General Discussions

Reavers, what's their deal?

POSTED BY: athertonwing
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 06:24
VIEWED: 17272
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ATHERTONWING

Thursday, March 25, 2004 4:18 PM

Okay so i was sitting watching firefly by myself and i said to my self, self i said "what's the real deal with the reavers?"

I never did quite buy into the whole savageness of space legend thing, and people going crazy in the blackness of space really didnt wash with me.always reminded me of the villagers theory that River was a witch.

i figured there must be a reason behind the reavers lack of human emotion and that part of their brains which tells them bad reaver it aint nice to eat that womans liver then sew her skin into your clothing. which got me thinking again. the reavers have a few of the characteristics of someone on board serenity...River.

okay okay hear me out.What if River and how ever many other students at the Acamdemy for the gifted werent the first people to be experimented on? what if there were preludes to these experiments. testing that went awry? the reavers. who is to say that they didnt have bits of their brains cut out? and were mangled up so badly that they were made void of the traits that humans possess left without compassion or feeling. cast out into the blackness of space in ships past their sell by date and left to drift and die.

so what do you think? is it plausable or am i just being 'CrAzY'?

BROWNCOAT1

Thursday, March 25, 2004 4:49 PM

I have thought about that myself Ath (I can call you Ath?). I even remember pointing out in a thread last year I think it was, that the Reavers might very well be failed experiments by the Blue Hands.

I know, I know, we don't know anything about them, and there is nothing to support my theory, but it is fun to think on, no?

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

LODRIL

Thursday, March 25, 2004 9:23 PM

It's an interesting idea.

I just figured they were like the ummm... whatchacallems from Gene Wolfe's books (Malthropes? something like that). I'm blanking on their name, but they were people who voluntarily had surgery on their brains to reduce them from people to animals. They were sick of the world, couldn't take it, wanted to get back to nature, whatever... but as a result, they reduced themselves to savage beasts. Clever savage beasts, but monsters all the same. Basically they surrendered their humanity.

I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

KURUKAMI

Thursday, March 25, 2004 10:20 PM

Only problem is, that theory has some holes in it. Namely the "survivor" found onboard the derelict in "Bushwhacked". That guy didn't seem to have had any surgery done on him -- as evidenced by the fact that he was running around less than two weeks after his ship went missing. And there's very little voluntary about watching savages cut your family and friends apart. Not to mention that the ship hasn't been built that could be competently piloted by a "dumb beast".

For similar reasons, I find myself doubting the "they're all survivors of Blue Sun" theory. By blind chance, the Reavers just happened to find a brilliant savant on the vessel they've waylayed and then said to themselves, "My, this chap's quite the intelligent sort! We must bring him into our ranks, but after we convert him to our way of life we should leave him on this space-going vessel for no particular reason, because after all his table manners are abominable."

Naaaah.

And Blue Sun, if they wanted to kill them, wouldn't need to bother with old ships. If one wishes to get rid of evidence in deep space, just tranq the suckers, then toss them out an airlock. One medium-to-large problem solved by explosive decompression.

"Sir, I would like to gingerly point out that it is difficult for someone to be gently reassuring when they're holding three and a half feet of sharpened steel."

KARENKAY99

Thursday, March 25, 2004 11:49 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by athertonwing:

okay okay hear me out.What if River and how ever many other students at the Acamdemy for the gifted werent the first people to be experimented on? what if there were preludes to these experiments. testing that went awry? the reavers. who is to say that they didnt have bits of their brains cut out? and were mangled up so badly that they were made void of the traits that humans possess left without compassion or feeling. cast out into the blackness of space in ships past their sell by date and left to drift and die.

so what do you think? is it plausable or am i just being 'CrAzY'?

i don't think you're crazy. i've been wondering along these lines as well.
they didn't finish with river, simon rescued her before she became whatever is is they want her to be. who knows how she would have ended up. and i would imagine they screwed up a whole lot before they got it right so maybe the reavers are those screw ups. we don't know the guy in bushwhacked is really like a reaver. he's nuts for sure. maybe they left him to stew with plans to make him one of them later. let him get good and nuts living alone on that ship with all those ghosts. maybe that's why blue hands wants river back so bad, she was so close to what they wanted, assassin, psychic. and of course they don't want their secret out.
and i am always worried about what book knows about all this. i think he's involved somehow. i just hope he comes out on the side of the good guys.

