Here's How It Is... Or Not

POSTED BY: 34cygni
UPDATED: Thursday, April 29, 2004 18:42
VIEWED: 3664
PAGE 1 of 1

34CYGNI

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 5:52 AM

Okay, fellow travelers, I've been lurking around these parts long enough, an' ah reckon it's past time for me to (a) say hello -- and to that end: howdy, stranger... mind if I smoke? -- and (b) stake out my little piece of prairie sod with a longwinded "this is how I see the Firefly universe" post.

By way of establishing my bona fides, I was hooked on the series from the very first episode. Granted, "The Train Job" was far from the best of the lot, but the moment Niska's thug went airborne and disappeared into the maw of Serenity's port engine was the moment I knew I'd be back every week for the forseeable future (barring the month of October, during which "Firefly" was inexplicably preempted by baseball games, if memory serves). I progressed rapidly through the Four Phases of Firefly Fandom --

Enthusiasm: "This show has a lot of potential..."

Happiness: "This show is really good."

Joy: "This show is the best new series to come down the pike in a month of Sundays!"

Bliss: "Sorry, but I can't go out on Friday night. Any Friday night. Ever."

Then, of course, Fox pulled the rug out from under us because the show wasn't pulling the right demographic mix. At least I got my Friday nights back.

But now, against all odds, our beloved Serenity is poised to fly again. Unfortunately, we've got an entire year to fill with naught but rumor and speculation. I'm afraid I'm not tied into any rumor mills that this crowd might value, so I can offer only speculation. I hope it's of some interest.

Without further ado...

1. The Firmament

Is Firefly set in a single solar system or in an interstellar civilization? To my mind, the answer is unambiguous: Serenity is a starship.

Why? Well, leaving aside the many explicit references to the "galaxy" made repeatedly in the show's dialogue, we have never heard so much as a passing reference to any of the major bodies in the solar system of Earth-That-Was. It is therefore unreasonable to suppose that the series is set in our native system. In turn. this implies that either we have to go out of our way to rationalize a one-time-only interstellar migration to a new solar system, or else interstellar travel is routine. The latter seems easier to swallow, particularly given that humanity has mastered gravity so as to obviate a whole bunch of expensive special effects and flying actors around on wires and all. Mastery of gravity implies that physicists long ago discovered a Grand Unification Theory -- and once you know the rules, you can start thinking about how to break them.

I think a lot of the confusion on the FTL issue stems from the fact that Joss, bless his soul, just doesn't grok outer space at all. Or at least, he didn't when he was working on the series... I'm sure plenty of people have pointed out that his very terrestrial sense of speed and distance is laughably out of place in the black, so I won't rant about it here.

Finally, Joss appears to be a canny fellow, and I don't think he would intentionally limit his Big Damn Sci-Fi Show to a single solar system because, well, it's kind of limiting. Who knows -- if the series ever comes back to life, it may someday be dramatically necessary (for which you should probably read, "one of the writers may come up with an irresistibly wacky idea") to blow up a star and destroy an entire solar system. Doubtless it would be River who figures out how to do it, and Zoe who does the impossible and actually pulls the trigger... but that's another conversation entirely.

2. The Nature Of The Alliance

As others have pointed out before me, the Alliance's flag indicates that it was forged out of an alliance between the United States and China (communist China, at that!). Presumably the US went authoritarian, China went capitalist, and they met upon the middle ground of fascism. From what we've seen in the show, the Alliance is a surveillance state in which police powers are vested in the military and merely venturing into an unmonitored neighborhood or stepping inside a police station is noted, logged,

NEROLI

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 6:32 AM

Welcome out of lurkdom and into postdom...and a mighty fine post it is 34Cygni!

You have some interesting theories, definatly thought provoking.

ZOID

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 7:13 AM

34Cygni:

I like your moniker; got a piece of real estate picked out? As to your post, I'll start with the last thing first: It occurs to me you've just made your own brown coat, by virtue of your excellent first epistle. Now you must wear it, by continuing to come to your own conclusions. Individuality and Independent thought (pun intended) are what being a Browncoat is all about. Welcome!

I agree with much of what you've said and found most of your evidence compelling, your conclusions intriguing. However, I'm sticking to my oracles that Book was once General Richard Wilkins, the Alliance mastermind of the brilliant maneuver that obviated their victory at Serenity. You've got to be quick to catch it, but it's in Simon's encyclopedia history recital in the cut-scenes section of the DVD. Protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, I think Joss cut that scene from the series because he feared some might catch on. I think he included it in the DVD set because he thought the show was done (kaput), and he wanted someone to catch on. Here I is.

