But said power source is cheap to run, but not obtain. Would you want to give an expensive reactor to a bunch of yokels who might be as likely to use it to make moonshine as mine ore.
Especially since the Alliance has been stated to drop people on these new planets with "a few tools and maybe a herd." My guess is that the rim worlds are seen a more of a dumping ground for excess population than as a potential source of income for the Alliance.I believe someone else postulated it would be hard to obtain.
When you have cheap energy and cheap labor, you have inexpensive factories, inexpensive mining and smelting and inexpensive transportation. You can make and transport “Mr. Fusion” easily.
At which point, I give up.
It’s poetic license on a TV show. 
Also keep in mind that Mr. Fusion requires the tender loving attention of Kaylee to keep running (hmm… I think I could stand having to be Serenity’s main engine). So every one of these Mr. Fusions requires it’s own mechanic to keep in operation. That’s fine if Mr. Fusion powers a ship that goes from place to place making money to feed Mr. Fusion (He’s a hungry bastard) and to keep him mended, but I doubt every settler on the rim worlds can exactly afford all that, even assuming they could get Mr. Fusion affordably. A horse, you feed him and keep him dry, and that’s about all you need aside from maybe the occasional vet visit. Assume the planets are already teraformed, and you can just mass produce a bunch of horse clones (with enough genetic variance to make it worth your trouble, assuming it’s not too difficult to just hold the shift key and highlight 20 or 50 gene samples and dump them into the equinoclonotron. Hell, just let the horse wander for a bit and he’ll feed himself. Let’s see Mr. Fusion do that, the lazy bum
As for Firefly being sci-fi, somewhere I picked up the habit of seperating science fiction from sci-fi. Science Fiction is a kind of storytelling that is rooted in a real science, which it tends to stick rather faithfully to (even if it ignores sciences unrelated to the central one) Thus, Dune is science fiction, since it centers around ecology and to a much lesser degree political science. Sci-Fi is storytelling centered around how science affects people, even if said science is itself rather bunk. Star Trek is sci-fi. Star Wars is either sci-fi or space opera, depending on who you ask and how you look at it (the science of Star Wars is fairly constant in the movies, even if it is vague and made-up in nature.)
Of course, in Star Wars, sometimes the Wizard really DID do it. 
All I ever saw Doc do to Mr. Fusion was toss an empty beer can into it. The settler crowd shouldn’t have much of a problem with that.
We don’t know what the power source is, though, whether it’s as easy to maintain as a lawnmower or as difficult as a Space Shuttle.
Again, it’s TV.
Although if settlers have been transported like unto Australia it’s a different matter.
Saywha? I think I’m missing a joke here. 
Back To The Future. Doc’s flying DeLorean was powered by a Mr. Fusion device.
It was a more or less magical device that fitted onto the back of the DeLorean time traveling car. It was patterned after a Mr. Coffee coffee maker. A little box, you throw some garbage in it, and voila, fusion power!
:smack:
What does this tell me? It tells me it’s been too long since I watched classic sci-fi.
You know, the high tech stuff may be embargoed on the outer rim worlds. Perhaps the core worlds don’t want them to become too powerful, or basically they are being ignored because the core worlds are greedy and don’t care about them. Or perhaps there just isn’t enough manpower and wealth out in the rim to constantly maintain, repair, and refuel complicated machinery. Or maybe the towns have all the power they could ever need, but what the rim worlds lack is an infrastructure to transport the power where it needs to be, and the equipment that can use it in the first place.
Back to ‘War Stories’: One of my favorite parts was when Nika was kicking into his big speech about how she would have to choose one of them, and she just totally cut him off at the knees. Hilarious…
Adam Baldwin looks absolutely natural with weapons, I must say. You could convince me he had real military training somewhere. Unfortunately, Gina Torres looks completely unnatural in this show, running around corners with her head cocked over that little rifle. And that roll and draw two guns thing was pretty clumsy. Slow and basically unbelievable. Did anyone else think so?
Kinda seems that way to me too. All the power you want, but no useful appliances to plug in. Maybe you could rig up a space heater to keep your horses warm at night.
