(000) Personality/Background/Abilities
PERSONALITY:
Kaylee Fry isn’t a paragon of cultural refinement or scholarly intellect. Growing up on what was presumably a backwater planet in a family of simple folk, she probably didn’t have the opportunity (or the funds necessary) to pursue a higher education. What she is, however, is a mechanical genius, able to work on a shoe-string budget to keep her beloved Serenity in the sky. She’s a lively, cheerful young woman who always tries to see the silver lining, no matter how dark the clouds seem.
Kaylee’s cheer is a seemingly indomitable force; Mal commented that there was likely no power in the ‘verse that could keep her from being cheerful. While she’s been known to pipe up with oddly inappropriate-sounding comments (like her blithe parting remark to Inara to “have good sex”, or her infamous line about... things run on batteries), she’s a surprisingly innocent individual who takes in the world with a sort of wide-eyed awe not found in many of her more cynical or jaded crewmates. She’s a sensitive soul who lights up at a word of praise, but shuts down just as quickly when criticized or reprimanded, and she sometimes takes offense a bit too quickly. This is especially the case when her lifestyle, profession, or the Serenity are the things being called into question.
Being part of a rough-and-tumble crew like Serenity’s, she knows how to roll with the punches life constantly throws her way. What she lacks in formal training in the realms of mechanics and engineering she makes up for with her natural intuitive skill and talent. As Serenity’s sole mechanic, Kaylee bears the responsibility of keeping the ship flying, which in turn keeps food on the table for herself and the rest of the crew. Not only that, but on a more fundamental level, the lives of all of Serenity’s inhabitants are in her hands. A simple malfunction in the engine could result in the deaths of all of her friends, and that’s a fact that she takes quite seriously. Taken a bit further, it’s possible to say that - to some extent - a large part of Kaylee’s self-esteem and self worth are tied in with her ability to do her job and do it above expectation.
Not only does she manage to hold the Serenity together, but she acts as a sort of glue for the rest of the crew as well. She becomes obviously uncomfortable during arguments between friends, and she often attempts to step in and intervene when tempers run high. She’s a peacemaker at heart, and though she’ll take up arms in cases of utmost necessity, she otherwise shies away from violence. Kaylee has difficulty even defending herself, preferring to leave all combat in the hands of the ship’s capable fighters. That’s not to say she isn’t brave in her own way; even if she can’t shoot a gun for beans, she’ll rise to the occasion when she’s called upon to be strong.
Kaylee is an average girl who aspires to live a comfortable life, but who is always satisfied so long as she's living among people she loves.
BACKGROUND:
The name of the planet where Kaylee was born was never mentioned, and most of what’s known about her before she joined Serenity’s crew is that she lived with her parents and worked with them repairing machinery whenever work was available. She met Bester, who was Serenity’s mechanic at the time, when they were delayed by Bester’s inability to repair the ship. After Mal caught them having sex in the engine room, Kaylee was quickly able to fix the problem, easily identifying that it wasn’t a broken grav boot, but a bad reg couple instead.
Mal offered her Bester’s job on the spot, and as soon as she got permission from her family, Kaylee became the official mechanic of the Serenity. There’s no indication of the actual amount of time that passes between when she was hired and when the Tams and Shepherd Book boarded the ship, though it can’t have been more than a few years.
It was immediately obvious that Kaylee had taken a shine to doctor Simon Tam when he came on to the Serenity as a passenger. This later proved to be a subject of embarrassment for her when Jayne was crude about it at dinner, mocking her for her admiration. Later that evening, she was shot in the stomach during a conflict between Dobson (a federal agent) and the captain. Simon refused to treat her unless Mal fled from the Alliance, but performed surgery and removed the bullet shortly after Mal agreed to his terms. Kaylee’s importance to the rest of the crew -- even Jayne -- was made quite clear by their obvious concern for her wellbeing (and willingness to shove Simon out the airlock if she didn’t make it).
With Simon’s help, she was able to pull through, though Mal did torment Simon by telling him that Kaylee had died. Kaylee held no resentment toward the doctor, knowing that he’d done what he had to protect his sister.