I'm also gonna stand pat on my belief that Alliance/BlueSun couldn't get a working AI, so they attempted to strip River's mind of distractions to create the next best thing, a 'human war-strategy computer'. Her ability to assess strength and position, then eliminate three targets with three bullets -- as though it were child's play -- I believe indicates strategic military acumen, that a meatware computer peripheral wouldn't need. I am compelled by your citing the 'Cortex' (as in cerebral cortex, the so-called 'thinking cap' of the human brain) to accept the possibility that an AI does exist, and that your argument for River's role has merit (it could also just be a catchy name for an information system). But, as I said, I'm going to stick to my original assessment and let JW tell us which (if either) of us is (most?) correct.

The rest I agree with except in the most purely superficial ways. Ahhh, yet another deep observer! There's more than a few hereabouts. See ya' on the boards...

Respectfully,

zoid
_________________________________________________

(Of River) "Little Sis? I could see big things for her all along. Her and her brother both. I always knew they'd be worth something, y'know?"

- Jayne Cobb, Game Warden and co-proprietor, "Cretaceous Park", Hera; from A Child Shall Lead Them: A History of the Second War of Independence Wilkins, Richard

CAPNRAHN

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 9:37 AM

First off - A hearty welcome to FFFn to you!!!

Next: AH!!! very excellent theories!

But I have a suggestion for point 10, something you forgot or just omitted:Reavers.

They seem very intregal to Joss' series story arc. What is your theory there? I would love to see your perspective!

"Remember, there is only ONE absolute - There ARE NO absolutes!!!"

SASJA

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 9:42 AM

Hi and welcome - don't we all just love a good speculation! I love most of your theories (I'm not too sure about the AI, though - Whedon's shows are always about people), and I disagree with only one. Your theory on River. I think from the omitted passage in "Our Mrs. Reynolds" that River was destined to become a bluehand herself. Check this dialogue out:

RIVER
(to Book)
We want you to marry us.

SIMON
What? We - no! What?

RIVER
Two by two. Everyone has a mate, a
match, a dopple. I love you.

"Two by two" is of course the first part of the rhyme River sometimes mutters to herself: "Two by two, hands of blue". From way they cut from River repeating this rhyme to herself to the two bluehands by the end of "Serenity", they seem to tell us that the rhyme refers to the bluehands - that they operate in pairs. So when River uses this phrase and wants Simon as her "dopple", I take it that she's been given the idea that at some point she would be part of a "two by two, hands of blue"-some. Now, why bluehands need to be in pairs, I've no idea. As to why they would alter her mind so that she can't push anything back - could it be the first step of gaining control over her mind? First you break down her defenses, then you wire her up to get commands from somewhere, or just stick in a behavioral program making her act in certain ways. At least the bluehands don't seem very out of it, so I assume (if I'm right that River was supposed to be a bluehand) that one of the final steps in her "education" is completely missing.

I could of course be wrong - maybe she has just watched the bluehand pairs and the wedding rites and by herself come to the conclusion that everyone should have a "dopple".

Just my two.

KUGELBLITZ

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 12:37 PM

Some penetrating observations made there 34cygni. They are fine and wonderful ideas. Thanks for the thought provoking post.

To me, your premise of an AI dominated multi-world corporation dominating a culture resonates very strongly with what I have observed in the series. Not only is the thought of a faceless corporation controlling so much, but to even remove its motives from the merely human avarices by putting an AI behind all of the masks creates a very dark and strange source.

With the AI as a given, it would follow that its motives, and its methods would be inhuman to us, however much its autonomous units (blue hands) looked normal. Therefore all manner of odd objectives and efforts would pour forth from this cornucopia of creepiness. Certainly the survival of River and Tam depend on their staying away from any sophisticated machinery, at least anything that posseses alink to the coretex (0r AI).

What a fine cyberpunk styling of high weirdness.

The AI may as well be some remote and terrible god on a mountaintop who pokes at the masses below for its own form of entertainment or enlightenment, with the occasional plague thrown in to keep everyone guessing. We as viewers may not know why it acts as it does (it is NOT going to have human motivations), only that in the limited perspective that we DO have, we may never understand the terrible machinations it uses to gather its resources, and those machinations are very, very different to us, and again, come from an alien source.

