CaptainHawk1
Commodore
+1
The show is dogshit.
If Joss Whedon wants to impress people maybe he should start coming out with more fare like Firefly, eh?
"Dollhouse" probably cancelled - THX FOX
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+1
The show is dogshit.
If Joss Whedon wants to impress people maybe he should start coming out with more fare like Firefly, eh?
CaptainHawk1
Commodore
And Fireflys premise wasn't stupid? Western in space? Frakkin`Horses? Come on.
The premises and settings of Whedon shows are always stupid. But that doesn't make them bad shows.
3D Master
Rear Admiral
That actually did make Firefly a bad show. Of course, it being dull didn't help much either.
As numerous other people have probably told you already: Opinions may differ.
That isn't what I'm saying at all. What I did mean was sometimes giving shows some room to establish themselves can lead to some very good shows. Just giving up straight away can do some really good shows a lot of disservice when they're trying to build up the premise slowly.
Its not that the premise was bad, Western in Space its that narrow minded people decided it was. If it was so bad then Hollywood wouldn't be looking at adapting the comic Cowboys&Aliens which reeks of being Firefly except with aliens where Firefly didn't ever get around to that, if they ever would have.
There were horses on the outer world and more poorer people who tended to not go with the Alliance. Jsut like on Earth today tons of people have cars, but some people can only afford bicyles, and in poorer countries, horses.
It had western elements and speak, but was not an all-out Gunsmoke like affair.
3D Master
Rear Admiral
Except that in space, where you have to transport living animals and their food and their caretakers to get them to a planet, versus a nice folded up perfectly square vehicle that can be stacked all the way up to the ceiling, not to mention having to make food for the horse in a starting colony where you need the food for yourself, getting horses or any living animal, would be FAR FAR FAR more expensive than that vehicle. Horses and pets would be the luxury items.
^^^
Not at all. In less space than a vehicle, on a terraformed planet with sufficient plants engineered into the ecosystem and seed brought by the colonists, livestock and horses could be initially introduced using frozen organic material and a micro-lab that could possibly take up far less space than a vehicle. Once on the planet, they 'grow' the livestock with sufficient genetic variety to insure a healthy gene pool (not as broad as one might think, from the research that exists now), and from then on, it's a matter of raising them the normal way. All one needs is basic know-how, some minor technology that can be lost without dooming the fauna, and you're set.
OTOH, with your vehicles, you then need a technological infrastructure to maintain them, to re-energize them, to reproduce them, to create parts - you could go all the way back to needing to mine the minerals and refine them if you can't trade for the parts with visiting ships - ships you can't necessarily count on to arrive carrying what you need when you need it. These are backwater worlds, remember - they're most likely not on regular carrier routes. These people have to be self-reliant, and they need transportation that is easily replaced if it can't be repaired - a horse fits that bill a lot better than a hovercraft. On the outer worlds, it's the tech that's a luxury; what we see as "the Old West" is about the minimum level of technology to which any modern human being would need to descend when homesteading a suitably-terraformed planet, and they can augment their lifestyle with higher tech, but they'd be foolish to think they could rely upon it as their primary means of living.
Not at all. In less space than a vehicle, on a terraformed planet with sufficient plants engineered into the ecosystem and seed brought by the colonists, livestock and horses could be initially introduced using frozen organic material and a micro-lab that could possibly take up far less space than a vehicle. Once on the planet, they 'grow' the livestock with sufficient genetic variety to insure a healthy gene pool (not as broad as one might think, from the research that exists now), and from then on, it's a matter of raising them the normal way. All one needs is basic know-how, some minor technology that can be lost without dooming the fauna, and you're set.
OTOH, with your vehicles, you then need a technological infrastructure to maintain them, to re-energize them, to reproduce them, to create parts - you could go all the way back to needing to mine the minerals and refine them if you can't trade for the parts with visiting ships - ships you can't necessarily count on to arrive carrying what you need when you need it. These are backwater worlds, remember - they're most likely not on regular carrier routes. These people have to be self-reliant, and they need transportation that is easily replaced if it can't be repaired - a horse fits that bill a lot better than a hovercraft. On the outer worlds, it's the tech that's a luxury; what we see as "the Old West" is about the minimum level of technology to which any modern human being would need to descend when homesteading a suitably-terraformed planet, and they can augment their lifestyle with higher tech, but they'd be foolish to think they could rely upon it as their primary means of living.
that's even if the "colonists" took the horses with them?
