Why the 'Firefly' Crew Were the Bad Guys - Today's Topic

600 years

Mal was educated.

River wasn't like that before that. They also created the Reavers. Mal also is anti slavery. The Aliance does nothing to prevent it.

so you use serenity clips but fail to notice the fact that the movie confirmed that the alliance wiped out a planet and were fine with it. they also covered it up and kill anyone that tries to expose them. it also confirms that they are after river NOT BECAUSE of her psychic powers but because her psychic powers gave her access to info on what happened to the planet miranda. she also didnt have psychic abilities since before they fucked her up. so.. every problem in the show is a result of them.

The Alliance is withholding valuable amenities to the border planets, allowing lawlessness and systemic oppression to happen because they wanted the resources of the border planets without having to care for them. The medicines are an anomaly that they couldn't care less about, that's why they don't try to find them. The men of power like Magistrate Higgins and Niska aren't the result of an absence of Alliance influence. The Magistrate IS Alliance. He governs with their permission.
Just because the Alliance is an allegory for the Federalists (that wasn't some big reveal) doesn't mean the good guys can't be reversed.

Serenity proves the Alliance is evil. Miranda. As well, you have the removal of Rivers amygdala to push her into becoming an assassin.

Anything that occurs with Rivers powers is on the Alliance, since they weren't born powers, but pushed upon her.

Exquisite

The Alliance made the Reavers while experimenting to make people more compliant. The "good guys" don't do that.

Checkmate.

The dweeby guy is absolutely right, and I was waiting for him to bring up the Civil War link. Whedon did say exactly that about the Confederate bushwhackers, and he also said he likes stories of losers because they're more interesting (apparently without regarding for what they were actually fighting for). Mal and Zoe never articulate any principles they care about, still less actually fight for, other than self-focused personal friendship and tired, childish, "leave me alone, FREEDUM!" libertarianism. And, like libertarians, they're sociopaths, though with an occasional, belated sense of conscience (*sometimes* they give back what they stole when they realize stealing it will hurt people, a notion that never seems to occur to them before they steal it). Dweeby Guy is correct in pointing out that the lawless frontier is a a haven for even worse sociopaths, and violence is rampant. On the true frontier (the American Westward expansion), settlers first drove natives out of their lives and land and then set up law as fast as they could (you had to surrender your guns to the sheriff in Dodge City, KS, and Tombstone, AZ; Deadwood, SD, hired a professional sheriff less than 2 years after it was settled). It was not heroic and it was not "wide open".

Dweeby Guy is wrong to downplay the horrifying abuse of the Alliance's medical crimes against humanity, but he's right that our own and other governments have done worse and far more of it. He is wrong not to even mention the "Blue Hands Men," who consciencelessly kill almost everyone they speak to in complete cold blood, including members of the government they serve. Now that's bad. The cops are corrupt and murderous, and the schools are propaganda factories, as is true everywhere. But life under the Alliance, if they don't explode your brain out your nose or cut out your amygdala, actually seems to be pretty good. The Alliance does very bad things, but they are also the only source of security, peace, and affluence; in that, they are like every advanced nation in our own time. The frontier rebels are violent, corrupt, anti-social, and prey on each other as their only means of survival. They seemingly create almost nothing, and gain wealth only by trading with (or stealing from) the actual civilization they left behind. The frontier has continual ultra-violence, sex slavery, regular slavery, starvation, warlords, thugs, and Reavers (whom, yes, we later find out are the Alliance's creation, but still … they exist and survive only because they're on the frontier where the Alliance can't do anything about them).

If you're a reasonably normal person and you want to live a decent life in this society, you would obviously live in the Alliance and just obey the law. The ones who choose not to are almost all psychotics, violent thieves and thugs with a chip on their shoulders, and criminal warlords who think they can get more by taking violent advantage of people than they could by living in civilization. The Alliance's crimes against humanity can't be overlooked, but everywhere outside the Alliance is continual warfare and predatory violence. That's exactly what civilization is intended to *stop*. Resentful pseudo-Confederates who hate everybody are no solution to anything.

2021, how the sketch ending has aged....

