My least understood River's by ManiacNumberOne

FIREFLY EPISODE DISCUSSIONS

My least understood River's

POSTED BY: MANIACNUMBERONE
UPDATED: Friday, April 14, 2006 16:40
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Tuesday, December 7, 2004 9:30 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by RocketJock:
There it is, there it is. It's
always there if you look for it.
Everybody sees and nobody sees it...

I'm almost sure this is a reference to food additives. In Europe, I might include genetic modification but for a US show that doesn't apply.
There is an associated notion that the reason Reavers eat human flesh is to access the accumulated additives. Also some suspicion about the special cargo referred to in a log on the settlers' vessel in Bushwhacked that may have been taken by the Reavers.

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Friday, February 4, 2005 1:01 PM

THIEFJEHAT

The most interesting speculation I have heard, and which I'm starting to believe, is that the Blue Sun canned goods contain nanites.

Here's the deal. Blue Sun is big. And by big I mean colossal. They represent the worst of the mega-corp future. Think of them as being a corp that represents 2/3's of the current Dow-30 on the NYSE. As such they have a division that produces household products (like Proctor&Gamble).

Blue Sun is also in tight with the Alliance Government. The Government needs ways to control the people. Every time a person ingests Blue Sun food they are taking in little devices. Little ways the government can control a person. How did the "hands-of-blue" duo kill the guards in Ariel? Simple. They activated the nanites in the bloodstreams of the men who have all consumed blue sun food at one time or another. The command sent was "kill this host" And they did.

River knows these things. River was taken and "developed" by a military R&D division of Blue Sun. She knows what's in the food. She cannot however communicate these truths to the crew. She just "acts crazy" as Jayne would put it. Read above on this thread and posted is the script that River delivers. Read it and think. It's spooky.

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Friday, March 10, 2006 3:28 PM

STEAMBOAT28

I would agree less with the notion of nanites than the idea of additives in general, in this instance. i'd lean more toward chemical or genetic additives, the sort of which would serve to provide just enough nutrients to survive and aid in control of the populace. two reasons on my thoughts of this are: a) the fact that the subliminal messaging in the bar in the BDM was noted as being "good" or somesuch, above the norm, and b) that the PAX responsible for the disaster at Miranda was bio-chemical, not a feat of nanoengineering. the first would mean that subliminal messaging is at least more prevalent than it is now, and has been undertaken as a science. If nanites were involve, one could just (theoretically) directly intervene with the functions of the body instead of being forced to deal with the mind. the second, of course would be easily fixed in the case of nanites by a mass reprogramming, or by the introduction of a "destroyer nanite" into the same atmo.

Of course, this doesn't count the fact that the Blue Hands Guys would have consumed at least some Blue Sun products in their lifetimes, assuming they really do control as much as we think they do, unless they're "grown" in house, and monitored from birth. even then, there's talk in the nanoscience community of them being "contagious", able to be transferred as they replicate by any number of means.

just a few thoughts...

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Saturday, March 11, 2006 4:35 AM

CABOT

A lot of thoughtful posts on the subject in this thread long before the movie came out to help solidify the arc.

Quote:
...even then, there's talk in the nanoscience community of them being "contagious", able to be transferred as they replicate by any number of means. -- steamboat28

Which might explain the blue gloves...

As far as the can labels River tore off in the Shindig episode they appear to be regular can off the shelf of the local 21st century grocery store. Although they do look like they made the effort to get them from an oriental store since the labels have Chinese characters on them. (Not the Blue sun characters however...)

http://still-flying.net/images/shindig/index.php Thanks to still-flying.net for this screencap, which is found early in the list on page 4 of the shingdig group.(Sorry the code for displaying images on this forum is not the same as on my forum so I'm at a loss as to how to get it to work here.)

Which make sense rather than make up a bunch of Blue Sun labels for enough cans to do several takes of her destroying the labels, (note the U.S. government required "nutritional facts" portion of the label appears on one can in the screen cap I mention above.)

Actually what attracted the attention of the card players was River pounding on packages of crackers which do appear to have some sort of blue label I'm not able to find a screen cap the moment to double check it.

I doubt River can read the future, just minds. All the pointing toward Objects in Space and her wandering not only through the ship, but the minds of the various people doesn't ever show a viewing of future events, but what was probably upper most in the individual's mind at that moment.

So whether River was reacting to the Blue Sun logo on Jayne's shirt or just the rising tension in the room, I don't think she was reading the future and Jayne's undeveloped plot to turn them in and get the reward.

