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Is Firefly better off cancelled?
- Thread starter Joe Washington
- Start date
Probably the worst problem is the inherent instability of the trinary system that the chart depicts. Inherent gravitation instability would likely result in a system-wide catastrophe such as the collision of two of the stars or the ejection of one into deep space and similar fates would befall the star's planets and their moons. From what I recall, it does look similar to what was depicted in River's classroom scene so it might well be authentic. However, I can't be arsed to check as it's of no importance.
As depicted, it is not a trinary star, i count five stars (White Sun, Blue Sun, Red Sun, Georgia and Kalidasa), five "protostars" (Burnham, Himinbjoerg, Lux, Penglai and Qin Shi Huang) and two objects of which i'm not sure, if tehy are "protostars" or gas giants (Heinlein and Murphy). None of which makes your objection moot, if anything a system with ten to twelve stars is even more unrealistic. In the end it's just mental gymnastics to rationalize dozens of inhabitable worlds in one system.
Yeah, it's not realistic but it suits the needs of stories told in the Verse to limit its boundaries. If interstellar travel was cheap, easy and quick, anyone dissatisfied with the Alliance would just buzz off and colonise somewhere else.
Well, the inhabitable worlds part is due to humanity terraforming them.
Also, here is the map from the opening of Serenity.
Also, here is the map from the opening of Serenity.
I was going to post most of those issues, but I felt like it would be in poor taste considering I haven't watched the show. Thank you for addressing the exact issue I had with that map... the various stars and superstars being so close to each other, in various points during their orbits, would be causing massive instabilities in each others orbits. There is no way this would be a stable system. One star would be destroying the livable areas of other stars and affecting each others habitable zones and orbita mechanics constantly. Terraforming should take hundreds of years, and to find enough terrestrial worlds with the right mass, gravity, location and raw elements to even be able to terraform that many planets in a short amount of time is just totally unbelievable. Its one of the most unrealistic system/maps I could possibly imagine.
Well, I'd have to disagree. If your show is based around a specific thing, you kind of need that thing. If your show is about people struggling to survive after a war, then there needs to have been a war.
Well sure, the things that caused the war don't matter to the story, but the war still does.
The whole multi-star thing is based on descriptive names that were used in the show (Blue Sun, White Sun, etc), but I don't believe the show ever actually claimed there were multiple stars in the system. I've always assumed it was a one (or at most 2) star system that happened to have a high number of terraformable planets which also had many terraformable moons (with most of the locations named being moons rather than planets).
In the pilot, weren't they planning to travel from Persephone to Beaumonde? By that map it would have taken a long time.
It's plot drive -- the journey takes as long as the plot requires -- the same as Star Trek really.
Exactly, but I always just pictured it as one solar system with a few planets and a bunch of moons.
The fact that there was a war matters. The fact that Mal was on the losing side against the Alliance matters to him. Nothing much else about it ever really figured into the show, so who cares?
You know that Star Trek managed to keep that poohbah about the Romulan War going for decades without ever mentioning what the fuck they fought over?
IIRC Joss Whedon has been quoted as stating something to that effect and also that he doesn't worry himself about whether the system is valid scientifically. Somewhat like JMS, he seems to have only a vague grasp of galactic scale and interstellar distances and I expect he likely doesn't care as long as he can construct the stories that he wants to present.
Well, that's just how I like it.
Oh, I completely agree. I thought you guys were saying that there shouldn't have been a war at all.
Ok, not to sound argumentative, but I'm really curious about a few things. First of all, the map was done by QMX for a roleplaying game, which means after the show was created. I do not know if Joss had a map in mind when he crafted the show. We seem to be out of the time when authors and writers would map out their entire world, though I know of a few exceptions.
Secondly, does a map ruin a show's viewability?
Why do you assume that the terraforming was quick? Nothing in the material implies that terraforming was a quick process.
While I appreciate Joss' work, there are certainly some moments where it's a fictional universe, and that shouldn't surprise anyone, at least I would hope.
Let's ignore the likely dynamic instabilities that would cause collisions and eject bodies from the system. The map depicted in the game is kind of useless as the bodies in a multiple star system would be constantly changing position relative to each other and some might even have chaotic orbits that become unpredictable after a certain amount of time into the future. The map shown on the schoolroom display is likely an instantaneous representation of the position of the system bodies.
Firefly is set around 2517 so unless the era is not CE (AD), the human race had only 500 years or thereabouts to get millions of people out to the system, terraform the planets and moons, and then build the extensive infrastructure that we see on the core worlds. It's always a mistake to use CE dates as they eventually become unrealistic (as with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Space: 1999). Best to ignore.
Firefly is set around 2517 so unless the era is not CE (AD), the human race had only 500 years or thereabouts to get millions of people out to the system, terraform the planets and moons, and then build the extensive infrastructure that we see on the core worlds. It's always a mistake to use CE dates as they eventually become unrealistic (as with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Space: 1999). Best to ignore.
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