So are the blue hands some kind of data phages? Was River supposed to become some fancy kind of search engine? What would she be like if she sat in front of fifty montiors, each one tuned to a different feed?

River has many autistic aspects, and her modificstions point to a destination that is an alien one for any vibrant young human. We can speculate about what or who she is or was to become, but are we merely trying to put into human terms the goals of the ineffable AI?

"We are exporting democracy because we have all of this unused democracy lying around at home. Why not make some money doing it?"

DELIA

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 1:32 PM

Welcome, 34Cygni!

Hell of a first post; I enjoyed it. I'll be very, very curious to see how "right" you got it.

The only question now is, how the hell you're gonna top it.

Delia

BROWNCOAT1

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 1:53 PM

First and foremost, welcome to the board 34cygni. It is always a pleasure to greet a new Browncoat to the forum, and doubly so when that individual has chosen to come out of lurk mode and join our community.

You raise some interesting questions, and some of your theories are very interesting.

I am not really sold on the whole evil A.I. theory. That seems a little sci fi for Firefly and the feel that Joss has imparted to this 'verse we have all come to know and love. Interesting theory nonetheless.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

CYBERSNARK

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 2:17 PM

Welcome spacer. Make yourself at home.

Awesome theories, but I agree with the others who think the AI angle is too far out there for Joss' human-centred story.

Personally, I think Blue Sun could be a secret organization (possibly even reaching back to Earth-that-was), that's using the Alliance itself as a patsy.

As far as anyone else is concerned, Blue Sun is just a random megacorp. What does Blue Sun actually do anyway? Medical goods? Computers? Foodstuffs? Shipping services? TV network?

Quote:
Originally posted by sasja:
the rhyme refers to the bluehands - that they operate in pairs. [. . .] Now, why bluehands need to be in pairs, I've no idea.

Easy: so that if one of them goes rogue, the other'll be able to kill them, give a report to Blue Sun, and then kill themselves to eliminate any security risks.

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

EMBERS

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 3:02 PM

First of all: it is great to meet you 34CYGNI, I loved your post...altho, like others, I really disagree about the AI: I think Joss' point is that this is something humans do to themselves. In order to 'protect' ourselves, in order to have comfort and convenience, we take away our own freedoms and lock ourselves into self-made prisons. ID cards, documentation, survelance, and complete lack of freedom are all man-made...and get worse as the goverment and corporations get bigger and more inter-dependent.
JMPO

But Zoid! I must have missed your earlier posted theories, and I am thrilled by this!

Quote:
Originally posted by zoid:

I'm sticking to my oracles that Book was once General Richard Wilkins, the Alliance mastermind of the brilliant maneuver that obviated their victory at Serenity. You've got to be quick to catch it, but it's in Simon's encyclopedia history recital in the cut-scenes section of the DVD. Protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, I think Joss cut that scene from the series because he feared some might catch on. I think he included it in the DVD set because he thought the show was done (kaput), and he wanted someone to catch on. Here I is.

Now I must go back to rewatch my DVDs AGAIN!
Because I agree that 'Book' is a made-up name, based on the Good Book...
And obviously Book must have been very important since you can't make up your own secret identity if you don't have friends in high places...
and of course those friends are still making sure that he is treated well when ever he reveals his identity card!

This (all of the above theories and ideas) is why we NEED the movie, and the TV show to return, and more and more information! We have been teased by these first episodes but NOTHING is resolved, none of our questions have been answered.....

SHINY

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 3:09 PM

Nice first post!

>>They come out of the byte. They come when you call."<<

Actually, the quote is:

"they come out of the black. They come when you call."

Personally, I think the malevolent AI taking over humankind is a little too well-worn a sci-fi path for Joss (especially recently *cough*Matrix*cough), although who knows? After 6 or 7 seasons, even he can run out of ideas, as he mentioned at the convention panel. :)

Please help Haken keep this site running by occasionally clicking on some of the sponsored ad links on the side of the page!

SKYDANCE

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 8:05 PM

Your concept of an AI governing a race in conflict with the rest of humanity reminds me of the Deathstalker series (author forgotten). Of course, it has a more contemporary association with the Matrix movies ....

In a "high fantasy" story, I agree, Joss would need a "dragon" to slay. Remember, though, that Firefly is primarily a drama. There's plenty of evil in Men's hearts. Just look at the Reavers: those were human beings, once.

