Is Mal a pilot?
POSTED BY: spock74
UPDATED: Friday, June 20, 2008 15:28
VIEWED: 10455
PAGE 3 of 5
How could the ship have been on auto pilot when they were taking off? ALso it was River who performed the take off sequence even though she was in the Navigation seat.
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rallem: I was responding to the question about Serenity-the-Pilot episode when Mal and Simon are talking at the end of the ep.
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Ah, I appologize. I thought you were talking about the movie. My bad. 
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I don't get why the left seat is called the Navigation seat. Navigators don't have a pilot's yoke. The left seat has a pilot's yoke, thus it should be the co-pilot's seat. A Navigator could sit there, but the position shouldn't be called that.
I gotta look again. In Out of Gas, was Mal siting in the pilot's seat in the blanket, or in a seat behaind the pilot's seat. I had thought the latter, but gotta check again - another excuse to watch an episode.
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Quote:
Originally posted by homespun:
This is an interesting thread, because I have always wondered, when in War Stories Zoe tells them to leave the quadrant if she doesn't come back, just who would fly Serenity out. You have Jayne, Inara, Kaylee, Book, Simon and River, and at that point no one knows River can pilot, not would they trust her, I'm thinking.
I think they'd been SOL if they'd lost Mal, Wash -and- Zoe, but I would bet good money that Book is a decent pilot, especially with all the Alliance military speculations about his past. His abilities, save for the occasional knowledge of guns, shooting and what kind of rockets make certain marks on the ground, are unknown. He's a closed book (ha!) in many respects. We never see him take charge ever in the series or the movies, but it sure would have been an interesting thing to watch, and probably would have given us some more insight into his character.
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Quote:
Originally posted by nbz:
There is supposedly a massive difference in driving a automatic car and an 18 wheeler truck with tens of manual gears.
I drove truck for a few years. It takes two months of training before you can even think about doing it yourself, and a good solid year before you feel comfortable. Just an example. Your car has brakes. Trucks have brakes, yes, plus two sets of parking brakes, an engine brake, and a clutch brake, all of which act totally differently depending on how much weight is in the truck.
I would say that most people in the 'verse would be able to fly a shuttle the way that most of us can drive a car. But as soon as you get something big and complicated like a transport ship, everything changes.
"We may experience some slight turbulence, and then... explode."
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sure he's a pilot, just not a very good one. It's like he taught himself the rudimentary bits, and then didn't concern himself with the other stuff like how to fly smoothly, look out for other ships and space crap etc.
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In the pilot, Wash gets off a little too quickly IMO to have already set the autopilot. and when Mal talks to Jayne he is flicking switches. By witch Joss means he is doing "uhm... sciency stuff".
About long journeys - in the starting of Bushwacked, (the most underrated episode of the lot - I have seen a poll when not one of 200+ voters had it as their favourite! [a feat not managed by any other episode] - but I guess that is off topic) the ship is on co-pilot. No one is flying that thing.
There is a seat behind the copilots in the cockpit. Not sure if there is also one behind the pilot. Probably not as there is a locker on that side. A little circumstantial, but in the movie, only three people strap up in there too.
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Mal obviously isn't on par with Wash's piloting skill, but he's not bad either. Remember, in Serenity, River took off and than she put her feet up letting Mal take over. Which means it was Mal who did the cool twist-thingy when they were leaving atmo.
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Find here the Serenity you seek.
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I'm fair certain Mal can pilot his own boat. That don't make him a pilot per se. There's a lot more to being a pilot than just keep flyin'. It ain't all buttons and charts, but a licenced pilot, I'm sure, would need to know a lot about navigation: plotting courses, fuel calculations, etc. Plus, of course, have detailed knowledge of onboard electronic systems. And not just of your midbulk transport, standard radion-accelerator core, classcode 03-K64, "Firefly", but most like of an entire range of freighers, commercial airliners, and what not.
Also, a pilot must possess essential knowledge of the systems he's working with, in case something breaks down. He don't immediately have to be a ship's mechanic, of course; but a pilot can't go running off, calling: "Kaylee!" every time an unforeseen circumstance throws some terrifying space-monkey wrench into his plans. He'd have to know the systems enough to be able to improvise in case of an emergency, like, oh, say, divert the nav-sats to the transmitter. :)
In short: I want Wash back, gorrammit!
--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam
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