Many of us Dopers have added to threads about Firefly. Most of these threads are about how crappy it was of FOX to cancel the series.
I want to ask questions and compare notes with you all, maybe get into some speculation as well.
After watching all the episodes on DVD. I only noticed one mistake. In “out of Gas” they are throwing Simon a suprise birhtday party. The camera changes angles a few times, from one angle one of the candles is out, so they cut back and forth with the candle going from lit to unlit.
I try and figure out what possible plots and character development would have taken place in further seasons.
Mal in the first episode, wears a cross and once kisses it before doing something hair brained and couragous.(in a flashback to the rebellion war) yet, he is very much against religion when Books comes on board. I wonder what kind of story is behind that.
Speaking of Books: What exactly is he? The bounty Hunter in the last episode mentioned to Simon “that aint no sheppard” plus, the one time he was wounded and was taken to an alliance ship his ident card got him the medical treatment pronto.
I have had a few guesses. 1)Books is the brother of someone powerful in the alliance. 2) books was someone of standing durring the rebellion for the alliance, then after the war retired to the monestary because of regrets.
3) Books is part of a goverment agency, maybe the one that helped Simon spring Rivers excape. Might be such a group is interested in the well being of River.
I am sure I will think of different question and observations later. Feel free to speculate on the OP and bring up your own thoughts and Ideas.
Just that Joss has said he’s “trying to write a movie that everybody who hasn’t seen the show could enjoy, but that doesn’t repeat anything that we have seen on the show.”
I think the flashback is the story behind that. Losing the war destroyed his faith in God, humanity, law, and pretty much everything else. He’s supposed to be a bitter, bitter man, although Fox apparently leaned on Whedon to lighten the character up significantly. (This according to the commentaries on the DVD)
I think he used to some sort of top-secret law enforcement agency. He knows a lot about criminals (He knew who Niska was, he correctly identified the shipwreckers in Our Mrs. Reynolds, and he was able to spot that the Marshall chasing them in The Message wasn’t behaving the way a legit cop should). He knows martial arts, and has had expert firearms training. Plus, he’s got some sort of top secret clearance, as shown in the episode you mentioned where he gets shot. I think he was some sort of Alliance gestapo, maybe just like the guy who was after Simon and River in the pilot, but eventually developed a conscience and retired. However, that doesn’t explain why he still had an ID card that would make the Alliance jump like that.
Just while I was typing this, I had an idea. What if that card he showed the Alliance was a forgery? Maybe whatever he used to be required forged top secret Alliance clearance, and when he became a preacher, he held on to it? Maybe he used to be a ganglord like Niska before he got religion, or a deep cover agent for the Rebels who’s been at loose ends since his side lost the war. Or he’s still an active undercover agent working for whoever helped spring River, and is on the ship to keep an eye on her. In that case, he probably never worked for the Alliance at all, since it was a government organization that was experimenting on her.
Stuff I was looking forward to when the show was cancelled: I really wanted to learn how Jubal Early was going to survive being marooned in outerspace with no ship. 'Cause there’s no way in Hell that they were going to just abandon a character that cool. I wanted to know what the plot arc was going to be for the first season. The show ended right about where the final seasonal arc usually begins in a Mutant Enemy series. I wanted to know what sort of a person River was going to be as she got less and less crazy. I wanted to see one of those blue hand guys get killed, because I got the impression they really, really deserved it. I wanted to see a giant space battle between the Alliance and the Reavers. I wanted to see the crew of the Serenity forced into more uncomfortable alliances with the, uh, Alliance, like in the episode where they find the sole survivor of a Reaver attack. I wanted to see Jayne learn to use his powers of dumbness and violence in the cause of relative good.
There were a couple references in the DVD commentaries about the Blue Sun signs seen in the background of a couple episodes, that they were there for foreshadowing. I think it probably had something to do with the blue-handed guys (BTW, were those gloves or was it their skin? I don’t own the DVD set but I don’t remember seeing their fingernails), but I don’t think it was ever explicitly stated. And was Blue Sun the name of a company, or a company’s product, or what?
Another hint is that when River slashed Jayne with a knife (“He looks better in red”), Jayne was wearing a Blue Sun T-shirt. Someone mentioned that she also tore off Blue Sun labels from canned food, but I haven’t watched the scene close enough to check.
As for Book’s background, there’s a scene in Objects in Space where River walks around the ship, apparently reading people’s minds. She gets a brief image of Book saying “I don’t care if you’re innocent or not. What does that make you?” (quoting from memory).
Any thoughts about Inara’s background? In Serenity, when they encounter the Reiver ship she takes out a hypodermic injection kit of some kind. It’s natural to think it’s for suicide, but in the commentary Joss says there’s more to it than that. But what else could it be?
I’d like to know Inara’s back-story. She was on the road to becoming a high muckety-muck in the Companion Guild, and then she just got on Mal’s boat. I really want to know why. I’d also like to see how the Mal/Inara story develops. I am sure there were going to be many twists and turns in that one.
I would also like to see how Zoe went from “He bothers me” to marrying Wash. I want to know if there is more to Wash than comic relief.
And I want to see Simon and Kaylee kiss. Even though I know that it will go horribly wrong (this is a Joss Whedon show, after all), I still want to see it.
Shouldn’t the word “SPOILER” be in this threat title?
First of all, it’s Book, no “s.”