Despite the temptation to create machine intelligences or aliens, I believe it's all the more scary (and personally, I suspect it's Joss's vision) to show the dark side of humanity and what it can be. Minus Man, Red Dragon, Texas Chainsaw Massacre ... you don't have to go any further than reality to find the demons behind River's treatment. (Consider Niska, and the reference to that guy who tortured people to "meet the real person.")

Yours is a fine vision, but it's not needed, and there are no other hints of AI anywhere in the series. (The computers don't even talk; you flip switches, or touch spots on a piece of paper.)

"River's apparent psychic powers are, I think, an illusion ..."

Depends on how you view certain scenes. Watch the commentary by Joss for Objects in Space, though. He specifically says River is woken by the voice, in her mind, of Early. That's psychic, period.

Joss has also said psychic reading was as far as he was willing to take the "magical" powers in this series (again, this comes from one of the commentaries). That limit, of course, implies that the "psychic" element is there.

34CYGNI

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 12:38 AM

Thanks for the kind reception, one and all.

With respect to the AI theory, I stress that I'm not necessarily envisioning a silicon-chips-and-binary-code kind of AI, here, but more likely some variation on the old brain-in-a-jar meme. Joss showed us he can wring horror out of high technology when Buffy went to college, after all, and I'd be disappointed if he didn't go into his Big Damn Sci-Fi Show with something even more twisted up his sleeve.

I do respect the argument that involving an AI is potentially going against the humanocentric, "latex free" spirit of the show. However, I reiterate that a sci-fi show needs a sci-fi foe -- and let's not forget which network "Firefly" was on, y'know? There had to be an element in the pitch that satisfied their lowest-common-denominator instincts (I mean, aside from, "I've got two words for you: space hooker!").

Besides, the very best evil AI stories I've ever come across were all about humanity -- I refer you to the classic "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison and "Press Enter" by John Varley (you could perhaps add "Frankenstein" to that list, but I don't want to get too high-falutin'...). These short stories are highly creepy, deeply human tales in which the godlike, malevolent AI is both omnipresent and yet mostly absent from the narratives.

There is also some merit in the complaint that building up to a climax in which Our Heroes destroy the evil AI and set humanity free is simply too grandiose for a show about "the people history stepped on." What gets me past that one is the idea that Mal must have honorable satisfaction. He was a True Believer in the independence movement, a rare combination of the best elements of a man of ideals and a man of action, and by God, sir, a man like that cannot be left without a dragon to slay. Letting him destroy the evil force behind the Unification war will allow him to fulfill the ideals that we saw get crushed at Serenity Valley in the pilot, and yet that heroic act will be followed up by the existential horror of the realization that it won't have any palpable effect on the day-to-day lives of the citizenry of the Alliance. At the end of it all, everybody will still get up and go to work the next morning, the mechanisms of government oppression will still be in place (though with new hands at the controls), and Mal will probably still be worrying about where he'll find his next paycheck to keep fuel in Serenity's tanks.

Mal may free the human race from bondage, but all that means is that we'll be free to wallow in misery of our own creation, rather than the misery the AI sought to inflict upon us.

In other news, does anybody else hear River say, "They come out of the black," instead of, "They come out of the byte," while Simon's scanning her brain in the episode "Ariel"? I popped in the ol' DVD to doublecheck, and under no circumstances can I make my brain hear her say the word "black" rather than "byte". I even turned the sound off and stared intently at her lips (...now I feel faintly unclean, and not in a good way -- sorry, Summer, wherever you are) to see if there was an L in there, but Simon's thumb is kind of in the way. I'm sticking by my original interpretation of that line.

I discarded the theory that River was being indoctrinated to become a Bluehand because she's just too durn cute and way too ruttin' smart. Bluehands should be relatively inconspicuous on the street, another person in a nice suit who isn't worth a second glance but for their curious taste in gloves, and I suspect that they're just muscle, not the brains of the operation. (...So, do you suppose a female Bluehand would wear a dress, or would she go for a sort of grim, spare Annie Hall look? )

As for River being psychic, it potentially strengthens the case that she was being turned into a sensory organ for the evil ubermind. After all, it presumably already has full access to the vast reams of data harvested every second from all the security cameras, phone calls, security checkpoints, medical scanners, and what-all-e

DELIA

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 2:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 34cygni:

In other news, does anybody else hear River say, "They come out of the black," instead of, "They come out of the byte," while Simon's scanning her brain in the episode "Ariel"?

