Where the crew stands on a couple of things post-BDM

POSTED BY: UndaFiya
UPDATED: Friday, February 13, 2009 20:17
VIEWED: 19664
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BYTEMITE

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 7:28 PM

My impression is that there were a bunch of different programs at the academy, and that River was in a small class participating in the top secret accelerated program.

MOONDOG

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 7:54 PM

I agree with your assessment and with River the best of the best, they can't send many (if any) after her but, as I said, there is the potential for one of her fellows to go rogue and that would make for a great story in itself. I got the impression that the "students" were kept seperated, but if not, how about one that is no longer under control but desperate to contact River?

BYTEMITE

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 11:10 PM

It would be, especially if it was a game of tactics and counter-strategy, each trying to anticipate each other. Then the final showdown. :)

MOONDOG

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 11:27 PM

Well, it would be a good story line. Anybody got their pencils out?

AGENTROUKA

Thursday, January 8, 2009 11:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by moondog:
I wonder, how many "students" did the Academy have? It couldn't have been more than two score at most, given the apparent criteria. Then there is the question of how many would be ready to deploy, given the elapsed time (8 months)between her rescue and the events of the BDM.

For all we know, the program has been going for a couple of years already, so there may be students ready. Who's to say they recruited them all at the same time?

Quote:

When being "inspected", Dr. Mathias said that River was his star pupil, so anyone they sent would be inferior in some aspect or other.

But it wouldn't necessarily be a dramatic inferiority and we don't know what 8 months of additional training might have done for other students. Plus, River's training was never completed, so while she may have been the star pupil, she is both "ouf out training" for 8 months and may never have realized her full intended potential while there. Like a highschool dropout who missed out on some physics and history classes, perhaps. Except here it'd be controlling her mind-reading and such. Medication now likely differs wildly from what the Academy gave her, too.

We can't assume that River is still superior to every other subject there. Freer, happier, healthier.. but necessarily superior?

Quote:

I see your point about the alliance not wanting to accept the use of those "Weapons" but, I don't agree. They would need them even more than ever, considering the political situation they would be in.

Yes, but I don't think the Alliance is one uniform political entity and everyone down to the littlest mayor would have approved of Miranda. I think the pro-Miranda crowd was a small, secret and elitist faction within the top spheres of the Alliance (KEY members of parliament) and with Miranda coming to light, this faction may well be under intense investigation by the less psychopathic Alliance higher ups and THOSE would not really be the same costumers for the Blue Sun product of crazy assassins as the pro-Miranda faction had been.

If the non-Miranda factions do it right, they can clean up the pro-Miranda faction and be hailed as reformers by the public without the concept of the Alliance having to suffer much at all and no assassinations on their part would be required.

MOONDOG

Thursday, January 8, 2009 6:23 PM

The point about the "key members of parliment" is that it's like cornering a wounded dragon. They are still powerful and would not let go of their power without a serious fight and remember that in higher government it's power--power to the faction/wing/party that put them there--that comes first. This is a Lockeian (could that be a real word?) concept but it plays out even today. So the question remains, to what end would they go to retain their power. Blue Sun is the question. How deeply are these "Key Members" involved with the running of the maga-corperation? We have had recient examples of Highly placed government officials with control of major contractors and I don't see things changing in the future, human nature being what it is. Sure, if Blue Sun were smart and independant of their control, they would jump on the reformer bandwagon with no hesitation, but how much autonomy do they have, or what steps would they take to gain it? I am reminded of the Deathbed quary made by General secretary Yuri Andropov, "Does power corrupt us or do we corrupt power?"

AGENTROUKA

Thursday, January 8, 2009 7:17 PM

I wasn't referring to Blue Sun being part of the reform.

To me, Blue Sun is a private government contractor, run at its very top by people whose ideology runs along the lines of the Miranda experiment.

One faction of the Alliance government, maybe a party, maybe a secret group of merely like-minded, shares this ideology and uses their governmental power and the facilities of Blue Sun to experiment with things that clearly go against the legal creed of the Alliance: using teenagers or drugging their population into submission. The other factions of the Alliance government are likely not aware of this at all and the general level of intransparancy and confidentiality of such a massive and slightly overcontrolling government makes it easy to keep anyone suspicious from looking too close, as well.

So if there are Reformers, it'll be other factions within the Parliament, while Blue Sun will try to do their best to cover up their aspect of involvement in order to both avoid prosecution and to keep their profitable contracts - without the slightest intention of letting go of their ideology. (Hopefully not successfully.)

The main baddy I see here is Blue Sun, with the catastrophic aid of like-minded politicians. Not politicians using Blue Sun, but the other way around. I think Miranda and River wouldn't have happened without Blue Sun because it could provide private facilities for experiments that most of the scientists involved probably had not a single idea about weren't really govern-sanctioned, and they couldn't talk about it because.. well, death.

