Serenity - The Movie

[Maspy]

Originally posted by Ron Vutpakdi:
The Operative is a great villain, especially since, like most of the "heroes," the character and motivations are not black and white.

Btw, the original theme from Firefly does show up as a modified instrumental piece at the end of the credits.

Ron

The Operative was the villian Lucas wished Darth Maul could be. Walking out of the Theater (theatre) my friend said, I'd like to see him come back as a Shepard. My response... "You mean like his father?"
OK, so maybe Book isn't his father... But, he definately had to be an Operative. It sure would explain the mysteries surrounding him and the trait "Cortex Ghost" he has in the RPG.

 

[mike wightman]

Isn't Book's background explained somewhere?

In the comic?

 

[Klaus]

So what's the best line?

"Not had anything near my nether regions that hasn't needed batteries"

or

"Four full magazines and my swinging cock!"

 

[mike wightman]

Just got back from seeing it for the first time.

WOW

I'm going again tomorrow to see what I missed on the first viewing.

 

[DaveShayne]

Originally posted by Klaus:
So what's the best line?

"Not had anything near my nether regions that hasn't needed batteries"

or

"Four full magazines and my swinging cock!"

Well it requires setup,

Operative: Your trying to make me angry, you won't suceed.

Inara: Please, spend an hour with him.

 

[Tanuki]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
OK, still, if it is all in one system, why aren't the "outer worlds" cold? It ain't Science Fiction, its Space Opera. A good adventure story with spaceships.

Wil McCarthy has some interesting speculations on how to cram all those planets and moons into a single stellar system in "Worlds of Serenity" at http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue439/labnotes.html

Follow the links to "Why Crush the Moon" and "Blue Moons for a Distant Jupiter" too. Real good stuff for Traveller worlds in there as well.

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by Maspy:
OK, so maybe Book isn't his father... But, he definately had to be an Operative. It sure would explain the mysteries surrounding him and the trait "Cortex Ghost" he has in the RPG.

Yes. I think Book had to have been an Operative too.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by Tanuki:
Wil McCarthy has some interesting speculations on how to cram all those planets and moons into a single stellar system in "Worlds of Serenity" at http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue439/labnotes.html

Follow the links to "Why Crush the Moon" and "Blue Moons for a Distant Jupiter" too. Real good stuff for Traveller worlds in there as well.

Interesting links, thanks.
Crushing the moon... we've seen no sign of that level of technology. But even the moon, if you give it an atmosphere (by blasting it with comets?) will keep that atmosphere for hundreds of years before you have to "top it up".

Blue Moons I hadn't thought about the sunshade effect ... but the backside of the moon will get brutally hot, exagerative the "evaporative loss" from that side. And any moon close enough to spend a significant amount of time in shadow will also be in the Jovian's lethal radiation belts.

Anybody who saw "2010" should understand the benefits of a brown dwarf. And judging from our Jovians, I could see 2-4 moons big enough to hold an atmosphere, each.

But Jovians (particularly super massive brown dwarves, 8+ Mj) do not play well with others. That is, there gravity perturbs any nearby orbits and either capture them, sling them into space, or spiral them into the sun.

So lets take a big, hot star (F0?) with a wide habital zone. I could see two planets in the habital zone and one brown dwarf with 2-5 moons in the extended habitable zone.

So if you stretch it to the edge of reason, I could accept 3 warm wet worlds, up to 3 habitable moons. One marginal planet at the cool edge with it's own moon, and up to ten habitable brown dwarf moons.

So stretching things to the limits of understanding we get six "inner" worlds (planets anf moons) and twelve or so "outer". Not a hundred.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Originally posted by Klaus:
So what's the best line?

The exchange between Mal and Jayne at the beginning of the movie, followed by the exchange between Jayne and Zoe right after.

Mal: "No grenades."
Jayne: "Aww, but Mal..."
Mal: "No."

Zoe: "Are those grenades?"
Jayne: "Yeah, Mal doesn't want me to bring 'em."
Zoe: "Jayne, we're not occupying the building."

Those little exchanges convinces me that Joss Whedon has not only played Traveller, but has had to deal with the 'Gun-Bunny' problem before in games.

 

[stofsk]

Uh, why WOULDN'T the Alliance be set in several star systems? They had to have FTL to get from Earth to the New Home (whatever you want to call it).

The line at the start of the film "We found a new system, with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons..." remember, it doesn't say that the Alliance is all in one system, it's just the initial system had a lot of planetary bodies. Not all of them would be habitable, and frankly the way the line is said strikes me as hyperbole. Saying 'dozens' and 'hundreds' is vague and nonspecific.