And his presence on Serenity has nothing to do with River. Remember, he booked passage before Simon showed up.
And if you want story problems, here’s one. In “The Message,” if Mal had told Tracey his plan for dealing with the Fed, Tracey wouldn’t have gone postal and wouldn’t have got dead.
I’d have to agree with most people about Mal losing his faith after the Battle at Serenity Valley.
Regarding the “someone powerful in the Alliance” comment, some fans are speculating that Book is directly responsible for the demise of the Independence, having been mentioned as a general from Simon’s history book. It was shown as a deleted scene of the pilot “Serenity” episode. The full name of the general was not divulged but some believe it is in fact Book’s real name.
Osip: Re mistakes–If you haven’t done so yet, listen to the commentary tracks; they point out several other mistakes.
Goofus: Those were gloves. There were a lot of Blue Sun images scattered around the episodes. Blue Sun is a sort of mega-corporation-cum-government-entity that has a lot of power in the Alliance.
The biggest, goofiest, weirdest thing is in, uh, Serenity, I think. There’s a scene on the bridge, right, and Wash is all steerin’ the ship while the important people talk, but he’s not holding on to anything! He’s pantomiming steering the boat, but no one noticed until it was already in the can. High-larious.
And of course there’s a good reason that Mal didn’t tell Tracy what the plan was in The Message. He’s an arrogant bastard who thinks that everyone should just shut up and do what he tells them to do. Which, I’ll grant you, usually works out for the best. That, again, is one of the things I like about Mutant Enemy shows. The protaganist doesn’t necessarily have to always be right, good, or virtuous. I maintain that they were actually trying to get us to actively dislike Buffy in the seventh season of her show. The only alternative is that the show I used to love ended up as a steaming pile of Suck.
I always figured if Joss wanted to bring back the bounty hunter he can. The ship was very high tech and it would not suprize me if a remote control type device can summon the ship to the adrift Bounty hunter.
I also have wondered why Innara did leave the home planet and hook up with Mal’s merry band of theives.
I am also curious about how River would have developed. I do not think her regaining her senses with all these powers she has displayed would be benificial to the show.
I think it is pretty interesting that people get shot in most ever episode. I like the fact the good guys do not always come out on top untouched.
The pool of bad guys is pretty nice, Reavers, Saffron and the bounty hunter (cant spell his name correctly) plus… the little german guy from “war stories”
I was hoping the second season was going to help us learn more about the characters personalities better and deal more with their interaction with each other.
Little Slavic guy, you mean. There’s no German in that accent.
Another thing that bugs me about “The Message:” Tracey’s whole enterprise. As we learned the story, he was an organ courier carrying experimental synthetic organs. His own organs were replaced by the new ones, and he was to go to the delivery site where the synthetic organs would be swapped back out for his original ones. But Tracey took a better deal and screwed over the original buyers.
Okay, so if Tracey was carrying these synthetic organs, how were his original organs going to get to the destination? He wasn’t carrying them himself; he didn’t have any luggage. Shouldn’t they have stayed with him?
And he “took a better deal?” From whom? Someone else who also had his original organs on hand?
After watching all the DVD’s, I had come to the conclusion that Book was some super special secret agent for the Alliance at some point, or possibly a double agent for the Independence movement, because I like Book and don’t want him to be part of the Big Evil.
I would have been very disappointed if the season had continued and River got sane … she was too fantastic a character with a few marbles missing.
I definitely think there should have been more about Reavers. Something Jayne is that afraid of is something that should have been paid attention to.
And I think my favorite part of the whole series was something that was pointed out in one of the commentaries–before Wash does anything on the bridge, he first flips three switches over his right shoulder. Communication, steering, whatever he has to do, those three switches did it.
I agree, that really bothered me. And if they can keep Tracey’s original organs alive and healthy in a jar, why not the synthetic ones?? The doctor said something about him also acting as an incubator for the new organs, but at the time it’s put into Tracey it’s obviously functional enough to keep him alive.
First, remember that when he shows up at the post office in a coffin, he’s already tried to doublecross his original employers and failed. The guy he was supposed to meet was killed by the rogue space cop. He faked his death and mailed himself to Mal and Zoe because his original escape plan failed. I assume that, before he doublecrossed anyone, he was travelling with his organs, or they had been sent on ahead to wherever he was originally supposed to go.
As for what the other company was going to replace the sythetic organs with since his original organs were lost, heck, we can already do organ transplants. I assume they’ve advanced medical technology, at least on the core worlds, to the extent that organ transplants are somewhat routine.
Could be something unique to the organ synthesizing process that makes it so they can’t survive whatever process is used to preserve real human organs. Or, could be that they were afraid of someone hijacking the shipment, and figured the safest place to hide them was inside of a person. Or, they could have been smuggling them to avoid the oppressive Synthetic Organ Tax the Alliance has been imposing on everyone.
But remember, this is also the guy who said he was going to rape Callie. And he tortured animals when he was a kid. Jubal Early deserved his fate.
I wanted to see Badger again. He’s a grown up version of the kid your parents didn’t want you to hang around with!
I really wanted to see those Blue Sun guys again. They were seriously badass. I’d love to know how they can survive the pulse their little death ray puts out.
Firefly had so much potential… a movie can’t come soon enough.
If the movie was a hit, could it conceivably lead to the series being on television again in the form of new episodes? Or would this be unprecedented?
