Firefly Timeline

POSTED BY: Almanac
UPDATED: Sunday, April 16, 2017 22:12
VIEWED: 18843
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This is meant to be a mirror of my original threads on other boards, as well as a place where I can mention updates to my work here without distracting from other posts...

For those of you who want to further familiarise yourselves with the universe of Firefly and Serenity, I invite you to have a look at my Firefly Timeline:

http://www.mts.net/~arphaxad/firefly.html

I wanted to have a timeline on the Web with as little speculation as possible, so you'll notice that all of the entries are annotated, no matter what source(s) I used to come up with the entry and/or its date of occurrence.

As the timeline is currently (still!) a work in progress, I also realise that there is some information missing. Nevertheless, I'm eager to know what everyone thinks about it thus far, especially if you have your own thoughts on dating the series/movie.

If you do disagree with one or more of the dates I've provided, feel free to provide alternative possibilities, but please cite the source(s) you're using--an episode of the series, an interview, or whatever--as long as it holds some canonical status. It's not enough to say, "I remember so-and-so saying this," as I want to be able to refer to it specifically.

Anyone from Mutant Enemy or Fox/Universal, or the cast/crew in general, who might be reading this are eagerly invited to take a look for themselves--for continuity purposes, or just to tell me all of the things I'm wrong about. I'm happy to do whatever I can to help keep the history of the 'verse as consistent as possible...

I'll bump this thread periodically, whenever I do a significant update to the timeline, and to encourage discussion of any and all timeline-related issues that come up in the series and movie.

In order to prevent a lot of rehashing, though, I'll provide some links to existing threads here, as I don't want to simply repeat various discussions that have already taken place elsewhere on the site...

For a long time, I was piggybacking on this (much more speculative) thread about the 'verse and its history:

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=2&t=3267

Old announcements concerning the Firefly Timeline are there, so feel free to have a look.

JewelStaiteFan has also been posting his own interpretations of the timeline for the main events in the series, based on some differences in methodology:

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=4&t=32184
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=4&t=36140

That should get everyone started, I think...

Either way, I look forward to hearing more from my fellow Browncoats.

Edgar Governo
Historian of Things That Never Were
http://www.mts.net/~arphaxad/history.html

Visit the Browncoat Saloon:
http://www.myspace.com/browncoatsaloon

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I am interested in seeing the progress of this process.
I had gotten the impression from the timeline I had seen that you had added timeline info as the series progressed, and then more after the DVDs were released.
After all that, more was added after BDM came out. It seemed that the info which had already gelled from the series ended up with more weighted validity than some of the newer data from BDM, even if they conflicted.
I had tried to give equal weight to all the data available - that I could find. for instance, when Mal and Operative (in script) state River has been aboard 8 months in BDM, and River is the same age as she was in the cryo-box, that all seemed to reinforce each other - and when other series data added up to being more than a year of Verse time, I conjured the 3 corroberating data might have greater validity than the disparate pieces of data which added together conflicted.


You posted links to 2 versions of the timeline I worked out, based upon 2 different assumptions. I tried to keep the posts as minimal as possible, to keep it readable and fairly clear in this format. Most cites were not included in these posts, unless brief. Better cites and more detailed info was in the discussion thread leading up to those, and that thread is:

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=4&t=31980

I would not be surprised if I missed some explanations, or if they are not clear. I would be happy to clarify any assumptions I made, if confusing points are pointed out. I also assume I made some mistakes, and would like to clarify them as well when found.

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I have recently read that Derrial Book was the name of a man our "Book" had killed, and he took the identity. It also metnioned his eralier name. I do not recall where it was posted, but somewhere here. I twas sourced as from and interview with Ron Glass, IIRC. Perhaps somebody could expand on that.

edit: it is in thread 36950 in the Episode forum.

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Serenity bluray has an Alliance database. List Mal's dob as 20 Sep 2468 (apparently a joke regarding soembody in the props dept born 20 Sep 1968) - is Mal really 49 in the show? Also Zoe dob 15 Feb 2484, Inara 14 Oct 2489, Kaylee 2 Jul 2497 location Kowlonshi, Simon Nov 2490, and River at the academy 2515-2517.

Maybe Kowlonshi and Kowlon Fed Base are different ways of saying the same place.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I am interested in seeing the progress of this process.

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Thanks!

As I said, some of my historiography has been spelled out before in other places, but I'll try to address some of what you're talking about...

Quote:

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I had gotten the impression from the timeline I had seen that you had added timeline info as the series progressed, and then more after the DVDs were released.
After all that, more was added after BDM came out.

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That's not too far off...

I had a very preliminary timeline worked out whilst the series was still on the air, but the episodes were airing out of order. I tried to ask about the 'verse and its history on the Fox site when there were still production staff there on a regular basis, but I got no response.

After the show was cancelled and the episodes' production order was well-known, I started working from my tapes of the series, and the timeline was first publicly uploaded before the DVD set was released.

I kept adding more and more detail to the timeline from what was available, which expanded with "Those Left Behind," the "R. Tam Sessions," and (of course) the movie; and has continued to expand with "Better Days," "The Other Half," and so forth...

Quote:

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It seemed that the info which had already gelled from the series ended up with more weighted validity than some of the newer data from BDM, even if they conflicted.

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I'll admit that, since I only had the series to begin with and had worked out its main kinks before the movie was even filmed, I have tended to be more likely at times to think of Serenity as the outlier when there's a serious conflict.

However, I don't do so as much as you might think, and your example kind of proves my point:

Quote:

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I had tried to give equal weight to all the data available - that I could find. for instance, when Mal and Operative (in script) state River has been aboard 8 months in BDM, and River is the same age as she was in the cryo-box, that all seemed to reinforce each other - and when other series data added up to being more than a year of Verse time, I conjured the 3 corroberating data might have greater validity than the disparate pieces of data which added together conflicted.

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If you look at how I've ordered my list of sources at the top of the Firefly Timeline, you can get a sense of my general "canon hierarchy," but I do struggle with trying my best to give equal weight to different sources...

In this case, you've given equal weight to one source from the movie and two sources from different scripts. If you were looking at this from a canon purist's point-of-view, though, there would only be two onscreen (and contradictory) references to River's age--Simon's description in the movie and Harken's pointed reference to "adult siblings" in "Bushwhacked."

When everything agrees, great. When it doesn't, I'm always going to give an onscreen reference more weight than a script reference--but these two onscreen references don't agree, so I actually deferred to the movie...even though it was an enormous pain to shift virtually everything related to Simon and River forward by one year to accommodate River's "new" age.

You're right, however, that I did that instead of squeezing the events of the series to accommodate the "eight months" reference, because I (personally) felt it better to leave only the one contradiction (that reference) rather than try to rationalise away multiple references from the series.

In other words, yes, I did brush aside that particular statement, but you'd be surprised at how much else I moved around to fit with all of the other references in the film.

Quote:

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You posted links to 2 versions of the timeline I worked out, based upon 2 different assumptions. I tried to keep the posts as minimal as possible, to keep it readable and fairly clear in this format. Most cites were not included in these posts, unless brief. Better cites and more

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