Are there other assassins like River Tam?

Question

From the Firefly Wiki

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.

With her psychic abilities, River seems to have been the most powerful test subject, but is there ever any mention of other successful subjects? If so, why weren't any of them sent to locate/capture River?

Answer 1

To my knowledge of Firefly, just the show, movie, comic. There is no definite reference to the other students in that facility. They show a simulation simulating other students, but we don't know if they are real.

We still don't know much in Firefly due to its cancellation, but we know that River was the only subject that the Alliance cares about because of her power and potential.

There was no mention of any other subjects directly. You can assume, from the movie, that there were more people because of the size of the facility that held River.

Answer 2

I would also point out that it was a research facility, and the research had only got as far as producing River (who would probably have been exceptional anyway). If subjects like River are 1:1M, and they could not succeed with her, then there are probably very few at quite her level of skill.

Even if there are 1 or 2, The Alliance probably has no real control over them either, and sending them out on such a mission would be highly risky.

So I think it is fair to say that River is the most talented of the experiments (not necessarily the most successful), meaning that there is no-one else they could risk sending.

I also think that part of the reason the Alliance wanted her back so much was that her story and what was done to her was a serious embarrassment to the government, not just because they wanted her talents back. Given the failure of their attempt to control River, letting other out into the general population would be even more risky.

The possibility that the Alliance could send their 2 most talented assassins against her, and that she could convince them to turn against the Alliance might have also been part of their thinking. I suspect that this would have been a real possibility.

We might have found out if Fox hadn't cancelled it, of course. That is a decision they will regret.

Answer 3

Other subjects of the program that worked on River do exist (they are referred to in the early scenes of the film) but are never shown anywhere (though the "school" simulation might have shown avatars based on real people).

Answer 4

Based on the episodes where Simon discussed her condition, along with the beginning scenes of the film, plus the interview webisodes, I get the distinct impression that she was more of an open-ended experiment rather than a prototype or project with an explicit goal. What I mean is that, instead of doing specific things to her in an organized process that would result in X (most likely her being an assassin), it seemed that they were trying out different un-tested methods of enhancement & control on her to see what would happen. This fact is alluded to in a conversation between Simon and Shepherd Book after the events of "Ariel". Simon believes the experiments had a purpose, whereas Book thinks maybe they did it just to see what would happen.

The R. Tam Sessions indicates that she had strong intuitive or even latent psychic abilities early on, but it's still a far cry from the abilities she demonstrates later on. Based on what little we've seen, the Academy did not appear to include any kind of traditional "assassin" training, but instead seemed to be based around psychological & medical research. This alone seems to indicate that the experiments were of that nature rather than the traditional methods. It's possible that the overall purpose of the Academy was to "force-feed" assassin training into an individual artificially, or see if that could be done. This is supported by the fact that various triggers & code words were placed into River's mind.

Back to your original question, though - it's very likely that similar experiments were performed on other children at the same facility, though their levels of "success" probably varied. Based on the conversation between Dr. Mathias and Simon at the beginning of Serenity, it's reasonable to assume that River was unique - most likely due to her telepathic potential.

Answer 5

As noted in the comments above, there is an answer in the new Comics "Leaves on the Wind" by Zack Whedon. Spoilers, obviously.

One of the storylines is liberating others like River from the Facility. And the final cliffhanger shows yet another subject. All in all, lots of people return, Jubal, The Operative, and it all adds to the answer.