Didja Notice?

 

On the Lee Garbett cover of this issue, Mal is seen in his war days, dressed in a brown coat with the flag patch of the Independent Planets on the coat's shoulder.

 

Chang-Benitez implies to Kaylee that his first name is Leonard.

 

With Mal captured by Boss Moon, Zoe takes charge of Serenity and tells the crew they're going to find Mal. When Jayne and, to a lesser degree, Simon, object, she says they can get off when they stop for fuel on Nazareth. This is the first mention of this world in the Firefly universe. Like the moon Bethlehem introduced in "Clipped Wings", Nazareth is a city in the country of Israel on Earth-That-Was, said to be the childhood home of Jesus Christ in the Bible.

 

Boss Moon reveals she's heading for a military supply depot on Beta Seven Niner. This is the first mention of the depot in the Firefly universe.

 

Boss Moon tells Mal she wants to pick up a cryo tank to freeze him in for the trip back to the Alliance. This may be a nod to the carbonite-frozen Han Solo taken to crime lord Jabba the Hutt by bounty hunter Boba Fett in the Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. River was also frozen in cryogenic sleep in a crate that was brought aboard Serenity in "Serenity" and "Government Goods".

 

In this issue, we're introduced to some giant centipede-like creatures on Seven Beta Niner. The beasties make return appearances in the following three issues.

 

When Jayne offers to act as protection for Simon and River until they get wherever they want to go, Simon remarks that he's hesitant to entrust their safety to someone who's tried to turn them in to the Alliance three or four times already. As far as I can recall, Jayne has tried to turn them in only once, maybe twice. In "Government Goods", the tied up Agent Dobson somehow got hold of a piece of metal to cut his bonds and resume his attempt to capture Simon and River; it is speculated that Jayne gave him the metal piece to cut with (the maybe). In "Ariel", he contacts the police on Ariel in order to turn the pair over himself.

 

At a bar on Nazareth, Zoe asks for a bottle of Jax. She is handed a bottle the size of a beer bottle, so Jax may be a brand of beer.

 

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