Serenity (Open spoilers a plenty! You've been warned!))

Cafe Society
201

The problem with this is that, if the Alliance ISN’T there, then they’re going to be dead, dead, dead. The only way they even made it to land is that the Alliance intercepted the overwhelming majority of the Reaver ships that were following them.

I agree that this would have been the ideal situation; but I’m saying that, as near as they could tell, there was no way for their plan to work. The only reason it did work was that Mr. Universe had the secondary upload area. If he’d had only the primary one, then according to their plan, either they’d be killed by the Reavers before landing, or they’d land to find that the Alliance had already destroyed any chance of their getting the word out.

Daniel

202

The one thing that bothers me is this whole idea simply broadcasting that recording was going to get the truth out.

I mean, don’t they have an entertainment industry in the Firefly universe? Why wouldn’t everyone yawn and say “seen better FX, but the chick was pretty hot” and tune in to the next episode of “Survivor 254: Callisto”?

203

So you’re saying the guy in Bushwhacked who survived the Reaver attack on his ship became a Reaver wannabe just because he liked their dental plan? :slight_smile:

204

Nope: [spoiler]I’m saying that his mind had snapped, and he was dealing with it in a way that made it bearable for him. Maybe he’d heard the same speculation that Mal had, and by pretending to be a reaver, he could keep himself from thinking about what he’d seen.

I’m also saying that Reavers were given a specific physiological cause in the movie, and that the guy in Bushwhacked hadn’t been subjected to this cause, so another explanation makes more sense. Since we can get that explanation without assuming a continuity error, I’d just as soon do so.[/spoiler]
Daniel

205

I prefer the Dental Plan Theory, but hey, I’m easy. :slight_smile:

206

RE: the Reaver’s involvement in the final battle

LHoD

This is what I thought was going on during the film, so let me know if I overlooked a detail that conflicts with my gap-filling.

First, I was under the impression that Mr. Universe’s hideout was just that—a hideout. As the futuristic equivalent of a hacker and an apparent recluse to boot, he would have had the reason and possibly the ability to pick a location that everyone assumed the Alliance didn’t know about (i.e. in a cloud/nebula with all sorts of pretty special effects). Add to that that he seems to take in with Mal’s sort of folk, and there’s another reason to have hoped that the Alliance would not know his location. Hence, I think no one expected the final showdown. Contrast this with Books unfortunate demise—Book wasn’t necessarily trying to hide, so it follows that if the Alliance wanted to track him down they could have.

Second, I didn’t think that the Reaver’s involvement was part of the plan. We all know how well Mal’s plans generally go, don’t we? IIRC, we were given an exterior shot of Firefly’s cabin, clearly showing a quite sane-looking crew. It cut directly from that to the Crabby Reaver Ship turning to follow them. During the film, I got the impression that the jig was up—that one of the Reaver’s saw them through the window and caught on to their ruse.

The cannon was on the ship not so much to look like a Reaver ship (thought it could have) but because ordinarily the Firefly has no guns (save Vera), and if they were going to fly through Reaver territory, they wanted something to protect themselves with. But they didn’t want to shoot at another ship unless they absolutely positively had to. See what happened when they did? So the call for Mal to shoot wasn’t a pre-planned trick to get the Reaver fleet to follow, it seemed more of a call of desperation—shoot now or we’ll be boarded for sure.

So Mal shot, and the Reaver fleet pursued. Serenity came out of/into a cloud with the Reavers desperately on their tail, and it was only their good fortune (egad is that painful to type, knowing what came of it) that the Alliance fleet was there to take some of the pressure off.

Now, can someone explain why they couldn’t email/wave the communiqué to Mr. Universe? He certainly saw it, so something had to be tranmitted.

