A creepy idea
POSTED BY: canadianjon
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 7, 2003 05:25
VIEWED: 10198
PAGE 1 of 3
From the FOX board...
I just read the thread 'mal's weaknesses'.
They discuss that Mal's personality was kind of 'shattered' into different 'characters' representing different things.
Book = his faith, belief in god
Inara = his sexuality, his dignity
Kaylee = playfulness, love for life
River = his struggle for sanity
Simon = his rationality, desire to help
Wash = his humor
Zoe = his military background, loyalty
Jayne = his aggression, violence
Serenity = freedom (the most important thing)
I think it was Betsyslu who dropped this idea for an ultimate plot twist...
The scene in the pilot at the battle of serenity where Mal looks up stunned, and the guy next to him gets gunned down, then we see a closeup of Mal's face, violin music playing.
WHAT IF he died there, and the whole series flashed before his eyes in a few minutes before he died. It never explained how he managed to escape, it just cut to six years later. His ship and crew could be manifestations from his mind.
The idea of serenity and the crew never existing
is creepifying to say the least.
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That's almost like something out of Buffy.
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Of course, "Out of Gas" shows us how he got the ship and gathered the crew, but that's noticeably from Mal's almost-dying perspective as well. 
My interpretation of how he "escaped" the Battle of Serenity was that he was commanded to lay down his arms and did. And the Independents negotiated peace soon thereafter. Serenity was the last battle of the war.
Cardie
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You know, about a year ago my girlfriend rented the first season of "Sex and the City" on DVD and showed them to me. Not really my cup of tea, but I had to admit that they were entertaining. "Plus which," I told her afterward, "I really kinda like the inner conceit."
"The wha?" she said.
"The inner conceit. You know, how the three friends all symbolize a different fundamental aspect of the main character's unconscious personality."
"The wha?" she said again.
So we talked about that for a while. I mean, it seemed blindingly obvious to me at the time. Each of the three friends embodies a different (sublimated) aspect of the main character's personality.
The mousy redhead with the boyish figure is her asexual aspect. If I remember right one of the episodes we watched involved that character's being mistaken for a lesbian, which obviously symbolized the main character's inner desire to divorce herself from her gender identity.
The voluptous blonde is just the opposite of the redhead: she's the sexual aspect. She's the main character's id, if you'll pardon the Freudism.
The timid brunette is the main character's nuturing aspect. She's the conscience. She always concerns herself with what others will think, and never acts impulsively, not because of a sense of restraint, but simply because that's not part of her nature.
We talked about this for hours.
Weeks later she told me that she'd mentioned it to some of her girlfriends, all of whom watch the show regularly. They concluded that my impressions had some validity, but that they probably weren't intended, and tended to break down if examined too closely.
I'd love to see the same sort of thing done with Firefly. I think the basic breakdown of the aspects is right on, whether it was put there intentionally or not. Maybe there's a sort of natural instinct that comes into play when building an ensemble cast for a movie or TV show: the creator wants a well-rounded cast with plenty of strong personalities and the potential for conflict, so that naturally results in ensembles that resemble aspects of a single person's personality. Maybe.
I don't think I like the idea that it's all a dying flashback, though. I prefer the thought that Mal's sitting in an Alliance prison daydreaming the whole thing. But that's just me: I'm with the melancholy.
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The whole dying flashback bit was the Plot twist for "The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Leguin". I don't think we have to worry about Mutant Enemy ripping off a story that blatantly.
Did ME take their name from the song "And you and I" from the album "Close to the Edge", by Yes?
Sad creature nailed upon the corridor of time. Insane preacher reminds us of the rhyme.
There'll be no mutant enemy we shall certify.
For political ends our sad remains must die.
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I myself was frowning at the tv as Mal just stood there, and as if I didn't know that he was going to be with us for a good long while (as with Kaylee getting shot-- I know, I'm a dumbass), was saying, "Ok, Mal, you'll be wanting to duck sometime soon, as I hear it gunshot wounds can be just this side of fatal..." Yes, it's creepifying. And sad. I would cry.
But it's not beyond Joss. He'd do it, being the sadistic mofo that he is. And we love him for it.
But I'd still cry.
---
Them's fightin' words
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Quote:
Originally posted by ThatGirlIsabel:
But it's not beyond Joss. He'd do it, being the sadistic mofo that he is.
One of my favorite authors is a guy named Niven. He writes science fiction of the just-this-side-of-silly vein. Over the years, he's constructed a whole universe of interconnected stories. Pretty complex, really.
A few years ago he wrote a story outline for a novel that he never wrote. He'd reached a point in his career where he wasn't interested in writing any more of those stories, but he didn't want to just completely abandon the universe he'd created, either. The novel was to be entitled "Down in Flames," and it would serve to utterly destroy his entire milieu. The story outline has since made it onto the net; you can find it pretty easily with Google. It's a fun read.
I wouldn't hold it against Joss one bit if he were to decide to do that very thing with "Firefly." If it reaches the point where the property just isn't commercially viable, I wouldn't mind at all if he scraped together enough cash to produce one final episode, or even vignette, that demolishes the whole premise of the story.
In fact, I have a sneaky suspicion that they're doing something rather like that with this season of "Buffy." There have been rumors that the events of this season sound suspiciously like the back-story behind Joss's future-set comic "Fray." I think it'd be great if he and the other writers were planning to find a way to destroy the whole vampires/slayer premise.
I mean, it's one thing to kill your series protagonist. Joss has both been there and done that, twice. But it's something entirely else to introduce an event into your continuity that makes future stories literally impossible.
What a way to go.
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I thought her idea was neat. It's been done
before many times, just never with a show I
cared about so much (I never thought I'd be
on a message board).
Star Trek TNG and DS9 had episodes that the
main character believed their star trek
universe never existed, Riker, Picard, Sisko.
Buffy also had an episode with her as a crazy girl dreaming up her sunnydale world. These
were pretty cool too, but it always ended up
that their universe WAS real. It's much
wierder to think about the characters
actually never existing.
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Merry Christmas. ...my first post anywhere... Are any of you old enough to remember the final episode of St. Elsewhere? Or, how about the last episode of the second Bob Newhart show?
Joan
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The whole "Different aspects" bit brought to mind a DS9 episode, "Distant Voices."
Whole concept - the station doctor just celebrated his 30th birthdays, and was contemplating the steady march of time, mortality, and all that jazz.
The some telepathic alien that was out to steal some meds nailed him.
Doctor wakes up to find the station is an awful mess...life support's failing, place is shot up. The more he tours, the more he realizes that the station is his mind, and that his friends are archetypes of his own personality facets. Worse, he's also aging rapidly, and the alien that attacked him is running loose (the telepathic attack is causing more damage to his brain).
Hmm...now if someone pulled that with Mal...
Co-founder of the Evil Writing Crew - causing hell, one hero at a time!
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