The "government" had had hundreds(?) of years to make those worlds (more) habitable for human beings that the flora and fauna could have been seeded and left to run wild but balanced on these outer worlds as public works to convince the riffraff that there's free stuff waiting for them when they get to their new homes.
Fish and billions and billions of fruit baring trees too.
The "government" had had hundreds(?) of years to make those worlds (more) habitable for human beings that the flora and fauna could have been seeded and left to run wild but balanced on these outer worlds as public works to convince the riffraff that there's free stuff waiting for them when they get to their new homes.
Fish and billions and billions of fruit baring trees too.
3D Master
Rear Admiral
Ah, yes. Cars cost much, but a full on bio lab with scientists too match, working on growing your animals for months on end (during which time you have no animals I might add) is cheap?
Which you're going to set up. The colony needs to be self-sufficient for the most part, and grow onward to be a whole lot more. Or do you want a colony that has no electricity - and thus no radio and the like - no heating, no sewage disposal method, etc. etc. etc. And never grows beyond this, remaining stuck, it's horrible.
The moment you're capable of going to other planets, you also have the ability to setup a technologically self-sufficient colony. To not do so, is to send colonists back into the dark ages with all the problems of hygiene and diseases that come with it. It's absolutely horrible and disgusting, not to mention stupid.
And even if they don't have horses or what not, there are visiting ships and the planet people can barter for a horse from each ship, promising goods if they bring a horse or two back, or lab produced horses. You could also barter for other materials.
We're arguing this again? 
My take is that terraforming these planets would have been hellaciously expensive, even the ones that look desert-like. Territory on a habitable world would have been at a premium for the Firefly denizens. This is completely opposite from the real-life 19th C Wild West scenario, where open land was available to anyone who wandered by.
Poor folks would be crammed into nasty, overcrowded cities - probably built underground, which would be the cheaper way of colonizing the average planet, rather than going to all the trouble of making it habitable on the surface. Or they'd live on spaceships or space stations - another cheap way of creating living space.
Only the uber-rich would be able to buy expensive terraformed land on any world. I have a hard time believing the Alliance would go to all the expense of terraforming a bunch of planets and then just let them be taken over by rebel scum and space pirates. It would make much more sense if the rich would fund terraforming only the worlds they intend to live on, leaving the minimum of squalid living space available to the working people of the colonies. Firefly should have been less like the Wild West and more like a Dickens novel.
The rich would keep horses as pets. The poor would eat them.
My take is that terraforming these planets would have been hellaciously expensive, even the ones that look desert-like. Territory on a habitable world would have been at a premium for the Firefly denizens. This is completely opposite from the real-life 19th C Wild West scenario, where open land was available to anyone who wandered by.
Poor folks would be crammed into nasty, overcrowded cities - probably built underground, which would be the cheaper way of colonizing the average planet, rather than going to all the trouble of making it habitable on the surface. Or they'd live on spaceships or space stations - another cheap way of creating living space.
Only the uber-rich would be able to buy expensive terraformed land on any world. I have a hard time believing the Alliance would go to all the expense of terraforming a bunch of planets and then just let them be taken over by rebel scum and space pirates. It would make much more sense if the rich would fund terraforming only the worlds they intend to live on, leaving the minimum of squalid living space available to the working people of the colonies. Firefly should have been less like the Wild West and more like a Dickens novel.
The rich would keep horses as pets. The poor would eat them.
Yes. It is all that. It's also a lot cheaper. So guess which option the Alliance picked?
It's all too believable, really.
3D Master
Rear Admiral
No, it would be a whole lot more expensive.
So if I follow this metaphor you're all using right, Eliza is the Horse?
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