RE: Inara’s bow

Hokey as all hell. It wasn’t just a bow, though. It had some scifi glowsticks attached and it seemed to do a bit more damage than a normal bow. Anyway, given what little information we had, isn’t it possible that given her training it was more effective than a gun? Also, I don’t recall her pulling arrows from a quiver, so perhaps it was much more than a bow, just something bow-shaped.

Which brings me to the real reason why I didn’t cringe too much. Because the whole series had such a western feel to it. There was almost none of that in the movie. The silly little prop fed into the missing element. So there.

Rhythm

207

No, in the movie Zoe says, “The Alliance has to know about Mr. Universe. They’re going to see this coming.” to which Mal responds, “No, they’re not going to see THIS coming.”

I think Mal assumed that the Alliance would blockade the planet, but not necessarily be ON the planet. Perhaps Mr. Universe’s lair was extremely well hidden, and Mal figured the Alliance would just try to intercept him along the way rather than infiltrate the lair itself.

Granted, it’s a fairly weak plan, since so much could have gone wrong, but that’s in keeping with the spirit of Firefly. As Mal said to Zoe in the pilot when she said, “I don’t like it - the odds are still against us” - “They always are. That’s what makes us special.”

But Mal’s surprise when he found the equipment destroyed means he really didn’t expect the Alliance to be on the ground. He thought that once they broke the blockade they were home free.

No way. The whole, “They’re not going to see this coming” was a direct reference to his plan of getting the entire Reaver fleet to follow him.

Here’s the plan in a nutshell: He knew there would be a blockade of Mr. Universe’s planet. So, antagonize the Reavers, get them to chase him, and then when he comes out of the ion cloud the Reavers and Alliance engage in a big battle, and little Serenity slips through unnoticed. That was the plan. I’m sure of it. Mal didn’t count on the Alliance being on the ground, and hoped they could get through without the Reavers tracking him through the battle. It just didn’t work out that way.

208

Hmmm… good points. But didn’t they attach the cannon to the ship before heading out to Miranda? That’s thinking pretty far ahead for Mal.

I’m still having a hard time accepting that the Reaver Train was part of a plan… it meant really really counting on the Alliance to be in just the right spot (close enough so that Serenity wasn’t overtaken) and in just the right strength (not too overwhelming so that Mal couldn’t escape, and not too small so that the Reavers just added them to the buffet).

Either way, something just isn’t right regarding LHoD’s quibble. Maybe the going to/not going to see this coming referred not to Serenity’s arrival, but the impact of the tape—that is, they know about Mr. Universe, but not what they are about to broadcast so widely. Again, recall that River learned about Miranda from reading Bootsy’s mind, but the Alliance as a whole was unaware of its import.

209

I guess that makes sense. It seems a bit of a stretch that he assumes the Alliance would know of the planet, but not know of the specific hideout; but given the ambiguous tech level, this could well be possible.

And now that I think about it, it’s more than possible: it’s downright likely. The Alliance couldn’t track Serenity from space without that little locator device (how’d that get onboard anyway? I forget).

So: objection withdrawn. Thanks, Sam!

I definitely agree that the plan was to bring the Reavers along: the dialog pointed to it, as did the precision timing of the fire-and-flee attack on the lurking reaver.

Daniel

210

Although it was only briefly referred to, I got the impression the pulse beacon is a standard transponder-type device that emits the ship’s identification (or something that lets other ships ‘see’ it, anyway). Mal merely thought far enough ahead to disable it. Though why he would just toss a ship component to to the Operative with no intention of recovering it is beyond me.

211

He wasn’t thinking that far ahead. They mounted the cannon for two reasons: One, it would help make them look like a Reaver ship, and two, it would give them some defense if Plan A failed and the Reavers attacked.

They didn’t need that thing to get the Reavers to come after them. If they didn’t have the cannon, they could have just opened a lock and had Jane spray a ship with Vera. Or they could have improvised an explosive and kicked it out of the cargo bay, or done something else. But since they had the cannon anyway, might as well use it.

I’m not seeing the problem here.

