Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex
Now you're just extrapolating with no reason or evidence. You are reading INTO what was stated in the film and ASSUMING a bigger number than was stated. There is NO REASON to extrapolate the existence of 300 million people on Miranda. Yes, a planet could certainly hold more than 30 million people, but the fact was that Miranda was a remote planet and was probably *not* the most heavily populated of them all. Given that, if you paid attention to the series, there are "over 70 earth-type worlds in the 'verse", it's not at all unreasonable to believe that many of those are *not* fully populated. After all, the entire point of leaving earth was because it was TOO populated. Spreading out is the logical thing to do.
Unfortunately, we are going to have to agree to disagree on this point. First off, there were only a dozen planets and hundreds of moons (as stated in the intro to the movie). Each one was terraformed, a process taking decades, to be the equivilant of Earth in terms of atmosphere and gravity. NOT SIZE. As such, planets are going to be bigger then their moon counterparts. A planet is going to hold ALOT of people. Miranda was a planet, not a moon. They aren't going to send a measly 30 million people there. The crew of Serentiy were surprised by the sheer SIZE of the city they were in with the beacon. That there were plenty more they flew over and yet none of them heard of the planet except decades earlier there were calls for settlers to go there as stated by Kaylee was a surprise they didn't expect. The fact they moved out from Earth due to population overdose shows that the human race in this story line has no sense of population control which is why they had to find a new home. Presumeably, Earth and possibly other places are still in habited, because no mention of it ever going bad has been stated. Only that it got so over populated that some people chose to leave and find a new place. I still hold by that there were WAY more then 30 million people on an entire PLANET. Deductive reasoning is due to the size of the cities, the reaction of Serenities crew, and the small cross section of Reavers shown in the movie. If there was only 30,000 Reavers, the Alliance would have wiped them out years ago instead of just merely denying their existance. It's much easier to deny something that is dead and doesn't exist then to deny something that DOES exist and you can't wipe out.
Yes, she was a human trial for the process of weaponizing a human being with exceptional talents (mind reading, in her case). The experiments were conducted on her and others in a laboratory environment, carefully controlled, on a small scale. It didn't involve experiments on people en masse, entire cities and civilizations. If this fact does anything it lends weight to the idea that they WOULDN'T do such an experiment on a huge scale without first conducting smaller scale experiments.
River proves the Alliance was willing to do human experiements. That is all that point of reference was suppose to make. Which it does. This means the Alliance is wiling to make human sacrifices to get the results they want. The Operative willing to kill "children" for the greater good also proves the Alliance disregards the life of it's constiuents. The blue glove operatives killing their OWN goverment police and men proves they are willing to go to extremes for a result.
Now, extrapolating that reference, The Alliance disregards human life for the end result, we need to see if they are willing to disregard human life on a mass scale without trying small scale. Okay, lets look at what the Operative did to any settlers that housed Serenity at any time period. All wiped away. Hrrm, "If your quarry goes to ground leave no ground to go to." This shows they are willing to disregard hundreds if not thousands of innocent human lives in pursuit of a goal. Were not into the millions yet but I'm getting there. Let's look at one TV show where the crew of Serenity was looking to steal the Lasiter. The guy that owned it was said to have slaughter almost an entire planet just to get his hands on it. He was a high parliment official too. He was said during the war to have done this many times for the spoils. Ahhh... now we get to the war. A civil war where you kill millions of your own people instead of using other means to end hostilities shows the ultimate price a government is willing to pay for results. I'm not saying war is never necessary. In the case of the American civil war, with the defining issue being that of SLAVERY, yes, it was needed. Anyhow, I'm trying to prove a point that the Alliance has shown in the past it's williness to disregard human life and that doing a massive trial with the Pax is indeed well within the realm of believability for both the Alliance and the fact that our own history has shown governments of countries to do that in the past. It's been done before in history and it can be done again.
No, quadrants are all the same size, just as quarters are all the same size. You don't go assigning random sizes to quadrants when dealing with geometry and certainly not with regard to geography. It's certainly fair enough to assume that the Alliance forces defeated the reavers for exactly the reasons you mentioned, but there still remains NO reason to imagine that there are anywhere *near* the numbers of reavers that you're trying to claim. 30,000 is still a LOT, there is certainly no reason to try and inflate that number beyond what was mentioned in the film.
Same size.. Hrmm a relative and subjective term when it comes to measuring. Are we talking pure space? Number of habitable planets/moons? Population census? Who knows how they break up their quadrants. If there was 12 planets and 100 moons, they could make a quandrant equal 28 life bearing worlds for example which does not equate to equal amounts of space for all planets. It could be a quandrant of a half of the solar system as well. It could be a quadrant of another quandrant that they are refering too. I was merely stating the BIGGEST it could possibly be. Being rougly 1/4th of the solar systems size and assuming 1/4th of the military size. If that was all there was to the Reavers in terms of their capacity plus a few stragglers, and 1/4th of the Alliances fleet was able to defeat the Reavers, because it WAS the Alliance soldiers on the ground at the end and not everyone ended up Reaver food, why didn't the Alliance wipe them out sooner? As I said, it's easier to deny something never existed if you wipe out it's existance. This only leads as another point showing that the Reavers have a great deal more capacity to them and THAT is why the Alliance is afraid of them.
