The earth that was. by Giantevilhead

I think if Firefly had never been cancelled, they could have had a spin off about the earth that was. It would be like Fallout.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Sunday, October 9, 2005 2:48 PM

I always figured that it was the meek.

An odd but totally believable twist on, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” The only people left behind are those who could not barter or bully their way on a ship to a more habitable planet. I mean if not everyone could go, and everyone wants to, the only ones left are those lacking the ability to force their way on a ship.

In short: the meek.

I doubt that they would simply let the criminals out of jail, though they could escape after the government jumps ship, on the other hand it would be just as believable that the prisoners are kept in prisons and starve to death because no one had the resources or time to feed them.

I’m pretty sure that the meek did inherit the earth, though how long they kept it is another question.

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Sunday, October 9, 2005 3:40 PM

GUNRUNNER

The poor and criminals (minor ones not the serial killers and rapists etc) were probably used as terraforming labor and colonists. You do ten years of hard labor on a new world you get to live there. Kinda like Australia or French Guinea a few centuries ago.

Earth-That-Was may still be a thriving world with its own space colonies. With the massave drain on resources caused by the US-China Alliance gone there could be sufficent stuff left to allow much smaller groups to survive with the minium of change.

EV Nova Firefly mod Message Board:
http://s4.invisionfree.com/GunRunner/index.php?act=idx

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Sunday, October 9, 2005 7:25 PM

SAMURAIX47

in Heart of Gold the scene in the theater there is the story of Earth-that-was being told by a shadow play... one part of it shows the earth engulfed in flames...

Question: If they had terraforming technology, why didn't they re-terraform Earth? But as they say Earth was all used up... so maybe there was no way to revitalize it.

Also... how long had they been in this new system? I would think that the Alliance had been around since first arriving, they may have started out nice and people friendly, so it would have been a few or several generations before the Firefly story. Now the Alliance has gone all greedy and power hungry and corrupt.

They only show a few ships leaving Earth but the fleet could have been huge, also it is hard to see the scale of those ships... if they were even able to transport the current world population of 6 billion people that would be a huge undertaking.

The concept of Earth-that-was and sending out colonists... reminds me of that show Earth2... they could have been the first colonists before the mass exodus...

Jaymes

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Sunday, October 9, 2005 8:13 PM

HOWARD

WELL DONE GOOD THREAD.
My impression from the show was that The Earth no longer exists.

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Sunday, October 9, 2005 8:55 PM

SNEAKER98

In the shooting script of Heart of Gold, the old man at Rance's party was giving a history lesson on earth.

If I recall correctly (and I might not), civilization left with the colony ships. Then the earth that was is destroyed by a series of volcanic explosions.

Now, I'm keen on beliving that mankind would've terraformed Mars and Venus, at the least, with the kind of technology they apparently had. So there likely is mankind still in the Solar System.

"I do the job... and then I get paid. Go run your little world."
-Malcolm Reynolds

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Sunday, October 9, 2005 10:40 PM

WAVERIDER18

Isaac Asimov finished out his Foundation series with a frantic search for a lost Earth. His universes denizens had centuries ago forgotten about the origin planet. When I first heard, "Earth that was," in the Firefly series I immediately thought of the Foundation novels. Good SciFi always stands on the shoulders of giants and tries to use/better the fiction that came before. Firefly works on this level just as the new Battlestar Galacica does. Thats all...I'm out

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Monday, October 10, 2005 12:41 AM

XEROGRAVITY

I think eventually Whedon would have gotten into storylines that would have touched on the subject. Perhaps a world decimated by natural or manmade disasters? Maybe just overpopulation followed by an exhausting of resources? Maybe even an evil conglomerate of cannibal men from the TV networks take over and kill all the good scifi entertainment in a bid to own the world?

It would have been interesting to see where he was going with the plot. I also think Whedon was playing it smart by not getting into too much of the technical blubbering about the technology behind space travel. Every other series has overdone it. How many episodes in Star Trek involved warp core breaches? Lost count after the 60th or 70th time. It is just assumed that (1) buncha space monkeys got off this blue-green rock, and (2) the physics that make it possible has since been conquered.

