Firefly (TV series)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** See the [[Firefly/WMG|Wild Mass Guessing]] section; my theory is that these particular victims were Paxed, and thus gave up without a struggle. The sole survivor may have been another kind of trap, a Reaver-in-the-making left behind to attack and destroy the rescuers and take over their ship as well.

** Actually, I just realized the simplest solution to the entire thing. It's brought up in "Our Mrs Reynolds." The Reavers ran down the civilian ship, locked it in place, overrode their atmosphere, and ''gassed the crew'' into unconsciousness. Then they went aboard, hauled everyone to one spot, and did their thing once they woke back up. No signs of struggle, no blood, nothing to indicate what happened.

 

== Zoe's armor vest ==

** She wears what looks like a bullet-proof vest in "War Stories," and considering how low-profile the thing is, its possible she's wearing it ''all'' the time underneath her regular clothes.

** On a similar note, though, why don't they run into more people with these supremely useful devices? Sure, one can argue that the Operative might have access to expensive and rare technology via his Alliance connections, but if that's the case how did Zoe end up with one? And if she's got one, why hasn't everyone else on the crew?

** Because it's wrecked ... that's the thing with modern armour. It stops bullets, but is permanently damaged in the process.

*** It was just a little dented. It could still be useful.

** Cost, presumably. Also, most of the times when crew members have been injured by torso wounds, they've either been in situations where they weren't expecting combat (Mal facing the pirate smugglers, for example) or were noncombatants (Book being shot in "Safe," Kaylee in the pilot, etc) of note is that Jayne gets shot in the chest in "War Stories" yet his only reaction is an angry curse, so its possible that he was wearing some variant of a bulletproof vest as well.

*** It's heavy. It probably chafes a lot.

*** That makes sense, Mal probably sold his, but Zoe would be the one to keep it around.

**** Why are we assuming Mal doesn't have one? It's specifically mentioned in the pilot that the reason nobody on Serenity wants to deal with Patience is because she shot Mal. We never actually hear the story of how Mal survived being double-crossed and shot by Patience, but a bulletproof vest would answer it plain and simple, as well as explaining why being shot in the back by the Operative in the [[Big Damn Movie]] didn't seem to perturb him much either.

** According to the official gaming guide, the armor is worth the equivalent of US$1150 today and would only regularly be available on the core worlds. There are only three other types of armor which are more expensive. Most likely, the rest of the crew simply never had the spare cash when they would have had the chance to buy armor.

*** Who said people don't have access to that armor? Niska's men seem to be wearing armor, and most of the rest of the people the crew fights seem to be either bandits or others who wouldn't have the money to buy the armor.

 

== River's Combat Skills ==

*** She was code-locked so that her butt-kicking would not come out until a specific code was shown to her. There are a couple of hints in the series, such as her aptitude with weapons.

*** Um, the series was kind of cancelled before they could do any of that hinting. Serenity had to compress a whole lot of plot points to fit into a 2 hour movie; plot points [[Word of God]] stated would have taken a good couple seasons to fully flesh out. You wanna be bugged by something, be bugged by the existence of [[Screwed by the Network]].

**** Presumably they decided that it was more important to study her telepathy, and then when she had her breakdown they had to do ''something'' with her.

*** The R. Tam Sessions strongly imply that River had latent psychic abilities ''before'' they upgraded her psychic abilities. All indications are that they were trying to turn her into a psychic assassin, using her abilities to hunt down targets and eliminate them, i.e. "She'll be ideal for defense deployment." Simon kind of slipped into the Academy and grabbed River while she was still "under construction" so to speak, and we never get to see what a "complete" Academy-created psychic assassin would be capable of.

**** Further supporting the River-as-Prototype theory is what the Operative discovered in the [[Big Damn Movie]], and the reason for the hunt: because key members of Parliament have been to see her. It's a small detail, but a critical one: why, exactly, have important people been looking at River? Because she is a new project. You don't call your bosses to say, "Hey, come have a look at yet another mass-produced drone, exactly like all the others we've made." You call them down to say, "Look at what I did, it's new and exciting and not like anything you've ever seen before."

*** I think they were planning on stretching that out and slowly explaining it, but then the show got canceled and the movie was Joss's last chance to show everything he was planning so he had to rush it.

** Even on Earth colonies in inhospitable spots (e.g. Antacrtica) have to wait sometimes months for the next shipment of fresh veg to arrive. Serenity spends weeks, sometimes months between systems where they can buy food (provided they have the money and it is available). Do the math.

** And yet in "War Stories" there is apparently ice on hand to put Mal's sliced off ear in until it can be reattached. Plus when life support goes out in "Out of Gas" River mentions, in her creepy way, that they will all freeze to death before they suffocate. In short I'm sure there was some kind of cold place on the ship they could store refrigerated/frozen goods, it just didn't ''look'' like a refrigerator.

** Technically, stuff that's been frozen before cooking or consumption is not considered "fresh" the same way freeze-dried packets of protein aren't considered "fresh." Similarly, even if they did have some sort of cold-storage room or refrigerator somewhere, perishables put in a fridge don't last for weeks of transit time. Supply, demand, economics, and cost are still the big factor here.

 

== Blue Gloves/Hands of Blue ==

*** Joss said that hitting Book when he was down was meant to be his signal to the audience that Dobson deserves what's coming to him, but when I saw the episode for the first time, Dobson double checking that Book STAYS down was my initial impression as well.

** In story-telling terms, it makes sense to have the alliance seem 99% evil for the first season then bring more complexity in later seasons. And realistically, the crew of the Firefly are largely going to come across arseholes anyway, because they will attract bounty hunters, government agents et al all the time. How "bad" are CIA operatives? Does that mean the US Government itself is "bad"?

** The Alliance is neither good nor evil. It's a lot of people, who are themselves either good or evil, or a mix of both like most people. Miranda, and employing Blue Hands and the Operative, shows that some of those people are willing to do stupid or dangerous things to "maintain order"-- making them [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|WellIntentionedExtremists]]. Not evil, just the wrong kind of good. Or not quite clear on how to go about causing good.

** While it's true that most of the Alliance people they meet aren't very pleasant, how many pleasant people do they meet at all in the first place? Most of the people they meet are either thugs, criminals, or both and, frankly, their not exactly saints themselves either. Mal and Zoe are appallingly casual about killing people, Kaylee for all her seeming innocence is completely unfazed by stealing and breaking the law, Simon is a criminal mastermind in the making, and Jayne is...well, Jayne. Desperate people aren't nice, and when you live on the edge of civilization, you're going to run into a lot of desperate people.

** There's at least one decent Alliance character in the captain of the Dortmunder, who gives up on chasing Serenity for an apparent rescue mission.

** The alliance is [[Lawful Neutral]], not evil. Personally, I think that actually makes them even more dangerous, though. [[The Empire|All-consuming, galaxy spanning empires]] can be rallied against and defeated, and [[Machiavelli Was Wrong|all the Tarkin Doctrine is good for is getting your stations blown up]]. Apathy is a much more effective tool; people know that evil is to be fought, but moral ambiguity makes their heads hurt, and is likely to be dismissed as Someone Else's Problem, provided that it's not '''their''' sister getting her brain cut open.

*** That's all neglecting to mention, we have seen "good" Alliance members. That lesbian chancellor that Inara serviced, for one, and that [[Cool Old Guy]] who protected Kaylee from the [[Alpha Bitch]] in "Shindig" was, if not a government official, at least a high-ranking member of society.

*** Eh, in the shooting script of War Stories, the chancellor indicates that she's part of the local planetary government, not the Alliance itself (so she's state government, not Federal), and even she's scared to do anything about Niska. The most she does is give the crew the dermal mender, which is why Inara makes a snippy comment to that effect, because she was turned away pretty rudely when she asked for help. The cool old guy in Shindig is "proof" that the Alliance isn't all bad about as much as Inara and Simon are, in that we have nothing to indicate that any of them have any particular connections to the Alliance government. They're decent people who have benefited from the security and services the Alliance offers (at least until Simon became a fugitive), but that's all we can say.

* Why did The Operative kill that scientist? He only kills when he has to, which means when someone either presents a threat, or their death helps his mission. This was just a "you have failed me for the last time" revenge murder, which is far removed from his apparent character.

** He felt that the scientist had failed so badly that his actions warranted ritual suicide, as he explains, which is completely within the Operative's vision of a perfect future.