Regarding the Blue Hands fellows and their possible connection to Blue Sun, I thing it is almost a given they were. I believe they are part of the Blue Sun Corporation's security group. Unless someone knows of a secret dislike Joss has of the color blue, I think it too much of a coincidence of the two mentions of blue.

In the script for the episode Dead or Alive,( http://www.fireflyfans.net/feature.asp?f=45 ) which was not even shot let alone broadcast, River tells a story to a gathering of children that features a princess who is held captive in a tower by "Blue Demons" who found her after a botched escape attempt. Since this episode never got aired, it is probably not canon, but it does show you the direction they were leaning with this back story.

Last thought before I end my ramblings, this mention of an escape attempt got me thinking, do we see the prelude to that attempt in the final segment of the viral marketing "R. Tam Sessions"?
_____________

River: Midbulk transport. Standard radion accelerator core class-code 03-K64. Firefly.

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Tuesday, March 14, 2006 1:14 PM

ASARIAN

Quote:
Originally posted by ManiacNumberOne:

So, I'm watching Shindig again for the umpteenth time and as always I can make no sense at all about River's scene in the galley, where she is taking the labels off the cans of food. I don't have a great tape of it, so it's hard to hear everything she is saying, but I made out parts of it and it doesn't make too much sense with what she is doing to the cans. Why is she doing what she's doing?

Hey Maniacnumberone,

It seems a lot of people quote this part of the shooting script:

Little ones in the corner that you
almost don't see. But they're the
ones that reach in and do it.
They're the ones with teeth and you
have to smash them!

But the shooting script is a notoriously good place for inaccurate text. :) Specifically, this part about "the ones with teeth" I find wholly absent (and not for lack of searching). First, here is what I can physically hear myself:

"The ones. It's the ones that take you. They're the ones reaching and doing... Everywhere. And the hands go everywhere. When you brush your teeth and, ... are there, but ... because sometimes they're afraid. And then they come."

When I try and fill in the gaps, using the shooting script, considering the position of the parts of phrases we DO hear properly, I come to the following reconstruction. All tentative, of course:

"These are the ones that take you. They're the ones reaching and doing. And the little ends of the roots go everywhere. And the hands go everywhere. When you brush your teeth, all the little blue things are there, but no one says it because sometimes they're afraid. And then they come."

It's the best I can do.

Okay, as for the Blue Sun logo, it's not on the cans, of course (at least not visibly). But I believe River goes for the cans anyway, because some of them have concentrically shaped paint on their lid, in a blue that matches that of the Blue Sun logo:

The color association just triggers her to go after the cans too, I think.

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

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Tuesday, March 14, 2006 1:35 PM

GRIZWALD

Annnnndddd.... there's a Blue Sun logo at the very beginning of the FOB commercial...

____________________________________________________
They could not take the sky from them -
Our Big Damn Heroes made a film!
I'm gonna see Serenity then
go back the next morning and see it again.
Cuz no one at Fox knew this show had no equal
C'mon Universal, and greenlight the sequel!

Click on my profile for my Annoyingly Long List of Firefly Links.

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Tuesday, April 11, 2006 4:46 AM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

You can see the Blue Sun logo on the boxes in that screen capture. What are those, crackers or something? There on the left. I think you're right about the color on the cans, too, but she does dump out those boxes.

*************************************************
Bible's broken. Doesn't make sense.

Zhu fu ni, mei-mei

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Thursday, April 13, 2006 3:42 AM

DEEPGIRL187

Quote:
Originally posted by SirenKain:
Jayne may have been planning it but the River attack decided it. I don't think the fact that River attacked him is what pissed him off (I mean besides being attacked). I think he was more upset that Mal took it so lightly. Mal gets his dander up when any one of his crew is hurt or threaten. He brushed aside the River/Jayne incident like Jayne was not as important as anyone else. I think Jayne was hurt (feelings I mean) and was trying to fix Mal more then River.

That would make sense in a way. After all, Mal does say that Jayne betrayed him, not River or Simon.

At last.
We can retire and give up
this life of crime.

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Thursday, April 13, 2006 9:16 PM

EMMAZULE

[quote="Whoodahn"]Is the Blue Sun part of the Alliance or is it a massive/powerful shipping company?

