Okay so I just watched the first series and saw them movie and thought they were great, but had a question.

Do we ever find out what sheppard really is? They were a few hints that he wasn't really a sheppard, like with his id card and in the last episode the bounty hunter just looks at him and said, that aint a sheppard.

And I saw the movie but


did I miss something, what is he?

That's all anyone was really given....hints. Nothing terribly specific was ever explained regarding his backstory.

One theory is he might have been an "operator" like the guy who was after Mal all the time in the movie.

It is certainly the most popular one, and the one to which I also subscribe.

In my fevered, fantasy dreams, we get a second Firefly movie, and that one is about Book's background (before he died, Shepherd Book made a recording for Mal, you see ...)

I like the way you think.

Saw the movie a second time last night and was thinking about this question when Book was talking with Mal on Haven. My guess is Book was training to be an operative, but never actually was, before he became a Shepherd.

I will add additional Illinoisan approval to this idea.

Personally I think it's the other way. He was an operative but it was the things that he had to do while being one that led to his "conversion". I haven't seen the movie while thinking about this though so maybe I'll feel differently about it then...

That was my first thought, too. However, the way Book spoke about the operatives makes me think he never was one and could never imagine being one. The operatives treat their assassination missions as their "faith," and I believe Book chose a different "faith" during his training.

You mean he answered phone calls?

I mean he jacked people in and out of the matrix

He was definitely an entertaining guy.

My favorite Book line:

"If you take sexual advantage of that girl, you're going to burn in a very special level of Hell, a level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater."

and then later in the episode:

"The special Hell."

I like this idea a lot. Book was one of my favorite characters in the TV show, and I don't think they gave him enough to do in the movie. I was really hoping that we would learn more about him during the film. I guess that we can just hope that in the future we'll be given some more hints about his true origins.

I too left the film thinking Book was a former Operative. It would explain how eager to please the Alliance goons got when they saw his ID card during Safe. And that's my favourite Book line too, JasonF.

Also believe he was an operative in another life...

And with that speculation on Book - I'm NOW a DVD Special Edition... Yay!