SerenityMovie.net

[funnygirl]

First, please let me apologize if this is somewhere else, but with all the hooplah about Wash and Book and what a ba**ard Joss is (not me thinkin' that!) that I can't find where this might have been discussed.

Was River being trained to be a weapon to fight the Reavers? You know, the Reavers? The ba**ards who killed Wash?? I have only seen the movie once so far, and I'm sure someone will quote something obvious from the movie that answers this for me, and that will be fine!! But if the Alliance created the Reavers and they "created" River to be a weapon....is that what she was supposed to fight??

Please, don't be angry here. I would like this thread to be a peaceful place of simple contemplation on the matter. Dear Buddha, I would like a pony and a plastic rocket.....
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Jayne: If wishes were horses, we'd all be eatin' steak.

[davejames]

I was wondering that myself. Maybe they were planning on taking her back to the planet themselves to hide all the evidence, and wanted a handy weapon in case the Reavers showed up.

But I tend to think whatever their original plans for her, it didn't involve Reavers. The Alliance acted like the Reavers weren't worth worrying about, and they kept far away from the central planets anyway. But then the question is, what threat out there did the Alliance NEED her for? The few unruly settlements didn't seem like much of a threat. I guess it was just experimentation for the sake of experimentation.

[Rando]

Maybe they where going to send these psychic soldiers out to the border worlds to root out dissenters and rebelious agents to insure another uprising wouldn't take place.

[theuglyone]

This is from a post by SerenelyWyrd, in another thread, regarding the impact of the reavers' origins becoming public knowledge:
Never underestimate the ability of people to totally ignore the Truth whenever they find the truth to be too dark or twisted or upsetting.

This is what made me pause at the Alliance's efforts to capture River. If the information about the reavers was what was making them chase her so fiercely, they're wasting an awful lot of resources on a PR scandal. Not that the information won't cause quite an uproar for awhile, but the shock will pass and the population will continue with life as usual. Was everything they did trying to retrieve River really worth it for them? One little girl, with some information that will make some folks look bad for awhile, but certainly won't be enough to topple a government; is that what they expended all that energy on?

Maybe a second movie will delve a little more into what the Alliance was planning to do with River. She's incredibly valuable to them as a weapon, but that was hardly touched on in Serenity. I'm curious to get more of that part of the story, especially since I'm dubious about the import of the reaver origins.

[Unholy62]

Well remember the begining, she was around 'several' key members of parlament, meaning she could have learned much more than just the secret about the reavers, the thing was, the Alliance didn't know what she knew, so she became a priority.

What I want to know is what happened to the Blue Sun Corperation?
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"Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?" - Mal

[theuglyone]

[funnygirl]

After I posted this question, I mentioned it to my son. He thinks she was being trained to be an operative. So now I'm wondering if she was being trained to be an uber-operative. There's a thread out there that thinks Book was an operative before becoming a shepard. Maybe the Alliance didn't like that too much, him leaving and all. So maybe they felt they needed a way to keep the operatives in check. I don't know, but it's fun to think about!!
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Jayne: If wishes were horses, we'd all be eatin' steak.

[Ninjahedge]

Im more with ugly on this one.

I think she was a very valuable piece of property that they wanted back. the info she could have had just added to it.

Think of it this wat too. If you had just created an uber-weapon, you would not exactly leave it on the table at the bus station.


As for the Reavers, I always thought that they were a deliberate creation of the government to give people a few things.

1. A universal enemey that the politicos could market as the one they must all band together to fight.
2. A bit of an inhibitor to make sure the border planets do not act up again.
3. A deliberate minefield placed to "deter" people from certain "off limits" worlds.

As for their creation, the specifics from the flik did not fit what I thought, but they seemed more an "oopsie" than a bunch of empty space psychos.


Unless, of course, they were messing with a piece of angel food cake.....

[bc2112]

[Cynewulf the Saxon]

My speculation . . .