I don't think the other planets are full of evil warlords. It's that if you make 15 episodes about the nice, fair and uneventful business the crew experience most of the time, the show would be so boring it'd get cance... oh. I give up. Forget I said anything.

That was a Lotta bleeps at the end

Let's be clear, the Alliance is good for the core, but screws over the rim.

Yeah, Firefly sucks arse! It's Neo-Confederate trash. It deserved to get canned in the end. No reboots either! FUCK JOSH WHEDON'S NEO-CONFEDERATE PROPAGANDA!

I've read some comments, and there is some confusion here.

The confusion is that the Alliance directly controlled everything -- far from it. As I will explain, Blue Sun Corp. is the actual "bad guys" they are talking about.

To further confuse the issue, is that many people think the agents who we see who were the "Hands of Blue", that they were Alliance. I think this is false, given that Joss has stated that Blue Sun Corp. had a conspiracy about it, and that would have been explored in later seasons. Given this, it makes sense that like Blackwater or other government contractors, Blue Sun was the ones doing the experimentation on River. It is a simple thing to consider, given government loves the term "plausible deniability." Don't forget that Blue Sun is everywhere Alliance control is, so it would make sense that Blue Sun is on Ariel, when River was scanned by Simon, at the hospital ("Ariel").

Given all this, I'm thinking that the reason why the Operative was called into action is that Blue Sun was also behind the PAX-23 debacle on Miranda. They have a pattern of mucking things up, in terms of the human brain and mind. It's also why the Alliance officially denies the existence of Reavers, which was the result of Blue Sun's failed experiments. It would also be why the Alliance would have sent in a team to check on Miranda (Serenity), and why that team never reported back.

Given all this, I suspect that at some point, the crew would have talked to Mr. Universe much earlier than the movie, and he would have basically come out and said that he used to work for Blue Sun (in what capacity, I'm not sure). As he was very good at communications and hacking, my guess is he also found out about the program River was involved in, and once he got out with the info, was the reason why Simon and River were in the hospital wing at the beginning of Serenity. It also is, I think, why River went nuts in the bar, seeing the Blue Sun advertisement in the bar, given that was where and how the subliminal messaging was programmed into her.

Point is, the Alliance was bad, but the private corps that had no scruples in contracting with the Alliance was worse. Funny enough, it reminds me of how Big Tech actually is today, with censorship.

New guy's a fucking fascist

Millennials were a mistake.

Didn't the Alliance try to come up with the perfect control with some kind of drug. That made people so content that they basically just gave up because they were so at peace they stop living and happily died. And then those who had an opposite reaction to the drug was the Reavers who basically were brutal savages who delighted in torturing and killing. Where the Alliance covered up what they did and pretended that Reavers were just myths that people used to as an excuse. Also the Alliance focuses on the Alliance people and in many ways cares little for the poor and suffering on farther out planets which they do show in many episodes.

Ok but, have you considered : reavers

The guy who's not Dan whose name I don't know makes several bad faith arguments here.
1. We see a lot of criminal types on the worlds outside Alliance territory because the crew of the Serenity does business with a lot of people like that. There's absolutely no reason to assume either that the criminal types are representative of all of even most of the population of those worlds, nor that such people also don't exist on Alliance worlds.
2. The fact that Firefly takes inspiration from a Civil War novel does not mean that the same moral framework applies. It doesn't make the Alliance the good guys just because the Union were the good guys.

3. Nowhere is it stated or even implied that River was taken and experimented on because of her powers. If anything, it's more likely that the powers she displays are the result of the experiments that were performed on her.
4. Absolutely no mention of the movie, in which it's revealed that the Alliance killed an entire world's worth of people via unethical experimentation and also inadvertently created the Reavers, thus making them also responsible for every death caused by Reavers.

Wow it's like these guys did not watch the series at all

First of all it was just one star system a lot of planets in that one star system but just a single star system

And Mal and Zoe were fighting on the side of the Confederacy. Let that sink in. The series is about a bandit band made up of....former Confederate soldiers.

