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Originally posted by UFO:
Yes, I'd like more science in this show, but not necessarily the hard science that the die hard sci-fi fans are asking for. I know it's a western in space, but I wish they'd balance the western and the science. Everything about the show screams western...EVERYTHING.

Their ship even has an old wooden table and chair to eat on. Is here a wood stove in the corner too?

I like the show, like the characters, but this is so close to being a western I'm afraid I'll lose interest pretty quick.

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Originally posted by Delvo:
Star Trek has hurt science fiction in many ways, but getting people used to "scientific" science fiction isn't one of them; Trek's as unscientific as it could possibly be.

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Originally posted by Ringwraith:

I don't watch TV for science lessons. If I want science lessons I'll watch "The Daily Planet" (formerly @discovery.ca). I watch fiction TV because I want escapism and the science/tech of the shows shouldn't override the story/characterization.

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Originally posted by pedme84:

joss (and tim) is (are) not the only writer(s) to use anime. he's just the most fun

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Originally posted by TheNightman:

The main character himself, as a soldier on the losing side of a decisive conflict, reminds me of Captain Harlock in the movie Arcadia of My Youth, licenced in this country by Animeigo ( http://www.animeigo.com). In that one, Harlock started out as the captain of a ship of Earth forces, which lost to an expanding alien empire, a situation not unlike that of the Battle of Serenity.

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Originally posted by Matt1:
Who honestly cares if the thrusters are engaged at a contradictory angle to the ships velocity?

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Originally posted by TheNightman:


I find that kind of ironic because of the important aspect in which Joss chose to place the science above the science fiction; the sound, or rather the silence, of space.

If you look at any other space opera show, especially Star Trek, what do you hear when you see outside scenes. You hear the engines, you hear the lasers blast, and you hear the ships explode. Theaters put a lot of money into making those explosions loud for their audience.

But what do we know about space? That's right, it's empty of matter, or so nearly so. And since sound needs air to vibrate through...space is silent.

Joss Whelon's show is the first to be true to that fundimental fact, and even play off it for his scenes. I salute him for sacrificing the technobabble for the 'real thing.'

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But I just keep getting lots of questions popping up. things like, it's ok to come up with a cool western style motif for say one of the border planets for instance, but why all of them?

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And why is it so alien to have energy weapons on ships the size of skyscrapers that can travel all around the star system?

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It's difficult to enjoy the characterisation and cool one-liners when someone fires a lever-action shotgun inside a spaceship.

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It's hard to marvel at the swashbuckling nature of a train heist when the ship has both engines firing full blast downwards creating hundreds of tons of down-thrust while hovering 20 feet over a train that should surely have been blown away!

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The problem isn't technobabble, it's that they are asking someone with my limited intelligence to believe something which is, considering the shows setting, imposible!

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I remember nearly hyper-ventilating when I saw an Alliance Cruiser fire a laser beam to destroy the derelict at the end of the 'Bushwhacked' episode. 'A last' I thought, something realistic!

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But alas, if you look closely you'll see it was probably just a ball of fuel (same green stuff that comes out of the back of the Firefly on full burn).

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And since the Firefly is probably using some sort of space-fuel-kerosene (presumably in keeping with the western motif), I had to conclude that a space cruiser the size of three Empire State buildings was only able to defend itself with a sort of Kerosene Cannon!

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As a reviewer, I get very worried if all I seem to be able to concentrate on is how unrealistic the show is.

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Originally posted by Delvo:

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But I just keep getting lots of questions popping up. things like, it's ok to come up with a cool western style motif for say one of the border planets for instance, but why all of them?

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This is already covered in other threads; these people live under similar circumstnaces and come from similar backgrounds.

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Everyone’s circumstances are different and we all come from different backgrounds. We all have different standards and we all want different things. To assume that all people would behave the same in all the towns on all the frontier planets is percular.

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Originally posted by Delvo:

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And why is it so alien to have energy weapons on ships the size of skyscrapers that can travel all around the star system?

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There's no connection between those things! It's like asking why we can put a man on the moon but not cure old age.

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The Firefly space-scape is not one of peace and light. Everyone carries firearms. If they have the technology to do all the other things (ie. fly between planets, have gravity that works even when all the ships systems are off etc.) then they would be able to defend themselves more effectively – they certainly have the motivation to try!

