Why the silly 'verse change? **Minor SERENITY Spoilers**
POSTED BY: Mycenius
UPDATED: Sunday, November 27, 2005 23:55
VIEWED: 17107
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Hi All,
Haven't noticed any major discussion on this looking at previous threads but anyone got ideas as to why Joss (and co) made some, apparantly unnecessary, changes to the 'verse in Serenity compared to Firefly?
In the Serenity start sequence it talks about the leaving of Earth that Was being possible because they found a new "Solar System" with 70+ planets and hundreds of moons that were habitable - which is obviously completely implausible (for several reasons) and, even given Terraforming capability, would be impossible to inhabit due to the distances of the planets from the 'sun', etc... In Firefly originally the implication is that these 70 Worlds (that belong to the Alliance) are located in multiple Star Systems, a far more logical premise, and making a lot more sense when in several episodes it is indicated the Crew spend a month in the ship flying from one system to another (plus the references to 'systems' on at least a couple of occassions, and at least one reference to multiple planets in a system). The core planets are those in the denser central part of that section of the (or a) galaxy, not the planets closest to the Sun.
With the new Serenity 'verse not only would it be near impossible to live the way implied, it would be such a crowded place there would be nowhere to hide, the reavers would be on top of everyone constantly, and so on...
It also makes several events in the episodes seem disjointed and out of place, such as in "Out Of Gas", or at least maybe illogical...
I am a HUGE Firefly fan and loved the movie, but I am also a bit of a pedant over minor details and there just seems no excuse for a silly change like this that adds nothing to the story or the movie, but detracts from what came before...?
I also have a similar gripe about the Alliance Ships - the failure to at least portray them once like they are in Firefly - as huge gigantic 'cities' - undermined the idea of how insignificant Serenity and her crew were and how all powerful the Alliance is... I realise that the smaller more conventional ships are 'sort of' necessary for the space battle scene to be a bit simpler from a cgi & creative perspective, and more probably, and that the smaller ships are not themselves illogical or wrong, but they do not convey the same weight and sense of power/dread as in Firefly. They could have tried to work in the existing ships at least once. What's more the silly Solar System (see above) renders the original FF Alliance ships both illogical and unnecessary as the 'verse is now very small and compact.
Some may argue that this is to do with story logic concerning space travel and spaceship engines, etc, but if humankind had the ability to travel half-way across the galaxy to find this wonderful Solar System (even if it took a couple of years travel or more) and has the ability to terraform then there is absolutely no reason they would stay cooped up in a single Solar Sytem. And even if you removed terraforming ability from the story adn made space travel slower there would be even less reason.
Select to view spoiler:
And of course the whole climax of Serenity is undermined by the 'verse change that makes the probability of the secret (of the dead planet) highly improbable and again somewhat illogical "in that 'verse"...
Just can't get my head around it... Both why the change, and the 'logic' of the new 'verse. Great concept, great series, great new movie, silly changes...
What are people's thoughts on these aspects of Serenity and has there been any discussion of this or related comments from Joss and team?
Cheers,
M.
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They never said in the show that the Firefly 'verse had multiple star systems. They have no FTL technology, it would actually make less sense for the show to have more than one star system. Plus they never said that the new solar system had only one sun.
"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam
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I agree that there are problems with the single solar system concept, but there are also problems with the multisystem idea. But I do not agree that there is any internal conflict between the portrayal of the scale of the "Verse in the movie. Just look at the endless threads on this site to see that the series did not clearly indicate which alternative Joss had in mind. You as a fan might have preferred one interpretation or the other for aesthetic or logical reasons, but the internal evidence from the series could be used to support either view. The movie merely clarified that Joss intended the "Verse to be smaller.
The only new problem concerning scaling that I saw arise in the movie was that there was definite evidence of FTL communications (even short interplanetary distances should produce time lags), which is an impossibility. But I'm willing to let this nit slide for purposes of dramatic necessity.
As far as the Alliance ship designs go, I also miss the behemoth city-in-space cruisers from the series. However, I don't consider this to be a major conflict either. I always thought of the design of the Alliance cruisers to be based more on psychological impact than on the practicalities of space combat. In that sense, the cruisers are a mobile intimidation platform for showing the flag on the border worlds and serving as a base for anti-smuggling patrols. I could be wrong, but I doubt they would be the first choice for front-line combat missions.
Anyway, no matter what function the Magellan and Dortmunder style cruisers serve, it makes sense that the Alliance would have a variety of ship classes (with many smaller ship classes available). Otherwise it would be like Starfleet in the original series where every starship was a Constitution class heavy cruiser like the Enterprise. The Operative called in the available warships which were close enough to reach him in time. It's not surprising that they were smaller ships. Then again, don't underestimate the size of those warships. Serenity was dwarfed by most of the vessels and I was satisfied by the little-bug-slipping-through-a-net feel of the climatic space battle.
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Hi Giantevilhead,
Quote:
Originally posted by Giantevilhead:
They never said in the show that the Firefly 'verse had multiple star systems.
True, but it is clearly implied - there are comments (in the show scripts) as I mentioned that refer to reaching systems with multiple planets, and so on... (IIRC I think one is something like '...its the 3rd planet in the system" or something like that). The references to the core planets early in the series also 'implies' they are multiple star systems not a cluster of planets around a single star system. Remember that Earth IRL is in a semi-remote area, other stars are much further from us than they are in other parts of our galaxy.
