The Train Job

The crew robs a train for the ruthless crime lord Niska – and realises too late that the cargo is medicine for a sick mining town.

It is Unification Day, when the Alliance celebrates its victory. In a bar Mal refuses to raise a glass and a brawl breaks out. Soon after, Adelai Niska, a crime lord with a vicious reputation, summons the crew to his space station and hires them to steal cargo from an Alliance train.

Mal and Zoe ride along as passengers while Serenity flies above the train and hoists the crates out of a car. But the train is full of soldiers, and Mal and Zoe are left behind in the mining town of Paradiso. There they learn what they have stolen: Pascaloid, medicine for a disease the miners suffer from.

Mal decides to return the medicine, even though Niska will never forgive him. When Niska’s henchman Crow comes to collect and makes threats, Mal kicks him into the ship’s engine intake – the next henchman takes the offer. At the end, two men with blue gloves appear for the first time, searching for River.

Joss Whedon and Tim Minear wrote the episode over a weekend at Fox’s request as a new, faster opener. That is why the characters and the world are introduced again here.