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Originally posted by Delvo:
The reason why energy weapons aren't a very good idea is that they drain lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of energy before they'd have enough "oomph" to really do any damage, and are ineffective when the distance and/or relative speed between shooter and target is to great, because they can't re-aim as they go.

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You are completely wrong. The US government has different ideas. They are currently planning to add laser weapons to aircraft in the next few years. See the CNN ( http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/09/25/laser.weapon/index.html) and Janes Weekly ( http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/news/jdw/jdw020809_1_n.shtml) . If people on Earth are doing this now, then it’s unreasonable to assume that technology will have regressed so much in the future. Such a thing has not previously happened in Earth history, indeed conflict has had the effect of increasing military innovation.

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Originally posted by Delvo:

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It's difficult to enjoy the characterisation and cool one-liners when someone fires a lever-action shotgun inside a spaceship.

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Why? If you're saying they'd blow out the hull, why must you insist on such a blowoutable hull when there's no scientific reason why it has to be and the show hasn't told us so? (Or is it something else you're objecting to?)

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Yes, I assume that the spaceship hulls are a lot thicker than would normally be needed for space-travel. My point was that a projectile (or lots of projectiles if fired from a shotgun) would ricochet around the inside of the spaceship and blast anything in it’s path. It would be extremely destructive to fire a gun inside any metallic enclosure (even assuming that the hull was capable of withstanding the impact).

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Originally posted by Delvo:

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It's hard to marvel at the swashbuckling nature of a train heist when the ship has both engines firing full blast downwards creating hundreds of tons of down-thrust while hovering 20 feet over a train that should surely have been blown away!

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No it wouldn't have, surely! And how do we know? Because we saw it, and that didn't happen!

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{Sigh}

Yes, but we also saw that the engines propelled the ship (you did see that didn’t you?!), surely you saw that the ship passed over and accross the train too, you surely also saw the engines turn around to fire downwards when the ship was hovering above the train. Perhaps it was doing that for cosmetic reasons. Maybe Wash was just showing off. “Hey look at me, I can turn my engines around!”

My point was that the writers hadn’t thought carefully about the technology that they were expecting (some of) us to take for granted. It the Firefly can hover above a train why have the engines fired up at all? There are a great many people out there (an awful lot more picky than me) who find that sort of oversight in their sci fi, irritating. I was simply voicing an opinion that the writers are ignoring hard sci fi fans and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

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Originally posted by Delvo:
And we have no right to say otherwise unless they provide us with the weights and speeds involved and tell us what kind of technology the train and the ship's engines are using and how much force is moving where (especially the forces operating between the train and the track and what makes the train move). Otherwise, we're just playing with assumptions WE MADE UP.

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We have every right to say otherwise. The shows are written for us, the viewing audience!

I wasn't so much playing with assumptions as LOOKING AT THE TV SCREEN!

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Originally posted by Delvo:
All we really know there is that the train would have experience no more draft on one side than the other, which is the main souce of wind tossing when it happens to real objects anyway (not two winds blowing on the same thing from opposite sides)!

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Eh? What about the few thousand tons of down-force from above?

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Originally posted by Delvo:

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The problem isn't technobabble, it's that they are asking someone with my limited intelligence to believe something which is, considering the shows setting, imposible!

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No, they're just asking you not to invent ways to claim that it's impossible when science doesn't dictate so and they haven't specified anything self-contradictory.

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But that’s my whole point!!! It IS self-contradictory. There are rudimentary laws of physics that can’t be broken (at least not by a bunch of futuristic cowboys) and the whole point of this threads concern the realistic portrayal of a story set in the future.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, and my rudimentary knowledge of physics, the show contradicts itself and asks us (ok, may be from the hostility of the posts it’s just me) to believe something which is unrealistic.

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Originally posted by Delvo:

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I remember nearly hyper-ventilating when I saw an Alliance Cruiser fire a laser beam to destroy the derelict at the end of the 'Bushwhacked' episode. 'A last' I thought, something realistic!

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No, just something that years of ANTIrealistic scifi has trained you to accept and expect despite its mindblowing ANTIrealism. (See above about energy weapons; they're not a realistic prediction about future technology but a holdover from certain decades of the 19th and 20th centuries when people got overexcited about certain discoveries of "invisible forces" controlling the universe and figured those forces were the future of EVERYTHING without giving the situation any real thought.)

