Accurate Portrayal Of Frontier Planets
POSTED BY: DakotaSmith
UPDATED: Thursday, June 10, 2004 13:04
VIEWED: 25056
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I want to get a word in edgewise about what's probably going to be the most controversial aspect of the series: the mixing of "western" elements with "SF" elements.
For what it's worth:
Anyone who says that the kind of low-tech stuff we saw on the frontier planets is impossible given a spacefaring culture is simply a city boy (or girl) who's leading too provincial a lifestyle. Case in point:
If I were to take a New Yorker to my grandmother's cabin in rural South Dakota, he wouldn't believe that anywhere so unbelievably remote and primitive could still exist in 21st century America. Quite literally, while the creature comforts and technology involved in cattle ranching have made enormous strides, the lifestyle of the South Dakota cattle rancher has changed little in the last century.
To get to my grandmother's cabin from "civiliation," you'll fly into Rapid City, SD Municipal Airport -- that is, if you're dumb enough to risk your life by disarming yourself and you want put up with having a body cavity search by some minimum-wage rent-a-cop.
From the Rapid airport, you'll drive 60 miles east on I-90 to Wall, where you'll head north out of town on a 2-lane highway.
Within five miles, the 2-lane highway becomes a gravel road. The gravel road becomes progressively less wide and less maintained over the course of the next 40 miles or so.
Ten miles from my grandmother's cabin, the road becomes loosely-gravelled dirt. Five miles from her cabin, the road becomes ruts. Two miles out, it's just a pair of impressions in the field.
You'll leave the impressions and drive a quarter of a mile or so off the Cheyenne River flood plain to a small ranch house that only last summer became equipped with indoor plumbing.
Now, this is a little extreme. Most of the cattle and bison ranchers who live in rural South Dakota have indoor plumbing, satellite dishes, FAX machines, modems, and a few have paid for high-speed Internet via satellite. My grandmother's cabin is essentially deserted except a few weeks out of the year when those of us who spent a lot of time there growing up come out to relax.
Indeed, the only reason we bothered with indoor plumbing was simply because myself and two uncles who use it over a four-day period for deer hunting in November decided that we were getting too old to brave the near-zero temperatures at 2am to go to the outhouse.
But even with the better-equipped ranchers who have all the creature comforts of the 21st century, out back there will be a barn where you saddle the horses when it's time to herd the cattle down the river to the summer grazing land.
I'm in Information Security. In our major city recently (Sioux Falls), I attended a Cisco-hosted seminar where they demonstrated setting up a network to use barbed wire as conductors as opposed to CAT5 ethernet cable.
Now, laugh if you will (and most of us chuckled), but in rural South Dakota, this actually has real-world applications in terms of delivering high-speed Internet to cattle and bison ranchers.
If you're a city boy or girl, you no doubt think that this kind of life is the exception rather than the rule. I'm here to tell you -- having lived in Chicago for ten years as well as having spent much of my life elsewhere -- that the amount of developed, urban land in the United States is massively outweighed by undeveloped farm and ranchland.
It's certainly true that more of the population of the US is urban. But when you get out of that bizarre, sheltered, city lifestyle, things are very different.
(In point of fact, I've wondered if the fact that life is so different for rural dwellers as opposed to urbanites combined with the fact that urbanites don't respect the rural dwellers at all might just lead to another civil war.)
Indeed, I was struck by how the scene at the opening of the show is rather similar to a couple of bar outings I've experienced with my uncles during Deer Camp. You see, there's a little general store about 40 miles from my grandmother's cabin. Because
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Undeveloped areas suffer most in a major war. Cross reference: Eastern Kentucky USofA during and after the US Civil War. Some say it never recovered until the Coal Boom of the 20th Century.
Judging by the mixed tech levels (old Traveler fen reveals self) in the bar, I'd say the war was extremely tough on the outer planets. Essentials like beer and whiskey have been replaced with local brews of dubious quality. I suspect that window was "pre-war" and an advertising scheme from some brewer to push his product.
I have been in brewreys in Germany which can trace their roots back hundreds of years.
Jeff
Who is waiting the scene in civilization where Mal opens a can of Michelobe. ;->
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Dakota, Thanks for taking the time to write that up. It rocketh. Being a rural boyo with an urban heart, I wanted to say something similar. You nailed it.
Nothings exceeds like excess.
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DS: I've been arguing the same thing for a long time. But your examples are much more interesting than mine!
You mention bison ranchers. Are there a lot of those now?
JOSH, WHERE'S MY CHECK???!!!
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
DS: I've been arguing the same thing for a long time. But your examples are much more interesting than mine!
Well, I'm a transplanted country boy at heart. I've got a couple of equally-amusing anecdotes about the red light district in Toronto, Ontario. ;)
Quote:
You mention bison ranchers. Are there a lot of those now?
Not a lot. You might check http://www.dakotabison.com for some of the details, but suffice to say that there are now enough bison ranchers that we're beginning to see bison meat in the meat section of the grocery stores.
