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Date Posted: 15:01:42 12/08/02 Sun
Author: Wisewoman
Subject: Me, too...and a somewhat lengthy rumination on the theme song.
In reply to: cjl 's message, "OK, I'm in." on 08:43:47 12/08/02 Sun

I absolutely adored War Stories. I'd say it was my favorite ep so far. And, for the first time, I really listened to the lyrics of the theme song (may be errors; transcribed from hearing it only):

Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free, you can't take the skies from me

Take me out to the black, tell them I ain't comin' back
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the skies from me

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity
You can't take the skies from me

Boy, does that ever tell me a lot about what's going on with Mal, and the whole post-Civil War thing that Joss has mentioned. Mal's loyalty to his ship (and by extension, her crew) is absolute. He's found something that neither the Alliance nor anyone else can take from him—his own world, within his ship and yet as boundless as the universal "skies."

The musical theme is brief, but very poignant. I don't know the details of the pilot episode and whether or not it goes into Mal's history in depth, but I'd bet that he was living on an outlying, terraformed, colonized planet, and was probably farming, working the land.

"Take my love…" This could refer to Mal's love of his home planet, his land, or perhaps he did have a love who was killed or otherwise taken from him by the war with the Alliance.

"Take my land" is obvious. "Take me where I cannot stand?" Where I can't make a stand or literally where I cannot stand? Well, you certainly can't "stand" in space unless you have a ship and artificial gravity. Or does he mean the more vernacular "to a place I can't stand" (i.e. despise)?

"Take me out to the black," is a reference to the blackness of space. Mal's superiors in the rebellion took him out into the black so he could fight the Alliance. Serenity takes him out to the black as well. "Tell them I ain't comin' back"—tell who, exactly? The folks he left behind? The Alliance?

"Burn the land and boil the sea," IOW, destroy completely any home I may have had, so that there is never the possibility that I can return there, even to live on the water. This lyric obviously implies "This is what you did," as opposed to, "This is what you should do."

"There's no place I can be since I found Serenity." Having the ship has liberated Mal. He feels there is no "place" i.e. no spot on any planet, that will ever be his "home" again. He has turned his back on land forever. His home, his country, his land, is his ship (and his "serenity") in the skies that can never be taken from him.

Makes me think that Mal would be likely to fight to the death to retain Serenity. The tradition of the captain going down with his ship must hold special resonance for him.

dub ;o)

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Replies:

  • Re: OK, I'm in. -- JM, 16:23:42 12/08/02 Sun
  • Re: OK, I'm in. -- darvangi, 21:54:38 12/08/02 Sun
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