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Hans-Quinn 2022 TV Draft: Round Two-Pick Six-Firefly (2002-2003)
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Hanspostcard/Quinn Maddux has a TV draft challenge. This is my Round Two pick.
“You can’t take the sky from me.”
Ok. I will say it. I am a hopeless Sci-Fi geek. I could easily do this TV Draft with nothing but Sci-Fi. I led with Doctor Who because it, by far, has the longest tapestry in my life. I would venture to say that Firefly was the shortest…and, yes, I am a Browncoat. I had an extensive list of Sci-Fi choices but, chose these two, only, because I also wanted to touch on other genres including law enforcement, drama, comedy and a couple of cartoons. ~Vic
When this came out, it struck me as being very close to the original description given to the first Star Trek series…a western in space. Fox had already scored big with the X-Files, running from September 1993 to May 2002. Firefly debuted September 2002 and, I was front and center. I didn’t find out until later that the first episode that aired was not the first episode of the series. You can thank Fox executives for that mess-up. It went downhill from there.
Created by Joss Whedon (Executive Producer, Writer, Theme Composter & Director of three episodes), it starred:
★ Nathon Fillion as Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, the owner & Captain of Serenity, a Firefly-class, small transport spaceship. He is a former sergeant from the Battle of Serenity Valley, an Independent soldier in the war against the Alliance (a fusion of the last two superpowers, the US & China) in the year 2517.
★ Gina Torres as Zoë Alleyne Washburne, second-in-command aboard Serenity and Mal’s loyal corporal during the war. She is Wash’s wife.
★ Alan Tudyk as Hoban “Wash” Washburne, Serenity’s pilot and a bit jealous over his wife’s attachment to Mal. He is known for cracking jokes, even during horrible situations.
★ Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra, a Companion that is a blending of a courtesan, a geisha & a mistress. She has a very high social status and rents one of Serenity’s small shuttles. She & Mal are attracted to each other, dislike each other’s “jobs” and want to remain professional towards each other.
★ Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, a 6’4″ mercenary that acts dumber than he really is. He sends much of his income back to his mother. He is excellent in a fight, has an intense fear of Reavers and has an extreme dislike of Simon and his sister, River, as she attacked him with a knife.
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★ Jewel Staite as Kaywinnet Lee “Kaylee” Frye, the ship’s adorable mechanic. With no formal training, she intuitively knows mechanical equipment. She routinely talks to Serenity and has a crush on Simon Tam.
★ Sean Maher as Simon Tam, a trauma surgeon (top 3% of his class) that became a fugitive after he snatched his sister, River, out of a government research facility. He struggles with his desire for Kaylee as his life revolves around his sister.
★ Summer Glau as River Tam, an intuitive child prodigy that the Alliance experimented on, leading to psychic abilities and combat training. She suffers from PTSD and has flashbacks from the experiments. She can be delusional, paranoid and violent without warning.
★ Ron Glass as Derrial Book, commonly referred to as Shepherd Book (a 24th century version of a pastor). A devout Christian, his background is unknown but, he has much knowledge that the average pastor would not have. He has a fairly high status with the Alliance and, though he objects to violence, he is skilled in combat. Quote: “…while the Bible is quite specific about killing, it is somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.” Book is the voice of reason, spirituality and conscience for the crew.
Fourteen episodes, with a two-hour pilot, were produced but, only 11 of them aired before being unceremoniously cancelled. The Browncoat Brigade started a postcard writing campaign to Fox, and UPN but, it ultimately failed. They continued to push for the DVD release and, in 2005, the feature film Serenity was released on September 30.
Trivia Bits:
♦ The real reason it was cancelled was that the FOX executives thought it was too dark (It was very dark).
♦ Whedon proposed a Firefly plotline in which Inara injected herself with a prophylactic solution, not a birth control but, a serum that would poison anyone who raped her. Whedon’s idea was that Inara would, then, be kidnapped and gang-raped but, that the rapes would take place offscreen and, the only sign of them would be a pile of her rapists later found dead. This plotline was nixed by the network and no version of it ever appeared on the show.
♦ Serenity’s engine room includes the center console from a Boeing 737.
♦ When Whedon created the show, he intended for it to run seven years.
♦ Between shots, the cast preferred to wait in the ship’s lounge, instead of their trailers/dressing rooms.
♦ The Alliance officer and soldier uniforms are leftovers from Starship Troopers (1997).
♦ The pistol-sized lever action gun Zoe wears on her hip is called a Mare’s Leg. It is a cut down Model 1892 Winchester, the same gun used by Steve McQueen in the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958).
♦ Astronaut Steven Swanson is a Browncoat and brought his Firefly & Serenity DVDs with him on the Space Shuttle Atlantis for the STS-117 mission in June 2007.
♦ The Shuttle crew of the Endeavour is awoken at 4:14pm ET to The Ballad of Serenity, played for astronaut Robert Behnken.
♦ The DVDs are in the media collection on the ISS.
♦ There are actual Browncoat Balls, held all over the US. The first one was in 2004.
