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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I am interested in seeing the progress of this process.

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I had gotten the impression from the timeline I had seen that you had added timeline info as the series progressed, and then more after the DVDs were released.
After all that, more was added after BDM came out.

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It seemed that the info which had already gelled from the series ended up with more weighted validity than some of the newer data from BDM, even if they conflicted.

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I had tried to give equal weight to all the data available - that I could find. for instance, when Mal and Operative (in script) state River has been aboard 8 months in BDM, and River is the same age as she was in the cryo-box, that all seemed to reinforce each other - and when other series data added up to being more than a year of Verse time, I conjured the 3 corroberating data might have greater validity than the disparate pieces of data which added together conflicted.

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You posted links to 2 versions of the timeline I worked out, based upon 2 different assumptions. I tried to keep the posts as minimal as possible, to keep it readable and fairly clear in this format. Most cites were not included in these posts, unless brief. Better cites and more detailed info was in the discussion thread leading up to those, and that thread is:

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=4&t=31980

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I have recently read that Derrial Book was the name of a man our "Book" had killed, and he took the identity. It also metnioned his earlier name. I do not recall where it was posted, but somewhere here. It was sourced as from and interview with Ron Glass, IIRC. Perhaps somebody could expand on that.

edit: it is in thread 36950 in the Episode forum.

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Serenity bluray has an Alliance database.

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List Mal's dob as 20 Sep 2468 (apparently a joke regarding soembody in the props dept born 20 Sep 1968)

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- is Mal really 49 in the show?

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Also Zoe dob 15 Feb 2484,

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Inara 14 Oct 2489,

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Kaylee 2 Jul 2497 location Kowlonshi,

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Simon Nov 2490,

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and River at the academy 2515-2517.

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Maybe Kowlonshi and Kowlon Fed Base are different ways of saying the same place.

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Originally posted by Almanac:

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Serenity bluray has an Alliance database.

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I'd seen that advertised, but wasn't quite sure what it would entail...

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List Mal's dob as 20 Sep 2468 (apparently a joke regarding soembody in the props dept born 20 Sep 1968)

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Does it say that in the database itself?

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
One question I would ask is how do you figure Simon would say he and River have been aboard for 2 months in Safe, if the Pilot was in May and Safe was in October?

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I must admit to an unfair advantage of perspective over you. I had the luxury of seeing the whole picture, the full canvas, instead of scrounging for scraps of data piecemeal like you had to. This gives me the proverbial "fresh look" or "new eyes" which I know drastically changes the view.

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I read that earlier thread you linked to, but not much of your analysis of central time references was there - must be on another board I haven't seen.

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If I wasn't clear about how I went to work on the conflicts, I tried to find how many of the references DID or COULD agree with each other, and tried to see if there were only a few that REALLY conflicted with almost everything else. If several different groups of agreed references were in conflict with one assumption, then I draped suspicion upon the MOST conflicting reference or assumption.

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I know many have discounted the Mal line in BDM about 8 months. If that were the sole reference, I would be less assured it was valid. But BDM script also has Operative saying it was 8 months ago that River escaped the Institute. This is several weeks before Lilac (Mr Universe said several weeks of subliminal Oaty Bar broadwaves), and the escape on Osiris was prior to the Pilot on Persephone - perhaps a few days or a week between escape and Pilot. Also, Pilot script says River-in-the-box is 17, and BDM script says River in BDM is 17 except for the escape scene, where she is 16. Because these 2 scripts are written by Joss, I felt they conveyed what he thought and intended, before time and budget constraints caused him to trim lines from filming. This means that all alone, here are 3 references agreeing with each other, but disagreeing with the "more than 1 year between Pilot and BDM" scenario.

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To be clear, I do not intend to convert you to my viewpoint. I do conjure you are trying to make your work the best that YOU want it to be. If my posts, or ideas I have mentioned, help you to explore various viewpoints, and help you to iron out conflicts which you yourself percieve, then I am happy to help out in that way. And you might also help me see things I did not notice before.

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Originally posted by Almanac:

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
One question I would ask is how do you figure Simon would say he and River have been aboard for 2 months in Safe, if the Pilot was in May and Safe was in October?

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Easy...he only says that in the script.


