The earth that was.

POSTED BY: Giantevilhead
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 07:26
VIEWED: 11312
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GIANTEVILHEAD

Sunday, October 9, 2005 11:40 PM

Does anyone else think that there are still people left on the earth that was? Somehow I doubt that the Alliance started the whole controlling the population thing after they got to the new earths. I can think of at least 5 different kinds of people that would have been left behind:
-Criminals, no reason to take them along.
-Poor people, probably couldn’t afford to leave.
-People in countries that are not aligned with the US-China Empire, probably don’t have the resources to build enough ships to take everyone.
-Political dissidents, don’t want trouble makers jeopardizing the governments of the new worlds.
-People who stay willingly, some people just can’t stand the thought of leaving their homes, and some people may sympathize with the ones left behind and chooses to stay to help them.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

CHRISISALL

Monday, October 10, 2005 12:02 AM

TONIGHT ON FOX:

You loved Firefly!

It continued on Serenity!

Now see where it all began!
They were left behind on a barren world, but they lived! And now they want revenge!

EARTH THAT WAS!
10:00 central 9:00 eastern on Fox (we SWEAR we won't cancel it!)

Yeah, for at least ten episodes Chrisisall

DERANGEDMILK

Monday, October 10, 2005 12:13 AM

I was thinking about Earth That Was earlier too.
What we are told about it in the series is vague, in the beginning of the movie what we learn of it is from a very biased perspective of history. The teacher refers to the Alliance as a "beacon of civilization" and the outer moons as "savage." Mal also makes the point later on in the film that "half of writing history is hiding what you don't want known." This leads me to belief that the Alliance is again covering up its past mistakes. I figure we'll be finding out in later movies that perhaps Earth That Was was ravaged by nuclear war, polluted beyond the point where we could live there anymore or perhaps a the power-elite(government officials, corporate executives, wealthy land-owners) were finally overthrown by the proletariat and in order to remain in power they took what people had not joined the revolution and took them to this new solar system. We know that China and the US were supposed to be the two powers that launched ships to the new system and what with corruption of the corporate system in the US and the despotic oppression(its my understand that the massacre at Tiananmen Square is still kept underwraps and is not taught in Chinese schools) of those in China these two countries seem the most ripe for that kind of power-elite cover-up.

GIANTEVILHEAD

Monday, October 10, 2005 12:18 AM

I think if Firefly had never been cancelled, they could have had a spin off about the earth that was. It would be like Fallout.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, October 10, 2005 12:48 AM

I always figured that it was the meek.

An odd but totally believable twist on, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” The only people left behind are those who could not barter or bully their way on a ship to a more habitable planet. I mean if not everyone could go, and everyone wants to, the only ones left are those lacking the ability to force their way on a ship.

In short: the meek.

I doubt that they would simply let the criminals out of jail, though they could escape after the government jumps ship, on the other hand it would be just as believable that the prisoners are kept in prisons and starve to death because no one had the resources or time to feed them.

I’m pretty sure that the meek did inherit the earth, though how long they kept it is another question.

GUNRUNNER

Monday, October 10, 2005 1:40 AM

The poor and criminals (minor ones not the serial killers and rapists etc) were probably used as terraforming labor and colonists. You do ten years of hard labor on a new world you get to live there. Kinda like Australia or French Guinea a few centuries ago.

Earth-That-Was may still be a thriving world with its own space colonies. With the massave drain on resources caused by the US-China Alliance gone there could be sufficent stuff left to allow much smaller groups to survive with the minium of change.

EV Nova Firefly mod Message Board:
http://s4.invisionfree.com/GunRunner/index.php?act=idx

SAMURAIX47

Monday, October 10, 2005 5:25 AM

in Heart of Gold the scene in the theater there is the story of Earth-that-was being told by a shadow play... one part of it shows the earth engulfed in flames...

Question: If they had terraforming technology, why didn't they re-terraform Earth? But as they say Earth was all used up... so maybe there was no way to revitalize it.

Also... how long had they been in this new system? I would think that the Alliance had been around since first arriving, they may have started out nice and people friendly, so it would have been a few or several generations before the Firefly story. Now the Alliance has gone all greedy and power hungry and corrupt.

They only show a few ships leaving Earth but the fleet could have been huge, also it is hard to see the scale of those ships... if they were even able to transport the current world population of 6 billion people that would be a huge undertaking.

The concept of Earth-that-was and sending out colonists... reminds me of that show Earth2... they could have been the first colonists before the mass exodus...

Jaymes

HOWARD

Monday, October 10, 2005 6:13 AM

WELL DONE GOOD THREAD.
My impression from the show was that The Earth no longer exists.

SNEAKER98

Monday, October 10, 2005 6:55 AM

In the shooting script of Heart of Gold, the old man at Rance's party was giving a history lesson on earth.

If I recall correctly (and I might not), civilization left with the colony ships. Then the earth that was is destroyed by a series of volcanic explosions.

Now, I'm keen on beliving that mankind would've terraformed Mars and Venus, at the least, with the kind of technology they apparently had. So there likely is mankind still in the Solar System.

"I do the job... and then I get paid. Go run your little world."
-Malcolm Reynolds

WAVERIDER18

Monday, October 10, 2005 8:40 AM

Isaac Asimov finished out his Foundation series with a frantic search for a lost Earth. His universes denizens had centuries ago forgotten about the origin planet. When I first heard, "Earth that was," in the Firefly series I immediately thought of the Foundation novels. Good SciFi always stands on the shoulders of giants and tries to use/better the fiction that came before. Firefly works on this level just as the new Battlestar Galacica does. Thats all...I'm out

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