Ok how about some negativity.....Yes towards Firefly!!!!
POSTED BY: TheSomnambulist
UPDATED: Saturday, April 24, 2010 01:56
VIEWED: 9300
PAGE 4 of 7
Hey Somnbabulist, nice to see you, as well!
The bow thing bothers me because it'a an inefficient weapon compared to her choice of guns available. No matter if it gave her a zen boost or she had more practice with it... she can shoot a gun, and a gun is a lot less difficult to handle than a bow. Less sitting straight up and exposing her entire upper body, basically.
But yay, we agree on a lot! 
Auraptor,
word on the HOG chase scene. There were a few flaws in that episode, but the chase is the one thing I find unbearably embarrassing to watch. So I never do, ever.
Byte,
science and logics win again!!
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Firefly episodes are just too good for me to nitpick them.
BDM - some questions/problems:
Reavers :
30 million population Miranda
30,000 Reavers = 1/10 of 1% population
So, did at least half of the 30,0000 Reavers start off as women and children? Can females be Reavers? Would they rape and kill men? Would they have been raped, killed and eaten by male Reavers? What about kid Reavers? How did they fare? And their ships....they're running without containment, or running with thick smoke as exhaust. After 10 years how could those ships still be operating?
River's "conditioning" doesn't make sense to me. She's triggerred by subliminal sounds, then she goes into attack mode, indiscriminately beating and killing all around without knowledge or regard of who they are....well how would that ever play out in a real world situation? Then we see at the end of the movie she herself has the ability to just "turn it on" or off by her own will? Just doesn't tie into the beginning very well for me.
Most of the Operative thing is a problem for me as well. He strolls into the facility without anyone stopping him, and then proceeds to kill everyone, except maybe the young miss. Well, did she and the others there all go home early that day? Did they file a report to the police or something that a man came in and killed the top scientists there? What did they do the next day? Continue to torture other poor souls like River being held there?
This Operative, who has no name or rank, is able to command a fleet of Alliance starships? And they take command orders from him, a civillian? And when he uses an escape pod, it's just so conveniently takes him to Mr Universe's place? And why would he need dozens of spaceships to confront Serenity, an un-armed cargo ship?
Why did the Operative's computer read-out on Mal Reynolds indicate he was awarded a Medal of Valor? Losing army's heroes don't win medals from the victors, and losing army's medals are not known or accepted by the victors.
Those are some of my concerns with the BDM. Other prooblems for me are:
Simon's realtionship with Mal and crew...totally different than the series.
Why wouldn't the mighty Alliance just wipe out all the Reaver ships around Miranda, clean up the bodies, and start fresh with a new population? Big investment there just to have it rot away.
How could the Operative have found out so quickly and easily all the safe havens for Serenity, and then killed them all? Seems a tad far-fetched to me.
Why did all the crew just go along with Mal for the suicide run to Miranda? Seems like he had snapped over Book's death, and was making them now choose being abandoned there or going along to their death. Mal was not thinking of his own crews' well-being, and that was not in his character.
Why did patrons at the bar continue to engage and fight River? After she attacked and knocked out the first few, you would think the rest would just get the hell out of there, but more and more kept fighting her.
And the Operative was seeing this either live or later on tape? How many bars are there in the Alliance? How long would it take to go thru security feeds from all public establishments before finding the River incident?
There's more, but enough for now. I still love the BDM; it is what led me to Firefly. I watch it several times a year just to relive all the great parts about it that I love.
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1) There was a female Reaver shown in the movie, I believe. The Reavers seem to develop a pack mentality and don't attack and kill other Reavers, since you'll notice Serenity, tiny compared to the Reaver ships it was passing through, was not attacked (or at least, not until Serenity attacked them and ruined the disguise). Being Serenity was so small, she would have been easy pickings if this was how Reavers operated. Also, the airspace above Mirana would be a constant battleground. It appears Reavers are capable of cooperation, but only with other Reavers.
Kid Reavers would be as aggressive and violent as adults, but probably be dominated by the adults, and the strongest of the adults would get the best pick of food and loot. Kids would eventually grow up, however, they may not go through puberty if they've been sterilized by the radiation. By now, due to exposure to radiation, probably most of the Reavers are sterile.
The Reavers seem capable of both flying and apparently maintaining their ships. It could be flying without core containment was a choice, and they stripped all safeties and failsafes from their engines so their engines would continue to run no matter what happened. It might also let them push the limits of their engines, when they might normally shutdown.
2) I assume the the subliminal message contained more than just a trigger, but also an instruction. Otherwise it would be worthless for controlling agents and sleepers in the field. The instruction was to beat the living bejesus out of everyone in her vicinity and be recorded doing it, to create a local newsworthy incident and reveal her location.
