Joss interview

POSTED BY: LizWhiz
UPDATED: Monday, February 7, 2005 06:48
VIEWED: 7800
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ZEEK

Friday, February 4, 2005 7:11 PM

It sounded a lot like Joss was blowing off the questions to me. "I don't think so"? That doesn't sound like he cared. Then the comment about crying if there were science questions. When I read it, I thought he just wanted a new line of questioning.

I fully believe that there is no right answer. No one thought it through. That's why Book's intro said "new solar system" and Mal's said "whole new galaxy". No one really paid much attention to it. They just thought "outerspace". No specifics of where.

Just my gut feeling.

COTTONWOOLFAIRY

Friday, February 4, 2005 9:42 PM

I agree. I got the impression that he was kidding rather than giving the definitive answers.
I can understand it not being that important to him - he's not a scientist, he's a writer. He worries about being true to the characters, not about astronomical calculations.

If Firefly is set in a galaxy then Serenity would have to be much faster than light. The closest star to us is over 4 light years away, and we know that it takes much less than 4 years for the crew to travel between planets.

Say it IS set in one star system (and for lots of reasons I seriously doubt that), it can't be our Solar System, despite terraforming there just aren't enough suitable lumps of rock in our patch of space! So if it's not the Solar System, it must be a different star system, which must be at least 4 light-years away, so they must have at least close to light speed just to reach that other star system since present time. If so, why are they sticking in that one star system if they are able to travel further?

So my money is on a galaxy, and Serenity must have faster-than-light speed, which is a pity, since it does seem a bit too 'Star Trek' for them.

GREENFAERIE

Friday, February 4, 2005 9:45 PM

Yeah, I think Joss thinks outer space is outer space. To heck with the scientific details. Just hope it doesn't come around and bite him in the arse.

ZEEK

Friday, February 4, 2005 10:20 PM

Ah a very good point. I haven't read too much into the solar system or galaxy arguments, but the fact that this is supposed to be 400 years in the future. Humans couldn't have gotten very far in 400 years without faster than lightspeed or really close to lightspeed travel. Especially sine it had to have taken a while for Earth to get "used up".

OLDFAN45

Friday, February 4, 2005 10:29 PM

Yep, I have to agree with the voices, sounded to me like Joss was wriggling off the hook there. "Outer space" was the answer when someone asked, "Where's it set?" Well, the fans have made this their own an most of us seem to be on the "FTL/galaxy" train.

WEASY

Saturday, February 5, 2005 6:12 PM

*raises hand*
scientist here. Serenity can't go faster than light, because if it did it would travel backwards in time.
Therefore Einstein reckoned travelling faster than the speed of light was impossible.
Although he didn't rule out the possibility of going forwards in time - which you can strictly speaking do by travelling at not-quite the speed of light.
I'm surprised there's even a ST argument here - anything past their most basic science is complete rubbish.

But that doesn't really solve whether it's a Galaxy or our Solar system - Earth could have been destroyed or wrecked or whatever in 500 years (believe it or not it's a possibility that we'll run out of usable water in that time) and then travelling to the nearest galaxy would only a little bit more than four years at almost the speed of light, so it could be a different galaxy.

KURUKAMI

Saturday, February 5, 2005 6:49 PM

Unless you adhere to the hyperspace/tesseract/"folding space" theory, wherein your actually velocity isn't faster than light, but your progress is.

Regardless, quite a shiny interview. Thanks!

"Sir, I would like to gingerly point out that it is difficult for someone to be gently reassuring when they're holding three and a half feet of sharpened steel."

OLDFAN45

Saturday, February 5, 2005 7:16 PM

Scientific correction noted and accepted.

I offer as evidence for the (whichever, wherever) galaxy theorists the fact that Mal says there are "more than 70 Earths" in the deleted scene from "Our Mrs. Reynolds" and Zoe references "this quadrant" in "War Stories." That's what I can recall off the top of my head, but I'll go back and slog through the whoooole series again for evidence. Poor, poor me.

Solar systems don't often get referred to by "quadrants" in my findings.

WEASY

Sunday, February 6, 2005 11:51 AM

Re: folding space - yes that could work.
But normally those theories are injunction with black holes etc because time and space are interconnected you can't ever use only one, but you can try and bend one to change the reults of the other...
Blackholes are the only real possible way people can see of doing that, because it's gravity is strong enough to bend time and I'm pretty sure they don't use them.
I'm not that up to-date with my theories here though... so I might be wrong.

Actually - did you guys now that although most of space is moving away from us - the closest galaxies to us are moving together, and we are all due to collide - such a collision won't necessarily destroy earth, but might, and might also spin it off into space on it's own, but we don't think a lot of the planets and things will be destroyed or lost - because there's quite big gaps between planets really and what's left would get caught in each others orbits creating one huge meta-galaxy, lots of planets much closer together and with multiple suns.

That's set to take place much later than 500 years in the future - but not before our sun burns out - so humanity could well in the future exist on earth in a giant galaxy unlike ours now.
Could be the answer to the question.

PULASKI

Sunday, February 6, 2005 5:09 PM

The explanation is quite simple.

The story takes place in a "star cluster" or a gathering of stars within a small area of space. Astronomers have identified two types of star clusters: "Open" where the stars are spaced out at large distances and "Globular" clusters which are bound tightly together and there stars can number into the millions.

Given the mysterious "Blue Sun" Corporation, I am inclined to think that the "Firefly" story takes place in the Pleiades star cluster.

Known as the Seven Sisters or M45, the Pleiades is one of the brightest and closest open clusters to Earth. The Pleiades contain over 3000 stars, it is about 400 light years away from Earth, and only 13 light years across, thereby permitting some manner of interplanetary travel without necessarily resorting to FTL drives. The only issue that remains to be addressed now is how did the humans get there? Four hundered light years is bit far for the 500 year story arc.

Then again, it could be a totally new, made up star cluster, which is closer to Earth, with smaller distances between the stars. Or perhaps "Serenity" is too small of a vessel to contain an FTL drive. Larger ships, such as the Alliance "Manhattan Express" :D might be equipped with some manner of FTL drive, be it a wormhole generator or some other exotic dohickey.

It will sure be fun to find out. And if Mr. Whedon requires it, I would be more than happy to help flash out the idea. :D

/s Pulaski

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