No aliens in the 'Verse...How do you feel?

POSTED BY: BWare42
UPDATED: Wednesday, February 8, 2006 03:25
VIEWED: 20169
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J6NGO1977

Friday, February 3, 2006 9:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Quixotic:
Dwarves: drunken miners with an axe-fetish. And so on.

You forgot with a Scottish accent as well. lol

ASARIAN

Friday, February 3, 2006 9:34 AM

I feel good about the absence of aliens. I like my fair share of them -- and Lord knows I've seen them enough -- but there is something really refreshing about them not being there in FireFly/Serenity.

We create our own mess, is also an underlying message, I think. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous aliens, or to take arms against our self-made troubles, and by opposing end them? I'm going with the latter. :)

"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam.

QUIXOTIC

Friday, February 3, 2006 1:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by j6ngo1977:
Quote:
Originally posted by Quixotic:
Dwarves: drunken miners with an axe-fetish. And so on.

You forgot with a Scottish accent as well. lol

Och, laddy!

Yeah, and if wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak.

CYBERSNARK

Friday, February 3, 2006 3:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by liminalosity:
'I believe we are the only sentient beings in the universe, and I believe that 500 years from now, we will still be the only sentient beings around.' ~Joss

The first time I read that quote I thought 'whaaa? no kidding, that's wierd'. It's one of the few instances where I totally completely fundamentally disagree with Joss.

Yeah, I have troubles with that too.

Don't get me wrong, I like that Firefly has no aliens, and I certainly wouldn't add any.

Thing is, I draw a distinction between "TV aliens" (as seen on Star Trek) and "aliens" (as seen in textual SF and only ever hinted at in TV land). I'm talking about the aliens of Farscape (Moya, Pilot, Zhaan, Aerin), or pre-thud Andromeda (the Magog, who reproduce by injecting larvae into host species, or the Than, who are insect-based, with "families" in the trillions, but do not have a hive-mind [and even pride themselves on being non-conformist individualists], or the Concensus of Parts, who out-Borged the Borg, extruding "Concensii" for specific tasks, then reintegrating them into the Concensus hive-mind --heck, the Nietzscheans were initially the most alien of the bunch, and they were 90% human).

As someone else-thread posted, aliens are too often used as shorthand stereotypes (all Klingons are stamped from this mold, all Vulcans from this mold, etc). I want a series that gives us some aliens with as much individuality as humans. Yeah, let humans be good, bad, and morally ambiguous, but let the other species do the same.

(This is the reason I loved DS9; it was Star Trek that didn't play by the Star Trek rules. It had Ferengi family drama, Bajoran factionalism, Klingon internecine politics, Cardassian social revolution, human black ops. . . There were no "token" characters.)

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

DIAVO

Friday, February 3, 2006 4:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Jadehand:
I forget who said it, and this may not be a direct quote but, "I think the biggest proof that there is intelligent life out there, is that they haven't tried to contact us."

It was a Calvin & Hobbes comic. Bill Watterson. =)
The strip had them in their woods and Calvin looks down to see some litter and says this. No faith in humanity.

BWARE42

Friday, February 3, 2006 4:44 PM

You hit the crux of my question. The whole "no aliens on the show" was really secondary. I think the concept of no aliens is great in Firefly!

But I saw Joss's quote about sentient beings the other day and wondered how many believed it. I certainly don't. Like Jodi Foster said in "Contact.": "I don't know if ther's life on other planets...If not, it seems like an awful waste of space." <>

I like the discussion about the show though too - one of the fresh pieces of Firefly was the "no aliens" slant. It allows for greater examination of the human condition...In a space-western setting!

SPINLAND

Friday, February 3, 2006 4:45 PM

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is the fact none of it has tried to contact us." -- Calvin

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"That's what governments are for, [to] get in a man's way." -- Malcolm Reynolds

CHRISTHECYNIC

Friday, February 3, 2006 4:45 PM

I think there are sentient non-terrestrial things in real life but even the word alien seems cliché.

In Firefly I’m happy that they are not there. First off there’s no reason that just because something exists we’d need to meet it, and second the lack of aliens it allows us something else people. Oh aliens are great for metaphors, and they’re great for stories, and even great for giving insight into people, but if you don’t need to have them in story about people having them distracts from people.

Firefly is not about aliens, it is about people, and unlike Aliens, a movie that was also about people, there is no vital function the be served by aliens of any sort. If the crew is supposed to meet something scary there are people for that, if they are to meet something strange and totally alien seeming … some people juggle geese.

It is a hell of a lot easier to make a scary person than a scary monster, and unless there is some reason for a monster the person is usually more effective.

Strange odd incomprehensible cultures can be made by people too, in fact it would probably seem more odd if such a culture was inhabited by human beings.

-

Also consider that it doesn’t matter whether or not aliens are real or whether we would meet them.

If aliens were to come up to us to day, introduce themselves, shake mandibles, whatever, I think there would still be a place for a TV show set 500 years on with no aliens in it. Speculative fiction is speculative, instead of asking, “What will we be like in 500 years if left to our own devices?” we would ask, “What will we be like in 500 years if we had been left to our own devices?”

The second question is just as valid as the first.

-

In real life I think they exist because it makes sense to me.

There are two basic arguments for the existence of life on earth:
1 Random chance caused the evolution of life from non-living matter.
2 God did it.

If it was random chance I can see life being unique to this planet just as easily as I can see the lottery numbers coming out 1,2,3,4,5,6 every drawing from now to eternity. Very possible, hardly likely.

If it was God then the idea that there is no life on other planets is absurd. From religions where God is a compassionate perfect being to ones where God is a jealous highly flawed arrogant ass I have never heard of a single version of God (or the gods) that would leave all of the universe, save one spot, devoid of life.

LIMINALOSITY

Friday, February 3, 2006 4:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BWare42:"I don't know if ther's life on other planets...If not, it seems like an awful waste of space." <>

That's the way I feel about it too: the universe is not at all wasteful, and us alone in all of it would be a gigantic waste of space and energy.

Shiny Trees! Yavanna made Shiny Trees!
Aztecs used the term firefly metaphorically, meaning a spark of knowledge in a world of ignorance or darkness.

ARCADIA

Friday, February 3, 2006 4:58 PM

Hmm... my roommate actually took an astronomy class last semester called "Extraterrestial life". Now she called me ignorant and narrow-minded whenever I say I doubt there are aliens. I suppose that aliens could exist. The universe is vast, after all. However, if there are any, I doubt they are similiar enough to us to be able to communicate, ever. I doubt they are close enough that we will ever meet them, no matter how technologically advanced we become. Even if we could meet them, would we want to? That's a lot of complications. If star trek was real, I doubt it would be so utopian. Probably quite the opposite.

I really like the fact that there are no aliens in Firefly. It gives everyone the opportunity to focus on the things that are so human about the show, mainly the emotions that the characters feel and share with on another. I have liked some alien characters in other shows, but when I sit down and think about them (overanalyze, whatever), I find that I must view there actions with a certain amount of distrust simply because they are aliens and their thought process, I reason, is so vastly different from ours... also, I hate how aliens just become an exageration of one characteric or two. Vulcans are logical. Klingons are agresssive. The goa'uld are stinky thieves. Okay. That's nice?

I'm rambling so I will stop. Happy friday, all.

"Objects in Space"
River: It's just an object. It doesn't mean what you think...

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