1. I have to accept Tim Minear's explanation but I think there's a different reason also.

2.River's purpose. We really don't know yet because it's still in Joss's brain but I have seen several fics with River as the ultimate weapon against the Reavers. (Kaynara among them).

3. I did American history and avoided math like the plague so I can't help here either.

Tbe Eensy ones

1. I'm with SpaceAngl here too.

2.If you listen to the commentaries enough, Joss just loves Summer's feet. Likely because she's a dancer.

3.Don't know nothing about no bugs...now space monkeys I could go on and on about.

4. Shawna Trpcic, the lead costume designer, loves flamingos and it was her idea. I think it's in the commentary on Shindig.

5.River is smarter than the Alliance docs.

'Kay -1) the syringe was a nasty Tim Minear idea. It contained a toxin that would kill anyone who had, er, relations with the Companion.

2)I'm thinking corporate espionage, myself. It didn't smack of military R&D, but it was black ops of some sort. Maybe someone in government was making themselves a little insurance. But she's a perfect assassin, really. She doesn'tlook scary, and she can be triggered. You seen the Manchurian Candidate?

3) Sorry, I did history.

It's one of the costume designers who has the flamingo fetish, and Joss wrote Alien 4, I expect he felt he could pinch the logo. Joss likes dancers feet (go figure) and giant space bugs would tie in with the fact that the Alliance uniforms are left over from 'Starship Troopers' :)

On the letter front - she's a rambling loon. As long as nobody actually tries to take the pen away from her, I expect they'd let her write anything short of 'someone cut a hole in my brain.'

Personally, I think that if River's training had completed, she could probably have blown the Operative, James Bond, Neo, and Batman all away, hehe. A super-operative, capable of sneaking into any secret enemy installation half a dozen ways, stealing any secrets, accomplishing any secret mission, and outfighting an armed infantry company. One little girl more valuable to the Alliance than a dreadnought battleship. But maybe that's going a bit too far, hehe.

>>3.) Where is the scene with these "space insects" I keep hearnin' about? (Kaylee WAS right--"Don't let the...space bugs...bite!")>>

In Objects in Space, as the camera pans up from River eavesdropping on the crew in the galley we see some roaches in between the ceiling of the cargo bay and the floor of the galley.