SERENITY #1: And I'm crazy for not believing it.

[starwolf_oakley]

Four pages of SERENITY: LEAVES ON THE WIND #1 have been posted. Here are three more, the first three pages of the series.



Personally, I'm not the biggest Serenity fan. I like what Firefly could have become (given time) rather than what it was. The characters were shown to be quite nuanced and have intriguing elements to them. (Jayne isn't a total dimwitted thug, Wash has a hidden badass side, etc.) Joss Whedon had to overclock Firefly to make Serenity, which I understand. But then we get "heroic criminals fight the mean ol' inept government that can't do anything right."



The following two pages are a two-page spread across the top.




As some would see Miranda as proof the Alliance is evil, I like the idea of some people just not quite "buying" Miranda and the Pax. Plus, given the Reavers' territory, they can't exactly fly out to Miranda and check.

When I saw Serenity, it seemed odd to use weaponized prozac on ordinary citizens to get them to "stop fighting." More like something you'd try on a prison planet. And I've heard fans wonder why no one on Miranda sent out a "Help, we're all falling asleep!" S.O.S.

But Joss Whedon says he believes in the genre, not transcending the genre. Drugging a populace so they will "stop fighting" and it goes horribly wrong is a sci-fi concept. It is downright "old school," really.

Comments

[icon_uk]

If Miranda was intended to be a test case, I can easily imagine the Alliance ensuring that offworld communications were "down for maintenance" or the like when things went wrong.

[siliconshaman]

The Alliance managed to erase any and all mention of the entire Planet from the cortex.. I'd imagine jamming communications while they ran their test wouldn't be too hard for them.

Actually, chances are they picked Miranda because it was relatively unknown to start with and isolated, what with being all the way out in the black an' all.

That, and anyone else find the talking heads up there a tad bit reminiscent of various real-world newscasters?

[philippos42]

More and more, lately. :(

I see the talking heads calling for wars they know they won't die in.

[siliconshaman]

Yeah... that's actually what I like about the BBC at least. Their reporters actually go out there on the front lines, sometimes even somewhat ahead of them. And yes, they do sometimes get killed too... makes the reporting a touch more sober and restrained.

[seisachtheia]

The thing that's hard to buy is that no one knew about this planet or these people. No one had a neighbor whose cousin lived out on some planet called Miranda, and hey, whatever happened to old Joe?

Now, if it had been something like "alas, poor miranda, it got hit by an asteroid right in the nuclear power station, what a shame it is radioactive/vaporized" and then it'd been revealed to be a cover up, okay then,

[icon_uk]

It might have been a qualifier for being allowed to move there in the first place. No family ties elsewhere, either loners or perhaps entire settlements.

Or the colonists signed an NDA.

[md84]

Depending on how quickly that weird drug worked, it makes sense that nobody sent out an S.O.S. By the time any of them realized something was wrong, the stuff was already working its way into their systems. At which point they either laid down and stopped caring or they went Reaver.

Wasn't Miranda as a colony specifically created just to test the stuff? If so, the Alliance might have made sure that every potential colonist they allowed on Miranda had no significant outside connections.

[bj_l]

Oh god, is there anything more overrated than Firefly?!

[northstarfan]

Joss Whedon.

[onceaskrull]

Rofl, this.

[md84]

Yeah, Alien Resurrection is proof of that.

[misanthr0pe]

It's kind of comforting to know that there will always be talking heads.