Should Firefly have more science in its fiction?
POSTED BY: Ringwraith
UPDATED: Sunday, October 20, 2002 05:25
VIEWED: 11207
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And there, I think you've hit the nail on the head! Most of us who enjoy science fiction enjoy being enthralled about innovative technology. We like to imagine how the future will work as well as how we would behave (equally scientific).
What most of us sci fi geeks (and there are a surprisingly large number of us around) have difficulty with is the feeling that Joss is insulting our intelligence. I'm sure it's not intentional, he's probably more concerned with developing the characters, and at that, he's terrific!
But I just keep getting lots of questions popping up. things like, it's ok to come up with a cool western style motif for say one of the border planets for instance, but why all of them? And why is it so alien to have energy weapons on ships the size of skyscrapers that can travel all around the star system?
It's difficult to enjoy the characterisation and cool one-liners when someone fires a lever-action shotgun inside a spaceship.
It's hard to marvel at the swashbuckling nature of a train heist when the ship has both engines firing full blast downwards creating hundreds of tons of down-thrust while hovering 20 feet over a train that should surely have been blown away! The problem isn't technobabble, it's that they are asking someone with my limited intelligence to believe something which is, considering the shows setting, imposible!
Some of us can ignore this, I can't - I've really tried! I remember nearly hyper-ventilating when I saw an Alliance Cruiser fire a laser beam to destroy the derelict at the end of the 'Bushwhacked' episode. 'A last' I thought, something realistic! But alas, if you look closely you'll see it was probably just a ball of fuel (same green stuff that comes out of the back of the Firefly on full burn). And since the Firefly is probably using some sort of space-fuel-kerosene (presumably in keeping with the western motif), I had to conclude that a space cruiser the size of three Empire State buildings was only able to defend itself with a sort of Kerosene Cannon!
As a reviewer, I get very worried if all I seem to be able to concentrate on is how unrealistic the show is. I want to enjoy the show in the same way I enjoy Buffy or Angel, but it's difficult because the show is different. There is no science in Buffy, it's just cool story-telling.
'Our Mrs Raynolds' was a fun story with bad science in it. Some of us don't like that. For me it was less enjoyable than 'Serenity' - I certainly didn't feel that it was his best script - by a long, long way!
The big test for me will be the next episode, 'Jaynestown' which is written by one of the great literary comedic sci fi geniuses of our time. He's not a hard-sci-fi writer, but hopefully Ben Edlunds writing style will help us take our minds off the poor representation of innovative science fiction seen so far.
SadGeezers Guide to Firefly
http://www.sadgeezer.com/firefly
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Oops I forgot.
The topic was, what is science fiction and what is fantasy.
The definition I use (not sure if it's correct) is that science fiction is a story which uses science as part of it's setting or storyline. It may not have been invented, but it could or is likely to be invented in the time that the story is set. An example would the the Warp Drive in Star Trek (the simple explanation of how they can get from one star system to another). The nanobots (micro-robots) in Andromeda (used as an internal defence system) are also good elemets of sci fi.
Science Fantasy is fiction that doesn't ask us to believe a scientific premice. Lord of the Rings is fantasy and so is Buffy and Angel.
Hope that's right. No doubt someone will correct me if I'm wrong. 
SadGeezers Guide to Firefly
http://www.sadgeezer.com/firefly
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Actually that's not what I was talking about at all. I actually like the Western motif of the show, and the fact that you don't, I think, has more to do with prejudice against Western style shows then insulted intelligence.
It would insult my intelligence, if the show suggested that 6 years after an interplanety civil war, all the loosing planets were all peachy and happy; If they all had the most up to date and expensive technology; They all lived in sterile futurist worlds. It would insult my intelligence if Firefly tried to portray the future as if, everyone was always going to be better off. That things that work well enough today, like firearms, are just going to be tossed asside because it's the future now, and there will always be something better to replace them.
Just because something takes place in the future, doesn't mean it HAS to be sterile and "futuristic;" that there HAS to be aliens or laser beams. Five hundred years ago, on this planet, there were people running around in loin clothes chuking spears at animals. Today, 500 years later, there are STILL people on this planet running around in loin clothes chuking spears at animals. It insults my intelligence to suggest that the future must be otherwise.