I don’t think he’s ever been in the military, but in the commentary, they mention how he’s done a lot of action stuff, and knows how to naturally “lead with his gun” whatever that means. I was in the military, and don’t recall anyone specifically telling me to “lead with my gun,” but I suppose they just mean “act like you might actually plan on using that weapon.”
I know the scene you’re talking about, and it did look unnatural, if not a bit silly. I guess most of her roles have involved swords & arm blasters, not actual guns.
I agree, but I don’t think it was her fault. I think it was a stupid thing they asked her to do, and she did the best she could, but it was just a bad idea: the writers wanting to give Zoe a badass moment but unable to think up anything better. Note how there are like three or four edits throughout the roll and shoot, trying to cover up the basic dopiness of the maneuver.
But yeah, I agree, it may be my least favorite moment of this particular episode.
Contrasted with the phenomenally amazing stunt where one of Niska’s goons gets shot, goes into freefall, and bounces his head off that shelf thing, which is one of my favorite physical moments in the show. Watch it on slow motion; it’s a truly brilliant little piece of stunt work.
Huh. I liked the roll-and-draw. Yeah, it was goofy, but I still laughed and said, “YEAH!” Maybe it was a little Kung Fu Hustle, and that’s not normally the show’s humor, but it still amused me.
Daniel
I like this idea. It seems possible that the Alliance could be afraid that the Browncoats (who seem to be largely from the border planets) could rise again. I can think of a few Independents who probably wouldn’t be adverse to giving the war another shot…
This is completely off topic, but I just have to mention that as much as I want to read the Firefly comic AND support my local comic book store, they totally suck. I stopped in yesterday, and was reminded of this yet again.
Guys, if you want women to shop in your store:
a) Clean it at least semi-regularly – nobody likes to walk into a store and immediately smell unwashed boy. (and we’re not talking the good, “borrowed his shirt” kind of boy-smell.)
b) Don’t have all the displays near the door focus on naked women with physically impossible measurements.
c) Don’t sit in the back with all your cronies playing D&D, and then all stop and STARE when a girl comes into the store. Especially if you are then going to CONTINUE staring rather than either going back to your game or asking the lady if she’d like some help. Nobody likes to shop while being stared at!
d) Label your damn sections so that the lady you aren’t helping find anything can find shit herself in your smelly, dark store.
So, yeah, I didn’t wind up giving them my three bucks, but since everything was poorly organized and the general vibe was so sketchy, by the time I resigned myself to not being able to locate it myself I decided I didn’t want them to have my money, anyway. Rrrrgh.
Such timimg! We head off to Comic-Con in about 15 minutes, and the major dislike expressed by my wife about going is #1.
50,000 unwashed Comic Book Guys. I’d better find my nose-plugs!
Heh, a couple years back at A-Kon (I think it was A-Kon 14) the hotel hired a guy to just wander around amongst the congoers with a giant tank of febreeze strapped to his back with one of those spraying attatchments than bug exterminator guys use.
Oddly enough, nobody (at least, nobody the Con staff cared about) complained.
Also, one of the anime companies in Houston, ADV, sells “Otaku soap” to it’s fans as a side-venture. You wash yourself enough with the soap, you get the toy hidden inside.
Tell Mrs. Silenus I feel her pain. On the other hand, I would totally put up with it for the chance to witness a Penny Arcade/ Scott McCloud cage match.
Jenny, that sucks. I sometimes get a little nervous in my local comic book store, but more because I’m a newbie and not totally knowledgeable about comics than because I’m a girl. The people there actually seem perfectly nice and never mock my purchases.
Kyla, oh, I’m well aware that nice friendly comic book stores exist, I’m just lamenting that the one I pass every freaking day can’t be one of them. And then I feel sorta guilty for buying online or at Borders instead, even though it’s their fault for having a crappy boys club kind of store.
Back on topic, I definitely think the Alliance makes exporting to previously Independent worlds harder than it should be on purpose. They might not even be afraid of another revolt so much as just punishing them, a la Reconstruction.
Now that’s funny. Was he going after the congoers or just trying to keep the hotel itself from soaking up the smell?