Nice touch IMHO.

XG

No such thing as gravity. The "Earth-that-was" just sucks.

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Monday, October 10, 2005 2:41 AM

THEPLOUGH

Quote:
Originally posted by sneaker98:
In the shooting script of Heart of Gold, ...

from the script, the narration of the shadowplay and one of my favourite quotes from Firefly:

"Little by little, the tribes used the Earth up. Barren, she had little left to offer them.
Swollen of her, they left. And for the first time since the Great Burn that birthed her, she was alone.
The Earth cried, and terrible were her tears. Acid and caustic, the spawn of the tribes' rape. They flowed a century.
The fire that finally came did so as a blessing. "

http://www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/Earth-that-was

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Monday, October 10, 2005 2:56 AM

XEROGRAVITY

Not a big fan of poetry, and the only script I've read from the series was Ep. 15 (Dead or Alive). But if I were a fan of poetry that would be tops on my list. Brilliant.

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Monday, October 10, 2005 3:15 AM

THEPLOUGH

Beautiful, eh? And, of course, there's Saffron's myth. Another favourite:

SAFFRON
Do you know the myth about Earth-that-was?

WASH
Not so much.

SAFFRON
That when she was born, she had no
sky, and she was open, inviting and
the stars would rush into her,
through the skin of her, making the
oceans boil with sensation, and when
she could endure no more ecstasy, she
puffed up her cheeks and blew out the
sky, to womb her and keep them at
bay, 'til she had rest some, and that
we had to leave 'cause she was strong
enough to suck them in once more.

WASH
Whoa. Good myth.

So, both myths, plus the unreliable Alliance teacher's account, leaving the question of the Earth's fate wide open.

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Monday, October 10, 2005 5:55 AM

DERANGEDMILK

Now see, I'm still inclined to go with an alliance cover-up for the very reason that if Earth was simply "all used up" then they COULD have just done to Venus or Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn or hell! are own moon if we have the kinda of technology they're talking about in the beginning of "Serenity." Those in power would want to leave the system entirely and tell all of the poor and the criminals they duped into coming along that the Earth simply wasn't usable anymore, but not mention how it was the greedy blundering of the corporations and governments that ruined her.

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Monday, October 10, 2005 6:09 AM

CYBERSNARK

In the Serenity Visual Companion there's a Joss memo that describes the exodus as using generation ships (he doesn't name them as such, but the description is clear enough).

He specifies that an entire generation was born, grew, aged, and died without ever seeing the outside of a ship.

Point of all this is that using criminals from ETW as terraformer labour wouldn't have been practical unless they were carried as cargo in stasis (which woulda' taken up cargo space from other sources, so I can't see going to all that effort for cons).

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

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Monday, October 10, 2005 8:33 AM

I'm thinking that the reason why they didn't colonize the other planets in our solar system was because the terraforming failed. Even when they got to the new earths, the terraforming process still had problems. The moon, and Mars would have been the first places they terraformed and it simply failed.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Monday, October 10, 2005 8:55 AM

DONCOAT

If we put together the "generation ships" idea with the other known fact that highly-effective spaceship drives have been developed, we get an interesting possibility.

The exodus ships may have cruised at a high fraction of lightspeed. If so, then relativistic effects come into play -- specifically, time dilation.

The trip that took a generation (from the travelers' viewpoint) could have taken millions of years by Earth clocks.

So, in the Firefly system, they simply may not know what happened to Earth-That-Was after they left. If any of the left-behinds survived, they might well be something very different than the humans who left, and may be in no position to send signals to those-who-left.

This also makes the "500 year" timeline more plausible. It's 500 by the ships' clocks, not Earth's.

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Monday, October 10, 2005 9:05 AM

They can calculate how much "real time" has passed by looking at stellar drift.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Monday, October 10, 2005 9:36 AM

R1Z

One of the episode intros said: "Earth that was got used up."

