"THE TRAIN JOB." DVD Commentary.

Series | Season | Disc

Firefly | 1 | 1

Commentary By: Joss Whedon and Tim Minear

When watching "The Train Job" or listening to the commentary, the most important thing to remember is that it was not the original pilot. Joss Whedon and Tim Minear compounded a two-part pilot into a single episode. Exposition is key in this episode and occurs both visually and orally in every scene. Whedon and Minear opened their commentary with an explanation of why "The Train Job" aired first and how that influenced their writing:

Whedon: The pilot, which we assume you have just watched, was not aired until the very end of the series. And Fox came to us and said, "Hey, we want an idea for a new show. What if we aired something else first?" And then on Friday afternoon they called us and said " Okay Joss and Tim, we want a script…

Minear: by Monday

Whedon: and it has to be on our desk before we get in in the morning. Umm. So we had exactly two days to write an entire new show.

Minear: …well to break it.

Whedon: Yes, to come up with an entire new show that introduced nine characters who had very complicated lives and relationships and umm…

Minear: …in a whole new universe that did not fall into any kind of science fiction cliché.

Whedon: Right. That had never been explained to the audience at all and was culled from all these different cultures and so there’s a lot of visual and oral information going on constantly throughout the episode because we were dancing just as fast as we could. Umm. The good news is that it got the show picked up. They read the script and said, "Why we’ll make this show after all." The bad news is that when people watched this, despite all our dancing, they didn’t really understand what was going on because there was simply too much information for them to take in all at once.

Tom Towles: (the instigator in the bar brawl, "Lund") Whedon mentioned that Towles played villains/bad guys in The Borrower, Portrait of a Serial Killer, and the remake of Night of the Living Dead. He also commented on how Towles was a joy to work with and makes a wonderful bad guy.

Carey Meyer, production designer, Michael Boretz, Whedon’s assistant, and Drew Goddard BtVS writer were all in the crowd as Mal and Zoë exited in the train at the station. Whedon stated that they just didn’t have enough extras to make it look like a town.

Gregg Henry: ("Officer") he usually gets villainy roles: Whedon and Minear called him a "man of virtues." Whedon stated that Gregg showed up with a very southern accent and he had to pull him back. He also commented that Gregg began the scene with an overly emphasized limp and Whedon pulled him back on that as well.

Alan Tudyk: (Hoban ‘Wash’ Washburn) Whedon and Minear both talked about how much they enjoyed working with Alan, but how he needed much more direction/attention than the other actors.

Gina Torres (Zoë Warren) and Nathan Fillion (Capt. Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds): During the scene immediately following the train robbery, Whedon and Minear discussed how beautifully Gina and Nathan’s wit and how they play off of one another. They described Gina’s wit as being dry and Nathan’s as wet or damp.

Nathan Fillion (Capt. Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds): Whedon commented that Nathan is great at fighting and they used a double less and less throughout the show.

Adam Baldwin (Jayne Cobb): Whedon stated that he had to push Adam to be more assertive. Adam’s character was supposed to be "the mean guy," but he became "beloved instantly" because of Adam’s approaches. Whedon further commented that he could not remember what he or Adam wrote individually or collaboratively. Whedon gave the actor credit for having Jayne reach for balls of light before passing out in the cockpit.

In the teaser, Whedon had the actors and a handheld camera mounted to a "teeter-totter" to make Serenity move behind the crew on the cliff.

Whedon stated that "you introduce a mechanic by having them roll out from under something"; in Whedon’s case it was Kaylee Frye during the teaser.

Whedon requested that the cgi zoom on Serenity after she is back in space not be made stately or people would notice the difference between the handheld cameras on the inside of the ship and the cgi on the outside.

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones used the cgi zoom and it pissed them off because their show had not yet come out and they thought Firefly would be the first to use it.