 

== River's Gun in "Objects In Space" ==

** Inara calls him stupid all the time and they do trade barbs a lot. The thing with "petty thief" was more to illustrate the difference between "Mal and Inara ribbing each other" and "Mal and Inara fighting for real". There's a noticeable difference in tone between when they really fight and when they're just doing their daily dance.

** On the DVD commentary Whedon notes that he intended Firefly to be much darker but [[Executive Meddling]] forced him to lighten it up a bit. So that ''particular'' quote by Inara may not be entirely canonical. Alternatively: It's possible that their relationship simply improved in the time between the first and second episodes.

** Possible [[Fridge Brilliance]]: It may simply be that the insults need not be objectively even, because they are subjectively uneven; Inara, while offended by the denigration of her profession, is ultimately content with it, while Mal is deeply insecure about the morally ambiguous nature of his work and the people it leads him to associate with, and so wishes to avoid facing up to the reality of it, or at least not on somebody else's terms. Both "whore" and "thief" describe the obvious, but only Mal has a problem with people telling him what he is.

** I agree somewhat, though I add that it seems to bother Inara more than she lets on, otherwise I'm not sure she would've gone all "sad-face Inara cleanses herself" in the pilot. It's possible that there's a difference between Mal is blunt and when her clients are blunt; when Mal is blunt she can simply be offended because he's not a client, but when clients are blunt, they make her feel like she is the insult. In either case, the insults ARE about equal, but only because both insults hit close to home about aspects of their work that bother them.

* Is nobody else bothered by Jaynestown? Actually, I should clarify --- I love Jaynestown, it's a great episode, but it seems like a really bad example of discontinuity. To wit: the amoral, devil-may-care Jayne is profoundly shaken by the Mudder's act of sacrifice, and it gives him A Lot To Think About. It's strongly implied He'll Never Be The Same Again. And then, one episode later, he's...the same Jayne we've always known. If I'm not wrong, we scarcely see any sign at all of a different Jayne until Serenity.

** Actually, I am a little bothered by Jaynestown, for completely different reasons. About three days after I first watched the episode, it dawned on me that Stitch actually had a legitimate grievance. Jayne did kind of, you know, drop him three stories and abandon him to Boss Higgins' (non-existent) mercy. Four years in a box? I'd be torqued as well. Stitch never does anything that Jayne himself wouldn't have done if their positions had been reversed, and he winds up with death by blunt force trauma, mere hours after being let out of the box. I didn't necessarily feel bad for the guy, but it's awful tough for me to hate him.

** Wasn't that sorta the point? That the Mudders were deluded in hailing Jayne as a hero, and that in reality he is, well, kind of an ass? He smashes his own statue to hammer the point home that keeping him a a symbol of goodness is stupid on the Mudders' part. That whole episode is about the uselessness of symbols, really. Jayne isn't a great symbol of righteousness, losing his virginity doesn't work as a symbol of young Higgins becoming a man, and then there's Book's poor Bible that River took to "fixing"...

** Firefly ''is'' that good a show, to the extent that - much as in real life - events can inform a character's worldview without changing it completely. In the next episode, Ariel, Jayne is more concerned about River and Simon finding out about his duplicity than he is about dying - clearly this has been informed by the loss of his legacy in Jaynestown. I'd say it would be unrealistic for something like Jaynestown to turn him around immediately, and since they need to get the possibility of Jayne turning River in for cash out of the way at some point (after it was raised in the pilot), it makes sense to do it straight after Jaynestown.

** Jayne isn't exactly the type to be introspective or openly emotional. I'm actually refreshed that the effects were subtle instead of the usual [[Anvilicious]] instant [[Heel Face Turn]] that most shows bash you over the head with.

** Besides, you don't think Atherton has a ''serious'' sword fetish? There has to be more like him.

** Dueling is like fencing. In fencing, it's not dangerous or fatal, but the object is still to poke the other guy with the sword. And, from how the episode plays out, it's fairly obvious that duels to the death aren't exactly uncommon.

** Also, just because someone is revered doesn't mean that someone won't try to rape a very beautiful, elegant lady.

*** Except we don't know (and have no reason to assume) that fencing is the only form of self-defense Inara knows.

*** In fact, we know she ''does'' know other forms of self-defense, from the Big Damn Movie. She's shown wielding a bow, and even though he kicks her ass pretty handily, her attacks on the Operative seemed to be some form of martial arts.

*** ...Aw man, that just made me realize: ''Simon'' probably knew how to handle a sword. Damn you Fox, for canceling the show before we ever got to see that. ''Damn you''.

*** Not only did I reach the same conclusions when I first saw the episode, but something else occurred to me at the time as well. Simon's already shown blade-wielding aptitude - surgically-speaking. What if that talent isn't just limited to his medical aptitude but is also part of a more generalised blade-wielding talent? That would result in him not just being trained in fencing because of his breeding but actually being ''good at it'' as well (I don't mean River-good, just good by anyone else's standards). Given Simon's personality, I would assume he'd only be interested in the fencing sport and not in death-duels, but then the rather Alexandre Dumas-esque feel of "Shindig" did leave me suspecting that death-duels would only occur on outer planets, leaving core planets to practice it for sporting purposes, and I could see Simon mastering it as a 'gentleman's sport' rather than for gritty fights-to-the-death. That would leave Simon with a general talent for blades but a preference for channelling that talent into healing rather than harming.

 

== Dueling Etiquette ==

*** Yeah, I noticed that line too, exactly what I was thinking. The rules about the second shooting you if you try something underhanded in the preliminaries probably apply here to a pistol duel too. Maybe, for once in his life, Mal simply knows better than to try something suicidal like attacking during saluting or taking a cheap shot when they bind then break. Unfortunately, he just didn't know ENOUGH to avoid challenging a master swordsman. When he started to get desperate, he started to fight dirty, but maybe in the resulting scrabble Atherton's second couldn't get a clear shot before it was over. By that point, it might have been in the second's best interest not to shoot so that Mal would spare Atherton.

** Not sure if this applies in the duels in the setting, but in [[Real Life]] a lot of sword duels did, to a degree, involve some dirty fighting, at least once the duel actually began. Technically it wasn't allowed, but no one would fault you for punching your opponent or stomping his foot or gouging his eye in a fight to the death.

 

== River Breaking Free From the Reavers/River's Physical Strength ==

** Also consider that the Reavers probably wanted to rape River. To do that, they have to let go at some point, and that's probably when she struck.

** Just because someone doesn't appear to be muscled doesn't mean they aren't very strong. Elite military training, such as SEAL training, will often leave candidates looking less "body builder" but who are stronger than they were before.

*** And "apparent lack of muscle mass" means nothing when we're talking about the kind of modifications possible using Alliance medical science. Muscles are easily replaced with much stronger yet unobtrusive means of generating motion.

*** Muscle mass does not equate to power. Lots of bodybuilders have huge mass, but that doesn't mean they're more powerful in a fight. Speed and agility matter more in martial arts than muscle mass. Sure, power is necessary, but "muscle mass" has little to do with it.

*** The above explanations don't really make much sense, since Simon would certainly have noticed something as drastic as "muscle enhancement" in his first examination of her. Which brings up another thing that bugs this Troper. Through the course of the TV series Simon appears to have no clue that River has been programmed with any sort of combat ability, and becomes quite upset with Kaylee when she confesses to seeing River shoot three men with her eyes closed. Yet the Big Damn Movie makes it clear that Simon got the low-down on River's abilities just before freeing her, including her safe word. Though some discontinuity between the series and the movie is forgivable, it still bugs this Troper a bit.

*** Its not that odd, when you consider Simon's perspective on things. The very, very, ''very'' last thing he wants is for Serenity's crew to view River as a threat to them; to that end, he's probably not going to bring up any enhancements River has received in casual conversation, and Kaylee reporting River's lethality ''is'' going to make things a lot more difficult for him and paint her in a much more dangerous light. That reason alone is enough for Simon to become upset that her abilities are coming out into the open, and for Simon to not speak a word on River's combat abilities.

*** Scanning someone's brain =/= mutilating it. I saw it as a bit of a retcon considering that Simon had seen her all needle-fied, but his surprise at the Alliance having actually gone and dicked around inside her head seemed reasonable, if a bit expected. That may have been outrage, not surprise.

*** Dude, I'm not sure that sticking a needle into her forehead qualifies as a passive brain-scan.

** River may also have some kind of psychic attack that she uses when she's truly cornered. After all, she does tell Jayne she can kill him with her brain.

