Discussing the week of BDM.
POSTED BY: jewelstaitefan
UPDATED: Tuesday, July 8, 2014 07:38
VIEWED: 7862
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This is a discussion of the number of days elapsed in the movie Serenity. Brought up in other threads, I was surprised to find some thought it lasted a week instead of 2 days.
In order to streamline the other threads, it can be delved into here.
In previous discussions, the concepts of standardized calendars was assumed. The variations in different rotation rates, orbital rates, etc was not explored, assuming all time references were to the Earth-that-was calendar.
Location A: Serenity on Lilac for heist, reaver attack. Sunday, church time.
Travel time #1: Travel from Lilac to Maidenhead on Beaumonde. Lilac Reaver attack on newswave as BDH enter Maidenhead. Why would this take more than a few hours?
Location B: Maidenhead bar on Beaumonde. With Fanty and Mingo. Seems less than an hour. Location of Operative not known, but probably in the general area due to Firefly sightings from Alliance patrols.
Travel time #2: Travel from Maidenhead to Haven (destination Haven when leaving atmo). Operative gets video from Maidenhead, determines next destination to be Inara at Training House. This is explained in Travel Time #5 to be several hours.
Location C: Haven, arriving. Dusk or Daytime.
Time Span #3: duration on Haven.
Location D: Haven, leaving. After nighttime chat, Mal slept before wave from Inara.
Travel time #4: Haven to Training House, Mal states it is a "few hours".
Location E: Companion Training House. Operative present.
Travel time #5: Training House to Haven. Mal restates it is "few hours" to return to Haven. During these few hours, Operative meets beaten Fanty and Mingo, gets info on Mal's hideouts, and dispatches Alliance craft to destroy all of Mal's shelters, to deny Mal ground to go to. This indicates Fanty and Mingo on Beaumonde were not more than a few hours away, from Training House. Therefore Travel from Beaumonde to Haven is not much more than several hours.
Location F: Burned out Haven Mining camp. Mal tells Kaylee she has 2 hours to do a days amount of work. Daytime again, likely morning after arriving Sunday at dusk.
Travel time #6: Haven to Miranda. Mal offers Inara a passenger dorm if she "wants to sleep awhile", she says nobody can sleep. If this were more than 8 hours of travel, they'd need to get some sleep, but it does seem more than 4 hours if they're considering getting "sleep awhile". Six hours seems a fair estimation. During this travel the Operative asks "define disappeared."
Location G: Miranda. Seems an hour or less. When leaving Miranda, Operative is at Mr Universe, and kills him.
Travel Time #7: Miranda to Mr Universe. River states under 4 hours at maximum burn. Going thru reaver armada is backtracking past same ships, so returning towards directiion of Haven. Operative gets from previously having no destination to Mr Universe during this 6 plus 4 hour period, showing Mr Universe is not that far from previous location, and thus Haven is not that far from Miranda.
Location H: Mr Universe's place.
I'll be interrupted here soon.
The River Classroom opening scene, the Operative at the Institute scene, the repair faclity afterwards, and the 1 day travel time back to Training House are not included. Perhaps these are where people are adding time up into the range of a week.
Combination of Travel Times 3 thru 5 are about 12 hours, Haven mining camp goin thru dusk, night, daytime.
Summary: several hours between Lilac and Beaumonde, plus several hours between Beaumonde and Haven, plus about 12 hours between first arriving Haven to leaving after Book died, plus about 6 hours from Haven to Miranda, plus 4 hours from Miranda to Mr Universe, seems like the starting Sunday, plus Monday.
Where do you see an extra 5 days elapsing?
Related: Itinerary of Serenity's travel in the verse during the BDS and BDM:
www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=4&tid=58225
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Umm.
Does everybody now think it spanned 2 days?
Or is this just boring?
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As mentioned elsewhere, the Operative at Institute scene is well before the main body of the film, which seems to only span 2 days.
River escape from Institute - 8 months before operative at Institute.
Operative at Institute - reviews escape records, tells assistant she needs to get the subliminal commands files, so they can create a subliminal message for broad wave to trigger River to "lay them all down" in such a way that will be a big flag to security feed watchers. This way he can find her, or get video and timestamp of where she was triggered (eventually happening at Maidenhead). Although he has no specific planet to go to at this time, he has a "ballpark area" to head to due to sightings and reports of Firefly ships in the interim since the escape.
Mr. Universe states that these subliminal messages have been broadcast for a "few weeks".
Lilac-Maidenhead-Haven-Training House-Haven-Miranda-Mr Universe's place - this is the main body of the film, which seems to span about 2 days. - Maidenhead is where River gets triggered subliminally, so this is a few weeks after the Operative at Institute scene.
Repairing Serenity/funeral - this is after the main body, effectively epilogue. Mal says it's a day to get back to Training House, but Inara makes it unclear if she will disembark there, or pick up her stuff there.
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Small point, I'm not so convinced about the Operative's location during the Maidenhead scene. It would depend on the number of Firefly class ships in operation in the 'verse/system.
Also, could the news report from Lilac have been a rerun or update on the survivors type of report? I haven't seen the movie recently. I think the speed of that report would also depend on how isolated that town was, whether anyone was able to get a message out and how fast a news crew could get there.
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Each Alliance vessel that finds contact with Serenity says: Firefly? One of those still flies? It seems generally assumed that Firefly craft are not considered still spaceworthy, very rare to have a sighting.
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I also should have mentioned that after Serenity leaves Maidenhead, and Operative goes to Training House in daytime, Mal arrives on Haven in evening, and stays past sundown before going to Training House atill in daytime. Since Training House remained in the day side of it's planet both for Operative arriving and Mal arriving, this helps show the lack of passage of a day. Unless, of course, one would argue the Operative was not really in much of a hurry, and sat around lolligagging with Inatra for a few days before getting around to pursuing River.
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I also should have mentioned that after Serenity leaves Maidenhead, and Operative goes to Training House in daytime, Mal arrives on Haven in evening, and stays past sundown before going to Training House atill in daytime. Since Training House remained in the day side of it's planet both for Operative arriving and Mal arriving, this helps show the lack of passage of a day. Unless, of course, one would argue the Operative was not really in much of a hurry, and sat around lolligagging with Inatra for a few days before getting around to pursuing River.
I know, old discussion but...
I can see the Operative sitting a waiting to see if Mal took the bait and came for Inara. Up to that point he had no other leads that we know of as to where Serenity was.
I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.
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Too tired to rummage through all this, but I'll just say... even w/ a Firefly , travel time to different planets would take days, not hours.
( Unless you're communicating such things over an open channel, when the enemy can hear you, then hours really do become days )
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Too tired to rummage through all this, but I'll just say... even w/ a Firefly , travel time to different planets would take days, not hours.
( Unless you're communicating such things over an open channel, when the enemy can hear you, then hours really do become days )
I think planets in close orbits in the same systems most likley could be reached in hours.
I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.
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