Ah, yes, Ariel. There are two things I think of when I watch this episode: hands of blue, and the Ariel Ambulance.
If you've dipped feet into the world of the Browncoat, you'll know that the hands of blue villians are underused. They are scary, methodical, and have the coolest and goriest brain melting weapons - ever. These villians appear in two episodes and are scary as hell. They are very terminator like and feature blue gloves which, by itself, isn't all that scary but just watching them work makes my skin crawl. Unfortunately, we don't see them at all after this episode (unless you've read the comics) and we learn what happens to them afterwards.
The Ariel Ambulance from this episode also has an interesting story as a prop. A guy who was driving by a junk yard stopped to take a look around. He saw some common aircraft frames and one frame he couldn't identify.
He answer came from Firefly.
The craft he has found at a junk yard in the desert was what remained of the ambulance prop from this episode. To make a long story short, a bunch of Firefly fanatics pooled their money together and paid for the prop to be shipped to them to be refurbished.
Crazy? Nah. Cool? Yes. I gather that the ambulance has been fixed up and is making a few appearances at different conventions.
Shane Birley is a blogger, huge geeky nerd, web developer, poet, and creative writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
