Have there ever been aliens on Firefly?

POSTED BY: Malsyummy!mmmmm
UPDATED: Friday, January 2, 2004 20:21
VIEWED: 3531
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MALSYUMMY!MMMMM

Friday, January 2, 2004 6:52 AM

I was having a discousion about Firefly the other day with my almost stepdad, and he asked me if there had ever been an alien in any of the episodes. I said I didn't know but shamefully I haven't seen every episode so I can't be sure and it's been bugging me so if you know could you please let me know.

mmmm i love mal!

ZAPHODB

Friday, January 2, 2004 6:55 AM

No. None whatsoever.

MALSYUMMY!MMMMM

Friday, January 2, 2004 6:58 AM

why not jave the humans made them all extinct like they probably have with almost every earth animal?

mmmm i love mal!

ZAPHODB

Friday, January 2, 2004 7:11 AM

Joss Whedon said that in the Firefly 'verse that we (humans) are the only intelligent life out there. He didn't want any aliens in the show. Here's a link to a Quicktime interview (Bumpy Foreheads) from the old Fox site - http://www.fireflyfans.net/firefly/video/jossint_2.htm

SPLORK

Friday, January 2, 2004 8:57 AM

do you want count the fake alien cow fetus in "The Message"?

ZAPHODB

Friday, January 2, 2004 11:00 AM

Nah. Sideshow Bessy doesn't count...

HERO

Friday, January 2, 2004 5:10 PM

We can't be sure. There is always the possibility of alien influence with Blue Sun or the Alliance or the Reavers or Kaylee (some country know-nothing just happens to know how to repair starships, yeah right, what kind of strawberies did they have on that world anyway? Plus she's so darned cheerful, nobody else in the whole Firefly universe is that cheerful, nobody human that is. And she's afraid to shoot, heck even Preacher was poppin off after less then half a season. And I wont even address the issue of breast size and how it relates to what an alien taking human form would choose have...)

H

KASUO

Friday, January 2, 2004 5:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
..There is always the possibility of alien influence with Blue Sun or the Alliance or the Reavers

Humans can be (and have been) evil without alien influence. As for Reavers, chuck that up to the possibility of the emptiness of space and people being enveloped by it.

Quote:
.. or Kaylee (some country know-nothing just happens to know how to repair starships, yeah right, what kind of strawberies did they have on that world anyway? Plus she's so darned cheerful, nobody else in the whole Firefly universe is that cheerful, nobody human that is.

Hey! No Kaylee-hating here! I find your lack of faith to be disturbing.

Quote:
.. heck even Preacher was poppin off after less then half a season. And I wont even address the issue of breast size and how it relates to what an alien taking human form would choose have

Wow, I have no idea where that came from. Woosh!

----
"Let's moon 'em!"

ZACHSMIND

Friday, January 2, 2004 5:45 PM

Actually we CAN be sure. There are no actual aliens in Whedon's Firefly universe, nor should we ever expect there to be any, and I'll tell ya why.

Whedon's said in a number of interviews that he felt the alien thing had been done elsewhere repeatedly. There's H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, Star Wars, Star Trek, Earth-2, Battlestar Galactica, The "V" miniseries, Alien Nation, Aliens 1-4, E.T., Earth Final Conflict, Babylon 5, Space Above and Beyond, every space oriented B movie of the 50s and 60s, even Clarke's Space Odyssey. Practically every major speculative fiction story taking place in outer space in the past century has assumed as a given that alien life fluourishes just past our present visual acuity somewhere in the void of space. That under certain conditions life is a definite probability, and inevitable process of amino acids forming into proteins in some primordial soup, eventually leading to sentient life that (ethnocentrically as this makes us) will look humanoid in appearance, and may even like chocolate. In fact, I dare you to find a movie or tv show or book of the past half century (since 1950) that's about leaving this solar system to explore outer space, and doesn't involve aliens.

It's been done. It's been done to death. Whedon wanted to break out of that formula and create something uniquely his own. While it was a tried and true plot device for science fiction, to speculate on the existence of life outside Earth, Whedon had chosen not to explore the same dogged path in his own space opera. IF there's alien life in Whedon's universe, the human race will probably never encounter it. This is actually much more plausible a theory - that there may be nonTerran based life in the 'verse, but the 'verse is so darn big that even if there were, not a single human soul will ever meet one and have it over for dinner.

Imagine a field filled with haystacks, and two little sewing needles thrown from two different planes travelling thousands of feet above the field thrown out of the plane at different times. Even if both needles landed in the same hay field, the odds those two needles would ever fall on the same haystack are astronomical - and actually better than our odds of ever encountering alien life even after we escape this solar system.

I don't know if Whedon personally was making a statement about the prospect of alien life by taking as a given that no aliens will ever show their face in Firefly's universe, but from a writing standpoint he wanted to separate his alternate future from that of most all other speculative fiction out there, and by saying no to alien life he pretty much did that from the get go.

Besides, after a decade or so of pointy ears, fangs and ridged foreheads, he'd had his fill of humanoid monsters. Normal humans can be monstrous enough without the help of spirit gum and prosthetics.

Bessie in a jar was confirmed by Simon to not be of alien origin, so she didn't count.

Although we must also keep this in perspective. In Whedon's world all the characters are descendants of us. Meaning they come from family lines which once lived on the Earth That Was but when Earth That Was got all used up they had a mass exodus and are now offworlders. Nomads. I don't think any of the nine principal characters in the show have ever set foot on the Earth That Was. They were certainly never born there.

So from our perspective, they're ALL aliens. =)

------------------------------
"Hang on, travelers..."

HERO

Friday, January 2, 2004 6:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by kasuo:
Quote:
.. or Kaylee (some country know-nothing just happens to know how to repair starships, yeah right, what kind of strawberies did they have on that world anyway? Plus she's so darned cheerful, nobody else in the whole Firefly universe is that cheerful, nobody human that is.

Hey! No Kaylee-hating here! I find your lack of faith to be disturbing.

Quote:
.. heck even Preacher was poppin off after less then half a season. And I wont even address the issue of breast size and how it relates to what an alien taking human form would choose have

Wow, I have no idea where that came from. Woosh!

You must have missed the discussion about breast size of the various crew members. Also its not Kaylee-hating to be critical of the whole Kaylee issue. Thats the same as saying is unpatriotic to be anti-war. I'm just saying I look at Kaylee and see a cheerful girl who can (without formal education) fix starships, in a universe where nobody is cheerful or can fix starships. Its suspicious.

And the frilly dress...come on, something aint right.

Also if she was alien, perhaps even a crossbreed or an android of some sort, its not necessarily a bad thing. She's still beautiful and maybe she just wants to be human...like all good aliens.

Whedon said she was the Willow of the show and Willow had a dark side. That'd be cool, evil Kaylee, malfunctioning alien cyborg, stalking the crew in deep space ala Terminator.

Or if not alien...merely augmented or tampered with in some way. Maybe thats why she gets on so well with River. Kindred spirits.

Hmmm...we know she bleeds from the pilot episodes. So she's probably not a cyborg. I'll have to give this more thought.

Maybe we need an entire discussion on exactly who is and who is not an alien. I have a whole list of reasons why Wash is an alien and Inara (remember the alien 'Companions' from that other scifi show) and all the others except Mal and Serenity.

H

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