*** I took River's comment as an intellectual observation, not a psychic one. In "Objects in Space" killing Early with her brain is precisely what she does. Intelligence, creativity and psychology are the weapons she uses to win the day. Yes, obviously being a reader gives her an edge, but I'm betting it's not having the psychic abilities that makes her so good, it's how she uses them that makes her so good - and the how comes from her creativity and her intelligence. In other words, she wasn't threatening Jayne with her psychic abilities, she was threatening him with her intelligence.

** Actually, they address this in the movie. The crew isn't trying to stay safe while Mal does the work; they're trying to draw the Reavers away from Mal. If they closed the blast doors, the Reavers wouldn't hang around; they'd go looking for different prey.

 

== The "Charging-up" Sound ==

*** They're all firing projectiles. We see exactly one laser weapon in use in the series, and that's during "Heart of Gold," and indications are that laser weapons are expensive and extremely restricted. Other indications are that possession of weapons are highly restricted, and that most of the characters are forced to rely on projectile weapons because of very tight laws regarding possession of certain types of firearms. The Alliance does not want potential insurgents toting energy weapons.

**** If that's the case, why do the weapons sometimes sound like "lasers?" Did you actually read what I wrote? - [[Tropers/Martello|Martello]]

**** Because, as was noted in the discussion above your initial comment, they're some sort of futuretech guns with futuretech technology firing futuretech bullets. The precise technology involved is never really explained - probably has something to do with penetrating those low-profile suits of armor people like Zoe and the Operative wear. We know that whatever the guns do, they're ''powerful'', as a single shot from one of them can knock a human off their feet from the full force of the blow, if there's armor to stop the bullet and absorb the force behind it (again, Zoe and the Operative) so there's obviously some manner of futuretech involved that makes the pew-pew.

***** Cheaper and more reliable come to mind? We have laser technology now, but there are more parts, more technology involved to create and maintain them. In an outerworld, guns would be easier made, maintained, etc. You go with the old faithful. It's like the AK-47. It was designed years and years ago, but the design works. Also, why aren't bicycles, ox drawn wagons, and rickshaws obsolete the world over? Because poorer nations find them more economical.

* Given the future-tech that the guns are made of, they probably have some electronic parts inside, like a shot counter or some kind of railgun system, given that we rarely if ever see any puffs of smoke or empty brass/shells when the guns fire. The charging-up sound could be the systems inside the gun turning on, like the equivilent of turning off the safety.

 

== Firefly Setting Space ==

* I've often wondered what space exactly Firefly is set in. Not the literal co-ordinates or anything, but the setting was always kind of vague. Is is a single, really huge solar system? Is a a huge binary system? A bunch of stars all really close together that happen to have 'dozens of planets and hundreds of moons'?

** It's a single solar system with many planets and moons. The inner worlds, which make up the core of the Alliance are in the inner solar system, while the rougher, more primitive worlds are on the fringe.

*** Unreliable narrator may well be the word - the voiceover at that point was being given by a character in one of River's crazy Miranda-dreams.

*** (Actually I was talking about the opening VO of the series. But you're right, the Serenity opening is equally iffy)

** And "Blue Sun" might be more than a name-- a Blue Supergiant star would have a ''much'' wider Habitable Zone than a dinky borderline-dwarf like Sol. Room for plenty of worlds, especially if they're not all in same orbital plane.

*** The official poster map that was recently released shows that the star system actually consists of five separate stars, four orbiting one giant central star. One of the stars is a blue giant, appropriately named Blue Sun. There's also 215 separate planets and moons. Assuming the "dozens of worlds and hundreds of moons" holds up, we're looking at maybe five to ten habitable worlds per star, with an average of about forty moons to each star's multiple worlds. A stretch, but with terraforming to explain it all, it works.

*** I'd like to point out with this that 50 AU in astronomical terms is ''tiny'' You essentially have a planet+protostar approximately 1.6 ''thousandths'' of a light-year away from a blue giant....yeah...sorry, but you can't have non-f* d up planetary orbits with stars in that kind of proximity. That's assuming that the planets/stars/protostars don't pull each other apart anyway. I have this great image of a planet sitting at the roche-limit of a couple of stars...

*** The Blue Sun can actually be an OB-subdwarf. Despite of what the name suggests, these stars can be larger and much brighter than the Sun (up to 1000 times), just not as rad-fryingly bright as the usual kind of blue stars, not to mention they last much longer.

*** That's assuming that 1.) the map is accurate and 2.) it's to scale. Neither is a given. Also, note that in one episode (have to check) there's a background space shot what looks like a planet(oid) forming or collecting out of asteroids-- maybe the reason there's so many worlds is that they ''build'' new ones.

*** The map is official, so I assume its accurate. And the map is to scale, as it has a scaling marker in the upper right-hand corner.

*** Still, he was established as a [[Non-Action Guy]], so seeing him kick ass like he did seemed so... out of character.

*** Not really; in the pilot we see him leap off a catwalk onto Dobson's back and fight with Dobson for his gun. In "Safe" he fights off half the witch-burning mob, and in "Ariel" he incapacitates one of the police officers holding them prisoner. In "Objects in Space" he attcks Early ''twice'', the second time after he's been shot in the leg. In "Those Left Behind" he beats one of the Blue Hands over the head with one of Jayne's bench weights <ref>For those unfamiliar with weightlifting, the bar ''alone'' weighs 45 lbs.</ref>. The common thread binding all these together is that he's ''protecting'' River, so it shouldn't be much of a shocker that when Simon is ''rescuing'' her, he proves much more dangerous than one would expect.

*** Um, where, exactly, did Simon say he didn't know River was in the box?

*** He didn't. That would have been really, '''really''' stupid, to go to all the trouble of smuggling it around when you ''didn't even know'' if she was in there? Methinks that troper was sorely mistaken.

Simon: "I didn't. Until you opened that box." }}

** In general, Simon isn't a very effective fighter because he's too much of a planner. That makes him brilliantly effective at things like infiltrating a military research facility or stealing medical supplies from a hospital ("Ariel"). But when he gets into a fight, his plan usually breaks down the first time someone hits him or does something unexpected. What makes him a [[Non-Action Guy]] isn't that he's incapable of violence. It's that he's only effective at violence if he can plan out his attack in advance. He's an ambusher, not a brawler.

== Going Back to Mr. Universe's Moon ==

* Why on earth was it ''necessary'' for the crew to go back to Mr. Universe's place at all? (Other than dramatic tension.) Why couldn't they have uploaded the contents of the disk from where they were?

** "Why couldn't they just upload the contents of the disc from where they were?" The answer should be pretty obvious: "Its a fair bet the Alliance knows about Mr. Universe." Mal was expecting the Alliance had gotten to Mr. Universe in the first place; why else would he have goaded the Reavers into chasing him if he didn't believe the Alliance had already either copted or killed Universe? He knew he would have to go there and physically upload the data, because if he just transmitted it to Mr. Universe, the Alliance would have never allowed it to be distributed.

* Mr. Universe was the only person with the technology to broadcast it far and wide ''simultaneously.'' The crew could have transmitted it, but the Alliance would have intercepted and shut down their transmissions after a few seconds. Mr. Universe have the equipment to put the message on "every screen for a dozen worlds." Everything from an iPhone to those big TVs in Times Square would be showing the message at the same time, making it impossible to intercept and coverup.

*** How would broadcasts create a static ion cloud? Firefly may play a bit with physics, but the idea that transmissions would somehow generate a barrier of charged particles that ''block'' radar signals is kind of silly.

*** Is is explicitly stated that the cloud blocks radar signals? I thought from that scene that the Alliance didn't see the Reavers because their radar was off, as they were trying to set an ambush.

** More likely, Mr. Universe chose that moon ''because'' of the ion cloud; he's a secretive hermit, so it would make sense that he'd set up in there. Presumably, his massive array of ground-based transmission equipment would give him the power he'd need to boost a signal straight through the cloud.

*** Honestly, if you're broadcasting that many signals at once, the last place I'd look for you is behind a signal-blocking ion cloud. He's secretive, and probably picked that moon to hide himself.

*** The Operative does mention her 'deteriorating mental state' at the beginning of the movie, and the shooting script has him saying [[It Got Worse|she got worse]] after being shown off to Parliament, but I didn't think that ever implied that her issues were caused exclusively by the Miranda secret. They stripped her amygdala, that's bound to mess anyone up.

