Other members of the crew are Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion); Zoe (Gina Torres), a fellow soldier who served with Malcolm in the war; Kaylee (Jewel Staite), a mechanic; Book (Ron Glass), a preacher with a past; Jayne (Adam Baldwin), a mercenary; and River (Summer Glau), the younger sister of Simon who has been experimented on. Although the book doesn’t mention it, there are parallels between Mal and John Wayne’s Ringo Kid, a criminal who wants a better life.

It’s not a one-to-one comparison, but it’s a group of people sort of thrown together by circumstances. As the book explains, in “Stagecoach,” the group encounters the Apache tribe as a threat — and the way the 1939 film depicts Native Americans isn’t comfortable to watch or appropriate in any way — while the “Firefly” crew must deal with the Reavers, a group of people so consumed with rage they attack anyone in the most awful of ways (it’s explained in the film “Serenity,” which served as a second season of sorts for the canceled show). 

At a WonderCon panel in 2005 for “Serenity” (written up by Sam Arroyo for Comic Book Resources, article now archived), Whedon said: “Every story needs a monster. In the stories of the Old West, it was the Apaches.” Whedon’s version of a frontier threat took a population pacification drug called Pax, which had the opposite effect on some people who took it. They went mad, attacking and destroying anything in their paths.