4 of the 9 **** WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS ****

RealJohn

I imagine almost all of you know that there were supposed to be 5 main characters initially and they then decided they needed more so they wound up with 9. I don't know if the 4 "new" characters are known but since I don't know them, I was just wondering what your opinions on who the 4 are.

I suspected even before I saw Serenity

that Wash was one and Book was on my list of possible candidates too so when they killed both of them off (in pretty pointless ways I might add) in the film, it pretty much confirmed my suspicions

.
Any other ideas?

I'm thinking probably Inara and possibly Simon.
Inara never really played a significant role other than sexual tension for Mal and with no Wash, that could easily have been Zoe.
They also didn't really need a doctor (Zoe was already something of a medic) and with River's intelligence, it wouldn't exactly have been a stretch to give her the ability to pick up enough first aid to get by in the role too.

Anyway, opinions? Am I wrong? If so, who and why?

**Edit by sutty, spoiler tags added

Daelus

I'd say it was probably Simon, River, Book and Inara. They're not really part of the crew as much as the rest, or weren't at the beginning anyway. And Joss has said he decided to create the characters first and then think of the story, rather than the other way around, so I'm not so sure Simon and River were a definite.

TerrorFirmer

I would say the main characters that were more "core" then the others were Mal, Jayne, Zoe, Kaylee and either Simon or River (I think, even if there are two of them in the show in the show, Whedon might have allowed for the mysterious fugitive type character from the get go)

Inara and book seem tacked on and never serve any definative purpose other then what are essentially tagged on sidetrackers. Wash...I'm undecided between him and Kaylee actually.

OSiriS

The definates for me would be Book, Inara, and wash. I'm thinking the 4th is either Jayne or Simon, although I would lean more towards Jayne being another after-thought.

Piste

I think The Four are Book, Jayne, Inara and Simon. Book doesn't really contribute much to any of the stories, neither does Inara. Jayne is really only there for comic relief and I'm so glad he's there too as he's of of the best Characters. Siom and Inara too don't seem to have much of an important role either.

That said, I don't think the series would be nearly as good as it is if any of the 9 were missing.

supersheep

Simon and River definitely. Probably Inara and Book too, like Daelus said.
They weren't new characters, they were meant to be less important characters than they turned out to be. Something like guests/passengers is what I saw them as.
But of course the show wouldn't be half as good without its whole cast.

Fence

I'd say that maybe some of the characters we have now could've been combined. You know, maybe Zoe had more of Jayne's mercenary nature. Or Wash was able to fix the engines.

Be interesting to see exactly what the characters were like, but it wouldn't've been as good had any been taken away.