Reboot Rumors?

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Monday, February 27, 2017 08:42
VIEWED: 8170
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DREAMTROVE

Tuesday, February 21, 2017 8:13 PM

Hmm. I see your point, but I see WishIMay's as well.

I'm not sure.

An institution can be evil by design. There's more peace under President Snow, but that peace not only comes at a price, it leads to lasting decay. Snow may be an evil idealist. President Coin on the other hand is an evil opportunist.

Gwek, I get your point on the simplicity of a Star Wars universe. It justifies any means to say that the enemy is incurably evil.

In greater Whedonverse there is a theme of corporations being evil, but also government. Mayor Wilkins, for example.

Firefly specific, the Alliance is a tool for evil as it starts, can't see how it becomes a tool for good. Or if thinking that it could be is like wanting to use the one ring for good.

SECOND

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 12:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by GWEK:

. . . there is a moral gray area that we all live in that's very clear when we live on the frontier."

In Whedon's eyes, the Alliance is, in fact, a positive force.

There is a real philosophy that Whedon knows of, which is taking over this planet. If it were to be transferred to the 'Verse you'd get the Firefly Universe, with all the Alliance's achievements in longer and happier lives on the central planets and all the Alliance's shortcomings leading to shorter and unhappier lives on the frontier.

The founding philosopher of the Alliance was named Hayek. He begins his book by advancing the narrowest possible conception of liberty: an absence of coercion. He rejects such notions as political freedom, universal rights, human equality and the distribution of wealth, all of which, by restricting the behavior of the wealthy and powerful, intrude on the absolute freedom from coercion he demands.

Democracy, by contrast, “is not an ultimate or absolute value”. In fact, liberty depends on preventing the majority from exercising choice over the direction that politics and society might take.

He justifies this position by creating a heroic narrative of extreme wealth. He conflates the economic elite, spending their money in new ways, with philosophical and scientific pioneers. Just as the political philosopher should be free to think the unthinkable, so the very rich should be free to do the undoable, without constraint by public interest or public opinion.

The ultra rich are “scouts”, “experimenting with new styles of living”, who blaze the trails that the rest of society will follow. The progress of society depends on the liberty of these “independents” to gain as much money as they want and spend it how they wish. All that is good and useful, therefore, arises from inequality.

Inherited wealth is more socially useful than earned wealth: “the idle rich”, who don’t have to work for their money, can devote themselves to influencing “fields of thought and opinion, of tastes and beliefs”. Even when they seem to be spending money on nothing but “aimless display”, they are in fact acting as society’s vanguard.

http://evonomics.com/ruthless-network-super-rich-ideologues-killed-cho
ice-destroyed-peoples-faith-politics/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

WISHIMAY

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 2:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:

Weren't me that was saying it wasn't.

But ain't that America.

Yep.

I can't even fathom who really runs our government...

But ANY time a system gets bigger than any group of people's power, that system is generally not good at benevolence because it is too far removed from the consequences. The odds of more psychopaths running things goes up.

There will be oversights in a large system, but it's when they pay attention to something I worry

WISHIMAY

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 3:09 AM

Had a long conversation about possible reboot premises with hubby today.

We still like the idea RiverTam1 came up with which is about a Terraforming community. There would be whole new science aspects to explore and societal aspects and you could even have the original crew stop by...maybe the Terraformers could be closet Independents or something. Give the new people an air of character authentication. Maybe they could end up being a larger part of taking down the Alliance?

Otherwise, I thought maybe the Alliance leaders could come forward and "admit their horrible wrongs and vow to do better", but really they use it as an opportunity to do worse things and try to hide them better. Re-invigorate the Alliance as an Empire style baddie.

Or maybe 15 years down the line the Independents are the real asshole trash of the 'Verse and the Alliance is weak and useless.

Maybe Mal or Zoe are the leaders of a rebellion?

I also like the idea of them having a hard-hitting jerk journalist on the ship like something out of a Transmetropolitan comic. Except make it androgynous and slightly Sherlockian... Everyone loves a jerk character. I'm sick to death of the guys getting all the fun, too... House, Dr Cox from Scrubs, Elementary, Sherlock...

Ideas??
Plot devices?
Characters?

