Has some serious chronology issues. Michael escapes the fall of Cuban dictator Batista in 1958; and returns to face congressional hearings in 1959-but the McClelland Hearings were not held until 1953-64/
Another MAS*H anomaly is Colonel Potter’s age. He supposedly ran away and joined the Army at 14, during WWI. That means he was born in 1903 or 1904 (assuming he didn’t join the Canadian Army). That means that at the show’s end, he’s no more than 51. When he shows up, he’s 48 or 49. I don’t know if they ever mention his age, but he looks, acts and talks like he’s about 60.
I remember in at least one of the episodes they “bugged out” - got the camp out of there and moved it. I don’t remember if that was one of the old ones or not.
I suppose an example of this, but not a major one, would be King Gus Carey, Drew’s nephew on the Drew Carey show. King Gus was born in Season 6, in the episode “Drew and the Baby” which aired in February, 2001. By the ninth season, which aired during the summer of 2004, instead of being around three years old, Gus’s age was accelerated so that he was 5 years old and attending kindergarten.
Oh I know, it just feels different for Firefly for some reason because there’s so little “official” material. So all these explanations for some of the various parts literally comes from nothing.
That’s actually very common on TV for one of two reasons, depending on how tight your tinfoil hat is.
1> Working with infants and toddlers on TV is a bitch. Not just trying to get them to act before they understand what it happening around them, but for the various laws regarding their employment. Therefore, TV show producers tend to skip the uncomfortable years. Show the baby, then move on to the five year old.
2> It’s a plot to fool the aliens into believing that Humans mature faster than we actually do.
Ah, yes. See Fresh Prince of Bel Air…Family Ties. Or just find an excuse to get a five year old in to begin with when your cute kid starts to age, like on Cosby Show.
You’re on the money. Harry Morgan was sixty when he joined the show as a regular in 1975.
[nitpick]
Actually, the civil war was less than 6 years before the start of the show. The 2nd episode has the 6th anniversary of ‘Unification Day’.
The Reevers, 12. Well, I think they came up with 12 for the movie.
I actually do not know how long the civil war lasted…so I guess I’ll just shut my big mouth.
Here’s one for the older antipodeans - Against the Wind
A hokey little Aussie colonial bodice ripper where the angelic Mary was shipped to Austraila on a trumped up charge and ended up as nanny to a couple of preteens, she serves her seven year sentence, gets married, has a kid or so of her own and visits the family again, with the same child actors playing preteen kids…
Even as a randy 13 year old, only watching for Jon English (Og help me) - I noticed the discrepancy.
It’s mentioned in one of the episodes (or possibly even the movie) that the civil war lasted six years. So six years for the year and the sixth anniversary of “Unification Day” makes 12 years.
Now I await the inevitable fanfic that says the Alliance started the civil war to distract folks from Miranda/first appearance of the Reavers.
Snrk.
I always just kind of assumed that it took a while for ships to go out that far. They do run on fuel and this solar system seems pretty darn big. It takes time to go out further and further, not just to build settlements capable of holding life but capable of fueling passing ships which in turn go further and further, sort of like building oases.
Here’s my fanwank: there have always been naughty fellows like Mal and his buddies – more specifically like the guys who tried
stealing the ship by killing everyone on it with a big evil net
in one episode. There have always been little-r-reavers out there, space pirates, people out to make a quick buck by any means possible. It takes time to push out further, and considering that nobody seems to even remember Miranda, I think it’s pretty far out there. It’s late and I’m too tired to go grab my Serenity system map. 
Let’s say it was an outer planet and the rumor went around that the settlement failed, was a black rock or something; that was the official story, and nobody would sink more money into an already failed project when there were so many better places to go. But around the time of that failure, just after they’d pushed out that far, big-R-Reavers started showing up.
It’s a bit of the Tolkienesque/Lovecraftian “they dug too deep”/“delved into that which Man Was Not Meant To Know ™” since even Book says, quoted from Kaylee, that Reavers are just men who went crazy looking at the vast emptiness on the edge. Implies to me, at least, that Reavers weren’t seen till people travelled that far.
Doesn’t explain why he thought that when there were perfectly normal people who emigrated from Earth-That-Was on the generation ships who must have travelled through a lot of inky black… then again, that’s probably nitpicking. 
All the above is probably fanwankery, but damn it, it’s LOGICAL fanwanking!
Just to confuse MASH chronologists further, in one episode the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki are going on so that episode takes place in July 1952.
One of my fave chronological problems is from a crappy Kari Wuhrer B-movie called “Fatal Instinct” made in the 1990s. It features a title card at one point which reads: “2030: Orion Women’s Prison Colony.”
That’s right, the filmmakers thought we’d have interstellar colonies in 35 years. And that the first thing we’d do, apparently, is build women’s prisons in outer space. Because that’s what space exploration is all about!
Fatal Instinct was a spoof movie. It was supposed to be funny.
There were two episodes (a two-parter and a standalone) in which the camp relocated (not counting the episode in which Frank while in temporary command made them move everything across the road one day and back the next because “M stands for ‘Mobile’!”). In the two-parter, hordes of Chinese are supposedly bearing down on the camp and Hawkeye, Margaret and Radar stay behind because of a patient who can’t be moved. This is a Potter/Burns era ep. In the other the camp temporarily relocates to some nearby caves and Hawkeye fights off claustrophobia. This is a Potter/Winchester era ep and IIRC the B story revolves around the families back home getting together for a party.
Re: Aging Infant Syndrome, the most blatant I recall, mostly because the cast addressed it on-screen, was “Growing Pains.” A newborn daughter went from infant to age 5 or 6 between seasons while everyone else stayed the same age. The intro to the first show of the new season was the cast introducing the 5-year old actress and explaining what they did.
Alice does have two great-great-grandchildren–Scott, who hasn’t been seen in years, though his grandmother Julie (Alice’s granddaughter) is on the show occasionally, and Claire, daughter of her great-grandson Shawn Douglas. Since Frances Reid, who has played Alice Horton since the beginning of the show, is in her 90’s, that’s not too inconceivable.
Maybe running a tachyon inverter through the main deflector dish would fix it.
Right you are. I got the title wrong. All these “Fatal _____” movies are so confusing. The correct title is Fatal Conflict.
If only it were meant to be funny.