Firefly Opening Sequence
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The Fifth Dimension: Revisited
A Blog Post From: The Chris Thomas Files
[Note: I made a Fifth Dimension post on December 2, 2018. It was Chris Thomas’s first attempt to try to explain the “Ascending to a 5th Dimension” nonsense. It was one of his earliest essays and it was posted on the, now, defunct Mount Zion 144 Forum on May 15, 2011. This essay revisits the 5th Dimension issue and became Chris’s very last, full-length essay. It was published on October 30, 2013, on the One-Vibration Forum, via a blog post by one of his clients.]
Introduction
Over the past number of years, we have heard repeated claims that we need to “Ascend to a 5th Dimension”…these claims coming to us from a number of channeled sources such as Ashtar Command, Sananda, St. Germaine, The Agarthans, The Galactic Federation of Light, etc., etc… We have all read these messages from our inter-galactic “friends” and, for the most part, many people have accepted these claims and offers of help at face value in the hope that the actions of these alien beings will resolve all of the desperate problems we have here on Earth. In fact, so desperate are we to remove ourselves from the current conditions on Earth that we are prepared to accept these promises of help without question.
Rarely, if ever, have people asked themselves what “Ascending to the 5th Dimension” would actually mean for us humans, or to the planet we live on. Currently, scientists describe us as living in a three dimensional world. There is nothing special about this description as all it describes is the fact that we are physical. Each of us, and the objects we encounter in life, have a physical form that is described as being three-dimensional. We can measure these three physical dimensions in a physical way […] the length, width and height of our physical world define who we are in terms of physical bulk and, also, our physical location in relation to other objects or to other people. That is what is meant by ‘we live in a three-dimensional world’. We have a physical presence and a physical existence.
Whilst time can be measured in a linear fashion, one second following another, one minute following another, one hour following another, etc…it is not the way in which we perceive time. For example, if we are having a busy day, then, one hour can feel as though it has passed in a minute, whereas, if we are having a very boring day, then, one minute can feel to have taken an hour. So, whilst time can be measured, we perceive it in different ways depending upon our circumstances. Also, if you talk with quantum physicists, they will tell you their theories about multiple dimensions existing outside of our solar system. But, these are just theories and are not “provable” in any way, as we cannot access anything that exists outside of our solar system. [For] all intents and purposes, we are three-dimensional beings who live on a three-dimensional planet that exists within a three-dimensional solar system. What occurs outside of our solar system and the dimensions in which other planets exist or, the dimensions in which other forms of life exist, is totally unknown to science.
Five Dimensions
So, what can be meant by the “5th Dimension”? The fundamental problem is that nobody knows. Neither can we comprehend, from our three-dimensional world, what a fifth-dimensional world would look like or how it would function. Those who have listened to, and believed in, these channeled messages assume that existing in a 5-dimensional world is superior to living in a 3-dimensional world. But, how do we know? We don’t. We assume, without any kind of knowledge or understanding, that living in a 5-dimensional world is better than living in a 3-dimensional one.
Why would we assume this? Those who have channeled these messages have never explained what the implications of changing our world from 3 to 5 dimensions actually means. How will it change our lives? How will it change the planet? How will it change the solar system? To these questions no answers have been provided. However, the most important question of all is:
Can we, and the planet, survive in a 5 dimensional existence?
Answer:
No answer to that question has ever been provided by those who propose that we shift to a 5th dimension. We have just assumed that it is possible. We will return to that question a little later.
Dimensional Differences
Our solar system, and particularly the Earth, exists as a three dimensional, physical, reality. Let us pose a question:
What if we, humans, decided to “Ascend to the 5th Dimension” whilst the Earth decides that She wants to stay in Her three-dimensional, physical existence. What would happen to us? What would happen to the Earth?
After all, we have been Created with the absolute freedom to choose our path in life. If we decide to move on and the Earth does not, what would happen? That is a difficult question to answer as we do not have any awareness or experience of anything other than our three-dimensional physical world. This question has been considered by many scientists over the centuries and explored in many books and movies. So, here is one example of what could happen.
The TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation had an episode that explored this question. Captain Jon Luc-Picard [sic] and the crew of the Starship Enterprise were warping through the galaxy when the ship came to a sudden halt. The engines and all of the ship’s systems were working perfectly. They could detect nothing outside of the ship that could have stopped them and, yet, they were marooned in space. They fired one of their “probes” out into space to look at the ship from the outside but, could not see or detect anything. They could not move forwards or backwards nor could they move up or down…just locked into position without anything, apparently, stopping them. Eventually, they realised that the probe had filmed an extremely thin line, virtually undetectable, at the mid-line of the ship. What the ship had hit was a colony of beings that existed only in two dimensions. In other words, they had width and depth […] but, no height. The three-dimensional humans, and their three-dimensional technology, could not detect the existence of these beings and, the two dimensional beings could not perceive the three-dimensional ship.
To continue reading (it’s six pages), download the PDF version HERE.