time on the rack, but perhaps this was his first time to “turn the other cheek” to his enemies.

I wanted to have River say something about the Blue Hands during her torture, to vividly show her comparing her torturers to what she suffered in the past, so that line was a neat end to her sequence.

My dark side really came out with Inara. I thought, what could be the worst thing they could do to her, and because of her profession, the idea that they could take away her sensation of physical pleasure was a simple, twisted idea. No pain, and thus no pleasure, would be torture to her for the rest of her life.

firefly : still flying – from the writers' room – episode 1x17 'hero complex 8 Finally, George mentioned in his commentary the ending of the episode and my little contribution that summed up the whole point of the story. In reading the episode, I loved how it kept coming back again and again to the Jayne's knife. It becomes another character in this story, almost with a life and mind of its own. Near the beginning of the episode, River looks at her reflection in the blade, and it just occurred to me that having Jayne do so as well at the end would bring a nice sense of symbolic completion to the episode. He was already fiddling with his knife while talking with Mal, and Jayne's penchant for spitting while sharpening his knife made the idea of him spitting on his own reflection almost automatic. And then the swipe of the rag to blackout.

I'm glad the little image that said so much worked, and early on in the project it was one of those moments we created that made us feel like we were doing something special, and in the spirit and tradition of the show.

firefly : still flying – from the writers' room – episode 1x17 'hero complex 9