The earth that was.

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

Monday, October 10, 2005 10:41 AM

I think eventually Whedon would have gotten into storylines that would have touched on the subject. Perhaps a world decimated by natural or manmade disasters? Maybe just overpopulation followed by an exhausting of resources? Maybe even an evil conglomerate of cannibal men from the TV networks take over and kill all the good scifi entertainment in a bid to own the world?

It would have been interesting to see where he was going with the plot. I also think Whedon was playing it smart by not getting into too much of the technical blubbering about the technology behind space travel. Every other series has overdone it. How many episodes in Star Trek involved warp core breaches? Lost count after the 60th or 70th time. It is just assumed that (1) buncha space monkeys got off this blue-green rock, and (2) the physics that make it possible has since been conquered.

Nice touch IMHO.

XG

No such thing as gravity. The "Earth-that-was" just sucks.

THEPLOUGH

Monday, October 10, 2005 12:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by sneaker98:
In the shooting script of Heart of Gold, ...

from the script, the narration of the shadowplay and one of my favourite quotes from Firefly:

"Little by little, the tribes used the Earth up. Barren, she had little left to offer them.
Swollen of her, they left. And for the first time since the Great Burn that birthed her, she was alone.
The Earth cried, and terrible were her tears. Acid and caustic, the spawn of the tribes' rape. They flowed a century.
The fire that finally came did so as a blessing. "

http://www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/Earth-that-was

XEROGRAVITY

Monday, October 10, 2005 12:56 PM

Not a big fan of poetry, and the only script I've read from the series was Ep. 15 (Dead or Alive). But if I were a fan of poetry that would be tops on my list. Brilliant.

THEPLOUGH

Monday, October 10, 2005 1:15 PM

Beautiful, eh? And, of course, there's Saffron's myth. Another favourite:

SAFFRON
Do you know the myth about Earth-that-was?

WASH
Not so much.

SAFFRON
That when she was born, she had no
sky, and she was open, inviting and
the stars would rush into her,
through the skin of her, making the
oceans boil with sensation, and when
she could endure no more ecstasy, she
puffed up her cheeks and blew out the
sky, to womb her and keep them at
bay, 'til she had rest some, and that
we had to leave 'cause she was strong
enough to suck them in once more.

WASH
Whoa. Good myth.

So, both myths, plus the unreliable Alliance teacher's account, leaving the question of the Earth's fate wide open.

DERANGEDMILK

Monday, October 10, 2005 3:55 PM

Now see, I'm still inclined to go with an alliance cover-up for the very reason that if Earth was simply "all used up" then they COULD have just done to Venus or Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn or hell! are own moon if we have the kinda of technology they're talking about in the beginning of "Serenity." Those in power would want to leave the system entirely and tell all of the poor and the criminals they duped into coming along that the Earth simply wasn't usable anymore, but not mention how it was the greedy blundering of the corporations and governments that ruined her.

CYBERSNARK

Monday, October 10, 2005 4:09 PM

In the Serenity Visual Companion there's a Joss memo that describes the exodus as using generation ships (he doesn't name them as such, but the description is clear enough).

He specifies that an entire generation was born, grew, aged, and died without ever seeing the outside of a ship.

Point of all this is that using criminals from ETW as terraformer labour wouldn't have been practical unless they were carried as cargo in stasis (which woulda' taken up cargo space from other sources, so I can't see going to all that effort for cons).

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

GIANTEVILHEAD

Monday, October 10, 2005 6:33 PM

I'm thinking that the reason why they didn't colonize the other planets in our solar system was because the terraforming failed. Even when they got to the new earths, the terraforming process still had problems. The moon, and Mars would have been the first places they terraformed and it simply failed.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

DONCOAT

Monday, October 10, 2005 6:55 PM

If we put together the "generation ships" idea with the other known fact that highly-effective spaceship drives have been developed, we get an interesting possibility.

The exodus ships may have cruised at a high fraction of lightspeed. If so, then relativistic effects come into play -- specifically, time dilation.

The trip that took a generation (from the travelers' viewpoint) could have taken millions of years by Earth clocks.

So, in the Firefly system, they simply may not know what happened to Earth-That-Was after they left. If any of the left-behinds survived, they might well be something very different than the humans who left, and may be in no position to send signals to those-who-left.

This also makes the "500 year" timeline more plausible. It's 500 by the ships' clocks, not Earth's.

GIANTEVILHEAD

Monday, October 10, 2005 7:05 PM

They can calculate how much "real time" has passed by looking at stellar drift.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

R1Z

Monday, October 10, 2005 7:36 PM

One of the episode intros said: "Earth that was got used up."

If this Earth has no more metals, no more fossil fuels, perhaps no more clean water, there might still be some people living a subsistance agrarian lifestyle, but given the distances and expenses involved, there would be no reason to look back or to go back.

The concept of "frontier" has always been driven by a new resource to exploit, be it timber, farmland, mining opportunities, etc.

If Earth is indeed used up, why would anyone go back there? Curiosity and nostalgia both have a price point.

To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks. --Robt. Heinlein

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