*** The way I always saw it was that when River said "I'm okay" she didn't mean that her schizophrenia was completely cured, but that the immediate severe psychosis she had been undergoing for much of the film had been resolved, and she was back in the state that she was in during the series. In all likelihood, the use of her trigger, combined with the very recent and ''very'' close encounter with Reavers would have brought the memory of Miranda to the forefront of her mind, where it tormented her and drove her into deeper psychosis, and she was unable to repress it (mutilated amygdala and all). She was also not lucid enough to clearly enunciate her problem to the crew (if you listen to her statements, its clear that she was talking about Miranda and the Reavers all along). Once she made them know what she knew, it was no longer the focus of her entire mind, and she was able to return to her previous state (albeit with any mental blocks to her combat abilities removed). Quite possibly, River knows all manner of secrets that would render her incoherent if she were forced to lend all of her attention to them.

** The experiments conducted on River clearly loosened her grip with reality, but "insane" is not a binary state of being. For most of the show her state of mind was generally a bit nuts, punctuated by some extended lucid periods from time to time, depending on what medications Simon was treating her with, and other internal and external factors. It seems pretty evident that the Operative's trigger (the subliminally-embedded Oaty Bar commercial) was a massive trauma (when she regains consciousness on Serenity, her first conversation involves begging Simon to kill her). That initially drove her even more crazy, but the jarring loose of the memory of Miranda (an unintended side-effect of the trigger) gave her something concrete to focus on to face and eventually resolve the larger trauma (though we don't know how "cured" she is, just that after the battle with the Reavers she experiences an unusually long lucid period).

 

== Reavers in General ==

*** It wasn't Mal. Book says "Don't be a fool, son. Do as the man says". Simon seems to accept that. Scene change.

** I always just assumed that this plothole was why it never made it to air.

** There is some commentary on the DVD to the effect of explaining this one. If memory serves, Joss Whedon says that Mal and Book can't just say, "Don't worry, we've got a plan," due to ego. While that explanation isn't terribly clear, I took it to mean either 1) that they couldn't verbally commit to having a plan, so that in case the plan were to fail, they wouldn't look bad, or 2) that not revealing your epic plan to rescue someone helps boost your [[Big Damn Heroes|Big Damn Hero]] cred, since the most exciting rescues are those that occur unexpected and just in the nick of time, or 3) a combination of the above motives, lumped together with the fact that they couldn't outright say that they had a ''plan'' because in fact they didn't really have one per se, but did had every intent of winging it as far as possible.

** "The Message" plotline unfolding as it did felt like a direct comparison to "Bushwacked" especially since there seemed to be a lot of Simon/Tracey characterisation comparisons going on even though they barely had any scenes together. In both episodes, the captain is about to let the enemies of a fugitive on board and fully expects compliance without detailing his plan up front. Simon's bad at talking pretty, Tracey's good at it. Simon's actions prove him dependable and able to either stay calm, or calm down quickly, in a crisis; Tracey panicks easily and his panic increases. Simon didn't know Mal as well as Tracey did and yet found it easier to obey Mal than Tracey did. When panicking, Simon's first instinct was to run, Tracey's first instinct was to attack. If you view the episode as being more of a Kaylee-perspective episode, then it ends up being about the difference between what you dream for in a man and what you should realistically settle for - a man's ability to talk pretty, or his ability to be by your side no matter what happens? Neither Simon nor Tracey are both - one talks pretty, the other will be there when you need him. Which is the better option if you can't have both?

** Mal's strongest character trait is the fact that he will defend his crew to the death. This is a man who threatened to throw Simon out of the airlock if Kaylee died, shot Agent Dobson in the face for being in the exact same position as Tracey, nearly DID throw Jayne out of the airlock for turning on Simon and River, declared war on a small backwoods village to rescue Simon and River, and countless other examples. Shooting Tracey for shooting one crew member and threatening another is completely in character for Mal; if you harm his crew, the man has zero mercy for you. As Jayne will testify, it doesn't matter who you are; even his own crew is not exempt from this.

** Because Tracy's been going by the reputation Mal's garnered ''after'' he left the army, where his dislike of religion is most pronounced, and he's left a trail of bodies wherever he's gone. Tracy ''knows'' Mal has drifted away from his previous beliefs and become a more hardened criminal.

 

== Programmed to Defend Against Who? ==

** Not to mention the Alliance is clearly headed down an Orwellian thought-control path, what with Miranda and all. River's mind-reading abilities were their real pride and joy. They complemented her psychic abilities with spy/assassin skills so that she could easily act on whatever dirt she dug up in the minds of whatever targets the Alliance was suspicious of.

** And we're assuming that the Alliance isn't aware of, say, another colony project at the next star along?

** This troper always imagined that River was being created for a variety of purposes, one of which was to permanently dispose of all evidence that Miranda had ever happened by getting rid of the Reavers. Because while her intelligence is lauded a great deal she is quite specifically described as excelling at everything. Maybe a petite, ninety pound girl, isn't the ideal cleaner but the Alliance was hardly going to pass up a brilliant psychic who is capable of mastering any form of physical activity without effort. Even the Operative wasn't willing to fight the Reavers, but River was able to kill dozens of them without injury.

** Every single one of you needs to read more world news. Go ahead, I'll wait while you find me an example of a country that calls its military admin branch the "Department of Attack" or the "Ministry of Fucking People Up". "Defense" is government speak for "military". Occam's Razor, folks.

 

== Miranda in General ==

*** [[Space Does Not Work That Way]]. There is no [[Stealth in Space]]. Flying around the Reavers simply leaves a long thermal wake that you can easily track, and since Miranda is very far out in territory that no one goes to, no one will be out there but the Reavers. The heat trail can be easily spotted and followed, and if someone's projected path shows them circling ''around'' your large and obvious fleet, that means they're trying to avoid you. That's a surefire sign that they're not one of you.

*** Right then, I withdraw the question. I probably should have thought of that.

*** Haven is equipped with an anti-ship cannon powerful enough to kill a well-armored Alliance ship. It's what Book used to shoot down the ship that hit Haven, and on the DVD, one of the extended scenes shows the cannon is regularly manned and was tracking Serenity when it arrived. Presumably, that gun is enough to keep the Reavers away, especially going by the firepower it exhibits in the movie; two shots from it blew a Reaver vessel about Serenity's size to pieces.

*** Reavers are likely smart enough to target relatively undefended areas. Remember that for all their scariness, there's only thirty thousand of them at most (likely far fewer now) and individual raiding parties seem to only have a few hundred per and a small number of ships. They'd have to target small towns that don't have large, powerful anti-air weaponry. If the Reavers attacked Haven they would have been shot down and any survivors would learn not to go back there.

*** Off the top of my head, I thought the hologram woman mentioned that they tested the Pax there due to violence or a civil war or something on the planet, coupled with Miranda's isolation? I'm a little hazy and could be wrong, though.

*** Nope. She only mentions violence or civil war to note that's ''not'' what happened to the people on Miranda.

 

* The fact the Alliance didn't do any testing of the Pax (that name, too...), that, might, y'know, catch the...side effects. Possibly handwavable as an interaction with Miranda's atmosphere, that skewed the results from the lab, but that would've needed to be ''stated''. It wasn't.

*** ''And where does it ''ever'' say the Pax was intended as a weapon?'' It's a gas that renders an entire planet non-violent and cooperative, being developed just a couple years prior to a full-scale war. Do the math. And "no military applications"? It renders an ''entire planet peaceful and non-violent.'' Dropping Pax-laden bombs on a planet = instant pacification without a single shot fired. The Pax, if it worked as advertised, would have been the '''ultimate''' nonlethal weapon. And the Unification War ''hadn't started yet'' by the time Miranda occurred. Kinda hard to test your weapon on POWs when ''you don't have any because there's no war.'' And there's a difference between testing on POWs in controlled circumstances and testing on an entire planet - which, in Miranda's case, was controlled circumstances, just on a mind-bogglingly huge scale.

*** It's worth noting the Alliance's motivations in the war were to better the Border and Rim. The Pax would have ''really'' been useful during the Unification War, as it would have allowed them to pacify entire planetary populations without hurting either people or infrastructure. That kind of capacity would have been ''insanely'' valuable to the Alliance. They could defeat entire ground armies in a heartbeat, without killing ''anyone,'' which fits perfectly with the Alliance's vision of bettering the entire 'Verse.

*** Which would be ''another'' reason to have to test it on a planetary scale. It could have interacted with an atmosphere in an unexpected manner, and oh, hey, look, ''it did.''

