Quote:

---

“Firefly is science fiction,” says Minear. “It’s also a Western. It’s two great genres that taste great together. You can play all the great metaphors of the great Westerns.”

Despite the fantastic worlds of Mutant Enemy’s previous shows, Firefly more resembles Isaac Asimov’s “Human Universe” than it does to Star Trek’s “Quick! It’s an alien! We need a new forehead!” mentality. Meaning, no aliens at all.

“I’d say the basic premise of the show is getting by,” says Minear. “You can think of it as a Reconstruction era Western, set after a big war to unite planets--totalitarian independents vs. a rebel alliance. The crew would be Southerners. The South has lost, and they’re all people trying to survive afterwards, although our struggle was for more noble values than preserving slavery.”

The story centers on the crew of the Firefly class transport ship Serenity and it’s captain, Mal Reynolds (played by Nathan Fillion) who, according to Minear, is “basically the guy who lost the war.” Other characters include a mercenary who would betray everyone in a heartbeat, a Madame of an interstellar bordello and a pair of fugitives on the run from the government.

“Sometimes they take legitimate jobs,” says Minear, “sometimes they do crime. They’re kind of scavengers. They’re brigands...This shows less about the art, but the getting by of it.”

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:
[B
That's pretty different from Whedon's motivation. Firefly has no aliens because Whedon doesn't believe in them, and because the latex mask thing has been done to death. In point of fact, I suspect that Firefly will directly confront exactly the kind of issue that Asimov had to avoid.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:
On the same basis, if there's any space-going critters in our galaxy, it shouldn't take them more than a few million years to colonize the whole thing. Practically a blink of the eye!

---

Quote:

---

So why couldn't there be another species about as advanced as we?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:


But there's more. if our appearance is not a unique event, there wouldn't be just one other intelligent species in our galaxy, there'd be thousands. Cause even if the chance of a planet evolving life is very very small, there are billions of stars in the galaxy that have planets. If the origin of life is a random event, it's just plain impossible that none of these thousands of species is older than a million years.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Pandora:
But who's to say that the focus of these other species is expansion and exploration? Maybe, as I suggested in my earlier post, they're completely different than life on earth, and are content with a set group of creatures, only replacing ones as they are lost. Or maybe they're far more interested in the spiritual plane than the physical one, and have developed in that arena as opposed to this. Or maybe they're just energy. Maybe they're completely foreign to everything we know, with motives incomprehensible to us because they are so (pardon the pun) alien to our way of thinking and living, and are out there on the other sides of the universe doing their own things. It's possible, no?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Pandora:


But who's to say that the focus of these other species is expansion and exploration? Maybe, as I suggested in my earlier post, they're completely different than life on earth...

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by CharlieBlue:
Well, a species like that would have little survival value. Aggression is the whole point of life. Rocks just sit there; living things try to take over the world. If they don't try to take over the world, somebody else who is interested will take the job instead.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:

Well, if there are only a few intelligent species, I could buy that. But not if there are thousands. I find it hard to believe that so many beings could evolve intelligence, but not the itch to explore. Indeed, you can make a case that curiousity is a part of intelligence.

Also, if you start saying, "They're intelligent, they just don't think like we do," then you have to deal with the definition of intelligence. You can make a case that a lot of animal species on our planet are intelligent, just not intelligent in the same way we are. And most of the behavior of animals is complex and fascinating, but an utter mystery even to behavioral scientists, never mind ordinary people. If that's the pattern for our interactions with alien life forms, there aren't a lot of interesting stories to be told about aliens.

---

Quote:

---

Ok, but what if calamity has always struck? What if there is no perfect species in the universe, and each has some fatal flaw that ultimately resulted in its demise?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Pandora:
Well, Ziccy pretty much articulated what I would have said far better than I would have... and with examples!

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:
Yeah, that's a popular theory. It would certainly explain the galaxy isn't swarming with spaceships. But it still means we're never gona meet any aliens. Not unless we're lucky enough to visit their home planet during the brief (a million years say -- relatively brief) period between their appearance and disappearance. The odds are astronomical -- in a very literal sense.

