Firefly

[KarenS]

Anyone here catch the premier of Firefly? It's supposed to be "big budget sci fi" on Fox, but it's from the same guy who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was just wondering how "Bad" it is, if it's Bad at all, and whether it's worth watching.

[XPav]

I found Firefly a good show to watch. Its a sci-fi/western blend. This first episode had our "heroes" robbing a train. That's right. A train. Great stuff. Wish I had taped it.

Science wise:
One amazing thing: the spaceships did NOT make noise in space!
There appears to be gravity control.
The space ships apparently use some sort of jet engine while in atmosphere and some other sort of glowy drive in space.

The intro is: "After the earth was used up we found a new solar system and hundreds of new earths were terraformed and colonized. The central planets formed the alliance and decided all the planets had to join under their rule."

Interesting. Hundreds of new earths in one system? What are the chances of that? I suspect, having watched Joss Whedon's shows before, that this was intentional.

I liked the show though. I shall watch it again.

[frenat]

I watched it as well and it wasn't half bad. I especially like the part where he kicked the bad guy into the engine intake.

[ILeaTHS]

I like it too. I didn't really watch for Bad Astronomy (I don't know enough to do it justice) but I though the show was good.

And kicking the guy into the intake was really cool.

[XPav]

"I will find you and hunt you down and kill you..."

<kick><foomph>

Bring out the next henchman!

[Rift]

I loved it, the western flavor was refreshing for a sci fi show. The weapons were cool, all had a western six shooter feel to them, but they were obviously much higher tech then that, I think they did a good job with the western flavor but still leaving it futuristic.

I missed the start, but what I saw, there wasn't much bad astronomy, but then again I've learned to watch sci-fi without looking for astronomy [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

The train was cool too. It looked like it was a mag-lev type thing.

I was really impressed with the whole thing.

[Wiley]

What time slot was this sci-fi/western saddled with?

Sorry, I don't watch enough TV. Since I'm a big fan of Buffy, I'll make an exception for this show.
[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[KarenS]

What time slot was this sci-fi/western saddled with?

Fridays at 8 pm.

I used to be a Buffy fan, but the last few seasons haven't appealed to me as much.

[frenat]

It was on on Friday, 8PM on Fox.

[KarenS]

Oops, forgot to say--it's on Fox.

[Jim]

That's 8pm Eastern on Fox.

http://www.fox.com/firefly/

Cute show and definitely a Western flair. Check out some of the titles of upcoming episodes.

One of the Alliance characters made a statement about travelling "70 million miles to get here" and not wanting to waste the trip. 500 years in the future, in a galaxy-wide alliance, wouldn't that be more like a trip to the corner 7-11?

[Wiley]

Thanks, y'all. I'll try to catch it.

The NY Times magazine had an article on Firefly and Joss Whedon. (Free registration required.) Kinda of interesting.

[XPav]

On 2002-09-24 19:41, frenat wrote:
It was on on Friday, 8PM on Fox.

8PM Pacific too, when not preempted by baseball.

[Rich]

I found it pretty fun.

Doesn't seem they had much time for any BA, since most of the story was on the ground.

If I recall correctly they used some sort of "gravity drive" for interstellar travel, but they didn't really mention relative time/distance or how it worked (guess the writers haven't had much time to figure that part out themselves... BA I smell a consulting job). And I thought they implied that all those terraformed worlds were in many different systems...

Interesting plot device though with the terraforming. Nice how they explained that sometimes can't predict every possible result of a new technology in alien environments.

The follow-on show "John Doe" was interesting as well.

[Aodoi]

Not bad Astonomy, but some bad reality in John Doe (I only watched a couple minutes, but I turned it off because of this)... he spits out a string in binary and a kid goes "the source code for DOS!" or something of the like. DOS wasn't written in binary, so giving the source code in binary would be... well, stupid. Not to mention taking a rather extended period of time. 64K may be small now, but actually saying that many 0's and 1's would take a looong time.

I'm not sure if they explained later on, but if the guy knows everything why not ask him to write out a unified field theory? Or cure cancer? Or rewrite the lost works of various ancient philosophers? I suppose they can get around those by arguing he only knows what people currently know (they might have done so already).

