Outer space names/things in Firefly & the real world

POSTED BY: JaynezTown
UPDATED: Sunday, August 15, 2004 09:11
VIEWED: 6499
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JAYNEZTOWN

Monday, August 2, 2004 1:32 AM

How are ya doing people !?

Ok, I think firefly although it is very science fiction and fantasy much of the themes and settings seem to be based in reality .

On outer space and the universe, the background in the cover of the firely dvds ( where you see Mal, preacher.. ) seems to be that of the planet Mars, the title of the episode Ariel is also the name of the satellite around the planet uranus in our solar system, and of course Serenity can be connected to the sea of serenity on the moon where the Russian Luna 21 and NASA's Apollo 17 went.

On firefly themes and today's real world the Alliance seems to be based on an amalgamation of nations like the USA and China or something similar to Globalisation, the EU expansion or NATO. There also seems to be a type of corporate globalisation where possible stuff like big companies spread out and influence many types of production or areas of our life a bigger version of Peepsi, Miitsubishi , Audii or Applee ( trademark ) growing larger and having power and management over much of civilisation. While the rebelion or independance movement could be seen to be similar to those who tried to rebel against the Spanish Empire after they had conquered other lands and set up other colonies, or could be somewhat like the nations that fought for independance from the British Empire, there also seems to be a strong support for slavery and cruelty by some of the rulers.

Are there any other areas or themes in firefly where you can see direct or indirect connection to our real world / real universe ! ?

PURPLEBELLY

Monday, August 2, 2004 5:42 AM

Firefly tells the story of members of a defeated and disbanded army making a life in worlds rolled over by war, avoiding rabid criminals and a ruthless military machine, trying to be true to the virtue of their upbringing. Just everyday in Iraq.

http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_05.20.04/film/boxpopuli.html

BLUEHOOT

Monday, August 2, 2004 6:53 AM

I have a "theory" about the names of the planets/moons/worlds:

The more prominent worlds (I'm lumping planets and moons here) are named after figures in mythology, whether it be Greek/Roman, Egyptian, etc. This tends to hold even with some of the landmarks and places on said worlds...Isis Canyon for instance. The one exception to this that I have found so far is Londinium, which is a very old name for London.

The most obvious of these are Persephone and Athens (Whitefall is fourth moon of).

So, the more prominent in the "Core", the more prominent the mythological name....they go down from there.

JAYNEZTOWN

Monday, August 2, 2004 8:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by PurpleBelly:
Firefly tells the story of members of a defeated and disbanded army making a life in worlds rolled over by war, avoiding rabid criminals and a ruthless military machine, trying to be true the virtue of their upbringing. Just everyday in Iraq.

http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_05.20.04/film/boxpopuli.html

Yes PURPLEBELLY, I know Joss might have certain political stances but I'm not sure if firefly was supposed to be about our current state of affairs, but more a general feel about politics or bad leadership regardless of them being conservative Republican or Liberal Democrat doing the business.

Yes we have had much global change over the last 200 years, the Spanish Empire falling way, the Briish navy and enforcement of their version of rulership and of course the growth of the Soviets with their rockets in space and the USA landing on the moon and becoming the world's number 1 superpower. But like all things nothing lasts forever, Empires sometimes fall due to bad leadership or from within and Bush is doing a dog's dinner of a job on the economy and making a mess of Iraq. It was interesing to see Joss and his opinion that sometimes the Alliance is America in Vietnam, there also seem to be the Chinese influence. Could this be like Globalisation or more like how China has been growing as a country and the unsteady dollar since the expansion of europe and the euro and the movement of many jobs in electronics, manufacturing and so on going off to China ? It could be very possible that one day in the future Americans or Germans or Chinese are no longer in control of their own country but their could be a larger globalisation and larger alliance like NATO, mega-corporations or institutions like interpol controlling various areas of our life.

The moons and worlds in firefly without doubt have a kind of familiar tone to them like we know them before, they have kind of a Greek/Roman or latin fell to them much like they way our own celestial objects have been named. BLUEHOOT's great examples being Persephone and Athens

I wonder what else in firefly can be connected to our real world or real things in space

PURPLEBELLY

Monday, August 2, 2004 6:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BlueHoot:
... Greek/Roman, Egyptian ...

but then, we have a Wykehamist to lead us

JAYNEZTOWN

Saturday, August 7, 2004 11:04 AM

There are more clear connecting stuff like NATO, an Allaince between the USA and China, or interpol having rule over other areas and systems

The Dortmunder must come from the German city, I reckon Jiangyin is a real Chinese place while Canton ( Jayne the hero ) has come from the true Cantonese place name.
The Core must mean the Area around our solar system, I've been reading up on Space from those NASA and ESA websites. In the past few years more powerful scopes like Hubble have been able to find large planetoid bodies beyond pluto, some big ones like Quaoar and Sedna have been found but none big enough to be called planet number 10 , a traditional name for the Sun's tenth planet is Persephone so this might be our future 10th planet.
Simon had said he did some doctor work on Osiris, I feel that Osiris is not a Moon or planet but a region on one of Jupiters Moons. The real Jupiter moon Ganymede is the largest moon in our Solar system, it is bigger than the planet pluto and Mercury. Some moons could almost be classed as planets, for example some are larger than planets and have their very own atmospheres.
http://www.nineplanets.org/ganymede.html
I have found that the name Osiris is a region on the Jupiter Moon Ganymede, much like South America or Europe is an area on the planet Earth. Ganymede has some water so if it were settled in the future there could be large towns and colonized areas on Osiris.

In the nine planets link I posted should show some of the real area of Osiris on Ganymede. This adds weight to the theory that 'the Core' is in fact areas of our own solar system close to Earth in firefly.