DREAMTROVE

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 4:24 PM

Second,
I'm not going to drag the spirit of RWED into general, that would be a crime against the verse, but I'll just leave it at this: Have you read Hayek?

No doubt the Firefly universe is to some extent anarchocapitalism, but the libertarian ideal is much more strongly represented by Mal, Serenity and the outer planets. By contrast the alliance.

Whedon's ultimate social philosophy is hard to pin down. On the surface, he's a liberal like almost everyone in Hollywood. The underlying assumption of that idea that if only a liberal were in power, everything would be fine. They reinforce this by turning off their sensors whenever a liberal is in power, so they miss the horrible economic, environmental and human rights abuses of Clinton or Obama and focus on those of Bush and Trump, et al.

The conflation that is typically made here is a pretty simple chain: Reagan was a Thatcherite and Thatcher was a big supporter of Hayek. I see Monbiot is a Tory but decidedly anti-Thatcher, which is where is views on Hayek are coming from. That said, it's a pretty skewed perspective. Hayek is liberal more like Ron Paul, who, like Hayek, has an economic model is based on an overarching pacificism. I'd agree that this isn't Joss's position.

Whedon's surface politics are clear in the shows as well, but the story arcs of each Joss creation are pretty decidedly on the other side. Many people have commented on this, and it's what leads to that split fanbase that causes RWED fights. Searching on Joss and Hayek returned me nothing, but Joss Paul gave me this link, which is a pretty good analysis of Whedon's position.
http://istanbulfactsandideas.blogspot.com/2008/01/joss-whedon-and-libe
rtarianism.html
That said, I'm not sure Whedon himself has thoroughly thought it out, and what he writes, the world he creates are in stark contrast in many areas, to that of his consciously accepted political views (like feminism, liberalism, etc.)

I feel quite confident in saying that I don't think Joss picked up a copy of Hayek's Road to Serfdom, or The Constitution of Liberty and used it as a roadmap for the Alliance. Okay, nor did he thump it on the table and say "This is what we believe," but IIRC Thatcher (a Tory herself, like Monbiot,) was opposing another Tory's neoliberal proposal at the time.

Hayek is definitely a classic liberal like Paul, and not a neoliberal like Clinton. In fact, Hayek comments at some point that while at the University of Chicago, he was the only member of the economics department not invited to the Chicago School dinners. The posthumous connection of Hayek to neoliberalism is a distortion that would have appalled Hayek.

Neoliberal is more based on an evolution from Keynes, through the world bank, IMF and Federal Reserve models to the fiat derivative and international trade unions like the EU, NAFTA and TPP.

I didn't know I was going to end this post with a rap video, but here it is. Hayek vs Keynes.

I do not actually think that the Alliance represents either model. I think it's state corporatist, as Wishimay and Gwek suggest.

And that was enough on economics for me. Back to bed, really ill. I'll try to get back and address the reboot ideas.

DREAMTROVE

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 4:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Quote:
Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:

Weren't me that was saying it wasn't.

But ain't that America.

Yep.

I can't even fathom who really runs our government...

But ANY time a system gets bigger than any group of people's power, that system is generally not good at benevolence because it is too far removed from the consequences. The odds of more psychopaths running things goes up.

There will be oversights in a large system, but it's when they pay attention to something I worry

Agreed, just, completely.

DREAMTROVE

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 4:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

Terraforming community.

I'll get to the rest of this later. for now, just to first part. Structurally for a show, you need to move around. In space opera, if you're stuck in one place, you become a character interaction based show, which is what happened to DS9. Now this is something that Joss does very very well (Buffy et al) but it's not strictly speaking, Firefly.

I think I can reconcile this with a quick fix. If the colony were on the brink, maybe as a collection of asteroids, somewhere, outer rim but on the verge of colonization, something that would take us back and forth between an area of Alliance control and one of total chaos, but where there was a real culture. That would put us sometimes on a ship, a chance to land on planets while giving it a Titan A.E. kind of setting (or the story that was based on, I've now forgotten.)

Plus, a current sci-fi topic, asteroid mining. Perils, fortune, a gold rush, all fits very well into "space cowboys."

