Gun in the cargo bay

One of my most favorite scenes in the series is River's journey through Serenity at the beginning of OiS. The gun river stumbles upon in the cargo bay. No way Jayne leaves that out and about. So how did it get there? I'm genuinely flummoxed.

Theories and speculation?

1) River put it there herself.

2) A passenger (pre-OiS) put it there; as a trigger ala the code in the BDM.

3) Mischievous Space Munchkins done it.

Actually... I honestly think it WAS left out. Look at Out of Gas, the crew has guns taped up and unsecured in a number of weird places in case of an ambush.

Jayne's trying to avoid Mal's wrath and Mal's being a hypocrite, basically.

I think some Terrifying Space Monkeys got loose and put it there!

Or, it was one of the guns that's planted in strategic locations all over the ship, for emergency use, as in Out of Gas.

see, i'm thinking - guns all over the place IS an emergency!

Yes, because River's not the only one What about Mal having a PTSD moment while he's armed? (Oh wait, that might be headcanon )

ebfiddler987 wrote:Yes, because River's not the only one What about Mal having a PTSD moment while he's armed? (Oh wait, that might be headcanon )

snort! might be coz of some fics ups here but now i can see Mal with a sword doing a Sulu in the Naked Time around the corridors of Serenity. maybe i'm channelling charlie, LOL!

Mal with a sword doing a Sulu in the Naked Time

...If this means anything like what my imagination thinks it means, that's hilarious.

I think Mal does have some PTSD, and I think that the crew and Zoe have certain things they do deliberately to not set him off and also to ensure that gun safety is observed even with guns taped everywhere.

Maybe they usually aren't loaded, with ammunition also put up near where the guns are hidden, and Mal when he's in a PTSD state might grab the guns but not the ammo because he'd have to be thinking clearly enough to know where those are or to realize the gun's not loaded?

I've wondered about the gun myself. I don't buy that it was just left around - Jayne specifically says he doesn't leave his guns around and he doesn't leave 'em loaded, and I believe him. Jayne knows his guns, he knows how to take care of them, and how to store them. He has a gun rack in his bunk for his favourite weapons, every gun has its place.

Mal says the only way River could have gotten that gun was to know the combination on the lockers they're stored in, so that implies to me that this gun is not one of the ones from Jayne's bunk, but more of an armoury weapon, locked up to keep them safe (from passengers, prying eyes and the like) so it wasn't one of the randomly placed guns that we assume are there after Out of Gas either.

So how then did it get out there? Did River glean the combination from someone's head - entirely possible - and take it out herself? If so, when?

Truthfully, I believe it is a question the writers didn't really care about, and one they ignored in favour of presenting the scene they wanted

i think it was Book in a piece of undeveloped plot later given to Boyd in DH. It was a deliberate trigger.

Well, if Jayne doesn't leave his guns around, then Mal does (and tapes them up to stuff in case of an ambush - the guy is somewhat crazy).

Maybe Jayne was making a counter accusation or pointing out Mal's hypocrisy. Though reading a locker combination off them is also a possibility.

Book leaving it out... Hmm. Does Book want the crew to recognize how dangerous River potentially is? He wouldn't know the whole of it, but he might be able to guess some of it.

I still wouldn't call that 'leaving guns around'... deliberately placed, yes, with a very logical reasoning behind it (back up weapon on the mule), but I don't think that means there are guns taped up everywhere on the ship

Wellllll... In my story, and I know this isn't canon, but Mal has also deliberately left a classy looking little derringer in Inara's shuttle. In case she ever needs it. Because that's the kind of stuff Mal thinks about in my stories, and the way he thinks about it.

Oh, I could see that. I guess 'leaving around' implies to me that they're left without rhyme or reason, whereas, putting one in Inara's shuttle has a very clear purpose to me.

Heh. Yeah. I also imagine him feeling pretty smug about it, sneaking some of his belongings in among her things. The kinda shenanigans he'd pull, subtly sending messages and staking a claim in a way.

Yeah, I don't think Mal "leaves guns around," I think he places them deliberately and strategically. In my headcanon, Mal has guns stored and taped various places in his bunk and around the ship. I took a cue from Mal4Prez on that one, from The Fish Job. However, Mal's guns would not be "fully loaded, safety off" in the middle of the cargo bay floor, so that still leaves that scene in OiS unexplained. I kinda like Wytch's idea about Book placing it there...I'll have to think about that one. Of course 2x2's explanation that it's just sloppy writing is probably closer to the truth. Wouldn't be the only bit of "we're pressed for time, and don't have the leisure to think about this detail very hard" that made it into the shooting scripts.

I liked Mal4Prez's idea, I guess that's why I thought Mal might have gone overboard in his preparedness. Especially since that one gun was right there.

I never even wondered about that!

My assumption is that River took it in a subconscious haze, having gleaned locker code information from Mal or Zoe without even paying attention to it.

She's beside herself a lot in that episode and operating on disconnected levels she might not even be aware of. Taking the gun might have been a reflex left over from her training, operating somewhere in the basement of her brain while the rest of her head was simultaneously busy eavesdropping on voices and thoughts and creating pretty autumn forrests for visual metaphor.

It may just be an object without inherent meaning, but if she hadn't on some level known it was there, possible carried it around the entire time, the out-of-context appearance of the gun might have startled her more. As it was, it became a natural extension of her metaphor.



Gods, that scene is beautiful.

This to me is the most rational explanation, and the one that fits the best for me.

And yes, that scene is just so visually stunning

I really like Rouka's explanation. (*appropriates it for personal interpretation of canon*)

And absolutely, one of the most visually stunning scenes of all. And did you notice how River bent over with her legs perfectly straight to pick it up? Only a dancer! I love that detail.

I wonder whose autumn forest that was. Inara and Mal were the ones standing up on the scaffolds, one of them?

Bytemite wrote:I wonder whose autumn forest that was. Inara and Mal were the ones standing up on the scaffolds, one of them?

It might be all of them. In the Pilot Inara tells Simon, "You're lost in the woods. We all are." River makes that scary place beautiful.

Bytemite wrote:I wonder whose autumn forest that was. Inara and Mal were the ones standing up on the scaffolds, one of them?

I'd previously considered it all a product of River's imagination, but I think you're right -- the others have influenced her vision.

Agent Rouka wrote:In the Pilot Inara tells Simon, "You're lost in the woods. We all are." River makes that scary place beautiful.

Yes, so right. And Mal sees a clear path in the woods. And it all fits in with Joss's commentary on OiS -- same objects, same place, but different people see them differently. To River, it's beautiful. Just like her view of the stars and the blackness of space in Bushwhacked, where she sees the wonder and the joy, while Simon sees something else.

Agent Rouka wrote:

Bytemite wrote:I wonder whose autumn forest that was. Inara and Mal were the ones standing up on the scaffolds, one of them?

It might be all of them. In the Pilot Inara tells Simon, "You're lost in the woods. We all are." River makes that scary place beautiful.

Ooooh. Excellent literary visual.

Oh wait, I just noticed. River might have been walking around with a gun the whole time? Eek.

Not impossible. Could be people only just noticed it. Mal came down from the stairs about a half minute after River went to the cargo bay and started looking at the fallen leaves, and Simon came out from the common room where he was sitting with Kaylee.