3) The Operative IS the police. And also a spy. And it's also likely he killed the young miss after he got what help he needed from her. It's very important I imagine for the Alliance government to have the general illusion of being perfect. The Alliance would make a cover story for the dead people, and send it out, and that would be the accepted, official story. And if anyone questioned it, they would fall under Alliance scrutiny. If the person under scrutiny seemed like they could prove a threat to the established order, then they too would be killed or imprisoned. See 1984 by George Orwell for how this would work. I imagine after the reader project inadvertently caused a leak of sensitive government information, it was immediately terminated. Everyone involved would have died. Blue Sun still wants River for further research, though, and the project might restart under other names.
4) The Operative is a Special Agent, not a civilian. He calls himself rankless, but his title is Operative of Parliament. Think of him like James Bond, only instead of the Double-Oh Agent designation, his designation is Operative. James Bond seems to be able to give orders to everyone up to Admirals or Generals, who he seems about peer to, but on occasion his orders can even supercede theirs.
5) Serenity Valley was a major loss for the Independents, and the forces at Serenity Valley did surrender, possibly at an order from High Command. But there are some strong indications that the Independents as a WHOLE did not surrender at Serenity Valley, and that there were a few minor skirmishes before the Independents surrendered completely. It's also likely that the ultimate surrender was after the Alliance destroyed Shadow, similar to the surrender of the Japanese in WW2. As such, it's likely that that Mal was awarded that medal while he was imprisoned, but before the war was over, and the medal was put on Mal's war record by the Independents. The Alliance probably seized those records and kept the information about medals and such to look for war criminals.
6) Wiping out the Reavers would require the Alliance acknowledging that Reavers exist and that Miranda happened. Even if the Alliance tried to play off the Reavers as a rebellion, any soldiers they sent out to destroy the Reavers would figure out pretty quickly that something was very wrong. And if word ever got back about what Reaver extermination crews had
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Thanks a lot Bytemite for taking the time to respond to my questions. It's fascinating to me how you and others can draw from other sources, or create your own rationale and logic to justify situations that seem confusing or conflicting to me. I salute you!
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Originally posted by OPPYH:
Quote:
Happy Mal(in the heat of battle) first five minutes of Serenity pt. 1. Waiting for Happy Mal to return for the rest of the series, or even the BDM..................ummmmmmmm still waiting.
That though is the point of Firefly. Mal was never going to be that person again after that defeat. His spirit was crushed, his hope gone and his faith lost. The journey then becomes : Where does a man with nothing, go?
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byte, mal drawing on his crew, and casually shooting the alliance pilot, is one of the best of all firefly moments. just in case you were afraid that mal was a good guy, he goes and makes himself interesting.
in fact, i actually enjoy all of the heartless violence and darkness. it is, however, sort of undermined by a few futile jabs at dork humor (i.e, pretty much everything out of wash's mouth).
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Well, its annoying that the Firefly crew keep their plans too secret, resulting in various tragedies. End of episode twists are very entertaining if done well, but often in Firefly they come off a little lame. Example: Tracey died unnecessarily in "The Message" because no one took 10 seconds to explain the plan. (Retitle that episode: "The Mess")
And on a further negative note, if the series had lasted for years we would inevitably have seen some Whedon retread plots of which he has been seen to be overly fond.
Somehow the entire crew would lose their memories all at the same time (as happened in episodes in both Buffy and Angel -- and he kind of went off the deep end with this shtick in Dollhouse). Hilarious hijinks ensue as no one remembers how to fly, repair the ship, or heal the crew.
Mr. Whedon is not fond of persistent, thriving relationships, so over the course of several years we would have had to endure Wash and Zoe breaking up, Mal and Inara getting together and breaking up, and Kaylee and Simon getting together and breaking up.
Shuffle the deck and repeat, of course, so that we would get Kaylee and Jayne together and breaking up, Mal and Zoe getting together and breaking up, and so on.
(And of course we saw this temporary relationship thing also turned up to 11 in Dollhouse.)
Maybe we'd have seen an alternate universe Serenity where the ship is named Nervous Jitters and the crew acts pretty much the same except for Kaylee who's really depressing and the guys all have beards to show they're mostly evil and of course they all get killed.
Other annoying stuff:
Simon and River are considered part of the crew one episode and not on the crew the next. Make up your minds, guys!
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Sorry, posted twice.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Goldbrick:
Sorry, posted twice.
Don't ya just hate it when that happens?
Kinda like storming out of a room with your point made and then forgetting you left your wallet!
But certainly you make some valid points about the relationship issues. That did bug me about Angel in particular.
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Only ONE thing bugs ME: leaving out the "whiner" line & Sheppard Book's passage reading voice-over from the BDM.
The laughing Chrisisall
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