Mal found Kaylee later having her hair brushed by Inara, but shoo’d her away to square away matters in the engine room. She and Simon enjoyed some awkward interaction as they prepared for the train heist and she explained the details of their plan. He admonishes her to just call him by his name rather than his title. The plan was executed with a few hitches, but Mal decided to return the stolen goods once he learned that it was much-needed medicine for an ill population.
When the Serenity encountered a spinning, derelict ship, they stopped to investigate and wound up being discovered by an Alliance cruiser after Kaylee diffused the Reaver trap left to ensnare unsuspecting passers-by. During an interview with a federal officer, Kaylee went off on a tangent, defending Serenity’s honor after the ship had been called a “junker.”
On a later visit to Persephone, Kaylee accompanied Mal to a ball so they could meet a contact about a job, but not before he’d upset her by saying she didn’t need any fancy dresses and would look like a sheep flouncing around the engine room in the pink, floofy dress she liked.
Kaylee’s relationship with Simon continued to flounder as the young man was constantly driven to distraction in his endeavor to care for River. While on Jiangyin, Simon inadvertently insulted Kaylee with a disparaging comment about Serenity. He was then kidnapped by hill-folk (after he was pompous and River was crazy), much to the dismay of the entire crew, as Shepherd Book had been shot in the crossfire when a deal went south.
After Mal accidentally got married and his blushing bride Saffron sabotaged the ship, Kaylee and Wash had to rush to repair the damage before they flew straight into a death trap. They ended up having to disable the trap, since repairs took a bit longer, but were completed once the threat of imminent death was removed.
Kaylee is later seen teasing Simon when he claims to use swear words “like anybody else,” since he’s always so prim and proper. They spent a good bit of time together in the town of Canton while the crew tried to work out a deal, and were both amazed and confounded by Jayne’s status as a local folk hero. The two wound up drinking a bit too much and sleeping (yes, just sleeping) together, but Simon upset Kaylee when they were awoken by Mal, and the young man implied that he would never be intimate with her. They smoothed over their differences later, though she continued to tease him for his love of propriety.
On Simon’s birthday, an explosion caused a fire that injured Zoe and ruined an engine component, which then kept the engine from turning. With the ship incapacitated and only the slimmest chance that someone might come along and assist, the crew had to figure out how to proceed. Kaylee believed it was her fault (since Serenity would usually “tell” her if something were wrong) and she blamed herself for not keeping things in perfect running order. She revealed to Mal that the situation was worse than they’d anticipated: the broken catalyzer meant the engine wouldn’t turn, which meant that life support was off, and that the explosion had taken the auxiliary life support systems out as well.
Before the oxygen could run out, Mal sent the rest of the crew out on the ship’s two shuttles, putting Kaylee in Inara’s shuttle with Book and Jayne. She and the others protest when he says he’s decided to remain on the Serenity, but his decision stands firm. Although he gets himself shot in the process, Mal managed to acquire a new catalyzer and repair the engine, which Kaylee praised him for once the crew had returned to the ship.
Serenity stopped on the planet Ariel when Inara needed to be given a physical examination so her Companion Guild license could be renewed. Since River’s symptoms were getting worse, Simon came up with plan to get her into a hospital so he could scan her brain and see what had been done to her. Kaylee griped to Wash about her part of the plan (looking through trash) but still seemed to enjoy digging through all the mechanical components. She also helped guide Mal and Zoe through the hospital via the radio when Jayne, River, and Simon were apprehended by the Alliance.
She later also took part in a rescue mission to retrieve Mal when he and Wash were kidnapped by Niska, who was still bitter about the perceived slight to his honor after the train heist. Kaylee took up arms to help hold down the ship when the others penetrated Niska’s base, but wasn’t able to stand her ground when armed guards began shooting at her. She retreated into Serenity’s cargo bay to evade the fire, and was shocked and horrified when River appeared and shot the three men using the gun that she had dropped. River echoed the statement Kaylee had made earlier when they were playing together, saying that “no power in the ‘verse” could stop her. Kaylee was noticeably more timid around her younger friend after that incident.