I think you should take another look at Firefly. I'm not suggesting that you will like it one way or another; but if the western motif is insulting your intelligence, then I think you've grossly missed the point. And if you stop and consider what is actually being said with that western motif, you might realize that Firefly does have a reason for it, and you might decide it makes sense.
At least as much sense as any other motif Whedon could have used.
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In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.
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Quote:This is already covered in other threads; these people live under similar circumstnaces and come from similar backgrounds.
But I just keep getting lots of questions popping up. things like, it's ok to come up with a cool western style motif for say one of the border planets for instance, but why all of them?
Quote:There's no connection between those things! It's like asking why we can put a man on the moon but not cure old age. The reason why energy weapons aren't a very good idea is that they drain lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of energy before they'd have enough "oomph" to really do any damage, and are ineffective when the distance and/or relative speed between shooter and target is to great, because they can't re-aim as they go.
And why is it so alien to have energy weapons on ships the size of skyscrapers that can travel all around the star system?
Quote:Why? If you're saying they'd blow out the hull, why must you insist on such a blowoutable hull when there's no scientific reason why it has to be and the show hasn't told us so? (Or is it something else you're objecting to?)
It's difficult to enjoy the characterisation and cool one-liners when someone fires a lever-action shotgun inside a spaceship.
Quote:No it wouldn't have, surely! And how do we know? Because we saw it, and that didn't happen! And we have no right to say otherwise unless they provide us with the weights and speeds involved and tell us what kind of technology the train and the ship's engines are using and how much force is moving where (especially the forces operating between the train and the track and what makes the train move). Otherwise, we're just playing with assumptions WE MADE UP. All we really know there is that the train would have experience no more draft on one side than the other, which is the main souce of wind tossing when it happens to real objects anyway (not two winds blowing on the same thing from opposite sides)!
It's hard to marvel at the swashbuckling nature of a train heist when the ship has both engines firing full blast downwards creating hundreds of tons of down-thrust while hovering 20 feet over a train that should surely have been blown away!
Quote:No, they're just asking you not to invent ways to claim that it's impossible when science doesn't dictate so and they haven't specified anything self-contradictory.
The problem isn't technobabble, it's that they are asking someone with my limited intelligence to believe something which is, considering the shows setting, imposible!
Quote:No, just something that years of ANTIrealistic scifi has trained you to accept and expect despite its mindblowing ANTIrealism. (See above about energy weapons; they're not a realistic prediction about future technology but a holdover from certain decades of the 19th and 20th centuries when people got overexcited about certain discoveries of "invisible forces" controlling the universe and figured those forces were the future of EVERYTHING without giving the situation any real thought.)
I remember nearly hyper-ventilating when I saw an Alliance Cruiser fire a laser beam to destroy the derelict at the end of the 'Bushwhacked' episode. 'A last' I thought, something realistic!
Quote:So it's got to be the same thing because it glows and is a similar color, but the SHOW is the one being scientificly unrealistic here? And even if it is the same thing (engine exhaust), how about if that's the exhaust of a MISSILE, which is a far better space weapon than a laser anyway, and which must be propelled by an engine which would be likely in the real world to use similar technology to the ships? Or, if you want high-tech-sounding weapons, how about if it's a blob of high-energy plasma, visible because it's leaking radiation on the way to the target? Nobody specified what it has to be but you...
But alas, if you look closely you'll see it was probably just a ball of fuel (same green stuff that comes out of the back of the Firefly on full burn).
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And since tNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I really enjoy space battles as portrayed in Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and the like. They're cool. A tad unrealistic, but cool. Whenever the Millenium Falcon shakes due to a near miss, I don't guffaw and say, "There's no way there could be a near miss in space because there's no air to pass the vibration," or yell, "Spaceships wouldn't dogfight! They'd be thousands of miles away from each other, letting computers do all the targeting for them!" No, if anything I say, "Cool." Don't let your prejudices against non-existent technology deprive you of an enjoyable viewing experience.
"I ate what?"- Socrates
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Quote:
Originally posted by Delvo:Quote:This is already covered in other threads; these people live under similar circumstnaces and come from similar backgrounds.
But I just keep getting lots of questions popping up. things like, it's ok to come up with a cool western style motif for say one of the border planets for instance, but why all of them?