TENTHCREWMEMBER

Saturday, August 7, 2004 4:43 PM

I love the concept that the Firefly universe is in fact our very own solar system. Alot of evidence supports that, as some of you have stated. The biggest question I have is what about "Earth-that-was"...what happened to the original Earth? Did mankind ruin it? Did we destroy it alltogether? When we developed terraforming capability, did we just abandon it?

Joss does set the stage for all of this very well with the Earth-that-was collectibles, such as the Lassiter, and the fact that Mal makes reference to "over 70 Earths spinnin', and the meek not inheriting a one", as well as the fact that it seem ships travel at fast sub-light speeds, thus taking weeks and months sometimes to get between worlds (it only took Voyager I & II a quater century to "leave" the solar system, though that was without propulsion, but they were moving **fast**).

Given that there are currently over 70 known bodies orbiting the Sun, the names in Firefly are very familiar, and that a few more could be discovered even further out yet, it is a very logical that Firefly is set in our own solar system. After, all it is ONLY 500 years in the future.

Though, like the War for Unification, being modeled after the Civil War (and the World Wars to a degree; just look at the uniforms in the flashback sequences), it is possible they are just using names from our own solar system as a reference to keep the "real feel" of it all.

Also, I could see the globalization of nations in the future...hmm...perhaps that is how the Earth-that-was became such. A couple of superpowers (US and China) dominated space exploration and terraforming, and the rest of the world did not share the vision (or were envious) and picked fights, so they formed an alliance (possibly a few european nations joined in), moved into space, and layed waste to the Earth from the "worlds above".

In any fashion, I am happy thus far, and look forward to 04/22/05 on the Standard calendar. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BROWNCOATS! Rise again and promote Firefly/Serenity!
visit: http://the11thhour.home.att.net

ANNIK

Saturday, August 7, 2004 5:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
After, all it is ONLY 500 years in the future.

Yeah, nothin' much happens in 500 years.

Let's see: years 1500 to 2000 saw the development of modern physics, the creation of antibiotics and vaccines, the typing of blood and organ transplantation, the concept of being 'sterile' when performing medical interventions, the ability to perform in-utero surgery, the ability to fly in the sky, the ability to cross oceans without use of sailpower, significant increases in literacy by common people, communication technology of everything from telephones to wireless radio and satellite signals, horseless carriages, international finance, deliberate biological warfare, official confirmation of whole new continents on the other side of the planet (which turned out to be round after all).

Yeah, nothin' much happens in only 500 years.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

JAYNEZTOWN

Saturday, August 7, 2004 5:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by annik:
Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
After, all it is ONLY 500 years in the future.

Yeah, nothin' much happens in 500 years.

Let's see: years 1500 to 2000 saw the development of modern physics, the creation of antibiotics and vaccines, the typing of blood and organ transplantation, the concept of being 'sterile' when performing medical interventions, the ability to perform in-utero surgery, the ability to fly in the sky, the ability to cross oceans without use of sailpower, significant increases in literacy by common people, communication technology of everything from telephones to wireless radio and satellite signals, horseless carriages, international finance, deliberate biological warfare, official confirmation of whole new continents on the other side of the planet (which turned out to be round after all).

Yeah, nothin' much happens in only 500 years.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

Yes you make a very good point on the development of modern physics, the creation of antibiotics and vaccines, the typing of blood and organ transplantation.... Five hundred years can see many advances, you are right to say 500 years into the future things will be a lot different and we will have learned much more.

However even with all our modern understanding of mathematics, medical treatments and science in our world today we still have scores of problems to deal with, corruption with greed, the tales of America's mistakes in vietnam, famine in our blue Planet, religious Islamic madmen and terror camps in Afghanistan , poverty and crime, toxic waste and pollution.

It is wise to say in years to come things will be a lot different and we will have learned much more, but will things be much better ?

I think that's where firefly is fantastic, the Allaince isn't like StarTrek's nice outlook , the Alliance between USA and China is an organisation of power and greed. There are still probelms in firefly's future,
problems with wars and people are still exploited because of greed, and then we see crazy stuff like a witch hunt to burn outsiders on some planet and another horror known as Reavers.

This is why firefly is such a great show, it has a more detailed outlook on what might happen and the problems in the future.

ANNIK

Saturday, August 7, 2004 5:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JaynezTown:
It is wise to say in years to come things will be a lot different and we will have learned much more, but will things be much better ?

I think that's where firefly is fantastic, the Allaince isn't like StarTrek's nice outlook , the Alliance between USA and China is an organisation of power and greed. There are still probelms in firefly's future,
problems with wars and people are still exploited because of greed, and then we see crazy stuff like a witch hunt to burn outsiders on some planet and another horror known as Reavers.
This is why firefly is such a great show, it has a more detailed outlook on what might happen and the problems in the future.

I'm not saying that 500 years would make anything *better*. (I expect the Roman Empire wasn't too happy with the last 200 years of their reign and collapse, for example).

What I was getting at was that "only" 500 years could see a lot of tech change that could *easily* put us outside of our solar system. I vehemently disagree that Firefly is set within our existing solar system and I think that 500 years is plenty of time to find ways to get to other parts of the 'Verse.

As to the similarity in names and such on planets and moons, humankind traditionally holds on to names from our past ... look at how many "New This" or "New That" communities there are in North America, named after wherever the first foreigners who arrived there had originated from.

I mean, we still have Caeserean-sections, supposedly named after the manner of birth of a long-dead Roman emperor. We are nothing if not very creative when it comes to naming things and places. We seem to prefer to take ancient names and hold on to them like precious gems.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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