What would James T. Kirk have done?
Ya’ gotta wonder… 
Alliance currency shows one star. (Cite: page 15 & 16 of the Visual Companion.)
This has been gnawing at me, not to start a flame war, because this statement is loaded as flame-bait. By not naming one or the other you can take the position of antagonist to whoever takes umbrage first. In addition to that I quite disagree with the statement.
BOTH shows are of a superior quality and the FX are being done by the same team. They have a similar aesthetic, are possessed of excellent scripting and full of talented cast-members. Simply because you DON’T like one doesn’t mean there is a clear superior or inferior product. BOTH are well done. You may find one more believeable than another, however, they are BOTH well done.
Again, this is not to start a flame war, I simply tried to let this statement pass, but in the end couldn’t. I apologize if it rubs you the wrong way – that is what the initial sentence did to me. We obviously disagree, but there’s no reason why we can’t agree to do that.
Found a way to cheat – it is his way, the way of the Kirk.
I, for one, am a major fan of both shows. An in-depth discussion of their relative merits probably belongs in a different thread.
I gather that both shows have artificial gravity (I’ve never seen Galactica). But does Galactica have artificial gravity which can be cheaply used to blanket an entire moon or planet? That, I think, is the niftiest technological advance in Firefly.
As far as weaponry goes, we’ve only ever seen one hand-held energy weapon used on Firefly, and another (the prototype hand-held laser gun) is presented as an historical artifact, dating back to before they left Earth. Most personal weapons are bullet-throwers. Energy weapons seem to be standard on warships, however (the cruiser uses a laser to destroy the derilict in “Bushwhacked”). There are also ship-to-ship missiles (used by the cop in “The Message”), and I’m not sure what the principle was of the cannon they strapped onto Serenity’s back into the movie.
On medical tech, the only real advances we’ve seen are the artificial organs in “The Message”, and the suspended animation drugs and techniques. This does not necessarily imply that they don’t have better, but most of the medicine we’ve seen has been treatment of gunshot wounds and the like.
So says McCoy. ^ :dubious: ^
The Alliance used missiles to destroy the derelict in the (real) pilot. They also launched some sort of gunship, but I don’t think we ever actually see one, only that there’s not enough time for them to get back on board and “rescue” the decoy beacon Wash launched. The Reaver ship in that episode also had some sort of a beam weapon strapped to it. Might have been a tractor beam, though: I think they called it a “grappler.” The guards in “Ariel” had some sort of energy rifle (sonic?) that was entirely ineffective against the door Jayne wanted to break down.
Also whatever the hell they were doing to River’s head before Simon busted her out. Some pretty advanced neuro-surgery going on there. Also, when Niska cuts off Mal’s ear in “War Stories,” Jayne asks if they’re going to use it to clone him, but it’s not clear if that was Jayne being funny, or Jayne being dumb.
Mal also recovered from that little escapade rather quickly. Medical technology is a biggie. But at least in the BSG universe guns don’t need oxygen to work! 
This was actually in Bushwacked, in the pilot, we never see what they do with the derelict (presumably they poked around to find out what killed it, and then 'sploded it)
They contemplate launching the gunship(s), but never get to it because of the decoy. From the brief view we get of them, they’re presumably similar to the ones we see in “Trash” (it’s landing right before the Feds show up) and “The Message” (the Feds are riding around in it)
It appeared to be similar in nature to the giant stungun from hell that we see in “Our Mrs. Reynolds”. Basically it fries the ship’s electrical systems (along with the passengers and crew) with a massive power surge if it can get close enough.
We see these again in “Trash”, used by the Feds at Bellorophon. They seem to be some kind of less-than-lethal stungun.
Except in the episode “Ariel” when they are on Ariel the med-tech there seems to be a lot more advanced than BSG (just look at the 3D scanners).
When you then take into account the re-attached ear it seems that BSG is woefully lacking compared to Firefly
HOw did the ads below arrive at “artificial insemination”? :rolleyes:
Because I mentioned “AIs,” earlier. :smack:
Now it’s “Free Battlestar Galactica”.
What, the cast or crew is in durance vile?
I don’t think so. I think it was just a giant grappling hook/electromagnet that they’d hook their prey and then board with.
They don’t want to kill the crew with a electric burst. That ruins all their fun.
Run a search on my user name in Cafe Society and you will see that I am a pretty devout Trekkie but I believe Firefly, in its measly thirteen episodes, managed to create a more emotionally compelling universe than Star Trek did in thirteen of its seasons. Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation were both fantastic shows and I hold them as exceptions if you can ignore the first two seasons of *TNG *but in my purely subjective opinion, Firefly is superior to the *Trek *franchise in terms of writing.
In the opening scenes of the Firefly pilot, the battle of Serenity Valley is shown, and the fighter is definitely shooting some kind of energy bolts at people. In fact, I think there are energy blasts going off all over the place.
The terraforming technology in Firefly is pretty impressive, since Mal mentions that they can even change the gravity of the planet, implying that gravity control is very cheap, reliable, and widely applicable. You can see that with the floating estates in “Trash” as well.
As for medical, let’s see… They have a very sophisticated drug technology - so sophisticated that Simon is using targeted drug therapy against specific damage in his sister’s brain. They have 3-D imagers, suspended animation, the ability to remove an entire set of organs from someone, replace them with others, and then swap back the original later (apparently kept in suspended animation). They have a tissue-knitting machine that can put an ear back on with no trouble.
I haven’t seen anything remotely like that in Galactica.
Maybe they’re in the Durance of Hate. Anyone wanna do a Mephisto run?
From the Colonial side, maybe. But the Cylons can do things with biotech that would make the Blue Hands’ jaws drop.
Like what?