Episode 3: Bushwhacked

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Recap from Wikipedia

Bushwhacked

A dead guy on the windshield interrupts a little game of calvinball. The crew boards a derelict ship from whence the dead guy came, looking for salvage first and survivors second, only to discover that the crew of the derelict was killed by Reavers. Just when they think a ship full of crazed cannibals intent on chewing their innards out is the worst thing that could happen, up pulls an Alliance Cruiser.

No problem, right? There's just that small matter of a couple of Alliance fugitives on-board, not to mention the cargo they just lifted off the derelict without a salvage license, and the sole survivor of the attack they've got sedated in the Med Bay...

SCENE: Discussion after recovering the "survivor" of a reaver attack
Jayne: Reavers ain't men.
Book: Of course they are. Too long removed from civilization, of course, but men. And, I believe there is a power greater than men, a power that heals.
Mal: Reavers might take issue with that philosophy. If they had a philosophy. If they weren't too busy gnawing on your insides. Jayne's right, Reavers ain't men. Or they forgot how to be. Now they're just nothing. They got out to the edge of the galaxy, to the edge of the galaxy, to that place of nothing, and that's what they became.

A Reaver, according to the Urban Dictionary, is

1. One who reaves. Archaic term for one who despoils, plunders, bereaves, takes with violence. 2. Terrifying, cannibalistic, self-mutalating savages living in the outskirts of the settled universe in Joss Whedon's Firefly and Serenity.

Do monsters have souls? Think of individuals who have done horrid acts of crime, genocide, and violence. It is difficult to find the goodness and mercy in such stories. Like Mal and Jayne, I think we are more likely to say they are simply "not human." Yet Shepherd believes in a power greater than these horrors, greater than the blackness of such lost beings. He believes in a power that heals; a light that fills the darkness. I've referred to that sharing of light in other Sci-fi references as well. Consider I Am Legend and the "Bob Marley scene" in which he tells the story of Marley's belief one could end racism and bring peace by injecting music and love - "Light up the Darkness". In this case it is heal the mutilated spirit. God is such a mystery. How shall he empower you and me to be such healers in this world? All we can do is, like Shepherd, have faith and be open to receive the direction we are given. There is more to come in the story of Reavers...by the way, they are human. But that's to be learned in time.