psychic
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.
Deviant Art
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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
50 Quotes
Our Witch
Too Much Hair
Reboot? Yes, Disney Sucks (Sorry for the ads)
Chris Thomas: The Fifth Dimension?
A Forum Blog Post From: The Chris Thomas Files
A great many people seem to be getting bogged down in the concept of humanity, and the planet, “Ascending to the 5th Dimension.” But, what is meant by “The 5th Dimension?” We live in a world we experience as being bounded [sic] by [three] dimensions […]. [T]hese are length, breadth and depth. These are “physical” dimensions, measurements that place us within our spacial environment. Einstein added the concept of a fourth dimension…time, to make sense of his theories on the Space-Time Continuum. In other words, using time in this way is just another physical measurement within our environment. However, once we consider the concept of a 5th dimension, we have to move out of our physical environment and in to the realms of the other definition for a dimension…namely energy.
Everything is energy. What appears to us to be solid, physical matter is, in its basic form, constructed from frequencies of energy that combine together to give us “physical” matter…i.e. the human body, clothing, floorboards, trees, food, etc, etc… Everything we experience as being physical is made up of energy but, our brains interpret these energy patterns (energy frequencies) as being solid, physical matter. The amount of energy contained within solid matter is huge. If you apply Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, E=MC2, you will find that the energy contained in physical matter is immense (see Project Human Extinction for an example of just how much).
In this sense, a dimension ceases to be a measurement of physical space and becomes a measurement of energy frequencies. They can be thought of as being like the stations on a radio dial. A radio dial measures energy frequencies, called radio waves and, the station pre-sets are just measurements of the frequencies of the radio waves. So, a dimension can be seen as a collection of energy frequencies with the dimension, itself, being a pre-set marker that contains all of the energy frequencies below the marker but, not the frequencies above.
The concept of humanity “Ascending to a 5th Dimension” is uniquely Velon (Annunaki) in origin. For full details of how the Velon/Annunaki have interfered in human affairs, see The Annunaki Plan? or The Human Plan?. The Velon/Annunaki are a non-human race who have been attempting, by several means, mainly channelling, to persuade humans to leave the planet. As part of this “Plan”, they have concocted the idea of human ascension to a 5th dimension. As someone who “reads” energy frequencies, the 5th dimension does exist but, it is not away from Earth.
It is very easy to become seduced by the stories produced by the Velon/Annunaki as we live in changing times. Most people are aware that we are changing but, it is difficult to define just what we are changing to especially as we have no previous experience of the kind of change we are undergoing. Into this void of information has stepped the Velon/Annunaki with concepts which appear to hold some value for us at this time. However, it must be remembered that the Velon/Annunaki fantasy story begins many thousands of years ago where they inform us that the Velon/Annunaki created humans (which they call “Adamu”) as a slave race. By planting this fantasy deep into our past, they hoped that, at this time of change, we would welcome them in as our “creators” and, they could take over everything on the planet and lead us to believe everything they tell us.
The Velon/Annunaki are not welcome on Earth. The Earth’s consciousness has rejected them and, so, those who act as guardians of the Earth are ensuring that the Velon/Annunaki do not enter our solar system. To try to overcome their banishment, the Velon/Annunaki have resorted to using channelled communications to try to persuade people to build “portals” that break through the Earth’s defences.
Think of it this way: [I]f the Earth welcomed in the Velon/Annunaki, the first we would know about it was when they landed on the planet. Instead of which, we have had numerous attempts to break through these defences and persuade us on Earth that they are here to help us “ascend.” The more people who believe this propaganda, the more it encourages the Velon/Annunaki to persist, placing the Earth and all of its life in danger (see The Human Soul and Project Human Extinction for a description of the damage the Velon/Annunaki have done to their own worlds and, see Synthesis for a true history of the place humans have in the Universe).
To return to the fifth dimension… As someone who has worked as a psychic surgeon for over thirty years, I studied the energies contained within the human body to help understand why illnesses arose. The human body, in its natural state, contains 13 dimensions of energy, divided between the root and the crown chakras. The 5th dimension relates to [the] region of the body [around your] navel level. I am sure we would all agree that “ascending” to your navel is not a step forwards in human evolution!
© Chris Thomas 2011
[Original Posting/Mount Zion 144 Ning Forum Blog Post 2011/Defunct]
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