When Saffron came aboard the ship again with a plan to steal a famous antique laser rifle, Kaylee was the one to devise a method for getting it out of the high-tech manor where it was housed: by simply throwing it into the trash and picking up the bin later. She had to place the circuit board with the altered dump coordinates into the bin after Jayne got zapped in the attempt, and then had to fix the ship after Saffron sabotaged it again.
While visiting a space station for a bit of shore leave, Kaylee and Simon had yet another misunderstanding when he cited his reasons for liking her, and jokingly mentioned that every other girl he knows was “either married, professional, or closely related” to him. Kaylee took offense because it sounded to her that he liked her because she was the only available female around. Matters weren’t helped when Kaylee became upset after he offered to perform an autopsy on the ‘corpse’ of a young military friend that was shipped to Zoe and Mal.
When an Alliance police opened fire on the ship, the crew found out that the corpse, otherwise known as Tracy, was actually alive and carrying genetically engineered internal organs worth a hefty price. Tracy was obviously attracted to Kaylee and the two seemed to hit it off quickly, especially since she was still feeling a bit of pique towards Simon. Although the Serenity tried to evade Officer Womack, they eventually decided to land and allow him to come aboard (at Shepherd Book’s suggestion) because they realized the officer was outside of his jurisdiction and they would be within their rights to shoot him if he boarded the ship. Misunderstanding their intentions, Tracy took Kaylee hostage to keep the crew from turning him in, but was quickly shot by Mal. After he’d passed away, the crew of the Serenity saw his body safely back to his family, which had been the young man’s initial request when he’d been pretending to be dead.
The crew’s next adventure came when a former Companion sent a message to Inara asking for help when a local land baron named Rance Burgess was threatening her brothel - The Heart of Gold - and her workers. Kaylee pointed out that they had “boy whores” as well, although Wash and Simon didn’t seem to thrilled at the thought. Kaylee became depressed because she felt like one of the only people without a significant other, and went as far as asking Wash to tell her that she was pretty, claiming it was very “restorative” when he said she was.
The crew fortified the brothel, but Kaylee and Wash were unable to help in the inevitable fight when they found out (by nearly being shot) that some of Rance’s men had stolen into the ship. They managed to trap the goons in the mess hall, but inadvertently trapped themselves as well: Wash in the engine room and Kaylee in crew quarters. They remained trapped for the duration of the fight. The crew left, disheartened, after funerals were held for those who had fallen in the confrontation.
After all that, it looked like Simon and Kaylee’s relationship was finally looking up. They were able to laugh and joke together, and Simon told her stories of humorous (read: embarrassing) things that had happened to him as a doctor on Osiris. When River managed to get a hold of one of Jayne’s loaded guns, Kaylee finally told the others about the time when River had shot the three men at Niska’s skyplex. Simon was understandably distressed by the confession, although he told Kaylee that he wasn’t mad at her for sharing the information. He knew that River loved the ship and he didn’t want to see her forced to leave. She asked him if there was nothing he was glad of aboard Serenity, and he might have kissed her then if Book hadn’t passed by at an inopportune moment, wishing them goodnight.
She stayed up late to work on the ship, and was spooked by sounds in the corridor outside the engine room. A bounty hunter named Jubal Early (who had already temporarily incapacitated Mal) then appeared and terrified the girl with implied threats of rape and a painful death, binding her and forcing her to tell him where River and Simon slept, as he intended to capture them and return them to the Alliance. Later, River spoke to her over the intercom and instructed her to cut herself free and unlock the crew quarters which had been shut tight by Early.
After River and Mal managed to get Early off the ship, things returned to normal... more or less. Kaylee and River’s friendship seemed mended, and the girls were seen laughing and playing jacks together in the ship’s cargo bay.
A few months later, the crew had apparently resorted to raiding vaults as an alternate source of acquiring cash, and Mal complained at Kaylee when a piece fell off of the ship as they entered the atmosphere of a small planet in order to carry out said raiding. He claimed that she’d told him their problematic entry couplings would hold out for another week, at least. She countered that it’d been six months since then, but he maintained (somewhat lightly) that if the ship crashed it would be her fault.
