Who Proof's Joss' scripts? by Poster Nutbag

FIREFLY EPISODE DISCUSSIONS

Who Proof's Joss' scripts?

POSTED BY: POSTER NUTBAG
UPDATED: Thursday, December 19, 2002 06:57
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VIEWED: 5021
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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 7:48 AM

OK, before I go any further, this is not a negative review of the episode... in fact, I'm not really sure it's any sort of review at all. It's more of a comment, albeit somewhat negative, about a specific line in "Objects in Space" that had me thinking a lot this morning on my drive to work. Seems to me, this is probably the best place to bring up the subject for discussion. Ya think?

On the whole, I quite enjoyed this episode. It wasn't too rich in the funny (for a Joss-written episode) unless Wash was in the scene, and talking. But it was very rich with interesting and captivating dialogue, typical of Joss' style.

But there was one line in the episode (oddly enough, it was the line that got the biggest laugh in our viewing group) that really bothered me. In any other show, from any other writer, I might have expected to let this one go, but coming from a Mutant Enemy production, and especially coming from the hand o' Joss, it just seems odd.

The dialogue went something like this (from memory)...

Wash: This sounds like something outta science fiction.

Zoe: Honey, you live on a spaceship.

Seems like an innocent little moment, don't it? But it rubbed me wrong when I saw it last night (taped from last Friday), and I couldn't understand why.

Then, this morning, it hit me. Duh.

Zoe's response, "you live on a spaceship" was ridiculous and completely out of character for nearly anyone living in the 26th century, as depicted in the Firefly 'verse. Living on a spaceship has been, thus far, depicted as something that isn't all that uncommon in Zoe's world. And while, here in 2002 c.e., living on a spaceship is the makings of science fiction, it would not be so in the 2500's.

Imagine, for comparison's sake, the conversation taking place today, only replacing Zoe's line using a situation that is commonplace today, but would have been considered Sci-Fi in years past. Take cars, cell phones, personal computers, the internet, or any other thing that we take for granted in today's world...

WASH: That sounds like science fiction!

ZOE: Honey, you were just communicating with someone across the world on a computer!

-OR-

ZOE: Honey, you just flew across the ocean in a plane in a few hours!

See how ridiculous those sound to us in today's world? But those same things, the computer, the plane, were all the makings of science fiction until the last century! Likewise, living on a spaceship, while certainly the fodder for sci fi in the early 21st century, would be just as ridiculous to say in the 26th century.

So I wonder, did anyone else notice this? Did anyone else find themselves bothered by this logical inconsistancy?

Furthermore, I wonder who proofs Joss' scripts? I mean, we all know ("we" maning those of us who read Jose Molina's posts on the process) that after a writer finishes each draft, Joss proofs it and makes comments. But who proofs Joss' work? Normally, I wouldn't even care or notice, but let's be honest: as wonderful as Joss' (and his team's) work is, he (and they) are human, and not infallible. I'd think someone else would have found this line out of place in the Firefly universe, and would have red-marked it for alteration.

Or maybe I am just a picky little bastardo.

Comments? Questions? Concerns?

El Señor Poster Nutbag

Trained gorillas. Workable prototype jetpacks, and chicks, chicks, chicks. I know that's the action I signed on for.

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 8:08 AM

RADEGUND

Interesting point. I hadn't thought of it that way. The line doesn't bother me personally, but it's an interesting topic of speculation: what would be the "science fiction" of the future?

Psychic abilities, evidently. Teleportation/transporters. Whatever it is that they don't have yet.

Radegund

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 8:37 AM

JOHNNYREB

Zoe's Response did seem to me a little odd, but since these kinds of flaws aren't the norm, I just kicked up the suspension of disbelief a bit. I think she may have been trying to communicate that point. That until "recently" spaceships were sci-fi too--like if she said sarcastically, "Honey, You drive a horseless chariot." OR "Honey, you look at glass and plastic and know what people in the next village are thinking." In other words, "Honey, The life that we lead was sci-fi 700 years ago. Now it's reality, so be careful not to dismiss it as science fiction." It was still pretty odd though. Thankfully she didn't turn to the camera and address the audience at home!

Long live Firefly!!!!!!

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 10:31 AM

BIGDADDYESQ

It's called irony, my apparently sense-of-humor-challenged friends. You'll find it under "I" -- even in the kiddie dictionary.

--d--

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 11:06 AM

SNOWSPINNER

I think it's also that modern technology wasn't really prefigured in a genre with lots of conventions... I mean, the spaceship based sci-fi show is a demonstrable genre, with lots of familiar conventions... one of which is the spaceship. There weren't comparable genres about horseless carriages, or computers that we could meaningfully talk about our lives having become like.

I don't have a hard time believing that 26th century people are still aware of old genres. And that they recognize that there was a science fiction genre that dealt with spaceships.

As such, the comment didn't seem ludicrous to me.

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 11:30 AM

JOHNNYREB

I didn't say that it was ludicrous. I said it was a little odd. If Zoe was a real person living in today's world, and she said "Honey, we live aboard a submarine," that would suggest that the person she was talking to was aware that Jules Verne (sp?)considered submarines to be worthy of science fiction. It would also suggest that she considered the person that she was talking to to be smart enough to know that she was pointing out that irony. It would also suggest that they were familiar with 19th century conventions. Certainly it's possible, there's just a certain amount of oddness about it...

