Serenity...

[Andrew Boulton]

Yeah, a sci-fi western didn't appeal to me...until I saw it.

 

[mike wightman]

My Serenity DVD arrived in the post this morning

 

[jfetters]

Enjoy!

I have watched the film, but not any of the extras yet. I'm travelling next week, so I plan on bringing it to watch on the laptop.

 

[Murph]

The Ultimate Traveller adventure! What a movie!

 

[aramis]

Andrew:

I'd only heard of it on here; never even heard of it on TV, since I don't like the ghetto-targeted programming Fox normally aired at the time.

Between good words here and good words on another board, I decided to try it.

Glad I did.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Finally saw it. Liked it a lot. Great characters, good story.

BUT ... does it bother anyone else that distant Miranda, the forgotten planet, the planet on the edge of the Void is warm and has brighter sunshine than any other planet?.

In a real western we wouldn't tolerate sajuarro cactus in Montana or a heavy snowfall in Tombstone, Arizona.

 

[Ran Targas]

I liked the movie but did have a hard time with the setting. Seemed a little lame when so much effort was made to make everything else psuedo-realistic.

 

[Ranger]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
Finally saw it. Liked it a lot. Great characters, good story.

BUT ... does it bother anyone else that distant Miranda, the forgotten planet, the planet on the edge of the Void is warm and has brighter sunshine than any other planet?.

In a real western we wouldn't tolerate sajuarro cactus in Montana or a heavy snowfall in Tombstone, Arizona.

Well, this is an example of Joss' artisitic sense getting ahead of the science. He set the lightings to compliment the meanings for each world.

 

[parmasson]

"BUT ... does it bother anyone else that distant Miranda, the forgotten planet, the planet on the edge of the Void is warm and has brighter sunshine than any other planet?."
Mmmmmmm. . . .

 

[mike wightman]

All the more reason to think that the setting contains several stars in one system.

 

[Jeffr0]

In the commentary Joss gives several artistic reasons for the light being the way it was at Miranda. No science reasons, though. (Dratted story tellers!

)

Miranda was a highschool campus with a few props strewn around. The spookiest place in the movie... a highschool. Heh. Heh.

Does give me a new insight into why my students put their heads down on their desks so often....

 

[archhealer]

Miranda too hot?

Bah. There's a thousand reasons why that could be. Maybe it orbits a companion star in an outer orbit. Maybe it's hellishly green-house. Maybe it's got some crazy tectonic pressures and heats itself from the inside; we only saw a tiny bit of it, the rest could be covered in volcanos. Who knows.

Yeah, they didn't put a lot of effort into explaining the 'verse in great detail... which I'm glad of, because imho, the greatest failing of most sci-fi models is their attempt to over-explain the details, which just leads to inevitable hangups that can't be gotten around with 'real' science. Thus, science FICTION. I like the 'better left unsaid' approach they used.

 

[Jeffr0]

But they keep talking about quadrants. How can you have that in a single stellar system? Wouldn't they just have a single plane of orbits?

 

[Pickles]

As Mr. Whedon said, "Science makes me cry". There's no way to make the Serenity/Firefly star sustem(s) work in the real universe, and there is not even any coherent canon to go by. Just swing by any Serenity forum or Yahoo group and see how many diffeent opinions there are on the subject.

It's just going to have to be a case of IMSU (or IMFU) for everyone ...

 

[DaveShayne]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
But they keep talking about quadrants. How can you have that in a single stellar system? Wouldn't they just have a single plane of orbits?

Well quadrants are just what you get if you divide something into 4 parts. How you do that is up to you. The way I visualize it is as a cartesian coordinate system with the primary sun as the origin and the x axis defined as the line running to some other point (perhaps the farthest planet out or the nearest star not in the same system) the y axis is of course 90 degrees off from that and boders of the quadrants are the axes.

Now this means that planets will be moving from quadrant to quadrant in the course of their orbits (rather quickly in the case of inner planets) so I don't see a quadrant being a political division just an administrative one. Usefull for defining the patrol areas of Alliance cruisers and a bit for navigation.

Why the Alliance named a quadrant after the architect of the Chicago worlds fair I have no idea.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Attempting to explain the science at the expense of story is a bad idea. Knowing what it is so the World is consistant is a lot harder than winging it, but has benefits.

 

[Teletron1]

In the first scene of River as a little girl in school pay particular attention to the blackboard behind the teacher. You may notice that it is a map of the "verse".

 

[jfetters]

And also (I would have to watch the scenes in question again to refresh my memory on what the displays look like) the information shown to schoolchildren is going to be much different (i.e., simplified) than what is on a starship computer's navigation system.

 

[Pickles]

To save everyone from having to re-invent the wheel, have a read through the Nature of the Serenity "system" thread in the Filling the Void section of the Waves in the Black (sorry, can't link it directly). If you have a lot of time on your hands, people there have gone through a multitude of possible permutations of the Serenity (and the Firefly, which is not the same thing at all) 'verse. Lots of map links, too.

More Serenity maps and files can be found on the Serenity Crew Yahoo group.

Don't reckon astronomical science has no place in either 'verse, no-how.

 

[Princedarkstorm]

The Verse did fit Traveller .