The plan to confiscate the money from the town’s vault went smoothly until a group of Reavers arrived, attacking and killing everything in sight. Mal, Zoe, Jayne, and River rushed back to the ship on the mule, pursued all the way by the Reavers. They managed to escape with minor wounds, but Simon was furious that the captain had endangered his sister by involving her at all. Simon and the captain had a scuffle over the issue, and the two agreed that it would be best for the young doctor and his sister to leave the ship the next time they landed on an inhabited planet.
As Jayne discarded pieces left by the mule and part of a Reaver skiff crashing into Serenity’s cargo bay, he and Kaylee discussed the Reavers and how wrong they’d gone, speculating on their origins. Kaylee commented that the captain would eventually scare all the crew members off, but Jayne said she was just “in a whinge” because Simon was leaving. She had a point, though; Shepherd Book and Inara had already disembarked the ship for good.
When they arrived at Beaumond, Kaylee offered Simon several pieces of advise for his future travels: only speak with the captains, always look them in the eye, never pay up front, and don’t fly in anything with a Capissen 38 engine, since those fall right out of the sky.
She later argued with Mal as they entered a bar to meet their contacts, saying he’d driven Simon and River away instead of making them family like she’d hoped for, and startled him with a blunt comment about her sexual practices (or lack thereof, as it were). Mal was understandably shocked and appalled, though Jayne seemed eager to hear more. Mal claimed that if he’d wanted a woman badly enough that he would surely not let anything keep them apart, and Kaylee stormed out after making a jab at him about his distinct lack of action in regards to Inara.
While in the bar, River saw a commercial encoded with an Alliance signal which made her go berserk and attack everyone after uttering the word “Miranda,” but Simon arrived with a ‘safe word’ to put her to sleep just before she shot Mal. Back on the ship, Simon explained a bit more about the institute where River had been held and the experiments performed on her. Kaylee tried to support him as best as she could, but Jayne and Mal seemed especially displeased with the situation.
They docked briefly at Haven, where Shepherd Book had created a refuge camp of sorts, but they left just as quickly to rescue Inara after she and Mal held a conversation over the comm which was suspiciously free of arguments, and therefore a trap. At Sihnon, Mal and Inara were able to escape the Companion training house after a short duel with the operative that had been sent to capture River and Simon. They diverted the Alliance by sending decoy beacons in every direction and fled back to Haven, but when they arrived, Haven was burned to the ground and all those who lived there were dead, killed by the Alliance.
After disguising Serenity as a Reaver ship, the crew made their way to the planet Miranda, hoping to find out why the Alliance was so desperate to get their hands on River, or discover what secrets they were hiding.
They found it: everyone on Miranda was dead because the Alliance had added chemicals to the air to try and subdue the population. The effect was not what they had intended. Those who didn’t lay down and die became the Reavers.
Mal took the crew to Mr. Universe’s world to relay the video they’d discovered across every Alliance airwave, but were met with opposition on both sides: the Alliance before and the Reavers behind. Wash flew through the tangle of ships, but was killed by a Reaver spear when they crash landed. Mal was able to send the signal through after fighting with the operative a second time, but most of the others badly wounded. Kaylee and Simon were able to come to terms with each other, however, when Simon admitted that he’d put aside all the things and all the people he’d wanted because he’d been so concerned with caring for River, and that his regret was never being able to be with her.
The operative desisted in his pursuit because the secret was out; he was no longer necessary. Save for Wash and Book, the crew was back together. Since River had apparently stabilized after the visit to Miranda, Kaylee and Simon were able to consummate their relationship. Things seemed stable now, at least for the time being, and those left of the crew were able to live without the immediate threat of the Alliance on their tails.
ABILITIES:
Mechanics: Kaylee is a mechanical genius. She claims that machines “talk” to her and tell her what’s wrong with them.
Cooking: In one episode, Kaylee is shown presenting a home-made cake to Simon, and mentions in another instance that Shepherd Book had volunteered to assist her in preparing a meal.
Cheer: No power in the ‘verse can keep Kaylee from being cheerful.