Blue Sun is a big chunk of the Gubmint, kinda like Halliburton on steroids. Blue Sun ran the institute. The blue hand guys were part of Blue Sun.

Blue Sun is the contractor/department charged with training Operatives. River was part of an experiment, a way to create the next generation of Operatives: Operatives who can read minds.

Through the series, all they wanted was River back to complete her training. The blue meanies tried in the series. The blue meanies tried in the comix. Eventually, it was bumped up to a real Operative, who didn't need gloves and gadgets to get things done.

As part of the method to get her back, the Operative started at the beginning . . . the escape. Perhaps even further back than that. During the escape holo he noticed (where no one else did) that there was a security violation. His job was to plug the holes. Part of that was eliminating Dr. Matthias. The search for River, however, got ratcheted up from a capture to a capture/kill--whatever it took to plug the hole.

Was the secret really super classified? Nope, just a political embarassment. Did it matter it wasn't important? Nope, not to the Operative. He didn't care about secrets--only keeping them.

That it involved the extinction of all humans on Miranda, and the creation of Reavers, was merely coincidental. The Operative would have pursued River no matter what the secret was, because he didn't concern himself with it. The secret HAD to be big enough for Mal to want to do something about it actively.

Its kind of like a bureaucracy run wild. It's like calling out 007 to take care of something small that cascades into an avalanche nobody expected.

My take.
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Official forum Purplebelly
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Wyrd oft nereth unfaegne eorl, thonne his ellen deah.

[FFF0001]

I was thinking about what use a person like River would be to a MP and/or a Corporation. If you consider that a MP could me backed by a company like Blue Sun, they there is another interesting use for someone like River, as a consort for a MP. I got this idea by looking into the CIA spy outing that still is somewhat in the news. She was the Wife of an Ambastor, so she was not a "Jame Bond" like agent, she was in a position to travel the world, meet with other officals and their wives and to see any things normal people might not, so the CIA trained her to see detailes normal people would not.

That is what River was designed to do, to be the consort for a Blue Sun backed MP, be able to get close enough to read the minds of Poltical rivals, and protect the MP as necessary. Consort/Spy/bodyguard all in one small package.

Ben
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The first Firefly Fan, from 1993. We still want to know were Joss hid the camera from our Traveller Campaign.

[Haunt]

Hey Cynewulf, we seem to be of a mind on this subject. I pretty much agree with everything you said.

As for how damaging the revelation of the Alliance's role in the creation of the Reavers might be, there's this bit of deleted dialogue (taken from the shooting script) that shows Mal's take on it at least...

[Deadhorse21]

I'm of the mind that River was being designed to be the next generation of opperative. Not only would she have the physical skills to get the job done, but when they found out that she has mental powers, it was just another tool to be used.

I also agree w/ Cynewulf James Bond annalogy. It struck my slightly differently though. Blue Glove men were Vincent Vega and Julius from Pulp Fiction, and the opperative is Winston Wolf. Marcelus sent them out to get the job done, then they goofed it up, and he sent the Wolf out to clean up their mess. As the problems piled up, they had to bring out the bigger guns.
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Victims in demand for public show.

[Rando]

River was no doubt the next line of soldiers to be put out by the Alliance. Most likely their role would be spec ops and commanding roles, using their psyhic powers to counter the enemies moves before they happen.

btw who played Winston Wolf? He's been in a few Tarantino movies including Resevoir Dogs and From Dusk till Dawn.
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I so stole that from ytmnd

[Haunt]

[Ted C]

The information that she might have picked from the minds of government officials was the reason that the Alliance Government sent the Operative after her, but I daresay that the Blue Sun Corporation (which appears to be a military contractor of some sort) still wants her back because she's such a prodigy in their "education" program.

I wouldn't be all that surprised to see the Blue Hand guys reappear in a sequel.
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"Burn the land and boil the sea, you still can't take the sky from me."