annoying things in firefly

POSTED BY: est120
UPDATED: Thursday, March 17, 2005 20:31
VIEWED: 24468
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YT

Friday, December 10, 2004 7:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by PurpleBelly:
Do I have company, or is there really such a thing as too much Janis Joplin?

Neither.

Then again, it's easy to have too much Big Bro' & the Holding Company (four bars without Janis should do it). To call them a drug-addled garage band is an insult to the drug-addled garage band community.

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Wutzon: Janis, "My Baby", from "Kozmic Blues"

YT

Friday, December 10, 2004 8:55 AM

It bugs me that Nathan, Gina & Jewel can't say "ain't" like they've been sayin' it all their lives. Adam can.

Doesn't bother me so much that Ron Glass can't either, 'cause he's just bad. He reads almost every line he's got, rather than acting his character & making his dialogue sound natural. When Firefly began, he'd done more TV than the rest of the cast put together, but he can't speak the way his character is written. Why'd Joss hire this guy?

What really pisses me off is bad physics, with an honourable mention to inconsistent or silly arithmetic.
When the Dortmunder hears the Cry-Baby, it mimics a ship 13 klicks away. That's walking distance. If they can't see it with the naked eye, let somebody grab a pair of binocs & check it out.
The physics in the pilot ep is great; later eps have problems.
In Bushwacked, Serenity is hit by a human body in a spacesuit, and moves & shakes.
In War Stories, Serenity approaches Nishka's space station @12,000 miles per hour (hit a bull's eye 6,000 miles away; last fired jets a half hour ago), hits without retro fire, & amazingly without damaging either itself or the station's airlock.
In the Message, the feds fire rockets @Serenity. How did the director (Tim Minear)screw this up? Let me count the ways:
The rockets leave smoke trails in space.
When they explode, the shell of the explosion is constrained (by what? Luminiferous Aether?)
We hear the explosion.
And, of course, Serenity is moved & shaken.
There are lots of other things in the Message that bother me but, they're minor compared to this.
By the b'ye, I'm not much bothered that the captain didn't explain his plan to Tracy (or to Simon). A military leader doesn't explain.

That brings me to another thing that bothers me a lot. Ain't no way in hell that a corporal who fought alongside a sergeant, for four years, while hundreds of their troopers died, would habitually refer to that brother in arms as "Sir".

I should point out that, if Firefly hadn't exhibited, in the pilot ep, the best space physics on TV since "From the Earth to the Moon", I probably wouldn't have watched it much. I certainly would never have found this site, let alone still be posting here, two years after the show was cancelled.

Keep the Shiny Side Up

LETOV

Thursday, December 23, 2004 8:49 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by YT:

I should point out that, if Firefly hadn't exhibited, in the pilot ep, the best space physics on TV since "From the Earth to the Moon", I probably wouldn't have watched it much. I certainly would never have found this site, let alone still be posting here, two years after the show was cancelled.

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Not to completely discount/disagree with everything you said, but throughout the series (while I wasn't necessarily looking for it) I never noticed anything that bothered me physics-wise like the open space encounter between Serenity and the Reaver's ship in the pilot. Here we have two ships travelling through space presumably at high speed and they have this slow tense close encounter going nearly opposite directions? Please... That said, I never expect anything like real-space physics in fiction so it doesn't bother me that much.

CHANNAIN

Thursday, December 23, 2004 9:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by est120:
okay, we all love firefly. none of us would be here if we did not. still, there must be SOME things about firefly that bug the heck out of you.

The way Nathan rides a horse. In Serenity, at least with both hands on the reins he could hide that he didn't have quite enough training in the saddle (I'm not even sure all the actors were actually on real horses during the close-ups on the ride back to the ship). But in Heart of Gold? Forget it - I can't watch him ride. That scene where he's pursuing Rance Burgeon and the hovercar was meant for a "Return to Snowy River" sequence - Aussie-style hell-bent for leather riding, sans the slow-motin effects of course. He's supposed to have been a rancher once upon a time, right? And I can accept that there wasn't enough time for Nathan to get familiar enough with the horse to make it look good. Still, any wrangler worth his salt should have said to him, "Um, Nathan? You need to put the hand down, man. Seriously."

Mal's horse might have made it out of a cantor for about five seconds, only I'm not sure because I can't watch it anymore.

The women on "MacLeod's Daughters" ride better than that.

Fans come and fans go...but zealots are with you until the bitter black end.
I draw...therefore I am. http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=7922
Minnesota Meetup - join us! http://firefly.meetup.com/45/

DREZ

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 3:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by niknak:
1) The fire in 'Out of Gas' annoyed me by looking pretty fake. Fire is incredibly hard to do and I guess blowing a real fireball through the set would have been too expensive and risky. Also, the blast gave Zoe internal injuries but no visible burns. I guess they couldn't afford the make-up either.

To me the fire looked fine... We are talking about fireballs in a rapidly decompressing area. And also zoe getting internal injuries but not external is very easy. She was jumping through the path of the explosion, to push kaylee away. She just missed the actual fire.... she didnt miss breathing in a lungful of the superheated air that precedes an explosion like that. This- burns your lungs and causes internal injuries but no visile external ones.

RAT

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 7:55 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by est120:
there must be SOME things about firefly that bug the heck out of you. any scenes of specific lines or aspects of the series that drive you nuts everytime you see it?

Let's moon umm!

-Ratboy

PURPLEBELLY

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 8:16 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Channain:
The women on "MacLeod's Daughters" ride better than that.

I think you may have caught something here. Perhaps the reason the movie is less Western than the TV series isn't because the writer is jumping onto the wushu bandwagon, but because the actors fall off the horses

PIZMOBEACH

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 5:34 PM

And how about dollar-physics? I know cattle would have a high mark-up in the Firefly 'verse, but would it be worth burning all that fuel to land them in Safe?

I'd like to be king of all Londinum and wear a shiny hat.

EST120

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 5:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
And how about dollar-physics? I know cattle would have a high mark-up in the Firefly 'verse, but would it be worth burning all that fuel to land them in Safe?

I'd like to be king of all Londinum and wear a shiny hat.

that is a good point. it is one thing to be moving things like jewels or gold or something but cattle are a different story. still, the viewer is not privy to how much to costs to operate one of these ships. perhaps it is not as much as one might think. sort of analogous to buying gas for your car. not so expensive that most people can afford it.

KINGPAUSE

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 6:46 PM

Two things in "Serenity", which I never would have noticed had they not been pointed out in the DVD commentaries, but which bug the crap out of me everytime because now I can't not notice:

1) Inara holding the steering wheel of her shuttle upside down in the beginning, and

2) Wash not holding the steering wheel at all in the end

I'm also not the biggest fan of "Heart of Gold" for all the reasons pointed out and more. I have problems with "Safe" also, but the episode is redeemed by the exchange between Mal and Simon at the end ("You're in my crew") - just one of those classic Firefly moments, imo.

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