The Hectic World of Tim Minear

POSTED BY: NewsAdmin
UPDATED: Saturday, July 27, 2002 23:34
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NEWSADMIN

Thursday, July 25, 2002 2:33 PM

Tim Minear recently did an interview over at TalentScout where he discussed his work on Angel and Firefly. Here's an excerpt:

Quote:

“Firefly is science fiction,” says Minear. “It’s also a Western. It’s two great genres that taste great together. You can play all the great metaphors of the great Westerns.”

Despite the fantastic worlds of Mutant Enemy’s previous shows, Firefly more resembles Isaac Asimov’s “Human Universe” than it does to Star Trek’s “Quick! It’s an alien! We need a new forehead!” mentality. Meaning, no aliens at all.

“I’d say the basic premise of the show is getting by,” says Minear. “You can think of it as a Reconstruction era Western, set after a big war to unite planets--totalitarian independents vs. a rebel alliance. The crew would be Southerners. The South has lost, and they’re all people trying to survive afterwards, although our struggle was for more noble values than preserving slavery.”

The story centers on the crew of the Firefly class transport ship Serenity and it’s captain, Mal Reynolds (played by Nathan Fillion) who, according to Minear, is “basically the guy who lost the war.” Other characters include a mercenary who would betray everyone in a heartbeat, a Madame of an interstellar bordello and a pair of fugitives on the run from the government.

“Sometimes they take legitimate jobs,” says Minear, “sometimes they do crime. They’re kind of scavengers. They’re brigands...This shows less about the art, but the getting by of it.”

To read the full interview, you can go here:

http://atalentscout.com/article_victor_d7.htm

ZICSOFT

Thursday, July 25, 2002 3:44 PM

Is it just me, or do both Whedon and Minear talk real funny?

It's worth mentioning that Asimov's humans-only universe had a simple practical motivation. According to Asimov, he and the famous SF magazine editor John Campbell had no end of conflicts on social issues. The two admired and respected each other, but never saw eye to eye on things like racism and imperialism.

Now, Campbell played a bigger role in the writing process than most editors. He'd throw out ideas (which he was quite happy to let the writers take credit for) and spend a lot of time talking out the details of a story. In this process, Asimov felt frustrated by Campbell's tendency to turn every humans-and-aliens story into a White Man's Burden piece. So he wrote stories with no aliens.

That's pretty different from Whedon's motivation. Firefly has no aliens because Whedon doesn't believe in them, and because the latex mask thing has been done to death. In point of fact, I suspect that Firefly will directly confront exactly the kind of issue that Asimov had to avoid.

Oh, here's an excuse for one of my anti-Trek rants. The big irony about Star Trek is its unintentional recapitulation of John Campbell's prejudices. The Trekverse is suffused with Roddenberry's liberal sensibilities, yet the portrayal of the bellicose Klingons, the cerebral Vulcans, the greedy Ferengi, etc., is an exercise in the worst kind of group stereotyping.

PANDORA

Friday, July 26, 2002 12:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
[B
That's pretty different from Whedon's motivation. Firefly has no aliens because Whedon doesn't believe in them, and because the latex mask thing has been done to death. In point of fact, I suspect that Firefly will directly confront exactly the kind of issue that Asimov had to avoid.

Are you serious? Whedon doesn't believe there's intelligent life in the universe besides that of humanity? Whoa.

Honestly (and maybe I'm just a flake), the idea that aliens *don't* exist has never crossed my mind.

Pandora
The Truth Is Out There

"Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies
and the baby looked at me." -Ralph Wiggum

ZICSOFT

Friday, July 26, 2002 12:40 AM

It's called the Fermi Paradox. The idea is that intelligent life, if it exists, ought to be more conspicuous. If a species is successful enough to grow exponentially, it's gonna fill up the available space fairly quickly, no matter how big that space is. Look how quickly humans have filled up this one planet. (Well, a few hundred thousand years seems like a long time, but it's practically nothing compared to the billions of years the universe has been around.) On the same basis, if there's any space-going critters in our galaxy, it shouldn't take them more than a few million years to colonize the whole thing. Practically a blink of the eye!

PANDORA

Friday, July 26, 2002 2:24 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
On the same basis, if there's any space-going critters in our galaxy, it shouldn't take them more than a few million years to colonize the whole thing. Practically a blink of the eye!

Ok, but we like to think we're pretty smart, and we haven't managed colonization of even satellites of our planet, let alone other planets in the solar system (ok, so they're uninhabitable, but what about terraforming?), let alone intergalactic travel. So why couldn't there be another species about as advanced as we? How do we know what the ideals and goals of another species might be? Maybe they wouldn't be about reproducing at all.. maybe there's a set number of them, and when one dies, another pops up asexually or something. And what if they're somewhat dumber? I mean, not like Dog Planet or something, but like Monkey Planet, or Chimp Planet? The universe is so freakin' huge, it seems really unlikely that the only intelligent life in it is us.