If this Earth has no more metals, no more fossil fuels, perhaps no more clean water, there might still be some people living a subsistance agrarian lifestyle, but given the distances and expenses involved, there would be no reason to look back or to go back.

The concept of "frontier" has always been driven by a new resource to exploit, be it timber, farmland, mining opportunities, etc.

If Earth is indeed used up, why would anyone go back there? Curiosity and nostalgia both have a price point.

To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks. --Robt. Heinlein

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Monday, October 10, 2005 9:56 AM

No one would go back there but people could have been left there. Plus I doubt that they could have taken everything when they left. The earth that was would be like the wasteland in Fallout.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Monday, October 10, 2005 6:20 PM

Point of interest, nostalgia obviously is a big thing if Yo-Saf-Brig’s husband was using his considerable wealth to buy up artifacts from earth that was. He had a telephone booth if I recall correctly, not exactly something of great historical significance, just something that a collector or historian would want.

It says used up and I think it means that, the resources were so tapped out that they simply had to jump ship or completely redesign culture and lifestyle. If teraforming can fail so completely that a planet is abandoned (what Mal thought happened to Miranda) and we only have the two other useful planets in the system (Mars and Venus) it makes sense that we’d screw up our own solar system beyond repair before we could get it right.

The idea that the earth was destroyed after they left doesn’t make much sense though, I mean we saw the planet as they took off, does it look like it’s being engulfed by fire?

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Monday, October 10, 2005 6:26 PM

MANOSBDH

Earth that was was completely intact, it just couldn't support the numbers. A huge percentage of the population left leaving lots of people on the earth. Not abundant resources, but there should be pleanty to support those that were left. Once in the other solar system, history splits. Hell, for all we know earth is like Star Trek's earth. Wouldn't that be an obnoxious crossover though....

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Monday, October 10, 2005 6:53 PM

SIGNINE

I kind of take the Earth-that-was portion of the story for granted, as well as the exodus on the generation ships. On the other hand, idle speculation is one of my favorite hobbies! So let's say Earth was totally screwed (we're pretty close now), the Government is going to try to hide this (Global Warming anyone?), but at the same time the elite in government are going to begin heavily financing secret programs to save themselves or their families. So what we have is Earth kind of like today, only more technologically advanced, more polluted, and in danger of a massive seismic cataclysm (the end of the world!) in the near future. Seismologists would totally see The Earth being consumed in a volcanic fireball coming a bit away, though they probably wouldn't know exactly when.

The major world governments begin hoarding resources, fighting minor wars with one another, and all trying to come up with a way to reverse the damage to the Earth or get off of it. It turns out that the technology to reverse the damage will be pointless now (since the cataclysm is coming) and they redouble efforts to build colony ships (and put this equipment on them for terraforming). They locate a few star systems that look like they might have a large number of small planetary bodies, and fire off the colony ships. Likely these ships have a fair amount of scientists, really fertile women, livestock, seeds for almost every kind of plant, manual laborers, and a large number of well-connected people who put everything they had into getting off Earth.

Now, as a matter of physics, let's say they didn't have artificial gravity yet, but they did have quite efficient drive systems. As you can guess without artifical gravity we have to deal with how inertia affects the passengers, accellerating at 20gs, while nice, would turn every living creature on the ship into a dark-pink wallpaper. So let's say we accellerate at 1g constantly throughout the trip...or decellerate the last half, either way. The neat thing is that accellerating constantly at 9.8 m/s^2 will get you pretty quickly to 300,000,000 m/s (about 350 days). At this point relativistic affects would be pretty extreme, and there would be no gravity (unless they had artificial gravity, once again). On the other hand, those extreme relativistic affects would mean that, even if you're travelling to a solar system 2000 light years away, it's only going to be a couple days (to you) until you have to begin decellerating.

Of course, any interstellar debris would hit your ship at equally near the speed of light and instantly shred it to dust. Oops.

Either way, assuming that there's no FTL capability and Earth that was is known to have been consumed by fire after the colonists left, there's not much to be left in Sol, and whatever is is likely to be either very lonely, or very upset.

