posted
Can we see the reasoning? Because without sitting down and actually watching the whole show again to see which planets were visited and when. . .
I've wondered about using orbital mirrors to increase sunlight in the outer planets, but such tech would require constant maintenance and who'd do it? Not the Alliance, they obviously don't give a shit about the outer planets beyond making sure they don't develop some kind of govermental authority to challenge their own. I suppose the often-backwards nature of some of the settlements we saw doesn't necessarily preclude planets/moons having some kind of ground-to-space sattellite-maintenance capability. And, given their alleged ability to modify the gravity of a planet during terraforming, you can get into all kinds of arcane stuff like using gravity to focus sunlight, exotic physiscs like that. . .
Looks like Venus to me. Like it's got a thick atmosphere.
Sihnon
Core planet primarily settled by the decendents of the Sino powers, per the SVC one of the larger central earth-like planets. To my knowledge the show never went there.
Osiris
Wealthy core planet. Where the Tams are from. Except in flashback the show never visted there.
Three Hills
To my knowledge never seen, but mentioned as a place for Mal to sell their stolen 'goods' after Badger refuses them on Persephone.
Highgate
Hoighty-toighty name.
Londinium: Bellerophon
Core planet primarily settled by the decendents of the Anglo/American powers. Per the SVC one of the larger central earth-like planets. To my knowledge the show never went there. Bellerophon is known to be an Alliance moon where the wealthy keep their homes. Floating estates, etc. Visited in the episode "Trash."
Ariel: Bernadette, Kerry
Core planet home to at least one major medical center (St. Lucy's). Visited in the episode "Ariel." Bernadette from the Wiki "is a non-terraformed moon near the core worlds whose environmentally-sealed station is used as a staging location for ships of settlers headed for the border planets. The settlers in "Bushwhacked" left from here on their way to Newhall." I think it's also where Mal claims to be coming from in "The Train Job." Kerry? I knew a girl named Kerry once. She was pretty.
Border Planets
Greenleaf: Jiangyin, Harvest
Alliance planet (though not specifically mentioned as "core". As previously mentioned, noted as being 10 hours from Jiangyin where the crew of Serenity were selling their cattle in the episode "Safe". Zoe figures this pretty quick, so I'm assuming it's a number that doesn't change, which makes me think Jiangyin must be a moon. Jiangyin is apparently 3 weeks from Persephone which, I am assuming here is more distant due to orbital mechanics. Harvest just felt right there
I have no information how we know that Ezra and Regina orbit a gas giant called Georgia beyond the Wiki. Ezra is the desert moon around which Niska's skyplex orbits. If I recall correctly we see a large ringed moon impossibly close behind the BDH after Mal gets tossed through the window. Beylix is the only body shown with rings from the SVC. Regina is the mining town where Mal and Zoe are detained in the episode "The Train Job."
Hera: Santo, Persephone, Shadow, Silverhold
Hera was where the Battle of Serenity Valley was fought. According to the SVC, Hera was an outer world and along with Persephone and Shadow raised an army (half volunteers) to fight for independence. Given the Civil War parallels of the show and the technological disparity, I'm guessing these were fought primarily as defensive battles. In her speech about the Independents, River's teacher shows an animation from which all of these orbits have been traced. But before that, we see a desert planet with a frontier outpost falling under the shadow of what is presumably an Alliance warship. This dissolves to a reddish, Mars-like world, which, ultimately winds up in this orbit in the animation. I'm totally guessing here, but she was talking about the Independents, so it stands to reason she'd show a place significant to the conflict. Serenity Valley would be significant. Shadow (Mal's home, mentioned in "Our Mrs. Reynolds") was evidently devastated and rendered uninhabitable as the RPG would have it. The episodes "Serenity", "Shindig" as well as the comic (TLB) have stories set on Persephone, primarily dealing with crime-lord Badger. Has to be 3 weeks from Jiangyin at some point. Plus I liked the Hera/Persephone thing. Santo is also close as the barfight with the slavers at the holo-pool-table occurs shortly before Serenity's arrival on Persephone. Silverhold which is shown as reddish in the SVC Graphic is the locus of Womack's authority from the episode "The Message." The icy, frontier world of St. Albans is 7 (or 8?) sectors away according to Book in that episode. Whatever sectors are.
Heinlein: Higgin's Moon, Salisbury, Triumph
Another gas-giant whose mention I don't know, other than the Wiki. Higgins' Moon is where the Mudders mine the ceramic clays for a Magistrate named, Higgins as shown in "Jaynestown". Salisbury, don't know. If Heinlein is a gas giant, then it should probably have lots of moons. Salisbury could be one. Triumph is where the crew of Serenity is first introduced to the character Saffron (Yo-Saff-Bridge) in the episode "Our Mrs Reynolds." I figure it's got to be a little fringey and a lot back-water-y with the rainsticks gifts and strange marriage ceremonies.