---

Quote:

---

One idea that's always intrigued me is that we're not the first intelligent species to evolve on this planet, and that all our predecessors died out in exactly the way you describe. It would explain the diebacks that seem to happen quite regularly in the geological record.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:
One idea that's always intrigued me is that we're not the first intelligent species to evolve on this planet, and that all our predecessors died out in exactly the way you describe. It would explain the diebacks that seem to happen quite regularly in the geological record.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Shuggie:

There's a Larry Niven short story about this. Aliens visiting earth for the first time in 2 million years are distressed to find no trace of the 'original' civilisation - which IIRC was an under-water crystal-based lifeform. All life on earth as we recognise it was descended from some green scum growing on the surface of the oceans.

---

Quote:

---

Back to Fermi's Paradox again - surely the flipside, the thing that makes it a paradox rather than a conjecture or a hypothesis is the fact that there is life on Earth. What makes us special?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Pandora:

Are you serious? Whedon doesn't believe there's intelligent life in the universe besides that of humanity? Whoa.

Honestly (and maybe I'm just a flake), the idea that aliens *don't* exist has never crossed my mind.

Pandora
The Truth Is Out There

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Pandora:

Well, I think that's at least as likely as aliens. This is an old ass planet, and there are a lot of little weird things on it, structures, that is, that we don't really know as much about as we think (eg., the pyramids, the sphinx, stonehenge). And then there's that rumor about Atlantis (which I really want to believe, but I'm not quite there yet). Put together with that meteorites, ice ages, earthquakes, etc., you have the makings of the rise and fall of a whole other species.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:

Second, you're basically saying, "We evolved that way, therefore this is the only way intelligence can evolve." The universe is a big place, and infinitely inventive. We can't even assume life on other planets would resemble us in terms of basic chemistry, never mind behavior.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by InarasNewToy:

The idea that we are the only intellegent life in the Universe is pure arrogance. The idea that our pathetic little blue globe in a small dusty little corner of the galaxy is the ONLY place in the whole FREAKING UNIVERSE that can suport life? Absurd!

What a waste of space that would be!

INT

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Shuggie:

Back to Fermi's Paradox again - surely the flipside, the thing that makes it a paradox rather than a conjecture or a hypothesis is the fact that there is life on Earth. What makes us special?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:
Well, if there are only a few intelligent species, I could buy that. But not if there are thousands. I find it hard to believe that so many beings could evolve intelligence, but not the itch to explore. Indeed, you can make a case that curiousity is a part of intelligence.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:
Well first of all, too much has been made of the role of aggression in human evolution. You can make a case for cooperation, play, and other kinds of warm fuzzy activities as having a role. Try reading some of Richard Leakey's books on the subject.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by mojoeca:

What I do feel comfortable concluding from FP is that instellar travel must be impossible -- Wormholes and FTL are pipe dreams.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by CharlieBlue:
That's the most fundamental part of life--the desire to take over.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:
That doesn't follow at all. Even if you accept the speed of light as an absolute barrier, interstellar travel isn't impossible -- just time consuming.

---

Quote:

---

If there are thousands of intelligent species in our galaxy, I find it very hard to believe that none of them has gotten around to constructing interstellar craft. Yes, the resource, energy and time requirements are enormous ...

---

Quote:

---

... but if we're assuming there are bunch of species out there, then by implication a lot of them have been around for billions of years, and thus have had plenty of time to solve these problems -- and to have saturated the galaxy with their colonies.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by CharlieBlue:
That's the most fundamental part of life--the desire to take over.

---

Speak for yourself!

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:

Quote:

---

Back to Fermi's Paradox again - surely the flipside, the thing that makes it a paradox rather than a conjecture or a hypothesis is the fact that there is life on Earth. What makes us special?

---

What makes any lottery winner special? Blind luck.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Shuggie:

Yeah but the lottery is a system set up deliberately to have a very unlikely outcome. The question is - what is it about the universe that makes life such an incredibly unlikely outcome?

Shug

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by mojoeca:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zicsoft:
That doesn't follow at all. Even if you accept the speed of light as an absolute barrier, interstellar travel isn't impossible -- just time consuming.

---

I meant to say that. Without the fantasized shortcuts, interstellar travel is prohibively slow, discouraging widespread colonization.

---

Quote:

---

Study of geologic history and human history shows how much the world can transform in such a short amount of time. I don't know that an intelligent species can thrive long enough for such massive projects to be undertaken.

---