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Firefly (TV series)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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** This Troper finds it hard to believe that the Reavers took the time to get a bucket, mop and scrub brush after brutally raping, murdering and skinning the whole crew. Even with melee weapons there would be blood stains.
*** They can operate starships, advanced weapons systems, and leave complex explosive traps, [[Arbitrary Skepticism|yet you have difficulty imagining them cleaning up after a kill to lure in more victims?]] Especially when this has quite clearly ''been shown'' to have happened?
** See the [[Firefly
** 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.
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** And really, it was ''barely'' hinted at in Firefly, if hinted at at all, that River was a weapon. The stuff she displayed was telepathy, an aptitude for... well, everything mental, and precise around-the-corner aiming. This troper personally hoped that they were doing something slightly less... well, Joss Whedon, than making River a super-girl. (Have I emphasized how little this makes sense?)
*** 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
*** This still doesn't address the idea of the Alliance taking the brilliant mind of a 90lb girl and screwing it over, apparently having decided she's much more suited to Waif-Fu than, you know, putting her brilliance to use.
**** 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.
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** Reavers don't seem to be into vandalism. Remember, the ship in 'Bushwhacked' was in pretty good condition after being visited by Reavers, too.
** Reavers are sadists. Buildings don't feel.
** For that matter [[
*** Trying to avoid the Reavers in such an obvious manner is more or less a flashing sign that says "hey, we're not Reavers!"
*** Well, yes it would be, if the Reavers knew they were trying to avoid them. The whole point of going around is so that they don't know you're there. As was stated above, the given space is a whole lot of sky for the relatively small Reaver population to occupy. If they flew far enough in any direction, they could get around the fleet (for want of a better word) of Reavers without said space zombies ever learning of their presence.
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== Mandarin ==
* So, if everyone speaks bad Mandarin as a pillow langauge, and if China is the source for one of the two surviving cultures, why are there no Asian characters with speaking parts? With such a diverse bunch, you'd expect to see a few.
** 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
*** So...when people of different races inbreed they end up looking mostly like white people?
*** Watch the pilot episode again. Look at the port at Persephone. Or look at the people in the space station in "The Message." Or the mixture of races in the out-of-the-way hick village in "Safe." Or the mixture of people in the port at Beaumonte in the movie. ''That'' is what we're looking at when we look at an intermixed culture.
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== "Earth That Was"? ==
* I've hardly seen more than ten minutes of Firefly at a time, but even so, I have to ask: why, why do they call Earth "[[Earth-That-Was]]", instead of something more natural like "Old Earth" or just plain "Earth"? I can't see or hear the phrase "Earth That Was" without thinking of Stan talking about "the Before Time" on ''[[South Park]]'', or Miri's "the Before Time, in the Long Long Ago" on ''[[Star Trek:
** 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."
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== Mal's Character Derailment ==
* [[The Movie
** For Simon, keep in mind that A) Mal ''does not like him'' and B) Simon was outright going against his authority by refusing to let River be taken on the job. Being a member of Mal's crew is a two-way street; he'll cover your ass and keep you safe, but he expects you to follow his orders, or he'll come down on you hard. A good example of this was in "Out of Gas" - Wash refuses to obey Mal's order to go to the bridge and assess the damage to the ship. Mal's response is to slam him against the wall and force him to follow orders. Simon is refusing to let Mal take River with him on the bank job, so Mal is turning hostile toward him.
** For River, as was just said, being on the crew is a two-way street: You have to contribute something, and that's what he wanted River to do, use her natural abilities to help keep them safe on a job. Mal can be a jerk sometimes, but he probably wouldn't have actually put her in harm's way on purpose; no way he could've foreseen the Reavers, and if it weren't for them, they'd have gotten home without any sort of hassle. Mal has been, in the past, equally hostile toward any of the other crew when they went against him or refused to contribute, like the aforementioned instance with Wash, or Jayne on occasion.
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** Its for the same reason ships move so slowly in a variety of other science fiction TV shows/films; showing them moving at actual speed and at actual distances would have them moving too fast for the viewer to actually see them moving in relation to each other.
*** No, actually. Space is so huge that things in it seem to move relatively slowly. It also screws with depth perception. Things that are miles apart can look very close together in the vastness of space.
** It is kind of the same convention we see in ''[[
** 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..."
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