Wait, I think I’m confused.
It occurs to me that if humanity migrated to the Verse via generation ships, that could have had a huge cultural impact. It’s not exactly easy to keep ships running for that long. It’s going to be cramped, resources are going to be tightly controlled, and lots of people are going to become restless. Think about all the rules those ships would have, everything from what careers individuals are allowed to pursue to when you can have kids. The people who were happy under those conditions would probably be much more comfortable with government intervention in private lives than most of us would be. And conversely, the ones who hated that life would have probably run off as far away as they could.
Here’s this, which comes from a production memo from Josh Whedon on the history of the Serenity Universe:
You can read it, but basically:
Big generation ships. Joint US-Chinese culture and settlement of what becomes the Central Planets. Society was enlightened, tolerant. Some people didn’t fit in. Criminals, religious fanatics, libertarians, independent minded people, set up colonies along the rim.
The Core got more regulated and controlled. Conflicts over resources and trade among the Central Planets led to the formation of an Alliance that set up a democratic Parliament, but also a strong military that would harshly put down any unrest.
Eventually, out of a combination of idealism (because they wanted to improve the lifestyle of the outer worlds) and imperialism (because they wanted control over the resources of the outer worlds), the Alliance declared that the entire system was under their control. Some of the outer worlds objected and rebelled, and a five year war was fought, with the final battle, the Battle of Serenity Valley, ending after the war was officially over.
Thanks, Captain.
I think it’s fairly well established in canon that the settlers got there via slowboats, but I don’t think it’s ever established whether those slowboats were sleepers or generation.
And a system with that many stars and worlds isn’t too implausible. The real trick is in ensuring that all of those worlds are habitable. Most of them, you’d expect huge temperature swings as the distances to various stars changed.
The link says, “An entire generation never saw the outside of a spaceship”. How far would that get you, a light year? :dubious:
Generation A board ship and has kids (Generation B)
Generation B has kids (Generation C) and all die off after 80 years
Generation C steps off the ship.
80 years of, as perceived by the travelers is the key point. So distance traveled by the Generation B would be
0.1c they’d travel 8 lyrs
0.2c they’d travel 16.3 lyrs
0.3c they’d travel 25.1 lyrs
0.5c they’d travel 46.2 lyrs
0.8c they’d travel 106.7 lyrs
0.9c they’d travel 165.2 lyrs
Does that cover deceleration time?
No, just the distance covered by Generation B assuming no acceleration and they all are born and die at the same time giving us 80 years of travel.
Halfway to their original destination, they found a chappa’ai. The Alliance overlords all have glow-y eyes. That was going to be the S2 finale cliffhanger.
I’m drunk, so I’m gonna change the topic slightly and talk about how good Firefly is.
It created such a unique, realistic and intriguing universe. The small things such as new phrases, or the daily life on the ship are somewhat understated and just right. It’s similar to the movie Her in that way, in that the future is different, but often in subtle ways.
It has grit that was way ahead of its time for TV and has rarely been equalled, even 13 years later. For example, the moment where Mal throws the first Niskai henchman to his death without hesitation. An act that makes sense in the situation, but you almost never see.
All the characters on the ship are great and distinctive. Mal, the noble, tragic figure, still fighting his lost war. Jayne, the selfish brute, that is still somehow likeable. Kaylee the cute optimist that everyone likes. Etc. The show depicts this crew against the world, and you actually, genuinely root for them.
The show was as smart as any show. There was frequent situations with hidden intentions and characters cunningly trying to outsmart each other. For example, in the pilot the woman Patience who they want to trade with doesn’t try to haggle them down, and they know from this that she is going to try and screw them over.
That this series only lasted for one series is a tragedy. What where they watching in 2002 that was so important that this show had to go? Monk? CSI: Miami? In Firefly, most episodes are a minor masterpiece in themselves. If I could choose one thing to get more of in pop culture it would be another season of Firefly. And people back then didn’t even want to watch this one.
Ok, I guess I’ll buy this, since it’s the creator’s own view, but I don’t think the show executed it that well.
Some of this I agree with, some of it I don’t. I didn’t watch the show when it originally aired. I saw the movie in the theatre and enjoyed it immensely, so then I went back and watched all the episodes later.
I think the characters are great, and there’s a lot of nice touches, but I just find many of the episodes to be meh or downright stupid. YMMV, of course. And, to be fair, even Firefly’s worst episodes are infinitely better than that cuckoo-crazy “Helix” or that whack-job “Under the Dome.”