Meanwhile, on the first colonized planets (likely one was found to be habitable before the colony ships set out with the terraforming gear), the rich people who bought their way onto the ship set up a government and use the scientists, breeders, and laborers to build the utopia they've always dreamed of. Then, like all people building a utopia, they forget that the point of the utopia is to be good for everyone and not just them. The browncoats (laborers, blue-collar, whatever you want to call them) and scientists gradually grow dissatisfied and start leaving the core worlds in progress to terraform and settle the outer worlds. The Alliance (formed by the core planets after a few hundred years I'm sure) doesn't like this development, because the people on the outer planets are not under their control. They attempt to bring them into the Alliance, they attempt to starve them out to make them agree, but they still persevere.

After a bit, the Alliance starts trade embargos between the outer worlds, starts directly interfering in politics by using operatives, eventually pushing the outer worlds to the breaking point where they choose to unite themselves and declare war on the Alliance.

They lose, and likely the concessions to the Alliance are massive. They're probably shipping nearly every single thing of worth from the outer planets back to the core, and people are still very upset with the Alliance. There are certainly a few holdout planets, which is why we see people on moons willing to pay hundreds of thousands of credits for emergency food rations, because it's not the money that's important, it's the supplies, it's the resources.

Then we watch Firefly.

Basically every war is fought over resources in one way or another, with ideological concerns usually shortly thereafter. I'm kind of thinking of the Outer Worlds in terms of how the USSR dominated over Eastern Europe. They didn't really want to be communist buddies of Big Red, but they couldn't very well do anything else, because they didn't have the resources they needed and the USSR did. The trick is that the Alliance (like the USSR) is likely taking more than its fair share, and what happened with Eastern Europe in the last days of the USSR is likely to start happening in the Outer Worlds...eventually. As public opinion of the government drops and supplies dwindle, independence will gradually be restored.

Wow, that was crazy.

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Monday, October 10, 2005 7:22 PM

SPACEMANSPIFF

Here's my take on the situation;

First off, Mars and Venus would be very hard to terraform. Mars doesn't have the gravity, and Venus is just too close to the sun. But it could be done. But I think the situation on Earth was very dire, and with the present situation on Earth it was easier for the powers-that-be to build a few big ships, grab who they could, and jump planet. Good luck to the rest of humanity.

Now, generation ships would have been run just like a country. Political power with a few, and the rest just there to keep things running. Those in power, who later became the Alliance, came up with a story that says, "Earth was fine, there was just a lot of us, so we spread out." Those that did the work, some of which made it to the outer planets, know the truth, or a broken version of it. Hell, maybe that's part of the reason the Independents fought the Alliance so hard.

Also, for ships that can reach a decent percentage of lightspeed, a trip of several light years would only take a few of decades, ship time. So some of the people that left Earth could have been settling the new planets.

Earth that was is gone, burned away by pollution, war, and the locust-like way we spread. The Alliance is rewriting history, or at least correcting it. But the truth isn't gone yet.

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

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Monday, October 10, 2005 7:36 PM

Did they actually say that generation ships were used to get from the earth that was to the new earths? I would think that it would have been better if they had just put everyone in stasis, which would save a lot of resources. Plus the new earths might not be that far away, a solar system that we haven't discovered yet, maybe 20 to 40 lightyears away. Assuming that they were travelling at half the speed of light, it would take them 40 to 80 years to get to the new earths.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Monday, October 10, 2005 7:52 PM

THEPYRO

How come i remember in the begining of Serenity that teacher saying that earth was inhabitable and over populated?main word there, inhabitable? or am ijsut way off my rocker and she didnt say that? I could see a mean 'ol sequel coming here, The "earth that was" humans finally get off the rock we call earth, and very pissed off, follow the previous paths taken. The very pissed off earthlings start up the war again with the Alliance on the side of the browncoats, and we win! woh, srry that jsut poped into my head and i had to get it out. :) Would that make a crazy twist though, brought down by those you left......

