What is the Blue Sun Corporation?

Monday, April 30, 2007 10:06 PM

After writing the entire Wikipedia article regarding Blue Sun I started getting a few e-mails about it and I thought I'd write a blog entry to help those people who are new to firefly begin to understand the underside of the main story. Now keep in mind, this blog entry is entirely my opinion. It is not canon. It is based on my expansive personal knowledge of Firefly coupled with how and where Blue Sun inter-relates.

To understand Blue Sun you must first possess an understanding of the political structure of the 'verse.

Firefly can be politically compared to the 18th century English government. At that time there was a triad of intrests governing the highest decisions of British life. Firstly there was the King, and along with that persona you find the nobility. Second is the parliament of "elected" officials. I place the word (elected) in quotes because the concept of a democracy was more of a philosophy than a reality during that time period. The third and final major force were the capitalists of the era and along with them comes big business. One of the largest of these organizations was the East India Company. Blue Sun is modeled on EIC.

In the 18th century, political corruption was a fact of life and a nature of business. In order to see your commercial interests forwarded, one need only use ones money to influence the nobility and thus parliament. Oftentimes members of parliament were nobles who had political stock in EIC or other trade engines. The system was tightly interwoven and the result was that an elite few were able to become wealthy by treading on the backs of the common man. This is the exact situation we see in the Firefly 'verse. A nobility class clearly exists. Mal refers to a "King of Londinium" in the pilot episode. Warrick Harrow explains to Mal that his red sash indicates lordhood. Atherton Wing and Magistrate Higgins are clearly lesser lords. Interrelated with these nobles you find the interests of the Alliance government, which we know from the film to be governed by a parliament. The third and final piece of the puzzle is big business. In Firefly we see this expressed in the form of the Blue Sun Corporation, which while surely not the only corporation, is likely the largest and most influential.

Joss Whedon once described Blue Sun as a combination of Microsoft and Coca-Cola. Judging from what we see of Blue Sun a more apt comparision would be Microsoft/Coca-Cola/Procter & Gamble. Clearly the future of corporations involves business buying itself out until only a scant few entities remain. Those few companies provide all the logistical infrastructure in the 'verse. One of Blue Sun's niches is in the consumer staples market. Note the following apperances of Blue Sun on food products:
1. The crybaby was a radio transmitter taped to a Blue Sun coffee can. (pilot episode)
2. River rips labels of Blue Sun brand food. (shindig)
3. A Blue Sun cola commercial runs as Serenity debarks her landing platform (The Message)
4. River kicks a Blue Sun brand bottle off a table in the maidenhead bar (Serenity feature film)
5. Jayne passes a Blue Sun brand liquor bottle to Simon (Serenity feature film)

Blue Sun's other market is in electronic technological advancements. The only example of this is in the episode Ariel. When Simon boots up the holo-imager, a spinning logo appears before the machine begins to show Rivers internal organs. If you look closely at the center of the spinning element of the hologram, you can clearly see Blue Sun's logo. Be aware that it will appear backwards because it is presented in a manner that would appear correct to the operator of the imager (Simon) and we are on the opposite side. I have heard (non-canon) discussions that there were plans to hide Blue-Sun logos in internet communications, implying that the company has patients on common telecommunications technologies, such as sending "Waves" and accessing the Cortex. (For non-browncoats...the Cortex is the WWW of the 'verse. It traverses all the planets in the star system, tho

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