Good SF TV: "Firefly" DVD Set Released

[Donnie B.]

I just got back, and the wife had the set waiting for me. Damn the pinheads at Fox for sabbotaging this show. Compared to some of the crap out there this one really shines.

Welcome home, Ripper, and happy viewing! And don't forget to spread the word to your family and friends... :wink:

[Ripper 2.0]

I hope you all have noticed the super-human restraint I am exercising in not going at length on the firearms used in the show.

[Starbuck]

Really? A lot of the guns seem not to be all that realistic, and even the ones that do look remotely real have nifty "p-choo!" sound effects that indicate they're not standard IMIs or Glocks.

Methinks they are futuristic "space guns," whose properties remain unaccounted for.

[Ripper 2.0]

Actually, they mostly, sound effects aside, over 100 years old. Jayne's pistol is a dressed up LeMat revolver. J. E. B. Stuart carried one in the Civil War.

[AstroSmurf]

I had a few beefs, but one that came up consistently is how much they underestimate the amount of bruising you get from being punched in the head (and punching someone - there's a reason boxers wear gloves). The worst anyone got seemed to be a split lip.

But even so, this series was golden.

[gethen]

Golden indeed. I would say that one of the reasons it was so good is that the stories and characters could have stood on their own without the sci-fi setting. Good writing, good writing, and good writing--a rare thing these days.

[Stuart]

Actually, they mostly, sound effects aside, over 100 years old. Jayne's pistol is a dressed up LeMat revolver. J. E. B. Stuart carried one in the Civil War.

In the last episode River picks up Jayne's Desert Eagle.....

[Ripper 2.0]

In Our Mrs. Renalds they fired "Vera" inside a space suit because it needed to be fired in an atmosphere. I have not figured that one out. The physics are pretty good otherwise.

[Donnie B.]

Firefly is pretty hip when it comes to weapons.

In Ariel, Jayne has stolen a fancy sonic rifle from one of the bad guys. He fires it at a locked door, twice, without any effect. He swears at it ("gorram high-tech crap"), then uses it as a club to try to break the doorknob... :P

[gethen]

That's what I like about Jayne. He'd behave in exactly the same manner if he were a Roman gladiator or a wild west cowboy or a space age mercenary.

[Wingnut Ninja]

In Our Mrs. Renalds they fired "Vera" inside a space suit because it needed to be fired in an atmosphere. I have not figured that one out. The physics are pretty good otherwise.

Gunpowder doesn't burn unless there's oxygen around. I did think it was odd, though, that they didn't have any weapons that could work in vacuum, since they spend an awful lot of time there.

[daver]

In Our Mrs. Renalds they fired "Vera" inside a space suit because it needed to be fired in an atmosphere. I have not figured that one out. The physics are pretty good otherwise.

Gunpowder doesn't burn unless there's oxygen around. I did think it was odd, though, that they didn't have any weapons that could work in vacuum, since they spend an awful lot of time there.

The oxidizer is in the gunpowder.

[Ripper 2.0]

Daver is correct. Both black and smokeless powder rounds are self contained and get no oxygen from outside. The only firearm I can think of that would not fire in space is a matchlock. There was concern at one time that bullets would come unseated from cartridges at high altitude, but I have never seen it happen. Modern ammunition is fully waterproof, and some firearms can be fired under water.

[daver]

The only firearm I can think of that would not fire in space is a matchlock.

I was trying to recall if there was a projectile weapon that required atmospheric oxygen--spudguns and tennis ball cannon were the only things that came to mind.

[Krel]

All cartridge firearms can be fired underwater, it's just not the safest thing to do due to the water in the barrel.

David.

[Ripper 2.0]

My point was safely. Revolvers are generally not a problem. High powered rifles generally are. There are a few designs where having the receiver full of water would prevent the firing pin from moving freely, and may lead to misfire. It is also worth noting that most bullets would have very limited range under water. There are several purpose designed under water firearms, including a rether unique Kalashnikov variant.

I digress. We started by discussing a minor case of bad physics in an otherwise outstanding show.

[Wingnut Ninja]

The oxidizer is in the gunpowder.

Ah. That may be, but I think it's still the reason they used the spacesuit. Maybe he's just never tried firing it in space before?

[Ripper 2.0]

The bottom line is, there was no reason to fire the gun inside a space suit.

[daver]

The bottom line is, there was no reason to fire the gun inside a space suit.

I haven't seen the episode. Prolonged exposure to vacuum might not have been good for the gun.

[Ripper 2.0]

The bottom line is, there was no reason to fire the gun inside a space suit.

I haven't seen the episode. Prolonged exposure to vacuum might not have been good for the gun.