Anyway, the ads seemed to imply he was going to pull the old "psychic detective" schtick and help solve murders. While a nice enough career path, I'd have to imagine that there are some rather more broad applications to put the entire knowledge of the human race toward.

Firefly was good enough that I'll try and watch the second episode. I was amused by the "old west meets sci fi" flavor, and I'm thinking they'll probably be more scientifically accurate than most of those shows seem to be.

btw, I think modern jet engines get fouled (or fowled) up when birds get sucked in... I'd have to imagine that a human body would make a real mess out of one. Even in the future. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[KarenS]

Ok, you've convinced me, all of you--I'll have to watch it. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Er, I'll have to *tape* it and watch it later... Friday at 8:00 is a bad time, even for someone with only a marginal social life. What were they thinking? Argh!

[irony]

I saw it, but wasn't too impressed. My main impression of the show was that whoever came up with it has been watching an awful lot of Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star.

[honestmonkey]

On 2002-09-26 11:47, Aodoi wrote:
[About "John Doe"] I'm not sure if they explained later on, but if the guy knows everything why not ask him to write out a unified field theory? Or cure cancer? Or rewrite the lost works of various ancient philosophers?

Or - write a decent TV show? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[kadath]

On 2002-09-26 11:47, Aodoi wrote:
btw, I think modern jet engines get fouled (or fowled) up when birds get sucked in... I'd have to imagine that a human body would make a real mess out of one. Even in the future. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I didn't see the show, but with modern turbofan engines, anything of decent mass going through the intake will snap off a whole bunch of the fanblades, unbalance the rest of the fan, and do bad things to the actual burners.

Because of the strict tolerances for fanblades, they're made of rigid alloys to prevent wobble at high RPM. This makes them brittle and fairly easy to break, as metals go.

However, who's to say that In The Future[TM], someone won't have gotten around the rigidity/brittleness tradeoff in materials science? Reaching, I know, but nice to think about.

[frenat]

I saw a video once where a maintenance worker accidentally go sucked into an intake of a fighter jet. Amazingly he came out the other end with just a few scratches. I never heard how the engine ended up though.

[Rift]

64K may be small now, but actually saying that many 0's and 1's would take a looong time.

Yeah, that part bugged me too, it would take forever. And how would the kid know he had all those 0s and 1s memorized and didn't just rattle a bunch off.
And is his knowledge updated or something? He later makes a killing on indonesian rice futures or some dang thing, and the stock broker asks him what crystal ball he used, he says something like "no crystal ball, just an intant knowledge of the indonesian stock market". Those things change moment to moment...

I did end up watching more of John Doe then you, but I bailed after 30 minutes.

[Matherly]

More 'John Doe'...

Well, I liked it. Or at least I liked it enough to keep watching it for a while. There are a few thoughts though.

1. The rules for the 'knowledge memory' thing needs to be defined pretty darn pronto or else it will turn into a cheep trick. The pilot seems to hint that he has access to "public" knowledge, i.e. knowledge that the average citizen with no security clearance could aquire if they knew where to look. After all, he had to hack into the conviction records for the kidnapper.
2. They will have to keep the show from devolving into "Gilligan's Memory" where each show he is just moments away from finding out all the answers and then loses them. This sort of crap is just to &%^*ing frustrating to watch!

Well, I know I'll be watching Firefly and John Doe tonight [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[Donnie B.]

On 2002-09-26 19:48, frenat wrote:
I saw a video once where a maintenance worker accidentally go sucked into an intake of a fighter jet. Amazingly he came out the other end with just a few scratches. I never heard how the engine ended up though.

I assume this was an animated cartoon -- to my knowledge. there's no jet engine in the world a human being could pass through unharmed, even if it wasn't running (unless it was disassembled!)

You'd be more likely to be able to squeeze through the bars of a jail cell! Not that I think you'd ever need to... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[KarenS]

I assume this was an animated cartoon

That was that scene in The Phantom Menace, right before the pod race, where the robot was sucked into a pod engine and came out ok. That's the first thing I thought of when he described the human going through.

[moving_target]

On 2002-09-27 17:14, Donnie B. wrote:

On 2002-09-26 19:48, frenat wrote:
I saw a video once where a maintenance worker accidentally go sucked into an intake of a fighter jet. Amazingly he came out the other end with just a few scratches. I never heard how the engine ended up though.

