River Tam

"Also, I can kill you with my brain."

Biography
River Tam  was 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. After intense experimentation by Dr. Mathias on behalf of the Parliament—the Alliance ruling body—River was partially transformed into a mentally unstable psychic weapon intended for secret governmental use. She was rescued at great cost by her brother Simon but tracked relentlessly by several agents of the Alliance, primarily Lawrence Dobson, two blue-gloved men, McGinnis, the bounty hunter Jubal Early, and finally the Operative. Almost all of her time on the lam was spent with the crew of the Serenity, who became her extended family.

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 the graduate program for physics.

It was at this point that she was sent to a government learning facility known only as "The Academy". 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 removed her amygdala.

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.

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. In actuality, however, Simon himself had a key role in her escape, aside from monetarily supporting the extraction.

Rescue and Becoming a Fugitive
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, from 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. 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 only that which he had with him at the time, and put out a warrant for the arrest of both Simon and River, labeling them as fugitives.

Personality
River, when she is calm and normal, appears to be quite pleasant, nice and sweet. Both Mal and Kaylee have taken note of this, Mal remarking that "I find River pleasant enough myself". She gets along well with Shepherd Book, as demonstrated in "Jaynestown". In the first excerpt of the R.Tam sessions we might have made the observation that this was her original personality. However, probably as a consequence of being experimented on and hence partly damaged, she is often a bit odd, occasionally making inappropriate comments and throwing tantrums. These have proved to be some of the lesser problems she created, though, because when she was having one of her mental outbreaks, she may commit dangerous acts (such as slashing Jayne's chest, or his shirt bearing the Blue Sun logo, with a butcher's knife), and is potentially a threat to everyone. The danger she poses to everyone around her is made greater with her unparalleled genius and prodigious skill, in that had she wanted to actively harm someone, very few people would have been able to stop her from doing so.

In addition to being disowned by their parents, Simon and River are pursued by both Alliance forces and bounty hunters. Simon, a talented doctor, treats her regularly, attempting to find medicines that help the now mostly-psychotic River. Through an advanced form of medical imaging, he discovers that part of her brain, the amygdalae (which act as filters for emotions) has been stripped. Rather than causing her to not feel fear, which would be the typical human reaction to the absence of the amygdala, this prevents River from being able to control her emotions, even if she wants to. As Simon describes it, "She feels everything; she can't not." The fact that she is a psychic and actively reads all thoughts, and in extension, feels all emotions around her, serves only to worsen her condition.

Appearance
She is a petite, young teenage girl with long brown hair and big brown eyes. When she smiles it could light up the room. She's always wearing dresses or shirts with skirts and very rarely does she ever have shoes or pants on.

Abilities
River displays some ill-defined telepathic perception; she "sees" and foretells the future (though she often conveys her visions in a twisted, nursery-rhyme manner), she can "feel" people's emotions and sense their thoughts. At the end of "Trash", she threatens Jayne by very casually remarking "I can kill you with my brain", but it is unknown whether this was an empty threat or not (however, given River's psychological ability and her not having the habit of making empty threats, this is most likely true). She claims (at the end of the movie Serenity) to know what Mal is about to say and apparently reads the mind of Jubal Early (in "Objects in Space"). She exhibits a heightened ability to detect her surroundings, locating the bodies of the slaughtered crew in "Bushwhacked", finding her way around an otherwise unknown hospital without guidance in "Ariel", and detecting injuries or other physical problems, such as Shepherd Book being shot in "Safe" and a dying patient in "Ariel." This ability was put to use by the Serenity crew, as she could point out incoming dangers, specifically if people where going to attack them. The full extent of her psychic/intellectual powers are unknown, as are the intentions of the shadowy organization who experimented on her, or even the true relationship that organization has to the Alliance.

Although she is deeply intuitive and relies on feelings rather than knowledge, she often prefers to see things in a logical way. Given her immensely prodigious mind, she is indeed capable of being very logical when she is not overwhelmed by emotions. For example, she tried to 'fix' Shepherd Book's bible in "Jaynestown", due to her finding some of the biblical stories illogical. Her way of communication is almost lyrical, always deeper than it appears, consisting mostly of cryptic metaphors and never simple (save for a few occasions, e.g. telling Simon "You're such a boob.").

Despite all of the tortures and experiments she has endured, River's extreme genius and mental abilities seem largely intact. 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 and her head facing away from the men. She only needed to point the gun in their general direction to and then move it after shooting once to kill all three.

(Spoiler Territory for Serenity)

 * (Not canon to our timeline but canon to her abilities: In a scene edited from the final cut of the film Serenity, River calculates the most efficient escape vector and launch window for the ship to leave the planet Miranda entirely in her head. At the end of the film, she takes over the co-pilot's station and capably flies the ship. Near the end of the film, River appears to have stabilized (even going so far as to actually say, "I'm all right"). But given that her amygdala being removed, medically her bounds of recovery would be limited, in that even if she has a conscious decision to become and remain normal, she would not be able to harness her emotions sufficiently to appear as normal. It is possible that the time spent with friendly and caring (albeit occasionally not-so-) company has lessened the effects of her trauma, along with whatever treatment Simon has been administering. It is also possible that the appearance of normality is as a result of the 'Miranda' secret, which is something she never knew she picked up back when she was being experimented on, and had been bothered by it nonetheless ever since, now being made clear.)
 * (Despite her frail appearance and petite stature, River's skill at hand-to-hand combat is virtually unstoppable. On two separate occasions she ventures into large melees, both occasions with 20-30 opponents against her at the same time, and the latest occasion had her fighting armed Reavers, all of which she killed. On both occasions she emerges not only victorious but (apparently) completely uninjured. The fighting style used by River in Serenity was a kung fu/kickboxing hybrid, modified to be more "balletic." She was very proficient with combat, whether unarmed, armed melee and armed at-range.)

Relationships
Simon Tam - Her older brother, her protector. He rescued her and keeps her safe. He is the center of her universe.

Kaylee Frye - Would go so far as to say she is River's best friend.

Jayne Cobb - Always annoying him in her more lucid states, and beating the hell out of him in her not so lucid states.

Malcolm Reynolds - In a way she places him in that 'father' role. Looking up to him and hoping for his safety.