From the sounds of it, it's a bit of both. Like Coca-Cola meets Microsoft, on crack. :P

The commentary for the original "Serenity" pilot (when they're still on Persephone, meaning it would be part 1, right?) on the DVD mentions something about it - you can see walls (or possibly VERY large shipping containers) in the background with the Blue Sun logo. The original intent was to more and more and more often include Blue Sun logos - walls in the background, food packages, Jayne's shirt, and probably quite a few that I still haven't caught. It was part of the world-building.

It's got HEAVY ties to the Alliance, I remember that much. I get the feeling they're a "civilian" branch of it that sells stuff to keep consumers fed and clothed and all, but also bring in funds. I don't recall as much as you'd think there would be in Firefly about taxes, aside from the (apparently ridiculously expensive, since smuggling exists for such things as cattle and "wobbly-headead [geisha] dolls") tariffs on interplanetary exports and imports. And maybe... hm, maybe the REASON the tarifs are so gorram high on those goods - get ready for it is because they are not produced or sold by Blue Sun!

Maybe it's a sweetheart deal, though, not an actual government branch. But it DOES make one wonder, dunnit!

Quote:

Do the Blue Hands work for the Alliance or Blue Sun?

Well, The Academy was an Alliance school, right? And she's an escapee from there. Plus, Alliance guards (as we saw in Ariel) defer to them. So they're arguably WORKING for the government. Whether or not they ALSO work for the Blue Sun Corp. is anybody's guess, though.

Quote:

Does the Alliance do what Blue Sun tells them to do, is it another case of big business controlling the military?

And possibly vice versa? Oh, I'd say so. Again - and really this just occured to me today - the whole smuggling things like "wobbly-headed dolls" seems ridiculous. Why else would you need to smuggle them (it sounded like they didn't have drugs in them, but from Joss' joke about "and pot is totally legal", however negated it was, in the SVC, I doubt anything but the hardcore drugs are illegal, but you never really know. And it probably depends on the locals for the softer drugs)? I say it's because Blue Sun's in bed with the Alliance. Blue Sun, if it's not an actual, for-profit branch of the Alliance, might pay the Alliance huge sums of money in exchange for the ability to monopolize entire planets under their commericial rule. This gets even scarier if you tie in the "the Hands of Blue's 'splodey device only works if you've eaten or drunk Blue Sun goods". A you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours deal of ludicrous power; the government gets more control over the masses, and teh corperation gets more control over the masses' wallets, and, probably, governemnt contracts to boot. O_O Scaaaaary stuff.

Fascinating, though. I might just have to work that into a fic, LOL.

Interestingly enough, I find a direct tie between Paxilon Hydrochlorate (PAX) and the repeated usage of the color blue.

The connection is the following: in general, about 75% of any given group that isn't already categorized by favorite color

will state blue as their favorite. Why?

Because Earth's sky, the sky we and our ancestors, and our ancestors' ancestors, and our ancestors' ancestors' great uncles all grew up under... is BLUE.

A (hopefully) clear, light, azure blue.

It is, pardon the mostly-accidental pun, the color most associated with SERENITY. With calm, peace, happiness, comfort zones, etc.

It's a gentle color. A soothing color. A deceptive color. Quite possibly THE best color for a logo if you want to exude a friendly-seeming appearance.

Again... soothing and calming. The color therefore possibly connects Blue Sun AND the incident on Miranda, symbolically.

Blue Sun has negative connotations if only because of their Alliance ties. The Blue Hands keep folks from causin' a stir... by killing them. And PAX... well, that there was a disaster of the unimaginably stupendous variety.

Then you have the fact that Mal still kind of clings to his old Browncoat identity - that of, though not a complete anarchist, one who doesn't, certainly, "lie down and take it". He FOUGHT against a unified, apathetic masses.

I sense a theme (of anti-apathy and the need to occasionally challenge authority or accepted beliefs), in other words!

But, I tend to overanalyze a bit sometimes. Analyzation polishes the brain, I say, and makes it shiny [/bad pun]!

~Emma

"I swallowed a bug."

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Friday, April 14, 2006 8:47 AM

GIDEONSTARGRAVE

I saw Blue Sun as more or less being the 'verse equivalent of Weyland-Yutani (the corp from the Aliens series for all one of you who didn't know.)

I kind of suspect that it would have been one of the big mysteries of the series. Who's calling the shots, ultimately? Are Blue Sun manipulating the alliance government, or are the alliance government using Blue Sun to manipulate the people (or, getting more recursive, is a faction in the government using Blue Sun to mess with the rest of the government and people, or are Blue Sun using a faction of the government to mess... you get the idea.)