I bet Blue Sun covertly paid for war propaganda after Miranda went bad to drown out more reasonable voices and speed up the start of the war in what must have been a building conflict at the time, to cover up their mistake.

That's my view of this whole mess, anyway. Partly fuelled because I really do not buy that the Alliance is fully rotten to its core. They made a terrible, awful and greedy mistake thinking that forced Unification was a just cause, and Mal rightfully hates them for it, but most of his misgivings I think are negative bias based on war experiences, and the evil things perpetrated against River and Miranda are sick "exceptions", born out of private, not institutional, corruption.

I hope this clears up our misunderstanding about my personal view of the relationship between Blue Sun and the Alliance. Shutting up now!

BYTEMITE

Thursday, January 8, 2009 7:44 PM

Well, we know New Kashmir was about ten years before the start of firefly, and we also know Reavers appeared about ten years ago, and that Miranda happened about ten years ago.

So yeah, kinda spooky... But we don't know when the war started exactly, there could have been other campaigns in the years prior. Government mistakes are easily covered up by the process of war, too. It could be either way, declaration or actual war fighting being the distraction. But I like the way you think here!

AGENTROUKA

Thursday, January 8, 2009 10:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Well, we know New Kashmir was about ten years before the start of firefly, and we also know Reavers appeared about ten years ago, and that Miranda happened about ten years ago.

So yeah, kinda spooky... But we don't know when the war started exactly, there could have been other campaigns in the years prior. Government mistakes are easily covered up by the process of war, too. It could be either way, declaration or actual war fighting being the distraction. But I like the way you think here!

It all seems to be happening in 2506, eh? Cursed year. In the movie, Zoe guesses that the Miranda "terraforming failure" was right before the war. Mal guesses the scientist's message to be 12 years old, all point to 2506, like you say. New Kasmir must have happened a little later than that.

So I guess the Blue Sun helping the start of the war along may be a bit of a stretch, as it seems to have been coming along fast, anyway. Didn't hurt them, though, in terms of distractions. Anyway, it's likely that the same school of thought who cooked up Miranda would be part of the no doubt sizable "Yay Unification war!" section. More planets to purify. Ugh.

GOD, I wish they had had the time to create a flashback episode that deals with the crew during the war, giving us a ton of perspectives. Five-year-old River and maybe 12-year-old Simon we have seen, but barely-adult Wash contrasted with Zoe would be amazing, because of how vastly different their lives were. I bet Wash grew up semi-neutrally pro-Alliance.

Similarly 17-year-old Inara and 20-year-old Mal. Pro-Unification propaganda blasting from one cortex screen, anti-Unification propaganda from another. (No matter whose cause is right, there is always propaganda, right?) One goes off to war, another sees young soldiers off from the midst of tense Coreworld politics. And oh, the mystery of Book. Gah!

MOONDOG

Friday, January 9, 2009 5:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
I wasn't referring to Blue Sun being part of the reform.

To me, Blue Sun is a private government contractor, run at its very top by people whose ideology runs along the lines of the Miranda experiment.

One faction of the Alliance government, maybe a party, maybe a secret group of merely like-minded, shares this ideology and uses their governmental power and the facilities of Blue Sun to experiment with things that clearly go against the legal creed of the Alliance: using teenagers or drugging their population into submission. The other factions of the Alliance government are likely not aware of this at all and the general level of intransparancy and confidentiality of such a massive and slightly overcontrolling government makes it easy to keep anyone suspicious from looking too close, as well.

So if there are Reformers, it'll be other factions within the Parliament, while Blue Sun will try to do their best to cover up their aspect of involvement in order to both avoid prosecution and to keep their profitable contracts - without the slightest intention of letting go of their ideology. (Hopefully not successfully.)

The main baddy I see here is Blue Sun, with the catastrophic aid of like-minded politicians. Not politicians using Blue Sun, but the other way around. I think Miranda and River wouldn't have happened without Blue Sun because it could provide private facilities for experiments that most of the scientists involved probably had not a single idea about weren't really govern-sanctioned, and they couldn't talk about it because.. well, death.

I bet Blue Sun covertly paid for war propaganda after Miranda went bad to drown out more reasonable voices and speed up the start of the war in what must have been a building conflict at the time, to cover up their mistake.

That's my view of this whole mess, anyway. Partly fuelled because I really do not buy that the Alliance is fully rotten to its core. They made a terrible, awful and greedy mistake thinking that forced Unification was a just cause, and Mal rightfully hates them for it, but most of his misgivings I think are negative bias based on war experiences, and the evil things perpetrated against River and Miranda are sick "exceptions", born out of private, not institutional, corruption.

I hope this clears up our misunderstanding about my personal view of the relationship between Blue Sun and the Alliance. Shutting up now!

I bow to your flawless logic.

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