If anyone wasn't paying attention, sir, it's YOU. The Alliance was *never* hinted at being a Fascist regime. You may have heard about this little thing called "The Civil War" in the United states, wherein some states decided to secede from the Union, and the Union acted with military force to prevent them from doing so. Did that make the Union a "Fascist" state? No, it didn't. The Union was no more a Fascist state during the Civil War than it is today. As for the operative not caring about his cause, you apparently didn't see the movie at all. It was made CRYSTAL CLEAR from the opening scene of the film that the Operative *FULLY* believed that what he was doing was for the greater good. He was also FULL aware that his actions were evil, but his belief was that they were *necessary* for the greater good.
Incidentally, nice try that, attempting to co-opt the point I made earlier with regards to "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". The reason why they made such a huge point about the fact that "the man they're likely to send after you is the kind of man who believes hard". A man who believes absolutely that what he's doing is *right* and is for the greater good is the kind of man who's willing to make sacrifices--even if those sacrifices are the lives of others. Make no mistake about it: The Operative *absolutely* believed that what he was doing was the right thing to do for the greater good. *ABSOLUTELY*. Incidentally, the men with the blue gloves were from the Blue Sun corporation, presumably the business who was doing the experimental work on River. The Operative, however, was a *government* man, from the Alliance itself. The blue gloves men were NOT operatives in the same capacity as THE Operative from the movie, who was an agent of the Government.
It's really too bad that you've so badly missed the point and meaning of the film. It's really got quite the Libertarian theme to it, and it's worth learning what that means.
Fascism -definition
1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
2. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.
How does this apply to the Alliance? Centralized authority = Parliment. Does the Parliment expect total rule of all planets, i.e. to dictate rulings to everything in the solar system instead of leaving all planets to form their own government? Well, considering the Alliance fought and won a war over that issue I'd say yes.
Does the Alliance use censorship? Well, did they try to cover up Miranda? Cover their involvement with the creation of Reavers? Completely deny the Reavers? Cover up the bar fight scene that River had? Kill their own agents and cover that up in a top medical research facility? Did they send an assassin to kill the maker of River and all others like her at that secret facility that doesn't exist like the Operative? Going back into the TV series I can give you many many MANY more examples of the Alliance censorship.
As for terror... Are they willing to kill and slaughter settlements, children included, just to prevent Serenity from hiding? Are they willing to occupy a whole Planet, namely the planet Mr Universe resides on, just to obtain a single ship? Don't seriously tell me you beleive the planet Mr. Universe resided on only was home to him and his robot wife now did you? Was the Alliance willing to send out subliminal messages through public broadcasts to force River to trigger and go berserk so they could locate her position?
All those are instances of use of terror and or propoganda to their own populace.
A government that isn't fascist wouldn't have need of men like the Operative that "believes hard" because he was obviously programmed to believe what he was doing was the right thing. It wasn't until he SAW the tape that the crew of Serenity had that he turned his back on the Alliance. Even after viewing the video, the Operative still could have killed the entire crew of Serenity and the Alliance could have easily covered up the broadcast as nothing but a fake hoax to cause hysteria. Instead, the Operative turned on the Alliance. What does that action tell you about the Alliance and the revelations that must have went on that a guy's head who was earlier willing to kill children for that government because it's the right thing to do.
As for the Blue Sun Operatives, their work was done with the Permission of the parliment after fully witnessing their experiments. Remember, key members of parliment personally VIEWED River, which is what Simon was doing when he was posing as a parliment member.
As for the morale of the crew.... Umm.. they had very high morales and very strict morales, at least a few of them did. Not counting Jayne. Mal and Zoe VOLUNTEERED to fight against the Alliance. This assumes that some people in the war definately were not volunteers. In the TV series, we are shown more Browncoats and all them were volunteers. As Mal and Zoe said, they also were ones that "never left a man behind." This is pointing to the fact that the Alliance didn't always use volunteers and DID leave men behind as a extrapolation of that conversation. It is true their morales have been loosened somewhat what having to fend for themselves in the "wilds" but they are still willing to try and stick it to the Alliance, at least everyone but Jayne and Washburn, when given a chance. This was stated easily in the movie when Mal said to Simon, "You stuck a thorn in the Alliance's paw and that tickles me a bit." He is helping the Tams because it is a small battle he can still win against the Alliance given his current state. Mal and the crew of Serenity may have looser morals now, but they haven't lost them all completely. They still try to do the right thing when they can and if they can. Even when they have to do the "naughty" thing to stay alive, they try only to steal from the alliance and it's partners, not normal folk. Not ONCE in the movie or the TV series did they mean to steal from normal people. They did once in the Train Job episode when they stole alliance medicine, but they found out it wasn't Alliance goods but items for the planet they gave the medicine back at peril to their own lives. Of which Malcom DID die, and was brought back, when the guy that gave him the job to steal the medicine found him. That Russian dude on the space station.
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