*** Yes, but, ''nobody in the movie ever alludes to it being a weapon''. The recording said the chemical was put in the atmosphere generators. This implies that it needs to be constantly pumped into the atmosphere, and that just dropping "Pax Bombs" isn't going to get the job done. Every implication in the movie is that it was meant as social engineering. So, yes, there ''are'' military applications to it, but nobody in the movie ever alludes to or mentions it, so no, you cannot assume it's a weapon.

 

== Mandarin ==

** There is a subtle implication that interbreeding at some point in the past became fairly common, especially in the Alliance (Simon and River's last name is Tam, Atherton Wing is another example of an ostensibly Caucasian person with an Asian surname), but more than likely, Joss had ideas for this to happen sooner or later and [[Screwed by the Network|something got in the way.]]

*** So...when people of different races inbreed they end up looking mostly like white people?

*** Yeah, but that was a pretty obvious attempt at an [[Author's Saving Throw]] given the casting. None of the actors involved look the slightest bit East Asian.

** Apparently, the character of Kaylee was originally meant to be Asian, but when the actress auditioned they decided to go with her. For as much as I love the show, however, I have to agree that they could have done a much better job with when dealing with the subject of cultural and racial diversity. As it sits, the whole facet comes off as appropriating the "foreign, mysterious ways of the Orient".

* I am not sure why this bothers people so much, my native language had a lot of intermingling with Arabic, Persian, and French. Most of the words are poorly pronounced, or pronounced in a way that is closer to the underlying language than the language they are taken from. Also, very little of the populace looks Arabic or Persian (or French, for that matter).

 

*** It seems strange that they would have backup power for artificial gravity but not for ''life support''.

*** The artificial gravity systems weren't damaged like the life support systems were. The catalyzer thingamabob was what was needed to get the life support systems running again.

 

== Jayne's Injuries During the Reaver Chase ==

** Jayne is just ''that'' gorram tough. [[Made of Iron]], etc.

** Also, the Reavers wouldn't have wanted to tear his leg off; they want him alive when they eat him, remember.

** The whole weight of the Reaver craft wasn't pulling him back; that would imply that Jayne was literally dragging the entire ship by his leg. The pulley mechanism that launches the spears was what was pulling him back; the craft itself was still speeding forwards, trying to reach the mule. It's like launching a fishing line from the back of a pickup truck into the car next to you; the similar momentum of the two vehicles means that the line doesn't need to be strong enough to pull the entire car, just the item you snagged.

 

 

== Why Was Serenity Valley So Important? ==

** The battlefield of Waterloo is one square mile. Whatever the truth of history, the popular perception is that one day in that little valley determined the entire shape of Europe for the next century. This is on a much smaller scale, of course -- but what '''are''' the effects of losing a major battle? The Independents would have been severely demoralised by a major defeat. If -- as seems apparent -- they took incredibly high casualties (Mal's unit would be about 99 per cent), their army would have been destroyed as a fighting force. They probably had multiple armies, but spread over multiple worlds. So having their army so thoroughly annihilated at Serenity could have cost them the planet, and the planet could have been strategically key.

** Alternately, that could have just been the turning point of the war. The Browncoats' Gettysburg, at which it began to look like their defeat was guaranteed.

*** For example, let's take a hypothetical invasion of Earth. Assume strong anti-air/anti-orbital defenses, so surface topography is important and combat has to be waged overland, like it apparently was during the battle for Hera. There are at least two points on Earth that would be absolutely critical in any land war: Sanai Peninsula and Panama. Control of those two choke points could deny a land invasion access to entire continents. That's not even taking into account resources, population centers, logistics train, and locations of various forces. Its entirely possible that Serenity Valley could have been entirely useless strategically except that it would have provided Alliance or Browncoat troops access to the enemy's flanks or allowed a breakthrough into an otherwise strategically important location.

 

 

== "The wind blows northerly...." ==

* Okay, so when Mal says "the wind blows northerly, I go north" -- given that a northerly wind is a wind from the north, and would normally drive you south, is he misunderstanding and trying to say he follows the wind, or is he asserting his contrary nature in a surprisingly subtle way? I always assumed the latter, but it's recently been pointed out to me that there's no reason to assume Mal knows anything about meterology.

** Right. Mal isn't exactly what you'd consider a pillar of correct usage of the English language.

** I'd go with the contrary nature cloaked by Cowboy English - let's face it, he deliberately wears a brown coat in Alliance-friendly bars on Unification Day.

** He could be using "northerly" to mean "toward the north" -- it's a perfectly acceptable definition. It's just more commonly used the other way; a northerly is a wind from the north, while a northerly, say, journey could be to or from the north.

 

 

** Here's an easy answer: Jayne was wrong about it. He got his facts mixed up, and ended up just breaking a suit for no good reason. Simple as that.

*** Joss even admitted he was wrong about this point, so no reason Jayne couldn't be too.

 

 

== Inara's Shuttle in "Our Mrs. Reynolds" ==

* In ''Our Mrs Reynolds'' Saffron disables the ship and flies off in a shuttle, leaving the ship very precisely aimed at a wrecking ring, with the navigation shut off. Why couldn't they just use Inara's shuttle to give a quick burn and change their course? Given that Safron's shuttle had enough fuel to move one shuttle to the nearest planet, Inara's must have had enough fuel to move one shuttle+one firefly a short distance.

** They couldn't use Inara's shuttle because Saffron flew off in it.

*** Maybe at the time he panicked a little, so that only occurred to Mal later, after it was already over. Then later on he used the idea in Out of Gas, an example of not making the same mistake twice.

**** Let's look at the situation; Saffron sabotaged Inara's shuttle. Her goal in doing so was to strand the Serenity crew onboard so they couldn't follow her, and so they would all die so that they couldn't come after her/spread the word about her. Presumably she did enough of a number on the shuttle so that there was no way they could use it to escape. Even if they detach it, it will essentially function as a floating coffin, leaving the crew to either drift inside until they starve/suffocate or until Saffron's friends come and shoot out a window to vent it so they can sell it as salvage. "Out of gas" is not a good example because they can use both shuttle's engines to fly away, something which Saffron would have made sure to take care of if she wanted not witnesses.

** In "Out of Gas" its stated that the shuttles only support four people (five if they push it). The life support systems probably couldn't support all nine crew members. Plus Mal ain't about to give up his gorram ship without putting up a fight.

 

 

== Fonts ==

** Maybe it's retro-cool? Or Mal just has no taste?

** Could be worse. Could be Comic Sans.

 

== The Operative's Violent Tendencies ==

** Did you not even pay attention during the movie? Mal was protecting River, and Mal was hiding. "If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to." Mal was hiding among his associates, so the Operative killed his associates so he couldn't hide. And the crews conducting the raids were clearly Alliance special forces, and thus the kind of people who would do this thing routinely.

** Yes I did pay attention to the movie and it still seems sloppy to me. It's like those contrived hit men like the Jackal that kill a ridiculous number of people even though there can always be one that can get away. It was out of character for the Operative-like killing people for the sin of pride with a crowbar instead of a sword. There was just as much probability of making a more elegant kill with a little patience.

*** The only way there could be 'nowhere to run' is if the Operative destroys all of humanity. I doubt Parliament would be overenthusiastic, seeing as they at least want someone to rule over.

*** Uh, no? Mal can't run to the Core, and he has lots of enemies in the Rim and Border. Killing his allies gives him less places to hide. He can certainly still try to hide, but without his contacts he's stuck in a sea of strangers, mercenaries, thieves, and people who want to ventilate him.

*** Information control. The Alliance has a ''lot'' of information; just look at how quickly they found Inara following learning who Mal is.

*** Remember, they fired off at least six decoy beacons to various points. Following all the beacons could certainly point the Alliance in the right direction.

 

== "Earth That Was"? ==

** Because there's countless phrases in the modern lexicon that don't terribly make a lot of sense that are used to refer to old places or times, e.g. The Middle Ages. All it takes is a phrase or word that sticks and people run with. "Earth That Was" doesn't sound terribly out of place to me - to the point that [[Earth-That-Was|its a trope.]]

** The quasi-poetic feel to it may be because it's actually ''from'' a poem. Many modern day words and phrases were either invented or popularized by Shakespeare and are still in use, despite the rules of grammar and so forth having changed significantly since the Elizabethan era. All you need is a playwright or a poet or someone describing "Our numbers were many, our graces were few | Our senses dulled by din and buzz | Our verdant home a duller hue | No longer our home, that Earth That Was."

** Hmm, that's not a bad idea. I think I can save my sanity a little by just assuming "Earth that Was" gained traction through something like that, a poem or popular phrase that present-day viewers just don't know the context for.