Between the (natural) economic demise of the family rancher combined with the desire for lower-fat meats, I wouldn't be surprised to see a few very large (think Dances With Wolves-sized) Buffalo herds in South Dakota.
There are already enough that a couple of outfits are charging very premium prices for guided hunts. And if you really want to get ripped off, just ask the outfit if you can keep the meat as well as the head. ;)
There's also a place in the Black Hills near Custer that will let you pay them for the privilege of watching them drive their buffalo herd ... ;)
Dakota Smith
No human being has the right -- under any circumstances -- to initiate force against another human being, nor to advocate or delegate its initiation.
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Well considering that I come from a small rural town in Michigan I think I can debate this somewhat. Even given the situation that you've described the technological scenario in Firefly is not well thought out. There have been numerous flaws:
1. Why did the colony planet need a train at all? WOuldn't flight or, since we know they exist, area to area space transport be better (it wouldn't be practical if settlements were close together but that planet sure didn't look like it was close together). One of the Mods as Television Without Pity has been bringing this up constantly (make her stop...please! 
). There was also the issue of chinese lanterns on the train but since I didn't actually notice I'm not giving it its own section.
2. Why use revolvers when automatics are easier to make?
3. The fashion. I sincerely doubt that fashions popular in the 1800s will ever come back into style again. Sorry but it might have made more sense to have the clothing be more modern (read: how you see ranch clothing today) might make sense.
I know these are nitpicks but these are the type of thing that Sci-fi fans (the set of people that this who must win over if it is to survive) will notice.
Nathan
"It looks like a great adventure...That's what it is; that's what it feels like. When I saw the pilot, it was really engaging. It was exciting. It was unusual. It threw me off every now and then. I think people will be grabbed by it." - Ron Glass, on the pilot, during an interview with the Indianapolis Star
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Quote:
2. Why use revolvers when automatics are easier to make?
Now, did they actually *use* revolvers? I don't recall; however, I do *know* that automatics were used in Serenity in most instances. I think Mal's gun might be a revolver, but there may be sentimental reasons for that (could be Independent-faction issued guns? Could be a memorial from his military days? Maybe it's an heirlum?)
Quote:
(the set of people that this who must win over if it is to survive).
See, I'm not so sure about this. Now, we all know how intense scifi fans can be, but I doubt their demographic is the one absolutely necessary for the show to survive. Firefly must be able to reach a variety of people and have the cross-over appeal, to both "geeks" and non-"geeks" alike, that X-Files had. And I'd even go as far to say that the important set of people is the mainstream one, not the scifi one, especially since it is on the Fox network.
--Dylan Palmer, aka NoVaGrAsS--
"Oh, shoot" - Mal
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Quote:
Originally posted by millernate:
1. Why did the colony planet need a train at all? WOuldn't flight or, since we know they exist, area to area space transport be better (it wouldn't be practical if settlements were close together but that planet sure didn't look like it was close together). One of the Mods as Television Without Pity has been bringing this up constantly (make her stop...please!
I know these are nitpicks but these are the type of thing that Sci-fi fans (the set of people that this who must win over if it is to survive) will notice.
I was reading rec.arts.sf.tv (I think that's the title) and someone was saying that trains have been around a LONG time and big corporations/governments/train unions would have fits if they couldn't have a train; what would they do if everyone had their own private air strip? The government would want control of land and perhaps even a rail line or two. He made a good point that this is how it's been and how it will be. Plus it's a reliable means of transportation and you can charge an arm and a leg for transport, keeping people impoverished.
As for the sci-fi fans Joss et al have to win over, I say
Personally I think the ones who will really rip it apart are the die-hard "trekkies," not really sci-fi fans in general. I mean, movies and TV shows that are sci-fi almost always involve sound in space and yet no one complains about it. It's "artistic license."
That's the same thing with Firefly. Given time Joss will flesh out his "rules" but it won't happen all at once.
I'm sorry you're visiting Television Without Pity. A care package will be sent your way for your troubles.
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"How will this end?"
"In fire."
--Babylon 5, 'The Coming of Shadows'
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umm... well... yeah... I realize there are backward places in this country. I grew up in one. But to see an even greater contrast between life as we know it and how it might otherwise be, just visit a third world country. We live like gods compared to much of the world.
roj
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Quote:
Originally posted by millernate:
3. The fashion. I sincerely doubt that fashions popular in the 1800s will ever come back into style again. Sorry but it might have made more sense to have the clothing be more modern (read: how you see ranch clothing today) might make sense.
Well, as I type this, there is a still of Wash in a tank-top in the upper-left corner of the site.
And Jayne has a t-shirt in this shot: http://www.fox.com/firefly/wallpaper/cargo_800 (insert ".jpg" at end of link)
and this shot: http://www.fox.com/firefly/wallpaper/cockpit_800 (insert ".jpg" at end of link)
It makes sense to me. People start moving "Out West" and some fashion designer starts a line of Wild West-inspired clothing, with the designs and colors recalling those old designs. If they're made cheap and sturdy, and I were a settler, I'd buy them.
Still, it may not be the fashion. It may be utility. Let's see what the city-dwellers wear...
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