Quote:
They have no FTL technology, it would actually make less sense for the show to have more than one star system.
Actually I believe it's implied that they do, or at least that they have something close - firstly it is not stated they don't, and secondly the 'migration' off ETW would have been near impossible without it... It may only be Einsteinian (i.e. travel at 0.999999999 the speed of light) but they would have to have something like it to get off ETW to start with regardless.
Quote:
Plus they never said that the new solar system had only one sun.
It is given by the 'visual' of River and Simon in school (the teacher's hologrpahic display) - I believe only 1 star/sun is depicted. Even if there were 2 or more suns the physics of reality still mean only 1-2 planets or moons could be in the appropriate 'belt' the right distance from the sun to ideally support human type life forms... Having multiple suns (i.e. a binary star) would just mean that belt would be further away from them and marginally larger - no way you could cram all those planets in the belt - others would be habitable in harsh conditions or would need atmosphere domes and so on... But you wouldn't get that many in a single system...
Even physics aside, aspects of the story don't make as much sense (to me at least) if everyone is crammed into a single system...
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Hi Diego,
Yep agree with most of your comments, and don't have a major issue with the ship thing, just missi the big 'uns! FWIW IRL it is likely if such ships ever existed they would need to be defeated by huge fleets of small fighters - they are actually depicted as essentially 'Dreadnought Aircraft Carriers' or similar in the TV series (i.e. heavy armament and a fleet of fighter craft carried onboard). And they would be serviced by support fleets of smaller craft as in the movie. They could have had one in the battle scene disgorging a huge swarm of fighters and such...
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Here's your answer(s). Was impressed with the pure science aspect of this, so if your astronomically inclined (and not just a "nay-sayer"), you should enjoy this a bit.
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue439/labnotes.html
"I aim to misbehave"
I am: http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/warriorshtm/bigcat.htm
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To be honest, Mycenius, I think you are trying to be too logical about this. Joss is a storyteller, not a hard SciFi writer. I'm not sure that all the different "facts" about the 'verse can be reconciled. It's about the human factor in the stories, not about the celestial mechanics.
MAL "You only gotta scare him."
JAYNE "Pain is scary..."
http://www.fireflytalk.com - Big Damn Podcast
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I could be wrong, but I have no memory of them saying there were more than 70 planets. At least in the movie they say "dozens" and hundreds of moons. The systems they speak of are not solar systems was my impression but say, a planet and it's moons. As for FTL travel Joss said that they probably didn't have in the 'verse. The migration according to the RPG book happened over more than a generation of travel. On top of all that Joss did say that science questions make his head hurt so he's not as concerned as some about having super real science, yet if you compare it to Star Trek or Star Wars(both of which I love) it makes a lot more sense.
And yes, I do miss the big ships, but I just figured that they weren't used in the move, yet they were there. My assumption was that the cruiser that the Op. was using was some new model cruiser the alliance had sucked tax payer dollars into.
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Quote:
Originally posted by DarkJester:
To be honest, Mycenius, I think you are trying to be too logical about this. Joss is a storyteller, not a hard SciFi writer. I'm not sure that all the different "facts" about the 'verse can be reconciled. It's about the human factor in the stories, not about the celestial mechanics.
You're probably right DJ - just borne of passion for the whole Firefly & Serenity thing...
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Quote:
Originally posted by Mycenius:
True, but it is clearly implied - there are comments (in the show scripts) as I mentioned that refer to reaching systems with multiple planets, and so on... (IIRC I think one is something like '...its the 3rd planet in the system" or something like that). The references to the core planets early in the series also 'implies' they are multiple star systems not a cluster of planets around a single star system. Remember that Earth IRL is in a semi-remote area, other stars are much further from us than they are in other parts of our galaxy.
Core planets does not imply that there are multiple star systems. It is possible that there are planets close to earth but we just haven’t seen them yet.
Quote:
Actually I believe it's implied that they do, or at least that they have something close - firstly it is not stated they don't, and secondly the 'migration' off ETW would have been near impossible without it... It may only be Einsteinian (i.e. travel at 0.999999999 the speed of light) but they would have to have something like it to get off ETW to start with regardless.
It’s never implied that there’s FTL technology and it would not have been impossible for the migration from the earth that was to take place without FTL. When he was making the show, Joss said that he does not think that the Firefly ‘verse has FTL.
Quote:
It is given by the 'visual' of River and Simon in school (the teacher's hologrpahic display) - I believe only 1 star/sun is depicted. Even if there were 2 or more suns the physics of reality still mean only 1-2 planets or moons could be in the appropriate 'belt' the right distance from the sun to ideally support human type life forms... Having multiple suns (i.e. a binary star) would just mean that belt would be further away from them and marginally larger - no way you could cram all those planets in the belt - others would be habitable in harsh conditions or would need atmosphere domes and so on... But you wouldn't get that many in a single system...
Even physics aside, aspects of the story don't make as much sense (to me at least) if everyone is crammed into a single system...
Mars and Venus can be terraformed to support human life. That’s three planets in our little solar system. Some speculate that even Mercury can be terraformed to support human life if we have the technology. Not to mention the fact that a planet can have more than one moon. We also don’t know the size of their sun or suns.
"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam
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