Mal and his people are just low-life thieves...
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 14:32
VIEWED: 39973
PAGE 15 of 17
Okay, I tried hard to think outside my box, and came up with this:
That soldier is in the fighter monitoring reactive containment pressures or whatever, and hates his job, and dislikes his missions under the Operative, and plans to get out as soon as he can, and personally never pulls the trigger. He also can't suggest to the pilot (his superior) that they shouldn't be doing this kind of work, or he might be shot.
The man I just described- all right, he doesn't deserve to die. Just wrong time, wrong place.
I guess it is possible he was like that, I just doubt it is all.
Acknowledging Chrisisall
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Just as an aside, the concept art for the Alliance attack ship in the Visual Companion shows it to be a BIG ship. We only see the front of it for movie budget reasons :)
Mal says in the series that most of the legal work being handed out is for the Alliance, since he has no wish to be under their thumb he chooses not to take it. So he's made the choice that smuggling and petty theivery is better than working "for the man." To my mind that makes him independent but it does remove the argument that he can either do what he does or starve. He has other choices he just refuses to accept.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Chrisisall:
It would depend upon whether they had just been targeting and killing defenseless civilians, if so, then yes (My appologies to Mr. Collateral Damage).
What if they didn’t know that it was a civilian settlement?
Quote:
There has to be some responsibility at the action level.
Yes but what people tend to be missing here is that a soldier tends not to know what the hell their doing or why.
Quote:
And the fighter weren't that big
He tasks me, he tasks me and I shall have him…
Ok:
I’ve got this picture from the movie, it’s kinda hard to make everything out, so I’ve quickly added fake colour to make things easier.
Here’s the same picture without colour:
From these I’ve managed to measure the craft as 186px high. Given that it’s partially buried, and that I was a little conservative in my measurement I’d say it was about 190px minimum, so a value between 180 and 200px is reasonable I think.
The Alliance officer is approximately 42px high in the picture, but only about half his body is visible, so at a guess I’d say his height is roughly 84px, so at a guess I’d say between 80 and 90px. Let’s take a guess at his height as being 1.828m (6ft) which means an individual pixel is ~2.2cm – 2cm.
With these values the height of the ship comes out as roughly ~3.6m – ~4.4m. We can’t really know the length of the ship, since it has very obviously lost a considerable section at the rear. The height though is larger than the Concord passenger aircraft, whose fuselage is 3.32m. That’s a little larger than a fighter, especially given that there is easily room to stand up inside the fuselage.
This helicopter seems to have a similar height:
http://members.aol.com/mh53e/stats.htm
I’d say that was a really conservative estimate though, for the same reasons Fletch gives.
Also a fighter would operate in a wing, so there should be more than one, and there’d have to be a carrier in orbit. By the very fact there’s only one unsupported ship indicates it’d have to be quite a large interplanetary vessel.
Also Book calls it a ship.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.
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All right, gorram it! You win, Citizen, IT WAS A BIG ATTACK SHIP!!!!Quote:
Originally posted by Chrisisall:
It would depend upon whether they had just been targeting and killing defenseless civilians, if so, then yes (My appologies to Mr. Collateral Damage).
What if they didn’t know that it was a civilian settlement?
what people tend to be missing here is that a soldier tends not to know what the hell their doing or why.
If they don't know what they're doing, well, then... they should!
I think many times they do.
I hava a friend who was a marine in Grenada. In one of the few moments of action, a bunch of grenades were thrown into the windows of a building where it was suspected 'bad guys' were hiding, armed and dangerous. He said the windows blew out, and all inside were killed. He said it was a sad way to go, with no chance like that.
Execution on orders.
But it was war...or something...
Deep down, many know what they're doing.
Crow-eating Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by Chrisisall:
All right, gorram it! You win, Citizen, IT WAS A BIG ATTACK SHIP!!!!
It's true, I really can wind anyone up without wanting to, even you...
Sorry, I mean it.
The only thing I can say is theres a difference between putting a grenade through a window killing armed troops, preventing casualties on your side, and shooting them as they come out the door with their hands up.
All I'm saying is that there is a big difference between justification and right and wrong.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.
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...Well, if I recall correctly, they actually weren't very well armed...a few hanguns and rifles and such, they had expected rocket launchers or something...
And I ain't wound up, just trying to cling to my thought that Mal was doing the right thing, I guess absolute 'justice' was not possible at that moment...
Not so inflexable Chrisisall
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My view is that they only steal when it is needed, yes that can be alot of the time. But they need to keep Serenity in the air
I liked it in The Trainjob where Mal finds out what's in the boxes he was given the job to steal, he take them back as people whould have died if he had not
You Can't take the sky from me
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The thing that I think people are missing is that I don't think Mal is a bad person. But at the same time I don't think the guy he shot crawling out of the wreckage was either.
But they have both done wrong.
One thing I'd like people to think about though is that I think Joss showed us him shooting that officer not because it was the right thing to do but because it was the wrong thing to do. Good people, even real heros, can still do terrible and wrong things. Sometimes they become heros for just that reason.
Remember, both GWB and Osama are hero's to some, and villians to others.
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Yes I suppose it's all down to a persons point of view. I mean One man's Traitor is another nman's Hero
You Can't take the sky from me
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Think about it, how do you think the powers that be of the British empire felt about Ghandi.
I'm saying Right and Wrong are absolutes, but that sometimes the wrong thing to do is justifable, or not as bad as the alternatives...
But it is still wrong.
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The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.
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