"They say the snow on the roof is too heavy. They say the ceiling will cave in. His brains are in terrible danger."

KURUKAMI

Friday, March 26, 2004 12:24 AM

Yeah, but if one has been performing illegal (or at least immoral) medical experiments and one doesn't want anyone to know about the screwups, one doesn't dump the proof in deep space aboard ships. One liquifies the bodies internal structure with blue sproingy things (as we saw in "Ariel"), or just shoots them in the back of the head and cremates the body.

This whole "Blue Sun left them alive because they were failed experiments" theory makes no sense to me at all.

"Sir, I would like to gingerly point out that it is difficult for someone to be gently reassuring when they're holding three and a half feet of sharpened steel."

KARENKAY99

Friday, March 26, 2004 12:32 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kurukami:
This whole "Blue Sun left them alive because they were failed experiments" theory makes no sense to me at all.
Quote:

who says they let 'em go? reavers sound perfectly capable of escaping to me.

"They say the snow on the roof is too heavy. They say the ceiling will cave in. His brains are in terrible danger."

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ITSALLSHINY

Friday, March 26, 2004 2:07 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by athertonwing:
i figured there must be a reason behind the reavers lack of human emotion...What if River and how ever many other students at the Acamdemy for the gifted werent the first people to be experimented on? what if there were preludes to these experiments. testing that went awry? the reavers. who is to say that they didnt have bits of their brains cut out? and were mangled up so badly that they were made void of the traits that humans possess left without compassion or feeling. cast out into the blackness of space in ships past their sell by date and left to drift and die.

Hmm..., I think it's more plausible that these guys were scrounging on the edge of civilized space without enough funds to maintain their shielding, and they've got brain damage, alright -- but from radiation poisoning. Don't think the Alliance would waste any money on failed experiments -- just kill 'em. No reason to give 'em ships and cast 'em off.

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MAL: "I knew you let her kiss you!"

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Friday, March 26, 2004 2:41 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ItsAllShiny:
Hmm..., I think it's more plausible that these guys were scrounging on the edge of civilized space without enough funds to maintain their shielding, and they've got brain damage, alright -- but from radiation poisoning. Don't think the Alliance would waste any money on failed experiments -- just kill 'em. No reason to give 'em ships and cast 'em off.

If one felt the need to go with the “failed experiment” approach I’m sure one could plausibly present a scenario for their escape. The Alliance need not be so kind as to let them go. As far as the “radiation poisoning” theory, that could also work with the right tweaking and whatnot.

Radiation can cause insanity with adequate exposure. Of course it would also cause blindness and radiation sickness before the sanity reached the degree one might expect in a Reaver. A blind and lame Reaver might not be have the same stage present that Whedon is going for.

Of course, one could use the only Star Trek standby and invent a “special” particle.

ITSALLSHINY

Friday, March 26, 2004 5:07 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
If one felt the need to go with the “failed experiment” approach I’m sure one could plausibly present a scenario for their escape...
Radiation can cause insanity with adequate exposure. Of course it would also cause blindness and radiation sickness before the sanity reached the degree one might expect in a Reaver. A blind and lame Reaver might not be have the same stage present that Whedon is going for.

Of course, one could use the only Star Trek standby and invent a “special” particle.

Something doesn't have to be scientific down to the nitty gritty details to work on television -- it just has to be plausible We have two plausible scenarios here -- one with escaped Alliance brain-damaged experimental subjects, and the other with brain-damaged (from radiation or some other unspecified cause) sub-humans on the edge of space. I think the edge of space scenario (the simpler of the two) would be easier to convey to the audience, and it's already been alluded to by Mal in "Serenity" when the reavers were introduced.

At least the mythodology was introduced. We won't know for sure what reavers are until Joss tells us. But if they are some kind of failed Alliance rejects, it's going to take some masterful skills to tell the story. Can you imagine the complicated story arc that would take? You'd have to have reavers in a whole bunch of episodes to have the characters make the necessary discoveries to go from the myth to the Alliance's doorstep. Maybe in season 2...

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I call it "Vera"