No more ridiculous than Klingons-- or any society that has both soldiers and technicians.
On the contrary, any civilized person would hope for a society where sexuality is treated as a normal part of life and not suppressed by religious ideology. Mal was shown as having an old-fashioned attitude toward sexuality, but that was based on jealousy and insecurity-- as are all sexual taboos.
Just because you happen to be living in a particularly conservative period doesn't mean that things won't change. The long-term trend has been toward greater liberalism for centuries.
They all fit, because they're all outcasts and fugitives. The format of the show was designed to throw these disparate types together.
All frontiers have much in common-- the rest is literary license.
You mean like people who drive high-tech cars or fly private airplanes or own houseboats? People are people, in any century.
More like if the American Revolution were lost-- the Serenity crew were not bad guys. At least I hope Whedon didn't have that in mind.
No one like this captain will ever even man a spaceship, but this could be overlooked if not for the fact that every single aspect of this show that's unique to it wasn't even more far fetched. Prostitution will never be an upper class activity, sorry. Psychotic, cannibalistic, necrophiliac, torturers who don't even communicate will NEVER band together on space missions of any sort. Also, simply watching such beings will not turn you into one, that's just stupid.
You're being asked to suspend your disbelief for how people work. You should have a problem with that. You don't have to be too smart to come up with the only reasonable response to this: "No, I can't accept the premise that people become Jeffrey Dahmer by seeing Jeffrey Dahmer just b/c it's so sickening and evil, that's retarded." The acceptance of this premise is so low and so stupid that it insults and angers me to know that there are people who can actually buy that, people who are smart enough to type messages into this thread. It just disgusts me so much to have anything in common with such people at all, even this language.
How bad and illogical can the concepts be before it's too much of an incoherent mess to watch? I have to wonder what ideas Whedon came up with that he actually rejected, I can't imagine how bad they must have been, if he rejected anything at all. I mean, just look at what he kept. He's clearly not even throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. He's taking things that fell to the floor and trying to duct tape them back to the wall.
PROSTITUTES TRAVELING THROUGH SPACE FOR THEIR CLIENTS. "I'd like to see you, when do you think you'll have an opportunity to visit me? Oh, you'll be here in a few months? Yes I believe I'll be horny then. I'll pay now, thanks, bye." And the captain allows this
in exchange for the rent of a room on his spaceship, like his ship also serves as a flying hotel. And of course her clients are just going to happen to be where the captain has business of his own.
That's about the most inefficient means for both the prostitute and her clients to do business, this model would never work. Great business deal for the captain though, right, what does he get out of this besides the money? He gets the prestige and honor and respect associated with being the escort of a prostitute, for real. How is that not a sarcastic joke? How do you accept this as anything that could ever realistically happen? It's a concept most likely conceived upon waking from a nonsensical dream. There are prostitutes on call 5 minutes away, no matter where you live. Sex isn't some rare commodity, get real. Find a prostitute that so much as travels between CITIES for work, try it. Between planets? No, please. Again, it's just highly insulting. I'd be an idiot to suspend disbelief for this.
If it was less explained, and if it was just an excuse to get hot women around the set, it'd be shamelessly, hedonistically, fun enough. I could get with that. Just harmless, playful sexy time. Like the women of TOS, when they're in the background or crawling through a duct in a mini skirt I can even laugh out loud sometimes, "I see why you wrote that in there, you old dog, you!" If it's the first time a female actress is on screen, they're going to cue that whimsical music and you can bet that the fog machine's ready because it's time for a hazy close up of her bedroom eyes. "Subtlety," what's that? Innocently perverted, childish old man fun. Hypocritically, unapologetically sexist, gratuitous, and campy. Hilarious. Firefly isn't that, it's in fact the opposite. It's the same exact woman in every episode, with different men. If I could only believe that this was intended as a means to subvert expectations or purposefully give the audience the opposite of what they want as a sort of meta joke on them, I could dig it. Whedon unfortunately isn't that clever.
The idea that this is supposed to be a western only contradicts the premise. They're traveling through space, not across a prairie on horseback. The doctor will always be a douche and his sister will always be some randomly thrown in, expendable character who doesn't fit or relate to any other character. She's a random wild card for the sake of a random wild card. As a bonus, she's also annoying. Yay. The preacher and his silly religion that no one else on the ship even agrees with, don't belong in the show either. He's completely worthless. Not even a liability, just a nothing. The Alliance sort of evil is like, "in the future... we will be in the past!" It will show its age more as we become more advanced and even more civilized. They try to make the Alliance mysterious by not revealing anything at all about it. Like it's an old movie monster instead of just a government. The dialogue and occasional plot are the only saving grace. To rank Firefly above any ST series is just silly. There are no interesting new ideas in this mercifully short, derivative show.