** The-Earth-That-Was pretty much sums up that it's well in the past and something bad happened in any instance of it's use. I mean, what would happen if they explained Earth was ruined in a certain episode someone missed and then they went back to talking about it like it was just plain Earth? Wouldn't have the same easy to access oompf and understanding.

 

** Tried to kill a crewman in cold blood? If she'd wanted to kill Jayne, she could have - all she did was slash him across the chest with a relatively shallow cut. She could have done a ''lot'' more damage. And no repurcussions? "She's to stay confined to her room at all times. You take her to the infirmary, the kitchen, you come to me first, understand?" This appears to be fully in effect in that episode, as the only times we see her on the ship outside of Mal's presence, she's confined to her room. There's also the fact that she's mentally unstable, so Mal seems willing to forgive quite a bit for that, and its quite clear throughout the series that he has a ''very'' soft spot for her. Also, a major part of "Ariel" is that Simon is finally developing a real treatment for River, which comes out in the subsequent episode, and it makes sense that Mal would lessen up on River if she starts mentally improving. There's also the issue that ''Jayne betrayed them'', and Mal developing his suspicions about River's powers, which might give Mal a good idea of why River may have attacked him.

** Mal being "soft" on River is definitely a consistent part of his character. Note how he treats her in the movie. He brings her back on the ship even after she goes on a psychotic rampage, though he takes steps to confine her, which matches his reaction to her violent outburst in "Ariel" - she's effectively locked in her room and Mal gives Simon a stern reminder of what his responsibilities are. Mal ''does'' treat her differently than he does Jayne, but that's because while River's actions aren't really her fault due to her insanity, Jayne's were premeditated acts of betrayal. ''That's'' why Mal reacts so violently to Jayne. Once Simon's medications start taking hold, River is released in "War Stories."

** Still River was frickin' crazy and a potential danger. As Jayne said: What if it was Kaylee next, or Inara? What if Kaylee wore a Blue Sun tshirt? I think Mal was wrong on that one, and I really like River.

*** What exactly is Mal going to do? He knows that she's mentally unstable, but at the same time she and her brother are victims of the Alliance and it is quite clear that despite his hardass and uncaring exterior, Mal is a good guy and simply tossing Simon and River off the ship would not sit well with him. So Mal aims for a compromise between security for his crew and his conscience regarding the two: River can stay in the ship but is confined to quarters up until she demonstrates she is not a danger anymore. And with Simon's development of drugs that improves her lucidity, she's released.

** Also, she might happen to believe (some form) of whatever she's saying at the exact moment she's saying it (because sometimes it REALLY seems like she might). She might be planning to knock Mal out, steal his ship, and roll her eyes at all the crew while at the exact same time as she's a vulnerable (and quite crazy) woman who is attracted to Mal.

** Though I'm not sure the argument about arranged marriages is a slippery slope... It's a generalization, and sometimes right and sometimes wrong. Someone who consents to their own arranged marriage can be said to be in a consenting relationship. But if they don't, well, then that simply isn't a consenting relationship, where consenting is also awareness of what they're getting into and the understanding that they can say "no" to unwanted advances.

 

== River's Clothes ==

*** According to an interview with Shawna Trpcic, the costume designer, "River's clothes were supposed to be like Kaylee rejects. As if Simon in his rush did not pack anything, he was just planning his escape with his sister." Those shorts look like something that might be worn under a short skirt, such the pink one in "Safe" that River complained looked like a "gorram doll", suggesting that it's not the kind of clothing she would have picked out for herself. The interview's [http://www.browncoats.com/index.php?ContentID=42ea915100af6 here], if you're curious.

*** Given the rough nature of life in the outer rims, it's not unreasonable to think that some basic sewing/cloth making would be a skill some members of the deep space crews would have. River's clothes wouldn't necessarily have to be hand me downs from from someone, but could be made from left over or discarded clothing.

 

== The Salvage Pirates in "Out of Gas" ==

** Additionally, there is a perfectly good reason to use artificial gravity if you've invented it - it prevents bone and muscle decay. It's a very serious problems for present-day astronauts. They spend a few months in space and then proceed to spending a few months rehabilitating from loss of bone density. Without a need for it, your body will not automatically stay equipped for the stresses of gravity.

*** It's also probably a comfort issue. Humans evolved and are built for moving around in an environment that includes gravity. Thus, having gravity would be a priority for people who are going to be spending most of their lives living in space, assuming they have the technology for it. Also, gravity is useful for dealing with sudden movements, accelerations, and decelerations; if you didn't have it, then everytime the ship changed course anyone not secured would be smashed against a wall. Instead, they're consistently rooted to the "floor" and damage is mitigated.

 

 

*** That issue was discussed further up the page. There's a difference between the two scenes, as when Simon is rescuing River, he's in the middle of maintaining a cover while trying to rescue River, and his first priorities are going to be making sure she's healthy and then getting her out. There's probably also emotional issues there, too, as Simon is likely terrified and worried about River, and this is also the first time he's seen her in nearly three years. By comparison, when he's in the hospital on Ariel, he actually has time to observe and analyze without worrying about distractions like maintaining his cover and preparing an escape. Thus he can spend time being careful and noting everything they did to her.

 

** Actually, she very well could have found that by being on his ship. There's a thing people keep called "journals," after all. Early clearly keeps some momentos of his past around the ship, so him having a journal - even if it is something stored on a computer - makes perfect sense.

*** Or, she's just figured some things out based on his behavior, paired it with some facts she found on his ship, and then messed with him. Of course, it's established that she's a reader, which is how she knows Early is coming (she hears a strange voice in the montage of thoughts and goes looking for it in the beginning of the episode) so yes, she is also in his mind. Whether she can kill him with hers might be up for debate.

** Short version: World of difference between being a high-class, registered companion and being a slut.

** Well, to an extent. There's suggestions that a companion might be treated with respect to his or her face, but might be subject to prejudices and judgments from the noblewomen and men behind their back. In the Serenity RPG handbook, it's mentioned that there's a bit of a double standard, in that companions are looked at as suitable escorts for a party, or even long term arrangements like Atherton proposes, but are not looked at as acceptable marriage partners. Short version: they both get looked down on a little. Hence why even Inara has to endure receiving poor treatment and insults sometimes from her clients, but Inara doesn't conduct herself in public in any way that would have call for anyone to try to shame her whereas The Libby was being particularly rude.

*** It was actually a brilliant piece of showcasing how girls bully each other, tearing apart someone's self-image and self-confidence and making them feel like the dirt beneath your feet, all the while under the pretence of being 'helpful' and 'compassionate' - it's an absolutely vicious form of bullying that's a very common form among females of all age-groups. Whoever wrote those lines was probably very familiar with real-life female bullying. It was well scripted and both the bullies and victim played it very well.

** It's implied that they're mocking Kaylee's lack of privilege, because she doesn't have a personal tailor. Just because someone says something in innocent dulcet tones doesn't mean someone is being nice.

*** Actually, there may be some [[Fridge Brilliance]] in that. During the series, Mal never asks River to help because he ''does'' see her as a load, or at least not able to contribute because of her mental state. But in "Objects in Space," the episode ends with both Tams being accepted as part of the crew and as part of the family. And since now they're both fully part of the crew, Mal expects both of them to do their part.

** As for Kaylee, keep in mind she's angry and upset that he left, and may not be perfectly rational; hell, she's probably looking for someone to blame and making up reasons for it - something that, while not terribly nice of her, is perfectly human to do.

** Also Simon was the one who made the move to leave, not Mal kicking them out. So Mal may still have seen him as crew but had to belittle him because he was in a foul mood.

* Mal said in the show that taking the Tams onboard meant working harder to stay under Alliance radar, meaning that the crew was having a harder time finding work. Add 8 months of the Alliance expanding it's grip, and it's no wonder that Mal might start seeing Simon as the reason that Serenity is running on fumes and the crew is eating leftover scraps.

** It is kind of the same convention we see in ''[[Star Trek]]'', where characters describe very long ranges in the hundreds to thousands of kilometers but when we cut to the visuals the ships are very close together. They've got to fit both ships on screen, so speeds and distances are fiddled with to get a good visual.

** It's also possible Mal had Wash slow down so it didn't look like Serenity was "running away" from the Reaver ship, since they point out that Reavers practically ''have to'' chase you if you run. It was the outerspace equivalent of, "Okay, everyone just act natural..."