To conclude from this that the Alliance is all in one system is a bit moronic. Afterall, if the Alliance possesses the means of terraforming many planets in various orbits to earth-like conditions, WHY EXACTLY did they leave Earth? WHY NOT stay, terraform the moon, Venus, Mars, the asteroids, the Jovian moons, Titan, etc.

Finally, the line comes from a dream a mentally traumatised girl was having! We know she's had hallucinations in the past (ref. "Objects in Space") yet the 'single solar system' crowd takes it as a given that River's dream is fact.

 

[stofsk]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Isn't Book's background explained somewhere?

In the comic?

I don't think so. Likely his origin won't be explained anywhere, and Joss will leave it as a 'man of mystery'. Mal is a 'let sleeping dogs lie' kind of man, so why would he go snooping over the past of a dead friend?

Sometimes it's better to have a character's past shrouded in mystery even in death, if that is essentially the character concept (and for Book, it was).

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by stofsk:
I don't think so. Likely his origin won't be explained anywhere, and Joss will leave it as a 'man of mystery'. Mal is a 'let sleeping dogs lie' kind of man, so why would he go snooping over the past of a dead friend?

It depends. It's not unlikely that Serenity's crew will continue to be a nuisance to the Alliance, which could end up with them discovering more of its dirty laundry. It seems highly likely that Book was tied up with it in some way, even if the Operative theory isn't correct, so it would be quite possible for Mal and co to learn about his background as part of their other activities.

 

[stofsk]

If we get another sequel that is a possibility... I don't know how likely that is, however.

 

[stofsk]

Originally posted by Gaming Glen:
Re: one system
They left the Earth in generation ships, so no FTL.

I recall no mention of generation ships. Where was this?

 

[SanDragon]

In the official visual companion to the movie.

 

[stofsk]

But not in the movie.

 

[SanDragon]

Not that I recall, no.

 

[Whipsnade]

stofsk,

The STL and terraforming questions go hand in hand. I've seen the movie twice (trying to do my bit for a sequel) and never even thought about there being a FTL capability until you brought it up. Why? Well follow my 'logic' in the matter...

The colonists terraform 'dozens' of planets and moons (yeah, I don't buy the dozens part either) and it took 'decades'. If they had FTL why bother? Why not just flit off to another star to look for an existing biosphere? Why spend 'decades' terraforming all those planets/moons unless it was going to take even more time travelling to other star systems?

They terraformed because all they had was STL, and I don't have a 'visual companion' to the movie to come up with that. That's just what I automatically presumed during the first 5 minutes or so while listening to the voice over and goggling over the scenery.

A few other observations:

- Why not terraform in the Sol systems? Politics? Nations arguing over who does the work and who gets to live there, and then those arguments spilling over onto Earth?

- The Alliance. The Alliance develops after the colony mission and terraforming efforts. The scary teacher in River's class says that the 'core worlds formed the Alliance' meaning that the core worlds existed before the Alliance. The core worlds were presumably easier/faster to terraform, got settled earlier/faster, grew faster, and were thus able to shift their attention away from terraforming/survival to power politics earlier/faster.

FWIW, I don't like the 'all in one star system' bit either.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Klaus]

Few points:

A/ we know next to nothing about how other solar systems might form, or how many planets they might have. So far we've only inferred trans-Jovian supergiants, and this could be wrong.

B/ we know from our own star system that liquid water can exist outside what we term the stellar ecosphere (ie: Europa). It depends on how they've terraformed those planets, and that atm is a made up science.

C/ nowhere is it stated that the colony ships transported ALL the people of Earth. maybe the solar system was left to the people left behind.

So by no means is Mr Whedon's terraformed mega-system impossible.

Having said all that, p117 Serenity official companion, there is a map showing the location of Miranda, which seems to show 5 star systems with 8 or so planets each. (btw Miranda has a diameter of 47918.7km), so perhaps JW is deliberately keeping it fuzzy (or the graphic designer for that particular bit had not been informed).

It is absolute tho that htere's no ftl. Personally I don't mind these idiosyncracies when the quality of the product is so high.

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Oh, and apparently, according to JW, Wash could return for any sequel. Now that's far more interesting than how realistic the system is.

 

[Klaus]

FWIW, I think the one system is a touch of genius - it completely eliminates the need for ftl or wormholes or warpspeed whathaveyou, and all the technobabble baggage that goes with it. And it means a data cortex can function via radio...