No, Mal could have just been thinking, “There’s likely to Alliance all around that planet. We’ll never get through on our own, so we need a big damned diversion. How about an entire fleet of Reaver ships?” He was just improvising as he went. He didn’t have to necessarily know that there would be an entire fleet laying in wait - even one big alliance ship would have been enough to stop him if he didn’t have that diversion. Seeing the huge fleet waiting for him may have been a big ‘oh, shit’ moment for Mal as well.

Sure, this is a weakness. The assumption that the Alliance would somehow know that Mal would stumble on a secret right now, and that it would be the kind of secret that would require broadcasting, AND that he’d try to do it right now. The smart thing for Mal to do would have been to go to ground somewhere and sit out for a few weeks or months. An even better plan would have been to make numerous copies of the tape and just start shipping them to friendlies all over the system as backup in case they never got through. But that would have made for a boring movie. Plots like this often have to be artificially driven to keep the action moving.

212

Jewel Staite wanted to lose the weight and never liked gaining it in the first place. It may’ve been because being skinnier helped her career or, more likely, it could have been because she’s 23, has a body she is proud of, and wants it to look a certain way. It’s her decision, not Hollywood’s.

To each their own. If Wash had to’ve been killed by a Reaver to prove how dangerous they were, then I’d’ve preferred him being captured by them during the showdown afterwards and either being ripped to shreds to show how despicable they truly are or have Zoe shoot him in the head like Mal did the villager in the opening scenes. As I have said repeatedly, it’s not the death I minded so much, it was the way it was done… the spike really pissed me off.

I wouldn’t mind an Angel movie (with a few Buffy cameos, if possible) but, yeah, a Spike/Illyria buddy flick flies in the face of everything the show was in the last few episodes. I don’t want to see that either.

That was my interpretation as well and I think it makes sense for Mal to’ve just left it with the Operative – they’re smugglers and only want a beacon if it will help them. I imagine, being smugglers, it won’t be difficult to obtain another one should it be necessary to stay in business which I assume it is or else they’d’ve disposed of it long ago.

213

[QUOTE=John Mace]

I may try to catch a few episodes on SciFi channel. But I can’t see it being anywhere near the quality of the new “Battlestar Gallactica”. I’d take almost any random episode in that TV series over “Serenity” any day.

[QUOTE]

Having seen both shows, I’ll tell you the truth. Firefly is not better than Battlestar, mostly because it was cancelled quickly. Having said that, there are about 3 episodes of Firefly(out of the 14) that are better than any one episode in Battlestar.

The episodes to watch(remembering character development has occured already) are:

  1. Ariel

  2. Objects in Space.

  3. Out of Gas.

Watch these three, with an open mind that they may be better than Battlestar, and I think you should at least agree in part. I’m trying to be objective here, but that’s not 100% possible.

214

I dont’ think there’s any real doubt that the survivor in “Bushwacked” had been turned into a Reaver. I just can’t see simple post-traumatic stress leading to that level of self-mutilation. Rather, I wonder if the Pax agent that was pumped into the atmosphere is still in their bodies somehow. Maybe there’s a percentage on the population that has a certain enzyme, or something, that bonds with the Pax stuff and turns into something that makes you turn into a monster. Could be that the Reavers can somehow smell this on other people, which is how they choose who gets turned when they hit a ship or colony.

As for why they needed Mr. Universe to broadcast the message, and why everyone would believe it and not write it off as a hoax: I think that lucite cube thing with the message is Alliance military tech, and it puts some sort of authentication stamp on stuff recorded by it that can’t be easily forged, and which wouldn’t be carried by any copies they made of it. Likely enough, that would also mean that very few non-Alliance people would have access to a reader to get the information off of it: Mr. Universe, of course, being one of the few. It’s also pretty clear that Mr. Universe was some sort of high-end information broker, probably one of the top in the business, and had a reputation for trustworthy information. This video being transmitted from a bunch of no-name rocks might get ignored, but being sent out of Mr. Universe’s transmitter would give it legitimacy.