The Pyro

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 8:36 AM

I doubt that the people still living on the earth that was would have enough resources to evacuate the entire population. I think it's more likely that they'll be able to gather enough resources for a few ships and send spies to infiltrate the new earths and find a way to build and send ships to the earth that was and evacuate it.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 9:44 AM

CYBERSNARK

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Point of interest, nostalgia obviously is a big thing if Yo-Saf-Brig’s husband was using his considerable wealth to buy up artifacts from earth that was. He had a telephone booth if I recall correctly, not exactly something of great historical significance, just something that a collector or historian would want.

Which raises the question: why the hell did somebody bring a phonebooth while they were evacuating Earth?!?

Of what possible use could that be?!?

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

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 9:50 AM

I've seen it four times now and I certainly don't remember any mention of uninhabitable.

As for war, you have to remember that relativity is about relative stuff, I’m not sure exactly when they left, but I don’t think enough time passed for the resource-starved earth to get enough supplies to send out ships after them that would get there before our heroes died.

Also, if they were pissed at being left behind, likely, they’d probably not want to leave anyone behind themselves, and because of the time it would take to travel there is no way they could come back for some people. I think they would stay and work what they could.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 9:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Cybersnark:
[BWhich raises the question: why the hell did somebody bring a phonebooth while they were evacuating Earth?!?

Of what possible use could that be?!?

I wonder that as well, perhaps it was nostalgia then, maybe there was a ship that tried to collect random things as a sort of time capsule, or perhaps it is a special phone booth (one used by Superman in some film maybe?) who knows. But I bet that the phone booth took a spot that could have been occupied by a person.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 10:14 AM

Let’s say that it takes 50 years to get from the earth that was to the new earths and another 50 years to terraform the new earths. So they send the terraforming crew away in 2200, then they evacuate the earth that was in 2250 so that by the time everyone arrives at the new earths in 2300, the terraforming crew would already be done with the terraforming. It takes 150 years for the people left on the earth that was to get organized and another 25 years to scrounge up enough resources to build a couple of ships and send a stream of spies over the next couple of decades, so spies from the earth that was would have been infiltrating the new earths for about 25 years. I think that would be a reasonable scenario.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 12:24 PM

I think we will all see earth in the future, when the series actually does continue.

I like these idea. Here are some to add:

1. Earth has been taken over and infected with a reaver prion.
2. Earth and solar planets have evolved to a much higher tech and are caught in civil war
3. Earth is complete unpopulated except for a few total loonies

But let's look at it as the allegory is intended. There is a reason firefly is a western. Firefly and it's precedence, Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star, are taking the notion proposed in the original star trek to it's logical conclusion.

Space, the final frontier. Okay, we all know, and then we remember how star trek the old generation lost much of that idea as time went on, and STNG seemed to have never heard it at all.

The implication here is that when space travel begins it will open a new world of adventure, and free us from an overregulated society in a downward spiral of decay.

Also, a western is an allegory for the old west, obviously, but this means colonial america. It's analogous for a reason: The same sort of situation is coming when we finally settle space. So this situation will probably resemble that situation.

So what is earth? Earth is Europe. It's the home we all left. The solar planets, also terraformed would be the colonies. New, yes, not Europe, but made to more or less clone Europe. The Alliance is a new govt., be it mexico, louisiana, or the union, probably the latter.
Reavers alas, are very politically incorrect indians. Which is fine, no allegory has to be perfect, I would certainly get very annoyed if I were faced with large amounts of bleeding heart "reaver's aren't bad they're just drawn that way" dribble.

So, here are some thing we know about Earth by analogy:

1. Earth is over-regulated. It's society strangles the freedoms of the people in it, and makes the freewheeling lifestyle we love impossible.
2. Earth is probably fragmented as it is now into a large number of warring countries probably caught in a genocidal war. Or two or three. Remember Europe was caught in endless war long before WWI.
3. Earth is afflicted with bad religion. It probably has some overarching religious leader, something akin to "His Divine Shadow" for you Lexx fans. It would have to be a new religion, which has swept through and replaced Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but based on the same bible. If it weren't so, it'd probably end up offending everyone.
4. Earth is still exporting people to the new worlds. This is where those 30M colonists come from (lost colony at roanoke on steroids) and since Earth does have a vested interest in getting rid of people, and probably in the success of the alliance, they would probably not let their people know. So more folks would still be shipping off to join new colonies.