Everyone’s circumstances are different and we all come from different backgrounds. We all have different standards and we all want different things. To assume that all people would behave the same in all the towns on all the frontier planets is percular.
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Originally posted by Delvo:Quote:There's no connection between those things! It's like asking why we can put a man on the moon but not cure old age.
And why is it so alien to have energy weapons on ships the size of skyscrapers that can travel all around the star system?
The Firefly space-scape is not one of peace and light. Everyone carries firearms. If they have the technology to do all the other things (ie. fly between planets, have gravity that works even when all the ships systems are off etc.) then they would be able to defend themselves more effectively – they certainly have the motivation to try!
Quote:
Originally posted by Delvo:
The reason why energy weapons aren't a very good idea is that they drain lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of energy before they'd have enough "oomph" to really do any damage, and are ineffective when the distance and/or relative speed between shooter and target is to great, because they can't re-aim as they go.
You are completely wrong. The US government has different ideas. They are currently planning to add laser weapons to aircraft in the next few years. See the CNN ( http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/09/25/laser.weapon/index.html) and Janes Weekly ( http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/news/jdw/jdw020809_1_n.shtml) . If people on Earth are doing this now, then it’s unreasonable to assume that technology will have regressed so much in the future. Such a thing has not previously happened in Earth history, indeed conflict has had the effect of increasing military innovation.
Quote:
Originally posted by Delvo:Quote:Why? If you're saying they'd blow out the hull, why must you insist on such a blowoutable hull when there's no scientific reason why it has to be and the show hasn't told us so? (Or is it something else you're objecting to?)
It's difficult to enjoy the characterisation and cool one-liners when someone fires a lever-action shotgun inside a spaceship.
Yes, I assume that the spaceship hulls are a lot thicker than would normally be needed for space-travel. My point was that a projectile (or lots of projectiles if fired from a shotgun) would ricochet around the inside of the spaceship and blast anything in it’s path. It would be extremely destructive to fire a gun inside any metallic enclosure (even assuming that the hull was capable of withstanding the impact).
Quote:
Originally posted by Delvo:Quote:
It's hard to marvel at the swashbuckling nature of a train heist when the ship has both engines firing full blast downwards creating hundreds of tons of down-thrust while hovering 20 feet over a train that should surely have been blown away!
No it wouldn't have, surely! And how do we know? Because we saw it, and that didn't happen!
{Sigh}
Yes, but we also saw that the engines propelled the ship (you did see that didn’t you?!), surely you saw that the ship passed over and accross the train too, you surely also saw the engines turn around to fire downwards when the ship was hovering above the train. Perhaps it was doing that for cosmetic reasons. Maybe Wash was just showing off. “Hey look at me, I can turn my engines around!”
My point was that the writers hadn’t thought carefully about the technology that they were expecting (some of) us to take for granted. It the Firefly can hover above a train why
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Quote:
Originally posted by Thegn:
Actually that's not what I was talking about at all. I actually like the Western motif of the show, and the fact that you don't, I think, has more to do with prejudice against Western style shows then insulted intelligence.....
I think you should take another look at Firefly. I'm not suggesting that you will like it one way or another; but if the western motif is insulting your intelligence, then I think you've grossly missed the point. And if you stop and consider what is actually being said with that western motif, you might realize that Firefly does have a reason for it, and you might decide it makes sense.
Well, thankyou for streightening me out on that - however patronisingly. I have no prejudice against Western style shows.
I think the Western motif is a good idea provided it doesn't limit the use of a reasonable amount of science in a show which is set in the future.
I believe that in Firefly, the Western motif actually does limit the shows realistic portrayal of science. If the science becomes all screwy for the sake of keeping in with the motif then I think that's wrong - that what I meant when I said it would insult my intelligence.
However, it certainly seems like I'm in the minority here.
SadGeezers Guide to Firefly
http://www.sadgeezer.com/firefly
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Lets put it this way. You are unhappy because the show has not turned out how you want, and not everybody thinks the way you do (thank god!) therefore the future has not turned out to be the way you would make it. Just because you say somrthing does not make it correct. Every thing you bitch about has been explained quite well, but you won`t stop because you just wan`t to cry about something. If you don`t like it, go watch trek reruns!
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Quote:You're welcome.