Athens: Deadwood, Beaumonde, Ita, Whitefall
Whitefall is mentioned as being the fourth moon of Athens in the episode "Serenity." That the crime-lord Patience is able to control so much of it with her mostly horse-mounted posse, makes me think it's in the sticks. Plus in the article "A Brief History of the Universe circa 2507 A.D.", Joss specifically calls Whitefall and Beaumonde pissant moons. The fighting in the War for Independence apparently never reached these worlds. Beaumonde is visited in the movie "Serenity" where the crew meet Fanty and Mingo at a bar called The Maidenhead. Ita is a moon in a remote sector (whatever a sector is) and is from where the crew of the S.S. Walden is returning from a salvage mission when they pick up Serenity's boosted distress beacon in the episode "Out of Gas"
Boros: Constance
Boros was Serenity's posted destination before Badger's refusal to purchase their "goods" forced them to detour to Whitefall which detour evidently wouldn't put them more than a day or so off schedule. Constance is a world where Mal, Zoe and Jayne attempt a bank heist in the TLB comic
Frontier Planets
Newhall
Original destination of the settlers before they were hijacked by Reavers from the episode "Bushwacked."
Dyton
Badger's home world.
St. Albans: Aberdeen, Haven
Icy frontier world, home of Tracy visited in the episode "The Message." He-who-shall-not-be-named pointed out that Aberdeen and St Albans are both Scottish. I believe Inara's Companion Training House is on a colder world, and Aberdeen just seems right somehow. Also, from the movie, Haven ain't but a few hours out or something. Actually all the worlds in the movie are REALLY close together. According to the script in the SVC, Serenity could get to Mr. Universe in four hours at hard burn from Miranda. (In that same line River mentions the distance as something like 367,644 miles. 367,644 miles is barely farther away than Earth's moon! Historical revisionism or no, I'm thinking a planet capable of supporting 30 million souls would be quite visible to anyone capable of looking skyward. But Joss gave us the Musical episode of Buffy, so we forgive him his not-so-science-y bits.)
Verbena
Formerly a poor, underdeveloped world frontier planet when the Alliance chose it as a site of a new gearshift assembly factory for military skiffs from the unaired script "Dead Or Alive". From the Wiki
Lilac
A planet presumably near Reaver territory shown as having a purplish atmosphere as seen from orbit. The crew of Serenity are here robbing an Alliance bank when the town is hit by Reavers in the "Serenity" movie.
posted
Interesting question. If there was to ever be a distinction made - as opposed, say, to just using two different words for the same thing, which is the likely option in this case - I'd say that a border denoted a line beyond which was something or someone they didn't like and wanted to keep away from: an enemy, in other words; while, a frontier was something beyond which the territory was either unknown, or unexplored, or generally unwanted: say, the edge of the system.
In this context, you'd have a border between the Alliance and the Independents - or you would have had, before the war, and the planets along that border would be border planets. The outermost planet or planets in the system, and their associated moons, would be frontier worlds.
posted
Those are pretty much exactly the definitions I'm using. There are those big gaps in the orbits and I sort of see those as rough boundaries. It definitely provided a leg-up on positioning things.
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Lilac is a planet presumably near Reaver territory shown as having a purplish atmosphere as seen from orbit. The crew of Serenity are here robbing an Alliance bank when the town is hit by Reavers in the "Serenity" movie. Lilac is stated as being ten hours from Beaumonde which pretty much makes it a moon in the same system.
Boros
Frontier Planets
Newhall
Constance
Verbena
Aberdeen: Haven, St. Albans
Dyton
Badger's home world was originally settled by convicts.
Burnham
I'm taking Inara's line about Miranda being located in the Burnham quadrant, furthest planet out, to mean that Miranda occupies the last orbit of a planet, possibly a gas giant, named "Burnham."
posted
I love the show, but that's retarded. All the moons/planets/stations would suffer from a zillion comets, debris, unforseen gravitational pulls and other navigation hazards. aNd the liklehood of the occasional Not to mention that some planetary body would probably be in every space scene and most worlds would have several moons (or planets) in their sky in most scenes...
And of course, there's the issue of everyone on the outer worlds freezing to death.
But I love the show in spite of all that stuff. Stuff that we would rail against Trek for doing, I might point out.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
I still find a single star system unbelieveable. The outer planets would be iceballs that far away from their sun. And the two different introductions during the show, one implied they colonized many star systems while the other puts it all in one system.
