MAL CONTENT

"Zero", an episode of 'Law & Order' which first aired back in December, was repeated this past Saturday night, the elephant's graveyard of TV schedules. During the hour, we met Judge Malcolm Reynolds whose once-brilliant mind was slowly losing the battle to adult dementia or Alzheimer's, but who was being kept on the bench by the machinations of his law clerk.

At one point when Judge Reynolds was still lucid, he mentioned that he wanted to keep presiding in court because his wife was dead, his son was an alcoholic in Las Vegas, and there was nothing else for him in Life but the bench.

This wastrel of a son in Las Vegas.... Well, for once I'm not so manic intensive that I have to track down every character named Reynolds who might fit the possible age spectrum to be the Judge's son, on shows ranging from 'CSI' to 'Las Vegas' itself. I'd rather skip over the son and just move on down the timeline to consider the "pozz'bility" that the Judge might be the founder of the family tree which spawned Malcolm "Mal" Reynold, captain of the 'Firefly' class starship "Serenity" around the year 2517. There's only one hitch to making this claim, however. 'Law & Order' is firmly rooted in Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld. 'Firefly' was determined by Toobworld Central to take place in the same TV dimension as the new, "re-imagined", incarnation of 'Battlestar Galactica'. This was due to an in-joke appearance in the series' pilot by the Serenity (or a similar model ship) over the skies of one of the planets, probably Caprica, just before the Cylon invasion began. (It's about 14½ minutes into the episode.) This doesn't negate the pozz'bility, however. Shows like 'Star Trek', 'Buffy', and 'Hercules' have shown that TV characters have doppelgangers in other TV dimensions and their lives usually run similar to each other - unless of course it's the evil mirror universe!

I still want to keep 'Firefly' on the whole in Earth Prime-Time/BSG, simply to keep that show from getting lonely. However, that doesn't mean the characters and events of 'Firefly' can't also exist in the future timeline of the main Toobworld as well. And as such, Judge Malcolm Reynolds could be the ancestor to Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds.......

BCnU!
Toby O'B