River Tam

From The Firefly and Serenity Database

River Tam

Biographical information
Homeworld	Osiris
Gender	Female
Hair color	Brown
Family	Gabriel Tam (Father) Regan Tam (Mother) Simon Tam (Brother)
Statistics
Ship(s) captained or crewed	Serenity
Behind the scenes
First appearance	"Serenity"
Latest appearance	Serenity
Portrayer	Summer Glau

River Tam is the teenage sister of Dr. Simon Tam, both of whom take refuge aboard Malcolm Reynolds' Firefly-class transport ship known as Serenity. She is considered a child prodigy, intelligent beyond her years and athletically gifted.

1 Biography
- 1.1 Early life
- 1.2 Rescue
2 Character Relationships
3 Behind the scenes
4 Appearances
5 Notes and references

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

During River's early childhood, she grew up alongside her brother, Simon, part of the wealthy Tam family on the "core" (Alliance-dominated) planet of Osiris. It is remarked often that she was extremely gifted intellectually from a very young age (she is noted as having “corrected Simon's spelling since she was three”), and also very graceful. She has been portrayed and described consistently as having always had both a strong thirst for knowledge and a love for and intuitive grasp of dance. By the time she was 14 years old, she had grown “bored” with her studies and was already in some form of college.

It was at this point that she was sent to a government learning facility known only as “The Academy”.^[1] While her parents and Simon believed the Academy was a private school meant to nurture the gifts of the most academically talented children in the Alliance (the uniting governmental force over all inhabited galactic planets), it was in fact a cover for a government experiment in creating the perfect assassin. While in the hands of the Alliance doctors and scientists, River was secretly and extensively experimented on, including surgery that in some way damaged her amygdale.^[2]

In the R. Tam sessions, the progression of her youthful descent into insanity is shown, as are hints of her psychic abilities. She references the “Pax”, which would later be a plot point in the film, and mentions the Academy's first subject “dying on the table”, something she apparently could not have learned through conventional means. The R. Tam sessions' portrayal of her initial interview with a member of the Academy indicates she had previously had strong “intuitive” abilities in addition to her high intellect and ready grasp of complex subjects. How and when this translated into her apparently full-fledged mind-reading abilities is unknown, but the R. Tam Sessions implies that she may have already had some form of latent psychic abilities prior to being recruited.

River being questioned.

According to Simon, the Alliance attempted to isolate River from her family, though she managed to send a call for help by putting a coded message in a letter to her brother. Simon decoded the message and set out to rescue his then 16-year-old sister, despite his parents' insistence that he was simply being paranoid. Simon exhausted his own personal fortune and sacrificed a promising career in medicine, but eventually located River with the help of anti-governmental groups. Simon suggested that it was members of this group that had rescued River from the Academy and delivered her to Simon, who had in turn financed their operation;^[3]in actuality, however, Simon himself had a key role in her escape, aside from monetarily supporting the extraction.^[1]

[edit] Rescue

After learning about River's abuse at the Academy, Simon is unable to help her for two years. However, Simon is eventually contacted by a group of men from an underground movement. They explain to him that the Alliance has been "playing with her brain". If funded, the men agreed to sneak River out in cryo. River would then be taken to Persephone, a planet slightly outside the Core, where Simon could take her wherever he wished.

Simon spends a large amount of money funding the men. As part of the plan, he infiltrates the Academy disguised as a uniformed official of the Alliance government and asks questions of Dr. Mathias about River's treatment. Simon activates a hidden stun grenade and releases River. They then run to the window of an elevator shaft, break through, and the men's ship overhead releases a raft that they use to ride up to safety. This was all caught on the security cameras of the Academy.^[1] From there, they head for Persephone.

When the Alliance learns of River's rescue, they promptly freeze all of Simon's monetary accounts, leaving him with nothing but his medkit, and put out a warrant for the arrest of both Simon and River, labeling them as fugitives.^[4]^[2] Her skill with firearms is also shown to be near super-human: during a battle in the Firefly episode "War Stories" she memorizes the battlefield in one quick glance, then proceeds to take out three advancing soldiers with one shot each with her eyes closed.

[edit] Character Relationships

Despite her initial insanity, River nevertheless developed some interesting relationships with the rest of Serenity's crew over the course of the series

Simon Tam: Although River made him feel like an 'idiot child' when they were growing up, the two are nevertheless very close. Simon frequently refers to her as 妹妹 "mei mei", which means "little sister". When he received her coded messages from the Academy, he gave up his career in order to save her, and subsequently protected her closely while trying to diagnose what had been done to her. The key phrase that Dr. Simon Tam uttered to put River to sleep, "это курам на смех" ("eto kuram na smekh") in Russian means literally "this is for hens to laugh at," meaning "this is very ridiculous." ^[5]
Kaylee Frye: River and Kaylee enjoy playing together and relate somewhat similar to teenage friends talking about boyfriends and past experiences. A scene in "War Stories", where River jokingly steals Kaylee's apple, results in a chase through Serenity and Kaylee claiming back the apple then stating "no power in the 'verse can stop me". Later on in the episode River repeats the statement after killing three men and saving Kaylee. Kaylee is understandably somewhat distressed by the incident, and avoids River for some time, though later decides to put it aside.
Jayne Cobb: The most vocal opponent to River's presence aboard Serenity, Jayne once attempted to collect the bounty that had been offered for Simon and River by betraying them to the Alliance after she casually slashed Jayne's chest with a knife, although Jayne later helped them to escape after he was betrayed. River seems to almost enjoy annoying him in her more lucid moments, once casually commenting "Jayne is a girl's name".
Malcolm Reynolds: During the events of Serenity, River demonstrates a certain attachment to Mal; when a subliminal message triggered a dormant behavioral conditioning program that made her attack an entire bar, Mal was the only person she actually hesitated to attack, and when she becomes Serenity's second pilot, she tells Mal that she likes to hear him tell her the secret to flying a ship properly.

[edit] Behind the scenes

River is portrayed by actress Summer Glau in the television series Firefly and in the motion picture Serenity.

An addition to River's story is made in the novelization of Serenity. Even after months of surgery and psychological abuse, she has been able to remain remarkably sane — sane enough to hide coded messages in her letters to Simon that escape the attention of Academy censors. However, when she is forced by her handler to demonstrate her abilities directly to key members of Alliance leadership, she almost immediately descends into extreme psychosis, her messages losing all coherence.