The Blue Sun/Academy link doesn't even have to be uber-secret. Companies sponsor certain parts of educational institutions all the time these days. From the point of view of even the people who know the academy has the secret, it might not make them suspicious of Blue Sun. After all, to use an example, say if a doctor or nurse was killing people at a hospital, why would you necessarily imagine that the big company sponsoring one of their wards knew about it? Virtually nobody sees Blue Sun anyways, it's so ubiquitous it's almost subliminal. Heck, they might even have enough fingers in comparitively legit schools that their sponsorship might even be expected (and its absence commented on)

Edit: Here's an interesting little idea I just thought of. Maybe it's a little off. River's dislike of Blue Sun is something we're taking as given in this debate, and someone talked about using her to off Blue Sun execs. Maybe the dislike of Blue Sun isn't her fear of them for what they've done, as much as it was engineered in by the Academy, say so their pet project couldn't be directly controlled by Blue Sun, or they had insurance in case Blue Sun started going beyond certain limits.

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Friday, April 14, 2006 9:59 AM

EPEYON

Everybody's assuming that Blue Sun is part of the Alliance, or are in bed with each other. What if Blue Sun is nothing more than a corporation. Just an amazingly powerful one. And what if River's dislike of Blue Sun is because they created PAX?(That's the agent that infected Miranda, right? I haven't seen the movie in a while.) The Alliance heard about it, and decided to fund the research. Then before the Miranda debacle they planned to get it out to the general population by using Blue Sun products. And that is why River goes crazy at the mention of Blue Sun. Now just because Blue Sun didn't make the cans doesn't mean they didn't ship them. Or they didn't come in a Blue Sun box before they were put in that tray thing.

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Friday, April 14, 2006 4:40 PM

EMMAZULE

Quote:
Originally posted by Epeyon:
Everybody's assuming that Blue Sun is part of the Alliance, or are in bed with each other. What if Blue Sun is nothing more than a corporation. Just an amazingly powerful one.

I think you just contradicted yourself, there.

If they are "an amazingly powerful" corperation, chances are that they are or have at least TRIED to get "in bed" with the government.

Pharmaceutical companies, car companies, construction, no matter what the business is, if it's booming, the company usually tries to get in good with the government, in the hopes of getting government grants (such as for chemical research *COUGHPAXPOSSIBLYCOUGH*), tax breaks, laws that support them and not their competitors (again, I still feel there must be really high tariffs on exports for smuggling to be so lucrative on such silly-seeming objects, and Blue Sun seems to have a monopoly or near-monopoly on commericial foodstuffs, for instance), you name it.

A mega-corperation like Blue Sun that has its hands in so many different kinds of products, and IIRC, was compared by the series creator himself to Microsoft? Let alone with the kind of inter-planetary ubiquitiousness they have?

They may or may not be as tied-in as many of us suspect, but they're certainly in metaphorical bed with each on some level.

Quote:

And what if River's dislike of Blue Sun is because they created PAX?(That's the agent that infected Miranda, right? I haven't seen the movie in a while.)

Paxilon hydrochlorate, aka PAX, yes.

Quote:

The Alliance heard about it, and decided to fund the research. Then before the Miranda debacle they planned to get it out to the general population by using Blue Sun products.

There is one slight bone of contention I have with this theory:

PAX is a gas. At room temperature. It has to be, since it was in the air being pumped into buildings on Miranda. I don't think you could ingest it (through food or drink) at room temperature, nor would you absorb it through skin. It sounds like you'd have to breath it in.

Not to say it couldn't be worked around, or that there can't be another Paxilon product that isn't a gas, but it does raise some problems/questions about your theory.

Anybody who DIDN'T almost fail high school chemistry wanna take a crack at that?

(NOTE: I mean *I* almost failed HS chem, of course. Though I have to wonder if it's not because I happened to have the neurotic, OCDish, pedantic, universally-agreed-as-worst-ever-at-that-school science teacher teaching my chem class )

Quote:

And that is why River goes crazy at the mention of Blue Sun.

Wouldn't Blue Sun's being the creators of PAX, the substance the Alliance used on Miranda, make them kinda in bed together on some level, in and of itself? Giving them grants in exchange for a substance to control the masses is as good as being in bed with them, a you-scratch-my-evil-misguided-back-I'll-scratch-yours situation, as it were.

Quote:

Now just because Blue Sun didn't make the cans doesn't mean they didn't ship them.

A fair point.

Quote:

Or they didn't come in a Blue Sun box before they were put in that tray thing.

Also possible.

~Emma

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