Edgar Governo
Historian of Things That Never Were
http://www.mts.net/~arphaxad/history.html

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Originally posted by Almanac:

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I know many have discounted the Mal line in BDM about 8 months. If that were the sole reference, I would be less assured it was valid. But BDM script also has Operative saying it was 8 months ago that River escaped the Institute. This is several weeks before Lilac (Mr Universe said several weeks of subliminal Oaty Bar broadwaves), and the escape on Osiris was prior to the Pilot on Persephone - perhaps a few days or a week between escape and Pilot. Also, Pilot script says River-in-the-box is 17, and BDM script says River in BDM is 17 except for the escape scene, where she is 16. Because these 2 scripts are written by Joss, I felt they conveyed what he thought and intended, before time and budget constraints caused him to trim lines from filming. This means that all alone, here are 3 references agreeing with each other, but disagreeing with the "more than 1 year between Pilot and BDM" scenario.

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To me, though, the idea in the film's script that River is 16 when she escapes, but 17 in the movie, reinforces the thought of Serenity as a "Season 2" story in which River is a year older than she was in the pilot, which I also assume takes place soon after the escape (but not in such a way that River turns 17 while in cryo).

In much the same way that the story of the escape itself has changed (what's shown in the movie isn't very similar to what Simon describes in the pilot, though the novelisation by Keith R.A. DeCandido endeavours to iron this out), the timeline of River's age has changed--at least to the extent that Joss Whedon really thinks about these things.

Looking at the other thread you posted, it also feels like some of the explanations are a stretch:

-Inara in "The Train Job?" Well, time flies when you're having fun, so she doesn't really mean eight months.
-Inara in "Bushwhacked?" Well, Harken is just wrong, and she's humouring him.
-Mal in "Trash?" Well, even a brief marriage feels like a drag, so he really means a shorter span of time.

That already seems like a lot of rationalisation just to make "eight months" true, and all three of those rely on assumptions you have to make about the characters which aren't depicted onscreen. By contrast, Mal confuses weeks for months at the beginning of Serenity, so there's a clear precedent for discounting another time reference by the same character within the same story.

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:

I know many have discounted the Mal line in BDM about 8 months. If that were the sole reference, I would be less assured it was valid. But BDM script also has Operative saying it was 8 months ago that River escaped the Institute. This is several weeks before Lilac (Mr Universe said several weeks of subliminal Oaty Bar broadwaves), and the escape on Osiris was prior to the Pilot on Persephone - perhaps a few days or a week between escape and Pilot. Also, Pilot script says River-in-the-box is 17, and BDM script says River in BDM is 17 except for the escape scene, where she is 16. Because these 2 scripts are written by Joss, I felt they conveyed what he thought and intended, before time and budget constraints caused him to trim lines from filming. This means that all alone, here are 3 references agreeing with each other, but disagreeing with the "more than 1 year between Pilot and BDM" scenario.

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Originally posted by asarian:

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:

I know many have discounted the Mal line in BDM about 8 months. If that were the sole reference, I would be less assured it was valid. But BDM script also has Operative saying it was 8 months ago that River escaped the Institute. This is several weeks before Lilac (Mr Universe said several weeks of subliminal Oaty Bar broadwaves), and the escape on Osiris was prior to the Pilot on Persephone - perhaps a few days or a week between escape and Pilot. Also, Pilot script says River-in-the-box is 17, and BDM script says River in BDM is 17 except for the escape scene, where she is 16. Because these 2 scripts are written by Joss, I felt they conveyed what he thought and intended, before time and budget constraints caused him to trim lines from filming. This means that all alone, here are 3 references agreeing with each other, but disagreeing with the "more than 1 year between Pilot and BDM" scenario.

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It's rare, but I find your logic, and methodology, totally compelling this time. :) Especially I feel you're on the right track with your methodology. We've gone over the timeline many times, and encountered several bits of conflicting info. The only reasonably, sound thing to do then, IMHO, is what you're doing here: weigh the importance of each piece, and balance the things that add up against those that don't.

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And in light of the above, I feel a comment like Kaylee's "Going on a year now" to have less weight than the other things you mention. I mean, ask folks when the BDM was shown on the silver screen, and you'll find people answer something like: "4 years ago." My point being, when answering such questions, hardly anyone does the exact math (people just quickly subtract the number of the year of the event from the current one, and are done with it; or just do approximations, like almost a year, like 8 months, becomes a year).


--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
You say you ordered them by production sequence once that became known. And then the DVDs came out, rearranging the sequence of episodes - that must have been some work to rearrange the timeline for those last 4 episodes as well.

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jewelstaitefan: Serenity bluray has an Alliance database.