I doubt Earth is full of criminals. By this model, criminals got sent to Australia Planet, which is out there somewhere.
I doubt Earth was destroyed. I think this is a story that they tell people to keep them from coming back, because they really don't want more people coming to Earth. Earth is up to it's ears in people.

At least I hope it's not "Earth is dead" - this is a really boring idea.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 1:54 PM

DRROB

I like the ambiguity of "Earth that was"... it's certainly never referred to as "Earth that is..." whatever happened on earth... the Earth that 'they' knew is long gone, long past at least if not 'gone' altogether... the place wouldn't be the same by the time the generation ships landed in the new planets.

It could still be there... lost in the black and resembling nothing like the world of Firefly... a great lost Atlantis (ala Galactica) or a powerful ally/enemy in future stories... it's really wide open.

"Guess you broke into the wrong rec room."

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 4:46 PM

Look guys, we've seen no evidence for faster than light travel, at all. I don’t know how far away the solar system of Firefly is, but I do know that it couldn’t be all that close to us. That means it takes quite a while. Odds are a trip to earth that was and back would take so long that when you got back everyone and everything you knew would be gone.

Time dilation might make it so that you don’t loose much time (though apparently an entire generation was forced to grow up in transit the first time around) but it’s still losing your world.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 5:11 PM

No one would want to go back to earth but if there are people still left on earth, they would definitely want to get off. Since earth probably doesn't have the resources to move everyone off, the best hope they have would be to send spies to infiltrate the new earths in hopes of building up a fleet to move the survivors from the earth that was to the new earths, it may be a long shot and it may take hundreds of years but it's better than just withering and dying on the wasteland that is earth.

About criminals being used as cheap labor to terraform the new earths. I can definitely see that happening but I also think that they would just be killed off after the terraforming and possibly city building gets done since there’s really no reason to keep them alive.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 7:06 PM

Okay, I need to put on my geek hat. My really geeky hat.

1. I don't believe in time dilation. The relative movement of space at that speed would cause far more severe problems long before you got to c, but the solution to that would be to simply move space.

2. Without doing this it's still very possible. It would take about 10 years to cross systems. The actual limiting factor is not c, it's g. The G-force created by the accelleration would crush the human inhabitants to jelly, even if spread out over the entire time.

3. In 10 years it can be some with some sort of suspended animation. Remember, SA is essential to space travel. It ups your life expectancy, your g-force tollerance, but far more importantly, it downs your nutrient intake. generations of humans would starve to death long before they reached the next star system unless their ship was a sizeable planetoid, which would make it rather fuel innefficient.

4. Criminals once moved are not necessarily criminals. There are a multitude of reasons for this. They are no longer in the restricting environment. Stealing to survive in ireland made you a criminal and in australia you didn't need to. Being a religious dissident in england was a crime for the puritans, until they came to the US. Also situation is bound to change most people.

5. Sure, they would keep coming, and will probably be arriving with a few years delay, even if they left 100 years ago.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 7:57 PM

Well they do have artificial gravity so it's possible they have a similar technology that can negate the G-force created when ships are accelerated.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 8:05 PM

possibly. Artificial gravity can be created with a clear invocation of spin and accelleration though. This isn't gone into in television usually because of convenience, but I guess the point is it can be done without the integration of an antigravity unit which would be necessary to decrease the effects of gravity. Suspended animation of the sort I'm talking about though is already possible, and would only require judicious application of existing technology.

If they mentioned an anti-grav unit on Serenity and I missed it, please correct me. I tend to mis things like that because they're like "for the piece of mind of the audience, the rest of this movie will not be conducted in Polish"

I'm going to kill them all. That oughtta distract 'em.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 8:35 PM

Firefly/Serenity is pretty science light. They didn't lose artificial gravity in "Out of Gas" and for some reason Vera can penetrate the hull of spaceships.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005 9:26 PM