John Mace: I’ve only seen season one of BSG so far, but Firefly is easily on par with what I’ve seen. I still give it a slight edge, but if you like the one, I have trouble seeing how someone could not like the other.

215

I don’t get the debate/quibble over Reaver Creation. All we know is that the poor soul went off the deep end after his encounter with the Reavers. We don’t know that he became a Reaver. All we know is that he went wayyyyyyy off the deep end. After the horrors he’d seen and the trauma he was put through, that’s not too far of a stretch. So call him a reaver, but not a Reaver. The only other thing we have to go on is Mal’s statements about him, all of which are more than likely founded on rumor and whatnot, so can easily be discounted.

But that’s beside the point. As written, there is no need for the Reavers That Are to replenish their number with new recruits. I don’t remember the actual numbers, but wasn’t the population of the planet something like thirty million? If so, than only one percent would yield three hundred thousand Reaver candidates. Even if you take off of that for those that didn’t make it past atmo’ and attrition during the past twelve years, that’s still quite a number of Reaverfolk out there to wreak havoc.

Me? I was a bit let down of sorts to hear that they’d only been wreaking their havoc for twelve years. I thought I’d heard reference to them as bogeymen told to young’uns and such. Had they mysteriously appeared only twelve years ago, it seems odd that they’d have such a spookey, well known reputation in such a short amount of time. That and how did such a populated planet, chock full of cities and whatnot, just disappear twelve years ago with narry a trace? I can see if it happened fifty or a hundred years ago, the distant memory of Ebayers gone missing would have lapsed. But twelve years felt a bit short.

Again, color me confused

Rhythm

216

WTF?

What is their dental plan like?

217

As for comments that some members of the crew look thinner than before, recall Mal’s comment on wanting to finish this job so they could eat that month. He was likely exaggerating, but perhaps not much.

The Reavers should’ve been done better. I’d’ve liked to see a split scene when the Reaver fleet breaks through the ion storm (aka Mutara II):

Alliance officer: Reaver ships! AAAAAAHHHH!!
Reaver officer: Alliance ships! YEEAAHHHHH!!

218

I think that the universe in which the movie takes place and the universe in which the TV show takes place are not the same one, and the characters are not the same, so trying to resolve movie-canon with TV-canon is just going to make each weaker. Most obviously, Simon got River out in a different fashion, but there’s no reason to think there aren’t other differences as well.
That may be a bit of a cheat as far as fans of the show are concerned, but it’s in no way an unreasonable choice for Joss to have made overall, if he felt that was going to result in a better movie.

219

I was thinking more in terms of her not knowing yet; that would open the possibility of a very unusual story line. The reference upthread to Zoe and Wash’s conversation about having a baby is what led me there…it’s total speculation.

Merijeek, I didn’t see anyone answer your question about Book’s last words. The very end of what he says is cut off, but he says something like “River…whatever you believe…believe what she…”

The other point that occurred to me this afternoon is that there are two references to the power of love. One is early on when the Operative is talking to the doctor. He points to the projection of River and Simon and tells him to look closely at Simon’s face. The doctor is focusing on the fact that Simon threw away his medical career, a move that he considers mad. The Operative tells him the look on Simon’s face is love, which is far more powerful than madness. When you juxtapose this against Mal telling River the first rule of flight, it gives their scene an additional layer of meaning, I think.

GT

220

They’d first have to resolve that last battle scene - in my mind, the opening shot of the BtVS/AtS movie is the 4(3?) from Angel poised to do battle against the senior partners’ demons (final scene of the series), and >whoosh< in drops all the slayers (because the New Watchers have been keeping an eye on Angel et al ever since the lunatic slayer tortured Spike) and the battle is won (but there is still major tension between Buffy and Angel so they don’t end up together (personally, I like better with Spike anyway)