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There isn’t much I can say to that. Other than it’s a very strange thing to say.

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Originally posted by Delvo:

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But alas, if you look closely you'll see it was probably just a ball of fuel (same green stuff that comes out of the back of the Firefly on full burn).

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So it's got to be the same thing because it glows and is a similar color, but the SHOW is the one being scientificly unrealistic here? And even if it is the same thing (engine exhaust), how about if that's the exhaust of a MISSILE, which is a far better space weapon than a laser anyway, and which must be propelled by an engine which would be likely in the real world to use similar technology to the ships? Or, if you want high-tech-sounding weapons, how about if it's a blob of high-energy plasma, visible because it's leaking radiation on the way to the target? Nobody specified what it has to be but you...

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Wow, you are really getting off on yourself here huh? The ball of fuel is a hypothesis based on an observation of the fuel from the Firefly and other ships. It seems to behave in the same way. A simple observation!

I guess the rest of your rant was just aimed at antagonism. For goodness sake Delvo, you shouldn’t be threatened by people with ideas or beliefs that are different than yourself. Intollerance is immature.

I simply feel that the Western motif is limiting the writers in their ability to tell a sci fi story. I enjoy reading everyone's comments about it (except the insulting ones). But you (and some others) seem to take personally, anything in Firefly which is considered critical.

Why?



SadGeezers Guide to Firefly
http://www.sadgeezer.com/firefly

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Originally posted by Thegn:
Actually that's not what I was talking about at all. I actually like the Western motif of the show, and the fact that you don't, I think, has more to do with prejudice against Western style shows then insulted intelligence.....

I think you should take another look at Firefly. I'm not suggesting that you will like it one way or another; but if the western motif is insulting your intelligence, then I think you've grossly missed the point. And if you stop and consider what is actually being said with that western motif, you might realize that Firefly does have a reason for it, and you might decide it makes sense.

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The Firefly spacescape is not one of peace and light. Everyone carries firearms. If they have the technology to do all the other things (ie. fly between planets, have gravity that works even when all the ships systems are off etc.) then they would be able to defend themselves more effectively – they certainly have the motivation to try!

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You are completely wrong. The US government has different ideas. They are currently planning to add laser weapons to aircraft in the next few years...

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If people on Earth are doing this now, then it’s unreasonable to assume that technology will have regressed so much in the future.

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Yes, I assume that the spaceship hulls are a lot thicker than would normally be needed for spacetravel. My point was that a projectile (or lots of projectiles if fired from a shotgun) would ricochet around the inside of the spaceship and blast anything in it’s path. It would be extremely destructive to fire a gun inside any metallic enclosure (even assuming that the hull was capable of withstanding the impact).

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Yes, but we also saw that the engines propelled the ship (you did see that didn’t you?!), surely you saw that the ship passed over and accross the train too, you surely also saw the engines turn around to fire downwards when the ship was hovering above the train.

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I remember nearly hyperventilating when I saw an Alliance Cruiser fire a laser beam to destroy the derelict at the end of the 'Bushwhacked' episode. 'A last' I thought, something realistic!

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The ball of fuel is a hypothesis based on an observation of the fuel from the Firefly and other ships. It seems to behave in the same way. A simple observation!

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Wow, you are really getting off on yourself here huh?... you shouldn’t be threatened by people with ideas or beliefs that are different than yourself. Intollerance is immature... you (and some others) seem to take personally, anything in Firefly which is considered critical.
Why?

[moved:]I enjoy reading everyone's comments about it (except the insulting ones).

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Originally posted by Ringwraith:
Also, did the Star Trek franchise ruin sci-fi for us all? I like Star Trek (okay, Voyager belongs on its own special level of hell) but because the franchise has been seen by so many people and been on TV so long that it has warped some people's views on other sci-fi shows. To these people, Star Trek is the be all and end all of science fiction.

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Originally posted by TheNightman:

I find that kind of ironic because of the important aspect in which Joss chose to place the science above the science fiction; the sound, or rather the silence, of space.

If you look at any other space opera show, especially Star Trek, what do you hear when you see outside scenes. You hear the engines, you hear the lasers blast, and you hear the ships explode. Theaters put a lot of money into making those explosions loud for their audience.

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