Any curent firearm would work just fine in vacuum, so it would make little sense for a top of the line piece in a space faring society to design one that wouldn't.

Again, this is nit-picking. It is a great show, and I encourage everyone to buy a copy. If there is enough demand it may make a come back.

[daver]

Any curent firearm would work just fine in vacuum, so it would make little sense for a top of the line piece in a space faring society to design one that wouldn't.

Agreed, and agreed that this is quibbling, but if the firearm were unprotected for a long enough time funky stuff could happen to the lubrication, or it could radiate away enough heat that the metal would become brittle. From reading between the lines, this is unlikely to have been a concern.

[Ripper 2.0]

A subject I would like to discuss is the Reavers. The have only played in two episodes, the pilot and "Bushwacked". The basic concept is that humans go insane if they live too far out in space for too long. There is also the indication that one will go insane if they witness the kind of insanity the Reavers exhibit. I do not claim great knowledge of phychology. I am aware of the phenomena of "break-away syndrome". There have been a few cases of this in NASA, and even earlier during the high altitude balloon experiments like "Excelsior". One of the balloonists had to be conjoled into coming down. I have always felt that this is what David Bowie's classic "Space Oddity" was about.

One feature of the Reavers that needs to be dealt with is how can they continue to maintain space ships and modern weapons. In the pilot they mentioned that the ship had no reactor containment. Wash commented that that was suicide. To the best of my knowledge, insanity does not make you any more resistant to radiation. Perhaps they just don't care. Reavers would be pretty rare if their ships were all in the condition of the one in the pilot.

Any thoughts out there?

[gethen]

I had the same thought about the observation that the Reaver ship in that episode had no containment system for its reactor. How long are they gonna be around? And yet, that fits the whole idea that they notice another ship and just pursue until they catch it. No logic involved. Then again, they booby trap a ship they've already pillaged so that they can come back and pillage and would-be rescuers. That sounds like planning. I think it's another instance where we were cheated out of furthur knowledge about this idea by Fox's idiocy in cancelling the series.

So I guess I'm not the only one just a little obsessed with Firefly?
Shiny!!!

[Wingnut Ninja]

Yeah, the fact that Reavers were crazy doesn't really explain how they still had functioning ships and weren't dead. I mean, radiation leaking out of your reactor is going to do more than give you cancer in 20 years.

They still made pretty good boogeymen, though.

[Ripper 2.0]

They never show us how the Reavers interact with each other. There has to be some order to it or they would not be able to keep their ships operating. I guess it would not be too much to believe that the biggest, meanest one would take charge as captain. I suppose there may be one who's insanity takes the form of obsessively working on the ship. An even darker scenario is if they keep prisoners that are useful. They do not drive them insane and make reavers out of them, they just use enough fear and torture to keep them in line. In any case, insane does not necessarily mean stupid.

Still, that brings us back to the radiation. It would seem that Reavers are rather rare. The Alliance does not believe that they exist. Dr. Tam said he had heard campfire stories.

Reavers do make good bad guys though. Some shows make a point of the bad guys being so bad that there is no moral gray area about killing them. The Ceylons for example were robots with no purpose but to kill every human. Interestingly, Firefly does not seem to have any trouble killing off humans, but made the killing of the one reaver we get to see seem like an unfortunate necessity or mercy killing.

So much potential wasted. Damn the pin-heads at Fox.

[gethen]

The scariest bad guys are always the ones you don't know much about, and the Reavers qualify there.
One of the things that I thought made the series interesting was the idea that Firefly was a transport ship, and as such had no weapons of its own. Imagine. An outerspace movie in which the heroes don't have giant laser cannons and proton torpedoes and so forth. Had to use their wits to deal with bad guys and Alliance guys in bigger ships with lots of weapons.

[Ripper 2.0]

Excellent point. The less people know, the more they speculate. Unless anyone had actually survived a Reaver attack, how does anyone know what they do? In fact, how reliable is the word of someone who survived? I am sure the stories get told, and the speculation and embellishment runs wild.

Did you know that the Iraqis believed that to become a Marine you had to murder your parents?

[gethen]

The Iraqis must think we're a whole nation of Reavers. But I can personally attest that even though my brother is an ex-marine, my mother is still alive and kickin' at age 87. And my brother is still scared of her.

[Donnie B.]

Maybe the Reavers are a ship full of Moms... :wink:

[Wingnut Ninja]

The scariest bad guys are always the ones you don't know much about, and the Reavers qualify there.

I dunno, I thought the Blue Hands guys were, potentially at least, a whole lot creepier. I really wish we could have seen more of that story line.