But that might just be me.

Besides, the Weekly World News says there are aliens, and that they're having Bat Boy's baby.

"Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies
and the baby looked at me." -Ralph Wiggum

ZICSOFT

Friday, July 26, 2002 3:04 AM

Quote:
So why couldn't there be another species about as advanced as we?

Which would mean they're also about as old as we are, give or take a few hundred thousand years. So the galaxy tools along for several billion years with no intelligent life, then two different intelligent species appear within a million years of each other? A million years is a long time to us, but on a galactic scale its just a moment.

But there's more. if our appearance is not a unique event, there wouldn't be just one other intelligent species in our galaxy, there'd be thousands. Cause even if the chance of a planet evolving life is very very small, there are billions of stars in the galaxy that have planets. If the origin of life is a random event, it's just plain impossible that none of these thousands of species is older than a million years.

PANDORA

Friday, July 26, 2002 5:27 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:

But there's more. if our appearance is not a unique event, there wouldn't be just one other intelligent species in our galaxy, there'd be thousands. Cause even if the chance of a planet evolving life is very very small, there are billions of stars in the galaxy that have planets. If the origin of life is a random event, it's just plain impossible that none of these thousands of species is older than a million years.

Ok, fair enough. If the origin of life is random, or at least has happened in a bunch of different places deliberately, it's impossible that none of these thousands/however many species is older than a million years old. I'll go with that.

But who's to say that the focus of these other species is expansion and exploration? Maybe, as I suggested in my earlier post, they're completely different than life on earth, and are content with a set group of creatures, only replacing ones as they are lost. Or maybe they're far more interested in the spiritual plane than the physical one, and have developed in that arena as opposed to this. Or maybe they're just energy. Maybe they're completely foreign to everything we know, with motives incomprehensible to us because they are so (pardon the pun) alien to our way of thinking and living, and are out there on the other sides of the universe doing their own things. It's possible, no?

"Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies
and the baby looked at me." -Ralph Wiggum

CHARLIEBLUE

Friday, July 26, 2002 9:32 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Pandora:
But who's to say that the focus of these other species is expansion and exploration? Maybe, as I suggested in my earlier post, they're completely different than life on earth, and are content with a set group of creatures, only replacing ones as they are lost. Or maybe they're far more interested in the spiritual plane than the physical one, and have developed in that arena as opposed to this. Or maybe they're just energy. Maybe they're completely foreign to everything we know, with motives incomprehensible to us because they are so (pardon the pun) alien to our way of thinking and living, and are out there on the other sides of the universe doing their own things. It's possible, no?

Well, a species like that would have little survival value. Aggression is the whole point of life. Rocks just sit there; living things try to take over the world. If they don't try to take over the world, somebody else who is interested will take the job instead.

ZICSOFT

Friday, July 26, 2002 3:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Pandora:

But who's to say that the focus of these other species is expansion and exploration? Maybe, as I suggested in my earlier post, they're completely different than life on earth...

Well, if there are only a few intelligent species, I could buy that. But not if there are thousands. I find it hard to believe that so many beings could evolve intelligence, but not the itch to explore. Indeed, you can make a case that curiousity is a part of intelligence.

Also, if you start saying, "They're intelligent, they just don't think like we do," then you have to deal with the definition of intelligence. You can make a case that a lot of animal species on our planet are intelligent, just not intelligent in the same way we are. And most of the behavior of animals is complex and fascinating, but an utter mystery even to behavioral scientists, never mind ordinary people. If that's the pattern for our interactions with alien life forms, there aren't a lot of interesting stories to be told about aliens.

ZICSOFT

Friday, July 26, 2002 3:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by CharlieBlue:
Well, a species like that would have little survival value. Aggression is the whole point of life. Rocks just sit there; living things try to take over the world. If they don't try to take over the world, somebody else who is interested will take the job instead.

Well first of all, too much has been made of the role of aggression in human evolution. You can make a case for cooperation, play, and other kinds of warm fuzzy activities as having a role. Try reading some of Richard Leakey's books on the subject.

Second, you're basically saying, "We evolved that way, therefore this is the only way intelligence can evolve." The universe is a big place, and infinitely inventive. We can't even assume life on other planets would resemble us in terms of basic chemistry, never mind behavior.

The most imaginative aliens in SF have to be Larry Niven's Pupetteers. He invented them to challenge all the assumptions SF writers tend to make about certain human characterists -- bipedalism, exposed head at the top of the body, and yes, aggressiveness -- and back up his ideas with logical assumptions about how the creature evolved and behaves. More info here:

http://www.larryniven.org/puppeteer/pupbod.htm

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