But I think the main reason it didn’t last long is because it was on network TV, as opposed to a cable channel like Sci-Fi, where it probably could have had a 7-year run. Science fiction hasn’t seemed to fare well on network TV for the past couple of decades (with a few exceptions, like Lost).
I think some posters in this thread have misread Mal’s character. I get the impression that the side he took in the war was as much about where he came from as about any libertarian ideology. The ethnic identification comes first, the ideological-sounding statements come later.
And I don’t think he’s a smuggler because he wants to be a criminal. He’s in shipping and salvage. Half the time, he’s a trucker, more or less. He ships legal things (toys, cattle, and so forth) but also ships some illegal things, and loots dead ships sometimes, for the money. Which makes sense; after paying Kaylee and Jayne, he doesn’t have even as much margin as it would take to keep all the spare parts he might need. What was that part he put off replacing until it almost killed him?
Really? There seems to be plenty of opportunities for “shipping and salvage” without having to resort to pulling a heist on a pharmaceutical shipment or ripping off a mining company’s payroll. Mal, like Neil McCauley in Michael Mann’s Heat, seems pretty bound to the lifestyle of the intransigent thief. He has no aversion to stealing property that belongs to others. He is willing to injure or even kill people who stand in his way. He uses some past injustice as excuse for his actions (while proclaiming that he needs no excuse). He hires on a crew member who is an unabashed sociopath. That he ultimately performs an act which reveals a conspiracy that is not apparent to average citizens, or likely even leading politicians of the Alliance is almost incidental. In his own words, he “aims to misbehave”. Mal is spoiling for a fight–a point made repeatedly in the show preceding the film–and looks for conflict even when it could be avoided. He is The Outlaw Josey Wales in the Star Wars milieu. He is spoiling for a fight, any fight, which is a concern even to his closest shipmates.
Stranger
Well, Mal’s post-battle psychology is definitely a theme. He didn’t exactly name the ship for an actual feeling of serenity, did he?
I think it’s kind of hard to separate one from the other. He fought in the war because he was the son of a cattle rancher on one of the outer planets, but the fact that he was the son of a cattle rancher on one of the outer planets helped to shape his ideology and his view of the world.
And most criminals don’t “want” to be criminals. I think it’s more that Mal does the stuff that’s going to make him money, and he doesn’t care overmuch what the government thinks of it.
I had thought the series lost its direction in Season 3, the Auspicious Year. Having everything go *right *for the crew just seemed wrong. I stopped watching about half-way through but picked it up again when they showed that Jayne’s mother had been investing the monies he sent home, and now was controlling a criminal organization larger than Niska’s
When she was finally revealed was some of the best television of the decade; Linda Hunt was the best addition to the semi-regular cast in the entire run.
The S4 flashback arc was good. Showing how the seeds of corruption and discontent go all the way back to the Time of Troubles on Earth was an eye opener for certain issues brought up in S2. Having the current actors play the parts was to be expected, but Adam Baldwin being the idealistic scientist that set the whole departure movement in motion was a great choice. He carried the arc, and that finale scene was very emotionally charged.
.
Part of the problem with a TV series like this is the economics and physics and politics of the in-show universe are rarely plotted out in detail, and then we see the logical consequences of the setting explored.
Instead, they have a vague idea–a space western–and everything is just window dressing to justify the space western setting.
And that’s why it’s vague whether this is all one system, or they travel faster than light, or exactly how long it takes to travel from one planet to another, or what the Alliance is really like, and so on and so on. Details get added as each episode adds cannonical explanations for stuff, but this is never plotted out in advance. Instead a writer has an idea for an episode, stuff gets thrown in, and later shows just follow along, regardless of how inconsistent or illogical it is.
And so in Firefly spaceships have to take a couple of days or weeks to travel between planets. It doesn’t matter how far apart the planets or moons are, or how fast the ships travel, what matters is that it takes a while. And the planets all have to look like southern California desert scrub, because that’s where we’re filming, and besides, it’s traditional, they’ve been filming science fiction planets in Southern California for so long that we just subconsciously expect every planet to look like the California desert.
And most importantly, space travel has to work pretty much like ocean travel in the golden age of sail. Ships travel independently, ship captains can’t rely on instant communications with headquarters, there are core worlds and colony worlds, ships carry cargo, there are space pirates and space weather, a planet is about the size of a small town, and on and on.