I heard "black" and that's what I saw when I looked up the shooting scripts online. The subtitles, for the record, offer the curious "they come out of the bike," so I suppose its possible that Blue Sun grew out of the Tour De France. Or Harley Davidson.

Quote:

So, do you suppose a female Bluehand would wear a dress, or would she go for a sort of grim, spare Annie Hall look?

Well, did you see Diane Keaton at the Oscars?

Lots of thought-provoking stuff on this thread. I'm enjoying it.

Delia

EMBERS

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 2:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 34cygni:

...Mal must have honorable satisfaction. He was a True Believer in the independence movement, a rare combination of the best elements of a man of ideals and a man of action, and by God, sir, a man like that cannot be left without a dragon to slay. Letting him destroy the evil force behind the Unification war will allow him to fulfill the ideals that we saw get crushed at Serenity Valley in the pilot,

I find myself wondering if you have listened to the commentaries, particularly the one Joss did for 'Objects in Space'?
Joss is an existentalist...he is not into happy endings, and I don't think he is likely to allow Mal 'fix' the world...

I think the most Mal & his crew can hope for is to continue to run under the radar and be happy within themselves and with each other...

Similarly w/Buffy and Angel...evil exists, and inspite of all our best efforts, it will remain.

CYBERSNARK

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 2:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Delia:
The subtitles, for the record, offer the curious "they come out of the bike," so I suppose its possible that Blue Sun grew out of the Tour De France. Or Harley Davidson.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!*wheeze*

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

DELIA

Thursday, April 29, 2004 12:04 PM

Cybersnark,

You don't see it? The whole Alliance could be run by the preserved brain of Lance Armstrong, power by blue handed men riding stationary bicycles nonstop like little hamster in wheels.

Or not.

Actually, its probably just best to ignore anything I say for a while. It's the end of the semester, I'm running on three hours of sleep a night and a ridiculous amount of coffee.

Hey, maybe Blue Sun grew out of Starbucks. . .

Delia

SAMURAIX47

Thursday, April 29, 2004 6:34 PM

Welcome aboard!

I have to disagree with 2, maybe 3 points...

The use of the term galaxy by makers of scifi movies and television shows has been appalling. They use it like it means "the house next door." Just to travel among the billions of stars in our own galaxy would take eons. If they found a solar system with enough room for the whole of human population it would probably have to be within 100 light years of Earth-that-was in order to transport the billions of people in a short amount of time. And so far in many of the solar systems with planets that have been deduced or detected are all of the size of gas giants and closer to their primary than our Jupiter is to the sun... so extrapolating from that... there are probably more moons around the gas giants then there would be earth-like planets around the star, gas giants with moons the size of planets. So the Firefly verse is all within one solar system. The core worlds may be earth-like and earth-size... And all the rest are on moons. Also the 2 blue-hands guys on board the alliance cruiser say they had travelled 86 Million miles... Earth-that-was is only 93 million miles from the Sun, 1 AU. That means they are traveling within a solar system.

Next point... why would an AI have anything to do with humans? Humans are wasteful, inefficient, lazy, good for not much... Why would an AI try to control us? If anything it would try to get rid of us in favor of AI brethren (see Terminator). Or it would be so controlling as to stifle all human development (see Colossus: The Forbin Project). Or it would go mad, succumbing to chaos (see 2001: A Space Odyssey). I just can't see an AI acting human (mimicking emotion is not having a sense of humanity) by being the mastermind behind the alliance. Computers and machines are just tools of humanity and will never be able to, nor allowed to be in charge. Human foibles are what's behind the Alliance government... people with agendas... politicians, and their lapdogs.

I don't think a unified field theory, or the controlling of the force of gravity, will necessarily lead to, nor allow for, Faster-Than-Light travel.

Jaymes

KUGELBLITZ

Thursday, April 29, 2004 6:42 PM

I disagree on the AI's motivations. Since we have no data at all on how an AI would act, anything goes.

An AI could be capable of a variety of behaviors, with their origins either completely understandable or alien in the extreme. The hypothetical AI could still have some parameters at the base of its flabby black core that direct it to act towards a specific set of goals like-maximise productivity for Blue Sun Corp, or protect our assets or tinker with DNA until something sool happens and so forth.

Also there can be mutiple systems within a light year or less of one another, and we could see travel in system of one place and short hops or full burns connecting one system to another nearby one. Don't limit your setting to our local neighborhgood, there are denser places in the 'verse.

"We are exporting democracy because we have all of this unused democracy lying around at home. Why not make some money doing it?"