I assume this was an animated cartoon -- to my knowledge. there's no jet engine in the world a human being could pass through unharmed, even if it wasn't running (unless it was disassembled!)

no it was not a cartoon. it was a actual video of a man being sucked into the air intake of an aircraft engine (i think it was a harrer). He did not pass thought the engine, and he was not unharmed. Although considering the fact that he wasn't killed, i assume that the engine receaved the brunt of the dammage.

[xriso]

On 2002-09-27 18:43, moving_target wrote:

On 2002-09-27 17:14, Donnie B. wrote:

On 2002-09-26 19:48, frenat wrote:
I saw a video once where a maintenance worker accidentally go sucked into an intake of a fighter jet. Amazingly he came out the other end with just a few scratches. I never heard how the engine ended up though.

I assume this was an animated cartoon -- to my knowledge. there's no jet engine in the world a human being could pass through unharmed, even if it wasn't running (unless it was disassembled!)

no it was not a cartoon. it was a actual video of a man being sucked into the air intake of an aircraft engine (i think it was a harrer). He did not pass thought the engine, and he was not unharmed. Although considering the fact that he wasn't killed, i assume that the engine receaved the brunt of the dammage.

I think I've seen that clip too.

Anyway, here are some jet-engine-sucking related links:
http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/93/134/04_6_m.html (about monkeys. monkeys are good.)
http://www.globemaster.de/airextreme/jets.html (a guy getting sucked into a jet engine is one of the clips)

[David Hall]

On 2002-09-27 21:40, xriso wrote:

http://www.globemaster.de/airextreme/jets.html (a guy getting sucked into a jet engine is one of the clips)

The clip on that page is the same one I remember seeing too. It was on an "incredible things caught on film" type show broadcast on Discovery here a few months ago. They kept showing part of it as a teaser before commercial breaks. But it looked so gruesome I couldn't bear to watch the actual segment (I'm a bit squeamish about this sort of thing). Now I wish I had. I'm amazed and relieved that this guy survived pretty much intact.

[kadath]

On 2002-09-27 22:30, David Hall wrote:

I'm amazed and relieved that this guy survived pretty much intact.

It's not that amazing that someone sucked through a jet engine came out pretty much unscathed. Even sitting on the runway spinning up, a turbofan engine is still moving air at at several hundred miles per hour. Anyone picked up by the engine would be passed through in under a second, not long enough for the burner to do any real damage. Also, turbofan blades are very brittle, and the force of a human body hitting would destroy the fan. The only thing I can think of about getting sucked through a jet engine that could really hurt someone is if they knocked their head against the airframe.

It seems amazing, but jet engines are actually rather fragile. They're machined to careful tolerances because of weight and thermal restrictions, and only operate at their peak efficiencies in a small range of conditions.

[xriso]

Firefly episode TWO: Did anyone pick up some bad astronomy from this one? I think one of the crew said that a person's blood boils in space. Also, I'm not sure about this, but I think the engineer was saying something like "that ship's spinning around because that thruster is broken", instead of saying it's spinning due to angular momentum.

[Rich]

Yes, I caught those. Got the "we found a new system and terraformed hundreds of earths" (or something to that affect) this time too. The whole intro is actually pretty muddled. I know what they are trying to say, but it is presented in such a dull, lifeless, inconsistent way as to be rather a put off. If I were very judgmental I'd never get past the poor intro.

The rest of the show is pretty good, but they still can't decide on their astronomical terms. They seem to be headed in the right direction about half the time, but then they say something totally contradictory. For example, when talking about the "Reavers" (apparent mutated human boogey-men who've spent a little too much time dwelling in deepspace around the galaxy's fringes) they talk about the rim of the galaxy and such. They seem to imply that the reavers largely strike near the outer edges of the galaxy. Later when talking to the alliance captain our intrepid leader makes the same inferences, but this time says, "I take it this is your first patrol on the edges of the system?" Which is it?

They also constantly refer to the "inner worlds" rather than inner systems. Further muddying the waters. Are they just imprecise, or do they not know what they're talking about?

The general lack of clarity between one huge solar system of hundreds of habitable planets and a number of solar systems is going to be a problem for me. I cringe everytime the conflict comes up.