Almanac: I'd seen that advertised, but wasn't quite sure what it would entail...

jewelstaitefan: List Mal's dob as 20 Sep 2468 (apparently a joke regarding soembody in the props dept born 20 Sep 1968)

Almanac: Does it say that in the database itself?

jewelstaitefan: it said the dob, the joke info was what I'd read elsewhere, numerous sources.

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jewelstaitefan: - is Mal really 49 in the show?

Almanac: I don't think so...but then, the movie shows that as the age for "Malcom" Reynolds, whoever he is.

jewelstaitefan: I would tend to discount Mal being 49. If Nathan, a few years younger than Gina, is playing 49, then Book must be about 100 played by Ron. (120 years is median life expectancy in Joss' verse).

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jewelstaitefan: Kaylee 2 Jul 2497 location Kowlonshi,

Almanac: Matches my timeline again.

"Kowlonshi" is new to me.

jewelstaitefan: Maybe Kowlonshi and Kowlon Fed Base are different ways of saying the same place.

Almanac: Where is "Kowlon Fed Base" from...?

jewelstaitefan: I thought Kowlon Fed Base was where, in Safe, they were to drop off Badger's money from the cattle proceeds - from Jiangyin. Do I recall wrong?

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Almanac: Unfortunately, I don't currently own a Blu-Ray player.

However, if someone with Blu-Ray access who was reading this thread happened to take screencaps of the Alliance Database and emailed them to me for reference purposes (at the email address listed on the Firefly Timeline), I'd be forever grateful...

jewelstaitefan: I did not have a bluray player, until a few hours after I bought bluray Serenity and then bluray Firefly.

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Originally posted by Almanac:
Would all of you reading this prefer that I add the information from "Float Out" first, right away, or wait until I also have the four short stories from Still Flying--or perhaps even until after The Shepherd's Tale has come out--before giving the timeline a much more thorough expansion?

Edgar Governo
Historian of Things That Never Were
http://www.mts.net/~arphaxad/history.html

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Originally posted by two:
For estimating the date of Float Out, . . .

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. . . Baby girl Wash's birth does NOT need be less than 280 days from Daddy Wash's death.

And because nobody from Serenity showed at the christening of Jetwash, I'm thinking years and years could have passed. The woman looks ancient compared to Zoe in Serenity: Better Days. That might not only be different artist's style; it might be deliberate.

Remember, it is science fiction. Unlike today, in the distant future it is impossible to know how many months after Wash's death his child was conceived. Sperm banks exist for people working in a high radiation environments like Space Pilots. (Please don't believe a load of magic BS that space piloting is hypothetically safe because of scientific progress. The radiation exposure time for Wash could be 100,000 hours.) If Wash wanted healthy children, he had the good sense to put them in the freezer. Zoe is living in the same nasty environment as Wash. She might also have taken precautions with her eggs, not wanting to keep all her eggs in one basket, so to speak.

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Originally posted by Almanac:
If people have any thoughts on it before I draw my own conclusions, feel free to offer your input here. Anyone else should watch out for the spoilers that entails...

Edgar Governo
Historian of Things That Never Were
http://www.mts.net/~arphaxad/history.html] What is very odd about the timeline in Float Out is that nobody from Serenity came to the Jetwash christening. That is so wrong.

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At least Mal should be there with Zoe. And the woman doesn't look like Zoe. Blaming the artist can explain that away. Since there is only one black woman actress on Firefly, any black woman in the comics has to be Zoe, right?

Reading Float Out is more fun if you entertain the idea that the pregnant woman was not Zoe. That makes Wash a hot pilot and a dirty cheating dog! Zoe would have killed him if he had lived.

It also makes Float Out a Whedonesque tragedy -- Wash has his child, but Zoe never will.

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The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Not so strange. If that's Zoe, and I think it is, then it's possible she goes on walk-about (fly-about) as she's trying to come to terms with Wash's death and her old life as she prepares to have her girl. And if she's not with Serenity anymore, the crew of Serenity may not have heard of this memorial or been invited.

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Single motherhood for Zoe doesn't mix well with Zoe staying on Serenity.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Hmm. It could have happened only two months after Simon and River came aboard, after all we have to remember that we only saw like half a season, and Trash and others were towards the end of the run. If we say that the entire run of the series occurred somewhere between an estimated 6 and 8 months, then the fifth episode out of 14 would be slightly more than a third of the way through.

Though I swear I remember hearing something that dated OMR as five months after the pilot.

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