LONG LIVE FIREFLY!

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 11:36 AM

QUEENTIYE

"Honey, you live on a spaceship" meant (to me), Honey, there was a time such a thing was considered sci-fi...no reason to rule out this as sci-fi now..."

QT

QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 12:04 PM

SNOWSPINNER

The thing is, Verne, though a writer, was somewhat unique in his time... there wasn't the volume of genre there that there is now in terms of sci-fi. It wasn't an established genre.

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 4:54 PM

EVANS

Quote:
Originally posted by QueenTiye:
"Honey, you live on a spaceship" meant (to me), Honey, there was a time such a thing was considered sci-fi...no reason to rule out this as sci-fi now..."

I think yours is the best notion.

m.
------------------------------------------------
"But ... not boring, like she made it sound." Wash, in ARIEL
"None of it means a damn thing." Mal, in OBJECTS IN SPACE

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 5:10 PM

NOVAGRASS

Quote:
Originally posted by Poster Nutbag:

But there was one line in the episode (oddly enough, it was the line that got the biggest laugh in our viewing group) that really bothered me. In any other show, from any other writer, I might have expected to let this one go, but coming from a Mutant Enemy production, and especially coming from the hand o' Joss, it just seems odd.

The dialogue went something like this (from memory)...

Wash: This sounds like something outta science fiction.

Zoe: Honey, you live on a spaceship.

Seems like an innocent little moment, don't it? But it rubbed me wrong when I saw it last night (taped from last Friday), and I couldn't understand why.

I did not like this part at all... i think I mentioned it in my review. It was so unnecessarily self-refrential... and when I heard that line, it nearly ruined the episode for me.

I can justify it for one simple reason: Wash seems totally confused as to why she mentioned the space ship in reference to science fiction... the full dialogue goes...

Wash: It sounds like something out of science fiction.
Zoe: Honey, you live on a space ship...
Wash: Yeah? (as in, "what's you're point you silly woman?")

Perhaps Zoe is just well versed in early science fiction... Like an old sci-fi movie freak or something to that effect.

I also find it interesting that psychicism (yay, let's all make up words!) is considered science fiction in the future, as opposed to pure fantasy. That's another reason why I can forgive the comment, I guess. Now, I'd like to see MORE of the pop culture of the Firefly universe(i.e. Movies, TV, Sci-fi, or whatever equivalent there is in their future)... it could be a very cool little way of adding to the scope of the 'verse.

--Dylan Palmer, Pretentious Bastard at Large--

"Oh my god, I'm a hack!" - Joss Whedon

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 6:05 PM

SUINEGAGPF

My take on that line was that Zoe was implying that it was out of the ordinary for people to live on spaceships. (Afterall they went to the trouble to terraform several planets, why would you want to live on a spaceship?) In which case, I thought the point that she was trying to make to Wash was that since their circumstances were out of the ordinary to begin with, why was it so difficult to believe that River had the ability to read minds.

Just a thought.

BTW, you are aware that people have been living in space for the past few decades, right? Skylab, Mir, the International Space Station. It's not just science fiction anymore.

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 6:32 PM

HJERMSTED

I think Zoe and Wash's "Sounds like something out of science fiction" exchange is less out-of-place and/or self-referential than it sounds.

In Firefly's version of the future there are:

No aliens.
No time travel.
No clone armies.
No funny robots.
No crossable dimensional barriers.
No warp speed.
And, possibly up until that point, no full strength telepaths.

Thus all of the above would still be science fiction to the people of Firefly's future era.

Personally, I'm glad they still have science fiction in the future. It means the characters still have imaginations and aren't just mindless corporate drones or hopeless dirty serfs.

Somehow Wash and Zoe's comments reflect this. Perhaps they have an old beat up copy of Robert A. Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky on the shelf in their quarters.

During their down time, I'd love to see the crew of Serenity having a movie night on the ship. They can watch a preserved copy of Star Trek Nemesis and laugh until they cry much like their ancestors did this past weekend.

mattro

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 9:44 PM

MOJOECA

I, too, was bothered by the self-aware "we live on a spaceship" comment. It happens on BUFFY occassionally ("Must be tuesday"). But being a balls-out fantasy-comedy-melodrama-etc, the metatext just works. With FIREFLY, I really am sold on this being *real*, and Zoe's comment snapped me out of suspension for a moment.

--- Joe

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Thursday, December 19, 2002 5:05 AM

GATORMARC

Quote:
Originally posted by QueenTiye:
"Honey, you live on a spaceship" meant (to me), Honey, there was a time such a thing was considered sci-fi...no reason to rule out this as sci-fi now..."

This is exactly how I interpreted it.

And the fact that Wash was a bit confused by it really sold it to me.

GatorMarc

Eat 'em up, chomp, chomp.

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Thursday, December 19, 2002 6:57 AM

JOHNNYREB

I'm with MOJOECA. All of the arguments hereto are plausible, but how long did it take how many people to justify it? It's a speed bump in the dialog, like it or not.

LONG LIVE FIREFLY (Hopefully)

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