Quote:

Otherwise, I thought maybe the Alliance leaders could come forward and "admit their horrible wrongs and vow to do better", but really they use it as an opportunity to do worse things and try to hide them better.

lol. so true. Not full empire though. I agree with Gwek that the concept weakens the star wars universe, because if the opponent is an all encompassing evil, then anything is justifiable in opposition to it.

have you seen Blake's 7, the original series on this idea, or it's more direct derivative Farscape? Also, I assume everyone here has seen Cowboy Bebop. I have to admit that I have been meaning for years to watch Outlaw Star, the other show Firefly was based on, and I have the disks and haven't watched it.

Quote:

Or maybe 15 years down the line the Independents are the real asshole trash of the 'Verse and the Alliance is weak and useless.

I can see Blue Sun reavers as a tax-dodge in something like asteroid mining. You could have regular people, some trying to make a living, others a killing, and then Blue Sun coming in a sneaky kinda way where people were actually stealth corporate agents, tying to get the low down on where the real treasure was. The one corporation idea though, it definitely needs a competitor, at least one.

Quote:
I also like the idea of them having a hard-hitting jerk journalist on the ship like something out of a Transmetropolitan comic. Except make it androgynous and slightly Sherlockian... Everyone loves a jerk character. I'm sick to death of the guys getting all the fun, too... House, Dr Cox from Scrubs, Elementary, Sherlock...

Hmm. Again, Farscape comes to mind. But yeah, I hear ya. A new collection of characters. The big damn heroes are awesome but they didn't get chiselled enough to where they're outside of their archetypes. (Zoe is mostly amazon, and you can sort of mentally put almost anything amazon into her, as long as you maintain the sardonic crankiness. Willow otoh is not witch, she's distinctly "Just Willow" and if it doesn't fit, everyone will notice right away.) This was not true btw in Buffy season one, where the buffy characters were not as well defined. It takes a while. Some of buffy's most memorable characters (Anya, Spike, Faith, etc.) don't even show up until later seasons. I think he gets it faster with each try, but yeah, it would be good to mix it up.

Also, and I can't stress this enough. Joss should do this *with* someone. The cult of personality thing that surrounds a fandom almost always oversteps. Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, these are shows written by a team, and that team has Jane Espensen on it, and others (Marti Noxon, etc.) That's really quite important. Joss by himself is going to fall into personal cliches (and I don't just mean women fighting barefoot.)

ZEEK

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 9:13 PM

I don't want a straight up reboot. I don't want to see a new Firefly with a vaguely similar crew with a twist on their secret backstories. I also don't want a continuation at this point. Our crew is too old and frankly they'd be even more fractured and spread out by now than they were in Serenity. At this point I'd think only 2 or 3 of the original crew would even be left on Serenity.

I'd rather see a spinoff. My favorite has always been the idea of following a new alliance captain stationed in the outer rim coming to terms with what life is like outside of the core. Would have been nice to use the captain from Bushwacked but way too much time has passed. Still he's a good example. The first season can be all about him learning the reality of what he's dealing with and struggling with moral and ethical decisions. The second season I'd imagine him in almost all out revolt but trying to keep his position in order to help the people. By the third season I'd imagine the captain and some of the crew would be outlaws who had to escape on a new ship while some of the regular cast would have taken over command of the original alliance ship. The loyalists would be hunting the outlaws. So on and so forth.

SOCKPUPPET

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 10:08 PM

Going to third or fifth the spinoff thing. Maybe no central character, game of thrones style, or at least, not a strong pivotal point "the story is about this person." Fanservice? I think that the groupies and fanbois will be happy enough if a known actor from whedonverse appears. Eliza could just show up in a random ep and they'd be ecstatic. Whenever Star Trek brings a refugee from another series in, it just hurts the storyline. So yeah, nothing against it unless it destroys the new storyline.

Another question: Forward in time or backward?

WISHIMAY

Thursday, February 23, 2017 1:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SOCKPUPPET:
Whenever Star Trek brings a refugee from another series in, it just hurts the storyline.

Sorry, I absolutely LOVED the Scotty and Bones and Spock eps. in TNG. Data going "It is..hmm. It is... It is green." Bones "It's a new ship, but she's got the right name...You treat her like a lady, she'll always bring you home."

One last visit. Those were great!

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