Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

My understanding is that all the regular guns were supposed to be regular guns, but someone at Fox insisted they add futuristic noises because "it's sci fi!"

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

My problem is that I can only handwave so many times before my waving wrist gets sore. I'm supposed to spot them this miraculous system that they just happened to stumble across while fleeing Earth-that-was using an FTL drive that they just happened to somehow forget the principles of shortly after arriving, while they just happened to maintain terraforming technology, as well as the ability to move planets which isn't even mentioned in the show despite its obvious value both as a survival technology and as a weapon.

That's too many "just happened"s for me to handle. YMMV, of course.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

You don't need to move planets if you go to a miraculous system. Pick one, not both.

How about: Earth found a miraculous exosystem via telescope, just as we're imaging exoplanets today, and the refugees went there by relativistic, sleeper, or generation STL ship? No "just happened" needed so far.

Personally I'd assumed that many of the worlds were outside a natural habitable zone, and had some "fusion" (or whatever) reactor in orbit providing light and heat.

The show does say they adjust the *gravity* of worlds, which is fantastic, but then so is artificial gravity on a ship -- gravity that survives ship power loss, I note, though we could chalk that up to filming limitations. I sort of imagined gravity generators within the worlds, though the canon explanation seems to be condensing the worlds.

It's all still pretty implausible for 2500. OTOH, you could change a couple of background details while changing nothing of the actual story: the ships are sleeper ships, and much of the terraforming was one on a long time scale, like Niven and Cooper's Building Harlequin's Moon. They *left* Earth within the next 500 years, but they didn't start dropping colonists until untold millennia in the future, once the worlds were mostly ready. The crew slept through most of it too, but were occasionally awake to supervise. Then the crew and rich passengers went to the fully infrastructured core, the poor passengers got dumped out with 40 acres and a mule, and voila, Firefly. Since they have no contact with Earth, the exact year is completely irrelevant.

And we know they have at least some level of coldsleep tech; it's how Simon smuggled River onto Serenity.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Absolutely not. You might ignite a brown dwarf's core but then you'd disperse its' outer layers.

The compression that drives and maintains the nuclear reactions comes form gravity. Raise its' temperature without increasing its' gravity and you'll lower its' density and cause cooling. Then the fire goes out. The outer layers will eventually collapse back inward but the core won't re-ignite. There wasn't enough gravity to cause and maintain ignition in the first place.

There is no substituting for gravity or some sort of superscience pseudogravitational force. This is just one of those things that you can not accomplish with a sufficient supply of explosives.

Gravity is _everything_ jn stellar evolution.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Ancient Aliens? Sure, I suppose so. Not cow fetuses in jars...;)


But I think you're overlooking the obvious explanation:

God did it. The 'Verse is a miracle.

Humanity wrecked Earth-that-Was, but was given a second chance in the 'Verse.

I imagine this is how many people in setting would come to see it.

True, we don't get this explanation in the shows. But we don't get ANY explanation of how this huge system came to be.
What we do see is that religion is alive and well in the future. Thus, religious, theological, and mythological frames will probably be used to understand various things.



How long have they been in the 'Verse, anyway?

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

I remember them compressing moons and planets, not brown dwarfs. This is all from supplemental material, anyway; show just said "fixed the gravity" and in an opening voiceover at that, and the voiceover couldn't decide whether they were in a system or expanded into a galaxy...

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Well, I enjoy a lot of Whedon's stuff, but that hardly seems reason enough to deify Him :)

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Well, plus for no good reason. There's no reason to try to cram it all into one system, or come up with supertech that can terraform all these places but is generally useless for anything else, etc etc. Aside from "because Whedon (who openly admits to not being overly concerned with realism or consistency in his world building) said so."

Make it an open cluster with moderately quick FTL and it's a bog standard space opera strongly invoking it's Western storytelling roots. There's nothing wrong with that.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Quite true. And the reason Whedon didn't care is the same reason it's easy enough to replace with an open cluster or whatever you prefer: the exact astrographic details aren't important to the background or the stories. You need a core, and a frontier, patrolled space and room to get lost, and travel times in the order of weeks at most. All the business about X planets in a single system isn't actually a key factor in the setting.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

What's the point of having so many Earthlike worlds, anyway?

Unlike the TV show, your special effects budget is limited only by your imagination. Why not create multiple worlds unlike Earth in various ways?


OR...

Why not just set all the action on a single Earthlike world and give the PCs an ocean going tramp steamer?
The Alliance scales down to a major planetary power.

Maybe areas of the planet have been only partly terraformed, and are still very harsh.

Reavers become mutant bandits.

Lower the TL. Aside from the plot device spaceships and setting background gravitics and terraforming, how much really advanced tech do we see in Firefly?


YMMV