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"Bushwhacked" is the third episode of science-fiction television series Firefly created by Joss Whedon.

The crew of Serenity comes across a transport ship drifting in space. After recovering a terrified survivor and a valuable cargo, they are pulled in by an Alliance cruiser. While the Alliance commander grills each member of the crew, it appears that Reaver-spawned violence has not yet run its course.

As most of Serenity's crew play a chaotic kind of basketball in the cargo hold, a promixity alarm sounds. After a brief mock-panic attack, Wash heads to the bridge to find a tumbling spacecraft, and is startled by a body colliding with his viewport. The rest of the crew arrive to see what's up. River hangs back just outside the bridge door, whispering to herself that it's "ghosts."

The spaceship turns out to be a short-range scow (scout) converted to a one-shot settler transport to the "Outer Planets". Book encourages the crew to lend assistance, while Jayne wants to depart, imagining that the dead spacewalker killed everyone else and went for a joywalk. Mal decides to check out the derelict; if there's no one to help, Serenity may still benefit from any abandoned supplies. No one expects the Alliance to help even if called.

When Jayne tricks the vacuum-phobic Simon into donning a spacesuit and joining the crew on the transport — which, to Simon's embarrassment, turns out to be pressurized — Mal takes advantage of his and the others' presence to send them off in teams to explore the ship, while he and Zoe head to a section that he suspects holds the real valuables. They find some valuable supplies, when River comes and shows them mutilated passengers hanging in the darkness below the ceiling. As Mal sees them, he orders everyone to get to the engine room, but Jayne is hit from behind by an unseen attacker, whom Jayne shoots blindly. When Mal finds the wounded man hiding behind an air grate, Simon mocks Jayne's exaggerated description of his attacker.

As Simon treats the wild man, Mal announces that he must be the lone survivor of a "Reaver" attack. Book tries to offer some hope for the man's recovery, but Mal and Jayne suggest he hasn't a clue about the nature of Reavers. Mal says, "Reavers ain't men — or they forgot how to be", and goes on to explain how facing the nothing at the "edge of the galaxy" dehumanized them. But he allows Book and Simon to return to the transport to cut them down (with Jayne's help) and give them a modest ceremony. Mal's beneficence is actually a means to get rid of them while Kaylee tackles the removal of a Reaver booby trap that attached itself to Serenity when they docked earlier.

Once the derelict's cargo is aboard, Serenity moves to leave, only to be stopped by an Alliance cruiser. When the Feds board the Firefly-class ship, they find Mal and his six crew and passengers innocently awaiting them, the retrieved cargo plainly in sight to avoid accusations of theft. Alliance Commander Harken pointedly accuses them of harboring two fugitives, who are nowhere in sight, but Mal denies this, subtly implying complete unawareness of the fugitives. The commander, unfooled, orders their detainment for questioning.

As the Feds search Serenity for the Tams and smuggled cargo, and tend to the survivor, Commander Harken interviews each member of the crew individually. He deferentially questions respected Companion Inara, but plays hardball with the rest of the crew. Zoe responds tersely about her marriage to Wash, claiming that they're "private people", but Wash unwittingly undermines her by raving about his wife's many attractions. Kaylee lays into the commander's earlier quip about Serenity being a "junker" by ranting about the poor design of Alliance cruisers. Jayne simply stares silently at Harken in his turn. Book phlegmatically deflects the commander's questions. While the interviews proceed, the Feds are shown ransacking the Firefly's dining room, while just outside its window, the spacesuited Tams cling to Serenity's hull. Simon is clearly terrified, but River is enraptured by the experience.

Interviewing Mal, the young and ambitious Commander Harken accuses Mal of attacking the settler ship, which Mal points out is foolish considering that they rescued and treated the only survivor. But the commander reveals that the man's tongue has been split, implying that Mal had tortured him. Mal, however, sees a different meaning in this action — that the hapless survivor is becoming a Reaver himself, having been so traumatised by his confrontation with such incredible evil that he sees no other way out but to become what tormented him. Harken treats Mal's tale of "darkness you can't even imagine" as poetic nonsense designed to help Mal elude prison.

As Harken prepares to confine Mal for future prosecution, his lieutenant informs him that the survivor has viciously killed the Alliance medical personnel attending to him and is at large. Mal convinces Harken that he knows where the madman will go — back into Serenity — and that Mal is his best chance of avoiding more bloodshed. Leading the commander and his Feds into the ship's dining area, Mal spots Simon and River, who have reboarded the ship, hiding around a corner. Suddenly the survivor, bearing metalware facial piercings ("desecrat[ing] his flesh", as Mal put it earlier), bloodily bashes one of the soldiers. As he claws at a blood-spattered Harken, Mal uses his still-cuffed hands to break the neck of the nascent Reaver.

In return for this action, Harken allows the crew of Serenity to proceed on their way unharmed, though he still confiscates their cargo. After Serenity undocks, the cruiser is seen destroying the derelict, just as Mal had originally advised.

• This is the first significant look at the handiwork of the "Reavers", a population of humans that have culturally devolved into cannibalistic and apparently feral raiders, first encountered in the pilot episode "Serenity". Although no actual Reavers appear in the episode, the effect they had on an ordinary person who witnessed their actions, and who subsequently goes mad over his experience, hints at the ferocity of this group. Book and the Alliance commander's reactions also add to the idea of Reavers as a kind of boogeyman — nothing but a fantastic legend to the people of the more-civilized "core worlds".

• The Alliance commander observes that the unnamed fugitive siblings were last seen leaving Persephone aboard an unidentified Firefly-class transport around the same time Serenity left the same planet, events which were depicted in "Serenity".

• River continues to utter mysterious statements that turn out to have meaning in subsequent events, and seems to react to emotional outbursts of people not in her vicinity. This suggests that she has some kind of unexplained awareness of events going on outside the range of ordinary human senses.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Bushwhacked

• "Bushwhacked" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Bushwhacked" at TV.com
• Firefly Wiki - "Bushwhacked" script