OoG mistake...

POSTED BY: chronicthehedgehog
UPDATED: Friday, October 8, 2004 16:47
VIEWED: 9229
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BIKISDAD

Tuesday, September 21, 2004 12:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by corwyn:
Quote:
Originally posted by grrarrg:
But I remember something about the commentaries on the pilot - when they passed the reaver ship the first time, they should have both been travelling so fast that they barely saw each other, but it played out as if they were slow-moving ocean liners. They acknowledged that that was innacurate (I don't remember if it was an accident or if they took creative liberties with physics for the sake of heightening the drama),

I always saw this as a CGI error rather than a script error. Mal says 'we are PASSING another ship...' To me this means they are traveling in roughly the same direction. This could mean that their relative velocities are small. It could take quite a while to pass them. The trouble is the outside view which shows them coming at each other.

Oh well.

Good point. I hadn't thought of that before, but it would have made more sense if they had both been shown traveling in the same direction - especially since the Reavers also ended up going to Whitefall (that may have indicated that they were also supposed to be going the same way when Serenity first encountered them). I agree with you. The script and CGI aren't exactly consistent and the CGI appears to be what's wrong.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

YT

Tuesday, September 21, 2004 3:51 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by bikisdad:
Since Serenity is the only object around the debris with any significant mass, it would exert a small gravitational pull that would eventually attract all of the expelled debris back to the ship.

Not any of the expelled debris that reached escape velocity (for Serenity's mass @the distance of the cargo bay door from S's CoG), which looked like essentially all of it.

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Wutzon: Allman Bro's Band, "Hoochie Coochie Man", from "Live @Ludlow Garage 1970"

THEREALME

Tuesday, September 21, 2004 4:25 AM

As far as Kaylee saying that the ship isn't moving, she could just mean "Under her own power." It could be taken as a figure of speech. If someone said that Serenity was "dead in the water" I hope nobody would insist that proves that there are literal oceans of water in space...

As far as the passing of the Reaver ship, I am convinced that it was an error of the writer or production crew. But I can explain it! Imagine that the Reaver ship and Serenity were moving at almost exactly the same direction and speed - toward Whitehall. The motion that we saw was only the slight difference in velocities of the two ships. After all, a ship in space does not HAVE to point its nose in the direction of travel. Would it help to imagine the scene if both ships were pointed in a parallel direction as they slowly slid past one another sideways?

The Real Me

BIKISDAD

Tuesday, September 21, 2004 5:48 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by YT:
Quote:
Originally posted by bikisdad:
Since Serenity is the only object around the debris with any significant mass, it would exert a small gravitational pull that would eventually attract all of the expelled debris back to the ship.

Not any of the expelled debris that reached escape velocity (for Serenity's mass @the distance of the cargo bay door from S's CoG), which looked like essentially all of it.

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Wutzon: Allman Bro's Band, "Hoochie Coochie Man", from "Live @Ludlow Garage 1970"

Good album. I actually prefer the version of "Mountain Jam" on this one to the version on "Eat a Peach", although they both have their interesting points.

I just went back and rewatched the fire scene in OoG just to make sure what happened. I was surprised by how little debris there was expelled from the ship. Mal only slightly opened the cargo bay doors - not enough to let large items through. So almost everything in the bay was still there when he closed the doors again. Kind of makes the debris argument moot.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

ZOID

Tuesday, September 21, 2004 10:13 AM

And of course, Serenity's local gravity generator -- apparently Earth normal -- kicked back in as soon as the cargo bay door closed. The gravity drive was shot (no longer externalizing 1 or multiple G?), but there might be some 'attraction at a distance' on nearby objects.

Don't know about FTL, but Serenity's definitely got a gravity drive (think on: "secondary grav boot"), which'd be a pretty fast way to get around for free, or at least on Reality's dime, since TANSTAAFL.

Respectfully,

zoid
_________________________________________________

"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity

Only 212 days, 18 hours, 53 minutes, and 13 seconds left until The BDM!

FLYINGTAMS

Tuesday, September 21, 2004 1:35 PM

It stopped because the writers don't know, or care, about physics - its about people.

HANS

Tuesday, September 21, 2004 2:49 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TheRealMe:
As far as the passing of the Reaver ship, I am convinced that it was an error of the writer or production crew. But I can explain it! Imagine that the Reaver ship and Serenity were moving at almost exactly the same direction and speed - toward Whitehall. The motion that we saw was only the slight difference in velocities of the two ships. After all, a ship in space does not HAVE to point its nose in the direction of travel. Would it help to imagine the scene if both ships were pointed in a parallel direction as they slowly slid past one another sideways?

The Real Me

I LOVE IT! I've always hated sci-fi films and shows that treat spaceships like airplanes, where they are all streamlined, fly like they are in an atmosphere, stop when their engine's stop, etc. Blame it on Star Wars... I have yet to see a sci-fi show or movie (other than 2001) that treats physics in space in a realistic manner. The simple fact is that most ships travelling any distance would spend as much time de-accelerating as accelerating, making it necessary for them to turn around part-way to their destination.

This is a list of the things I'd love to see in a realistic sci-fi series:

1. No sound in space (and the absence of sound in Firefly makes me thank Joss every day).

2. No artificial gravity (not because AG is necessarily unrealistic, I'd just like to see a show that doesn't take the easy way out and assume artificial gravity exists).

3. No FTL (again, not because it's automatically unrealistic, but it would be nice to see a show deal with the absence of easy FTL. Since I'm firmly in the "one system" theory for Firefly I'll give this one to Joss as well).

4. A true representation of the vast distances in space. Most space combat would take place at extreme distances, and a "nearby" ship would probably be 1000's of kilometres away...

5. As mentioned above, a true representation of Newtonian physics (a ship that accelerates to 10,000 km/second needs to de-accelerate the same amount at the other end of its journey).

The above points would make for a very different show from all the typical space opera out there (the Treks, Andromeda, Farscape, etc). It's certainly something I'd watch...

Hans

AGEHN

Tuesday, September 21, 2004 3:29 PM

The turning around partway bit.. the Reavers did that in the pilot. The flip when they entered Whitefall's atmo was them turning around after being backwards to decelerate. The only other ship that I remember seeing reach a destination is Serenity, and even though it's facing foreward, the engines could be turned around for deceleration.

MWALKER

Friday, October 8, 2004 4:47 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hans:

2. No artificial gravity (not because AG is necessarily unrealistic, I'd just like to see a show that doesn't take the easy way out and assume artificial gravity exists).

They do have artificial gravity. They show it being turned on as soon as they get back to Serenity in the pilot episode (the boxes all fall to the floor).

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