 

== Other Colonized Systems? ==

== Zoe's Last Name ==

* Zoe taking Wash's last name. It just seems so out of character for a strong, independently-willed woman like that to give up her own name. This troper imagines it should have gone more like this:

'''Wash:''' Quaint! }}

** [[Sarcasm Mode|Yeah, its not like its commonplace for a wife to take on her husband's last name while keeping her original as a maiden name.]] Her name is Zoe ''Alleyne'' Washburne.

** [[Real Women Never Wear Dresses|So, a real woman can't take her husband's last name?]] Look at their relationship. Zoe ''loves'' him, and Wash ''loves'' her. I mean ''real'', "You are my world, I want to spend every moment from here on out with you, I want to be your wife and have your children" love. That is one of the big constants through the whole series is how loving and ''devoted'' those two are to each other. Why ''wouldn't'' she want to take his name? It's not some show of submission, it's a symbol of how strong their relationship is.<br />Also, yes, she is a very strong woman, but her "independence" is sorely in question to begin with, given her relationship with Mal in the first place; would someone who's so "independent" still be following her old army superior, and taking orders like they were still enlisted?

*** Alternately, Wash could have taken hers.

*** Okay, fair enough, I may have gone a little too far in the other direction. But the point stands that there's no real reason for her ''not'' to take the name of the man she loves beyond the OP thinking she's too "strong and independently-willed" for it, which, as I mentioned, is fairly unfounded.

** It's not inconceivable that Zoe and Wash wanted to have the same last name, especially if they were planning on having kids at some point, and as Wash goes by his last name--or rather a nickname based on his last name--it would be more practical for Zoe to give up hers.

** Maybe Zoe's maiden name was stupid and she didn't like it. I'm a strong, independent woman, whatever that means, and I dislike my unpronounceable, ugly last name. I don't want to go to the trouble of changing it, but if I get a socially acceptable, commonplace excuse--like getting married--it's gone.

 

== Passengers ==

* The fact that Dobson, Simon, and Book were brought aboard in the first place bugs me. No mention is ever made after the pilot episode about bringing in more passengers, not even an offhand mention in the movie about passengers after Book and Inara left.

** The answer to that is fairly simple -- River Tam. A crazy girl is hard to hide on a days- or weeks-long voyage on a small ship, and the kind of people who would choose to take passage on a rim worlds smuggler would probably not be the kind who could be relied upon to keep schtum when offered a reward or threatened with arrest. Looking after the Tams forced Serenity (and her crew) to stay further off the radar than normal; that included not taking passengers. They just happened to have already got seriously lucky in finding first Inara and then Book.

** Given that carrying passengers was just about more trouble than it was worth, I tend to imagine that they take on passengers partly (or mainly) because they like to have new faces aboard ''Serenity'' on occasion, especially faces which might take their minds off their shadier dealings -- in other words, to improve crew morale. Kaylee mentioned that she loves bringing on new passengers, hearing about their lives, and so forth. There was also the fact that the Tams became permanent passengers, with Simon joining the crew. Book had expressed intent to stay on ''Serenity'' for a long time, to have a chance to see the border planets and possibly keep an eye on other things. That said, they must have had at least one vacant bunk (Dobson's), and probably once matters calmed somewhat with respect to the fugitives they were harboring, they would have picked up additional passengers in later seasons. And hell, Inara was threatening to leave ''Serenity'', which would have left them with two vacant shuttles to rent out, making it all the more likely that future seasons would have seen new passengers.

*** They might not have had a vacant bunk; Dobson died, but they weren't anticipating River, so they lost a passenger and gained one.

 

== Why Didn't Mal Shoot Saffron? ==

** Why ''would'' he shoot her? Mal doesn't ride the '''VENGEANCE!''' train, and he doesn't kill people who don't represent an immediate threat to him. Crow was the exception, because he'd made it explicitly clear that he was going to hunt down Mal and by extension the rest of his crew and then kill them. He's perfectly willing to let people who cause trouble for him go, as long as its not personal. Saffron tried to kill him, but it was mostly just business, nothing personal and she didn't show any inclination to hunt Mal down.

*** Mal isn't some kind of pacifist. Saffron tried to get him killed several times, and he knew damn well she couldn't be trusted. At the very least, he could have tied her up to something in ''Trash'', once they were back in the shuttle, and he'd have avoided the waiting-naked-in-the-desert.

* In "Objects In Space", Early locks most of the crew in their quarters when he infiltrates the ship. Two problems: Firstly, he locks everyone in from the corridor. Why does ''Serenity'', being a small cargo ship, even have this holding-cell function? Secondly, why are they all going to bed at the same time, there being no day or night in space? ''Who's flying this thing?!''

** The problem in having day-night shifts like on the nautical ships of Earth-That-Is is that first, Serenity only has maybe four people who have any responsibility delegated to them in regards to keeping the ship on course and collision free. Two of them are married and wouldn't go for being on different shifts. The second is that they're landing on worlds with different local times compared to ship time and standard time. As they travel they have to adjust their sleeping schedules for the space equivalent of jet lag. Much like modern airline crews, when it's time to sleep, they all go to their hotel rooms, or in this case, their bunks. Just makes it easier if everyone is on the same sleeping schedule when they have to take off, maneuver, land, and etc. Wouldn't do to have the pilot nodding off because he took the night shift.

** The lockdown itself probably isn't a regularly used function. Its likely an emergency function for extreme circumstances. As for the day/night cycles, they're in the middle of extremely deep space with nobody anywhere nearby and nothing they can potentially run into. They don't need to have someone awake because there's ''nothing'' that the ship could encounter (save bounty hunters hiding in their thermal wake) and even then, they've got proximity alarms, Wash, Mal, Jayne, and Zoe are a ladder and a five-second dash from the cockpit, and Kaylee is still up and about in the engine room and Book is still awake down below. They don't need to have someone in the cockpit, and if something happens, their sensors will pick it up and alert the rest of the crew long before it gets close.

*** Its probably relatively safe for them to leave the ship on autopilot. Remember that, as Mal himself put it, they're "in the middle of no and where" and there's no [[Stealth in Space]] - if anything gets relatively close, the sensors can alert them. Two crewmembers are still awake (Kaylee and Book), and all of the main crew are a short ladder and a half-dozen steps away from the cockpit.

**** This "alerting them" thing worked really well for the ''incoming spaceship with a bounty hunter''. [[Fridge Logic|Makes you wonder]] if this episode would have happened ''at all'' if someone had been up on the bridge that time.

** Technically, according to the RPG manual, the Alliance doesn't actually send out medicine or charity aid that often. Lots of members of parliament are still miffed about the Independents rejecting the initial offer to join the Alliance, and despite a number of border and rim worlds actually supporting unification, the outer reaches in general kinda got painted with the stigma of being Independent by the core. This is very similar to the reconstruction era of the South after the civil war, when a number of people in the north actually wanted to punish the south for the perceived betrayal. And if that wasn't enough, there were the corrupt carpetbaggers that flooded in to government positions and started looting money and resources, since former confederates weren't allowed to take office. Rim world resources are FAR from being wasted; arguably the real point of the war was obtaining those resources FOR the core corporations. The one decent thing the north did try to do was uphold law protecting the former slaves, that is to say human rights issues; unfortunately the Alliance doesn't even have that to its credit, as the Alliance military and core corporations (especially terraformers) are the biggest buyers into slave trade of anyone in the Firefly 'verse. Won't hear about THAT in the core, for sure.

** As noted on the main page, we're dealing with a [[Protagonist-Centered Morality]] here. The Alliance comes off as oppressive and corrupt because we're looking at it through the lens of people who've ended up on the wrong side of the Alliance; if the story had been told from the viewpoint of someone from the Core who didn't run afoul of the Alliance, we'd see a much different portrayal. It's kind of how things would look different if you were seeing stories told from different sides of a real life war. For example, a story told from the perspective of a French or British soldier in WWII would have a dramatically different perspective on Germany than a story told from the perspective of a German soldier.

** It is worth noting that there does indeed seem to be some kind of opposition force within the Alliance's Core Worlds. When Simon is looking for River, he was in a "blackout zone" and trying to contact someone who could get him information on River's whereabouts. And he mentions that he did contact an organization that knew enough about the Academy to help him get inside. So there is definitely ''someone'' within the Core that is powerful enough and well-informed enough to be aware of both what the Academy was up to and how to help Simon get in. But as noted above, the core of the storyline is focused on the outlaw reaches of the 'Verse and the little guys in the morally gray world of smuggling and other criminality instead of the educated upper-crust of the Alliance. You don't get a look at the upper crust of the Alliance for the same reason that a story set in the American West doesn't focus on the power-politics of Washington DC. Its outside the scope of the story.

