Episode 2 is called "Bushwhacked". They find an abandoned ship. When they hook their ship onto it we see some sort of tubing reach out from the abandoned ship to entwine with the Firefly. They board and at first think the crew must have bailed. But then they find the crew all dead. They are sorting out this mystery when a mad crewman is found and subdued. Then the Alliance shows up as they are trying to leave. They have to deal with the Alliance's search for River and Simon along with an accusation that they had something to do with what happened on the abandoned ship. You can find an episode synopsis here.

I'm going to limit my comments to a few facets of the episode and of the larger context of the show's universe.

Of course we haven't even seen a Reaver band yet. But we see the consequences of a Reaver attack on the ship that the Serenity crew board. We haven't even been given a clear clue about what why the Reavers go around boarding ships. After all, Mal's group was able to find useful stuff to take from the abandoned ship. Do the Reavers hunt down ships just for the pleasure of killing their crews?

Reavers are some sort of scary barbarian hunter-killer humans. But they have to be capable of spaceflight in order to go raiding ships in space well away from any planet. That means they'd need some rational faculties. They apparently travel around killing in groups. So they have to at least able to cooperate with each other.

But what can be so powerful about them that makes them such dangerous killers? They are, at least as far as we've learned, just humans. Regular humans who aren't mad kilers ought to be able to fight just as well - perhaps even better since I don't see why insanity would be an asset for fighting in spaceships.

But how could a group of humans turn into what they supposedly are? Deep space wouldn't do that. If totally brutal cut-throat gangs were roaming around in space killing people that would be believeable by itself. But the message of the show is that the Reavers were driven mad by the vastness of space by some effect of being so far away from civilization. The exact reason seems vague. But being mad isn't the same as being a psychopath.

But it gets worse. Why would a guy was presumably normal who witnessed a Reaver attack then become one? Most people who witness their families and villages become butchered do not become stark raving mad killers. If Reavers are just those rare one in a million nut jobs I can begin to understand what they are supposed to be. But a normal person (which I assume the surviving settler was) who witnesses a brutal attack doesn't become the one in a million madman.

This show attempts to portray real humans. For many characters it does. But Reavers do not fit any real human category. The concept needs work. Are they psychopaths in bands? Were they once normal people who were driven mad? By what?

Mal's sending Simon and River out in spacesuits to hang onto the outer hull of the Firefly while it was being searched was quite the clever idea. It was the neatest ploy in the episode.

Before that we see River hearing dialog by other crewmembers suggesting that Mal might turn in River and Simon to the Alliance. What did River think of these conversations? Did she think it was possible? Or could she read Mal's mind and sense what he was really about? Will River ever behave in a paranoid way that is unwarranted? Or will the writers subtly show her making wise decisions using her psychic powers while not really drawing attention to herself from the rest of the crew? How rapidly will River develop?

Is the Alliance miltary supposed to be part of a malevolent dicatatorship? Are the officers free to be arbirtrary and cruel in their treatment of people on outer planets? Does the Alliance government see itself as a benevolent keeper of order?

What I wonder is just how well the writers have worked this out. Should we think of this militarty as imperial in character ruling over subject colonies? If so, is it imperial in the sense that the British were or more like the Oriental despotism of the Ottoman Empire? What empire is the Alliance supposed to be modelled after?