Originally posted by SadGeezer:
Well, thankyou for streightening me out on that - however patronisingly. I have no prejudice against Western style shows
Let me know if you need more straightening out.
Quote:This makes sense, but the Western motif is used to symbolize the degenerated state that people are living in. It's not saying that technology hasn't advanced, only that war and isolation have caused a reduction in the standard of living. High technology is dependent on a highly order society. Technology cost resources and a strong economy must be present to generate those resources. If that strong economy isn't there, the state of the technology suffers. The technology in Star Trek makes sense, because of the highly ordered life-style that you see represented in the characters. That level of technology in Firefly would be non-sense, because the entire theme of the show is based on the premise that the standard of living has suffered. They don't have the money to buy the material needed or pay someone else to build some fancy energy weapon, so they use firearms, which are simple, plentiful and can be made from things that are very common: iron, lead, brass, charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur.
Originally posted by SadGeezer:
I think the Western motif is a good idea provided it doesn't limit the use of a reasonable amount of science in a show which is set in the future.
Nothing has to be built in a clean room. No rare heavy metal alloys are needed. No flawless rubys or quartz tubes or dielectrics or super conducting coils, etc, etc
It makes perfect sense to me.
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In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.
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Quote:
The Firefly spacescape is not one of peace and light. Everyone carries firearms. If they have the technology to do all the other things (ie. fly between planets, have gravity that works even when all the ships systems are off etc.) then they would be able to defend themselves more effectively – they certainly have the motivation to try!
But nobody's said they're not able to defend themselves effectively. That's something you infused into this. Believe it or not, guns and missiles work. And one of the main problems with some scifi people's obsessions with replacing them is that there's nothing else that we have any indication will work better. What advantage would switching to a "cooler" scifi gadget confer over present technology? Technology doesn't just keep on changing because it's supposed to; it changes when there's something that ACTUALLY BETTER.
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You are completely wrong. The US government has different ideas. They are currently planning to add laser weapons to aircraft in the next few years...
They've been saying that for well over a decade, and it's still not workable. Meanwhile, on several occasions in that same time, people associated with such programs and willing to speak out have expressed their frsutration with wasting resources on dead-end projects that ignorant people above them have demanded, apparently just because they sound cool. As far as these lasers that they've been "so close" on for so long are concerned, they still can't do any real damage in the brief amounts of time allowed in real flight, they still are wasting huge amounts of energy, they still can't hit high-speed maneuvering targets from high-speed maneuvering and shaking platforms, and they still can't even ATTEMPT it until they're miles and miles inside the effective range of enemy missiles. And in space, the distances and speeds and accelerations just get more drastic and more prohibitive.
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If people on Earth are doing this now, then it’s unreasonable to assume that technology will have regressed so much in the future.
It's even more unreasonable to call it a regression, when there's no reason to believe the technology you prefer is actually going to ever become superior, or to think that it will stay so forever after if it does.
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Yes, I assume that the spaceship hulls are a lot thicker than would normally be needed for spacetravel. My point was that a projectile (or lots of projectiles if fired from a shotgun) would ricochet around the inside of the spaceship and blast anything in it’s path. It would be extremely destructive to fire a gun inside any metallic enclosure (even assuming that the hull was capable of withstanding the impact).
True, but damaging some stuff is a risk you have to take when the stakes are high enough... and this depends on how much like present-day ammo and walls the ammo and walls on the show are... and even a ricocheting bullet very very rarely returns to the person who fired it, especially if the shooter knows not to shoot at targets with walls behind them at anything like the exact angles necessary to do this.
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Yes, but we also saw that the engines propelled the ship (you did see that didn’t you?!), surely you saw that the ship passed over and accross the train too, you surely also saw the engines turn around to fire downwards when the ship was hovering above the train.
Did they fire down? I'll believe that. I know I saw them swing, and I think I've seen the dust-scattering to indicate that the force is repulsive out the back rather than attractive at the front. But still, like I said, expecting a train to be tossed is infusing assumptions that just aren't indicated. Since you didn't recognize this last time, I'll name some of the basic ones:
1. The amount of force coming out of those engines. You've said hundreds of tons, and thousands of tons; both were made up. The ship's not big. And it was empty at the time. And it's presumably made of the lightest stuff pheasible, and there's some indication that it might
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