-------------------- I'm slightly annoyed at Hobbes' rather rude decision to be much more attractive than me though. That's just rude. - PsyLiam, Oct 27, 2005.
Registered: May 1999
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That is, it's easier to reconcile the system with known scientific principles if the number of actual planets is kept to a minimum in favour of boosting the number of moons. The question is, do we know how many planets there are? They talk about "worlds" but that's no help. And the images are vague - the pic with the teacher in front appears to have 19 at a stretch (work monitor isn't very good with dark backgrounds); the image below it 14 (although that could be a closer-in image showing the inner worlds; does the pattern of separation match?); and your map 21.
Mind you, for all we know, some moons are actually referred to as planets because of their size, and to avoid having implied second-class status just because they orbit a gas giant and not the actual star.
So really the innermost planets (what do we actually know about Angel and Liann Jiun?) and the outermost (ditto Burnham) need to be the most uninhabitable. That way, you're starting to get towards an almost-believable CHZ; I can well imagine planets like Sihnon and Osiris having a balmy tropical climate that's popular with the wealthy elite, a global St. Tropez as it were. I think your map is starting to represent that, once the number of planets-orbiting-the sun is brought down to the minimum justifiable by the evidence.
posted
The teacher's voiceover at the beginning of the movie talks about "dozens of planets and hundreds of moons". In my mind, that means at least 24 planets. But as it turns out, Teacher's voiceover was all a nightmare River was having. So who knows if we can even believe it.
Malcolm talks about Mr. Universe being able to broadcast either to "30 worlds" or "THE 30 worlds" (I never can tell fromt he dialogue).
quote:Originally posted by Aban Rune: The teacher's voiceover at the beginning of the movie talks about "dozens of planets and hundreds of moons". In my mind, that means at least 24 planets. But as it turns out, Teacher's voiceover was all a nightmare River was having. So who knows if we can even believe it.
The dozens of planets bit could well refer to non-habitable (gas giants) as well as those which have been or could be terraformed. As Lee says, I think as many as possible need to be moons. We know the terraforming techniques are VERY advanced, possibly even to the extent of planetary gravity control so it's possible the habitable zone is wider than we assume, taking this into consideration.
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: ...Not to mention that some planetary body would probably be in every space scene and most worlds would have several moons (or planets) in their sky in most scenes...
It's true. We didn't see a lot of that. But we did see some. From The Train Job:
They're SO close!!
quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: I still find a single star system unbelieveable. The outer planets would be iceballs that far away from their sun...
Which assumes a geometry very similar to our own. I don't know how plausible it is, but in an interview with CHUD Joss responded to a question along these lines:
quote:... Q: Does Serenity go faster than light? Joss: I don't think so. Q: Are the planets really close together? Joss: They�re really close together. You�ve never seen a planet cluster like this one. It�s a little planet village. If you start asking my science questions I�m going to cry. ...
Which (among other things) is adorable and makes it clear why he'd never write for Star Trek. Add to this that we've never seen multiple stars in any of the skies (to my knowledge), and there hasn't been any dialogue about different stars or how to get to them in reasonable amounts of time given sub-luminal velocities. Anyway, yes. It is sort of silly to assume that they can have this many habitable planets orbiting one sun. But we don't have much else besides our present understanding of planetary mechanics on which to base our assumptions.
And at the beginning of the movie here we have this teacher explaining things by way of exposition, and behind her there is this animation with what appear to be planetary orbits:
quote:Originally posted by Lee: ...And the images are vague - the pic with the teacher in front appears to have 19 at a stretch (work monitor isn't very good with dark backgrounds); the image below it 14 (although that could be a closer-in image showing the inner worlds; does the pattern of separation match?); and your map 21...
For the purposes of this map (and before I started really), I took frame grabs as this animation unfolded and layered those into an Illustrator file so as to include as much detail as possible. The pattern of separation does match such that the lower image with 14 orbits shows closer detail than the wider one (with teacher's shoulder obscurring the innermost portion of the map.) Which is where I got the placement of the 20 (not 21) orbits that I have been using.
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Adjusting gravity was specifically mentioned in one episode.
Sidestepping the heating issue for the outer worlds for a moment, what about the amount of light those worlds get? I'm sure they had more than one way to heat them up (I like the possiblity moons around brown dwarfs myself), but all the places we saw had plenty of light. Even at Mars, there's a noticeable drop in the light level. I don't have any good way of explaining this.
posted
Let's not forget that it isn't impossible to have more than one planet in the same orbit (assuming you're willing to ignore that map from the movie, of course).
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