River Tam

River Tam is a character played by Summer Glau in Joss Whedon's (the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel) short-lived cult-hit show Firefly and, more recently, his 2005 movie Serenity based upon the show. She is the teenage sister of doctor Simon Tam, both of whom take refuge about Malcolm Reynolds' transport ship, Serenity.

Related Topics:
Summer Glau - Joss Whedon - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Angel - Firefly - Serenity

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River Tam and her brother Simon live on a Firefly-class spaceship approximately 500 years in the future, when Firefly and Serenity are set. River, a child prodigy when it came to almost everything, was sent to a government learning facility known only as "The Academy", where she was tortured and experimented upon secretly. Rescued by her brother Simon and put temporarily in cryo suspended animation, the two became fugitives, disowned from their parents and hunted by the Alliance regime (the uniting governmental force over all inhabited galactic planets). Simon, a doctor, treats her regularly, trying to find medicines that helped the now-psychotic River. He discovered through an advanced form of medical imaging that part of her brain, the amygdala, which acts as a filter for her emotions, had been stripped. As he said soon after he found out, "She feels everything; she can't not" ("Ariel").

Related Topics:
Simon - Child prodigy - Cryo - Alliance - Psychotic - Amygdala - Ariel

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River now displays some near-telepathic skills: she sees and fortells the future (albeit in a twisted, nursery-rhyme sort of way), she can feel people's emotions, sense their thoughts and knows what is happening in places beyond her sight (e.g. telling Captain Reynolds "don't make faces" through the intercom while in a separate spaceship). What River sees is open to interpretation, although it often is very clearly related in some way to a future event (or, in some cases, events she simply could not know, like when she insinuates that the Patron of a small village came to power by killing the previous Patron or that she knows of crewmember Jayne's betrayal). She is deeply intuitive and relies very much on feelings of things rather than knowledge (e.g. telling Mal that the cows "forgot how to be , but then they saw the sky, and they remembered again.") and her way of communication is almost lyrical, always deeper than it appears and never simple (save for a few occasions, e.g. telling Simon "You're such a boob").

Related Topics:
Telepathic - Captain Reynolds - Jayne

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The full extent of her psychic/mental powers are currently unknown, as are the intentions of the shadowy organization who experimented on her, or even what relationship that organization has to the Alliance. The crew of Serenity have discussed the possibility that she was being trained as an Alliance assassin. Supporting that theory, River has demonstrated superior skills in fighting and weapon-handling in several circumstances. In "War Stories", she shoots three soldiers with her eyes closed. In the film Serenity, she takes out an entire bar full of dangerous patrons and security personnel, and ultimately confronts and destroys a mob of Reavers single-handedly.

Related Topics:
Serenity - War Stories - Serenity - Reavers

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By the end of the film, River appears to have stabilized, suggesting that much of her disassociative behavior was related to the secret she revealed about the nature of the Reavers. She takes over the co-pilot's station on Serenity and flies the ship under the watchful eye of Mal.

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