In the scene at Adelei Niska’s office, Whedon illustrated how far cgi has come because the camera used to have to be locked down for cgi, but now it does not. This explained how Whedon could insert the ‘cgi paper’ while still filming the set and actors with a handheld camera.

Whedon: "Neither of us has receding hair lines, and I’m more than confident in bed."

Whedon stated that the mission of the show was "Let’s just keep them off guard."

Fox told them that, after the pilot, they were no longer shooting for wide screen. Whedon commented that they always thought of this show "as the DVD to come" while we were shooting it because they were not airing it as widescreen. In retaliation, they deliberately filmed the series in widescreen but compensated for the frame loss in fullscreen by constantly watching their frames.

Whedon discussed how he never really stopped to think whether or not taking out the roof of the train in order to steal the cargo was a good plan.

Whedon pointed out that the Alliance flag was the American and Chinese combined because that is "basically what the Alliance is."

Sonny Rhodes sang the theme song Whedon wrote, "The Ballad of Serenity."

Whedon and Minear gave thanks to Amy Britt for the "wonderful" casting of their nine stars.

Both commentators praised Carey Meyer for the bar, train, and office sets he put together on a "shoe string budget."

In classic David Boyd style, according to Whedon, the scene where the medicine is returned was lit only by the atv’s headlights. Whedon asked for one other light to light the crate, but it did nothing for the actors. Whedon and Minear both continually praise Boyd for his excellent cinematography.

Thanks to David Boyds cinematography, they shot close-ups and wide-shots at the same time, but "drove sound guy crazy."

Whedon, and Minear for Whedon, continually reminds the listeners that he spoke at length on the commentary for "Serenity" about production design, filming aspects, exposition, and the characters/actors.

The dream sequence River has about the school and the clinic scene immediately following were designed to explain River and Simon in as short as time as possible because it had been, according to Whedon, "explained at some length in the pilot."

Whedon did not mention the use of handheld cameras because he had "just spent two hours talking about it" on the "Serenity" commentary, but Minear explained the purpose because he did not participate in the previous commentary.

When talking about the "horrible, dark stuff" Whedon mentioned how, two episodes later, "Our Mrs. Reynolds" was produced, which was "basically a 1930’s William Powell comedy."

What is different about this episode is that it has a more hopeful vision. Whedon summarized the sentiment with "Look, they’re Robin Hood." He said that you have to earn the "really dark, horrible stuff," which they did in the very next episode, "Bushwhacked."

Whedon revealed that he used an ‘X-Filian cliffhanger’ by showing Summer "seeming all crazy" while mumbling her nursery rhyme and then switching to the blue hands men.

Whedon and Minear discussed the "NYPD Blue, you are there, documentary, found footage" shows using handheld cameras and sketchy focusing and how they wanted to use that in Firefly. Both commentators remarked on how they had to "work" to get the camera operators to film it "dirty."

In explaining the exposition in every scene, Whedon commented that it should be "Hopefully, incredibly artfully hidden, but not always so much."

Using Mike Massa, Angel’s stunt double and stunt coordinator for Angel, as an extra in the fight scene in Serenity’s cargo hold.

Whedon mentioned that when they designed the practical lights were added to double as lighting. He also commented that David Boyd, cinematographer, trusts that they hired "good-looking people" and that the light will serve its purpose. Whedon explained how crucial it was to filming because they did not have light and shoot one actor and then wait "forty minutes" to light and reproduce the emotion to shoot the other actor.

Whedon admitted that the Alliance soldiers looked like Starship Troopers because they rented the uniforms from the Starship Troopers people.

The jail set became the cargo bay of the ghost ship in the next week in "Bushwhacked."

Morena Baccarin (Inara Serra) was not enhanced with lighting and cgi in the police headquarters despite what Minear and Whedon said.

No matter how hard fight scenes are to write, Minear would not simply ‘cut and paste’ an Angel scene into Firefly and forget to erase the part about the hero ‘vamping.’

--Erica Marsh