 

** Why not? The pool table is difficult to damage, and simple tech that's readily available in the setting. Plus, holographic displays can be easily custom-modified to alternate playing styles. Want to mix up the game? Adjust the balls' relative weights, the direction they move, arrangement, etc.

** Stops drunks, idiots and/or miscreants nicking the balls. Speaking as a former bartender, this is a bigger problem than you may think.

 

== Book's Denomination ==

** It's also possible that it's based on Nazirites, who weren't allowed to cut their hair, eat certain foods, drink alcohol, or handle dead bodies. I'm pretty sure Book buries and prays for the dead, but it's possible that he wasn't permitted to do the other things. [[wikipedia:Nazirite|Thank you,]] [[Other Wiki]]!

** "Shepherd" is not just what they call pastors and ministers in the 'verse. Book is a member of the Order of Shepherds. From pages 206-207 of the Serenity RPG:

system. Shepherds look to Christian scripture as their faith's grounding. They do not claim to have all the answers, but are here to help spread the word to those that need it told to.

 

 

 

** It is. I mean, it was the last episode shot. Objects in Space was actually shot before The Message and Trash, if I remember correctly. OiS was the last episode to air on Fox (aside from the pilot, which ''actually'' aired last...anyway...) and it is Joss's personal favorite episode, so he decided it should be the crown of the box set. But The Message was the last episode shot. Listen to the commentary and they'll talk about how the scene with Mal and Zoe laughing riotously was filmed right after they'd gotten the news of cancellation, and how amazing it was that they could go in and do that when they were so heartbroken. The funeral scene was also the last scene ever shot, so the mourning you see there is real, and the gorgeous sad music for it is for the show itself.

*** Keep in mind River made her famous "Also, I can kill you with my brain" threat to Jayne in "Trash" which is indisputably set prior to both "The Message" and "Objects in Space." So Jayne would have that to consider even with out the events in "Objects in Space". I always took that to be a joke in part because the idea of River being a psychic, at the time, would seem silly to him. He reacts with surprise later when others take it seriously and he presumably started looking at that event (and probably others) in a different light.

*** Yes. Recall that immediately before Mal shot the guy he was ordering his crew to cover the ship with the corpses of their freshly dead friends. And immediately ''afterward'' he threatens to shoot ''them'' as well if they question his orders. It's an intentional [[Kick the Dog]] moment that's supposed to show the gravity of the situation and the depth of Mal's anger at the Alliance.

** Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my definition, but the mercy killing during the payroll job doesn't count, because it was for the guy's own good. Mal also shoots the Operative unarmed, but the Operative is definitely a threat to him -- Mal doesn't do it out of spite or revenge, but because it's the safest way to get Inara out of the trap.

 

== Mandarin Cursing ==

* There's probably some neat [[Techno Babble]] explanation for this, but it really strains my suspension of disbelief when people are running all over spaceships and space stations firing off guns. And not just guns, ''fully automatic machine guns''. In a show with no [[FTL Travel]] and no [[Sound in Space]], I really would expect that this would have the result it would in [[Real Life]]: hull gets breached, ship depressurizes, everyone dies.

** The ships and space stations are engineered to handle bullets hitting the hull. This is stated by Jayne in "Objects In Space" when Mal worries about Jayne's [[Hand Cannon]] potentially breaching the hull. "Bullets is soft lead, Mal. Vera's the best I got, she can barely breach the hull." Implication there is that Jayne's own personal BFG, with enormous rounds (which we can see on the gun itself are about the size of .50 caliber) barely poses any threat to their cheap, lightweight, barely-holding-together civilian ship. Besides, depressurization from bullets is an overblown hazard; if a section of the ship is compromised by bullets, it can be easily sealed off and the hull can be quickly patched. Not to mention that it would take time for a section of the ship to lose air from a hull breach from bullets; at least enough time for the crew in the compromised section to get to another compartment and seal it off.<br />Besides, if you've got ships that are moving so fast they're going to be crossing interplanetary distances in hours/days, you've pretty much got to engineer them so they can withstand micrometeorite/space debris impacts at that speed. A ship capable of routinely withstanding that kind of impact isn't going to blink at slower, less energetic impacts like those caused by bullets fired by small arms. You'd probably need something very powerful and likely tipped with armor-piercing and explosive rounds (i.e. the AA artillery gun from Haven that they bolted onto the ship) to get through the hull of any decently-designed spacecraft in this setting.<br />In short, the ships were built and engineered by people who expected that somewhere along the line, someone was going to be firing a gun inside the ship and didn't want everyone to get killed by a stray bullet. The vessels and space stations are built with this in mind. You don't need any kind of [[Techno Babble]] explanation for that - just good hull engineering.

 

 

** Perhaps he was being Bitchy McBitchface due to his own discomfort with her work. Think of it as a sarcastic nickname used to mock what she does.

** It's one of the nicknames Mal has for her, recognized by the rest of the crew. There's no real reason why he wouldn't refer to her by that nickname, especially considering that's her role on the ship, too.

 

== River's Feet ==

** It depends on how tough your feet are. Walk around a lot on your bare feet and you'll develop a thicker skin on them that can take it. And keep in mind that River ''is'' combat conditioned; you don't get that way without doing a lot of work on your feet, which will build up toughness. Regardless, I think River honestly doesn't care if her feet are cold or hot; she seems to care less about physical discomfort and more about making constant tactile contact with the ship.

*** This troper has preferred walking barefeet all his life. I've walked on forest ground, on rocky beaches, on tarmac, on gravel, on metal grates and once, on something of a self-dare, in a supermarket. Admittedly, the most discomfortable was the supermarket - these tiles are ''cold'', especially in the meat & cheese section. But mostly it's no big deal. The body adapts. It's kind of like when you live next to a subway station - after a while, you don't even notice the trains rumbling by every 5 minutes.

 

== Physics defying badassery ==

 

== Land Lock ==

# if such a thing really exists, what is there to prevent any bad guy from sitting at a spaceport, recording signals until some poor soul has a "land lock" applied, then using the signal to immobilize some rich target later on in a hijacking?

* In order:

 

== Simon's Importance as a Bounty ==

 

When exactly did Simon cease to have value to the Alliance? He's a certified genius, the shooting script for "Safe" suggests that the Tams were more deeply in on the Academy project than he realized, and he would be a very effective tool against a recalcitrant student (River) for the Academy. He either successfully found and paid someone to break into or actually broke into a secure Alliance facility and just knows too damn much. Not to mention that he would have given Jubal a.) additional bounty and b.) a very effective [[Fetish Fuel|victim]]/[[Nightmare Fuel|tool]] for the [[Forced to Watch|mental/emotional]]/[[Mind Rape|sexual]] [[Cold-Blooded Torture|torture]] that he is clearly shown to revel in. So why on earth does Simon's importance as a target steadily decline throughout the series?

 

== Garbage collector droid programming in "Trash" ==

* Actually, it makes sense when you consider the drones' range. Those drones can apparently transport materials to and from any location on the planet. Whatever company or government service is operating the drone is likely working across the planet, servicing hundreds or thousands or even millions of sites. They're going to be transporting many different kinds of garbage, whether it it would be regular civilian trash to nuclear waste to chemical byproducts to recyclable material to animal waste and everything in between. Different types of trash are going to go to different areas. It would be easier just to insert a destination in each container than code up a fairly complex system in each drone that has the drone determine where everything is supposed to go - plus that cuts back on manpower costs. And to be honest, for a society of the scale and tech sophistication of this type, loading containers with a simple interface containing transport coordinates is would be pretty cheap and easy; they can make flying cities and terraform entire worlds, so putting in a cheap computer interface less complex than a modern cell phone would be trivially easy.

 

This is inspired by the answer to the "guns in space" complaint, namely that a hull rated to take a micrometeorite at .33 ''c'' won't even blink at a mere bullet. There are windows on Serenity. They must be rated for meteorites, too. So...how did the Reaver harpoon penetrate it?

* If the weapon is rated for ship-to-ship combat, then it would be rated to penetrate hulls and bullet-proof windows. The harpoon is just a longer projectile with more power behind it. No reasonably competent gunner will be firing a weapon not rated for hull penetration at a ship. Its the difference between a navy crewman's sidearm and the anti-air and anti-ship weapons the ship carries.

 

[[Category:Live Action TV/Headscratchers]]

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