So the people who take down bad guys like Niska and Mud Farmer Baron and Jerk Rancher are themselves the actual bad guys? Meanwhile the Alliance created the REAVERS, ffs...

No mention of the Reavers...?

That guy really was a sociopath.

The outer worlds are inhabited by an exploited class within the overall economy of the 'verse. They're subject to greater danger in areas due to proximity to Reavers, which also adversely affects the economy. The lawlessness and instability of the outer worlds is a result of the economic disparity caused by the Alliance's policies. The Alliance has the power to end indentured slavery, and the resources to provide much better access to healthcare. (Despite likely future scarcity due to overpopulation, they don't seem to be rationing such resources for the core residents.)

The Alliance tortured children to make them into weapons, and when ANOTHER of their abominations created a Zombie Army of Rapist Cannibals, they blamed the victims, and covered their tracks with blood and corpses.

Yah, totally Good Guy behavior.

Almost as if Jose Whedon was the bad guy

As a southerner, this is EXACTLY why I liked the show.

Mal Reynolds = Johnny Reb.

Well. The Serenity crew being bad guys is a conflicting topic. The Serenity crew are merely space pirates/hired guns. The Serenity crew did what they did as they were trying to make a living and were the underdog. Yes, they did commit crimes which clients hired them and paid them to do. But, you got to ask yourselves? Who are the true bad guys of Firefly? The Serenity crew? or The Alliance? Simon and River Tam are both Alliance outlaws and Alliance cruelly messed with her brain which resulted in River Tam suffering from mental trauma. Psychotic episodes and autistic-like behaviour as The Alliance were turning River into an assassin. And the Alliance is responsible for the deaths of the colonists on Miranda and the creation of the Reavers as the Alliance was testing an experiment drug to calm and control the population. The Alliance was like the Terran Federation from Blake's 7. I think The Serenity crew broadcasting and exposing the truth about the Reavers and the incident on Miranda. The Serenity crew standing up for the colonists on Miranda. Are the Serenity crew bad guys? At the end you have to decide for yourself.

"Mal" is literally Latin for "bad".

Wow the new guy is a wacko leftist

One: River didn't have uncontrollable mental abilities until the alliance gave them to her.
Two: The planets they visit are rough on purpose, they're looking for criminal work so they go where the criminals are. That doesn't mean all the planets on the outer rim are bad in fact they visit quiet a few places that are populated by decent people and not murderous psychos.
Three: in the movie it shows that the alliance was trying to brainwash people with chemicals in the air processers that ended up killing an entire planet.
Four: in that same joss whedon interview he very specifically mentions that the big difference between the brown coats and the confederacy was that they were absolutely NOT fighting for slavery and he made sure to stress that as a key difference even saying something along the lines that the brown coats ARE what some southern people like to PRETEND the confederates were.
Five: Shepard book doesn't pay "space rent" he had a "little cash" and fresh strawberry's. After that mal kept him around because he liked him not because he paid.
Six: I could keep going but I'm gonna stop with them denying the existence of reavers even though they made them( see point 3).
Bottom line, Mal and the gang are kinda bad guys but the alliance is straight up evil.

I don't remember where this is mentioned, but Mal actually did have a classical education

River Tam originally had "reaver genes" + her exceptional talents (super intelligence + artistry) and good looks= if left unchecked she could wreak havoc on the 'verse. So Alliance found a way to transform her. Escape was probably her mission from Dr. Mathias, to start another positive social reformation of the Alliance by publicly admitting some mistakes.
The alliance cures River and pays the price... And the only thing stopping River from recovering sooner was her Brother and the Serenity crew.

THANK YOU! Yes, this.

I just want more of this show. Twenty years later and it seems like a far fetched dream to see this show or it’s like again but now more than ever we need a show like this. Andor proves there is at least a passionate if not large audience for a show like this and with Fillion and Tudyk now huge stars with brand appeal it seems like such a great opportunity to bring the show back. I’m preaching to the choir and we all know it’ll never happen but I power in the verse can stop me from dreamin.

Hey, WHO ARE YOU?
🤣😄😂😃😆😅😄 Best line. Especially since I was literally thinking that question in my head! This post was fun but I MISS THE ORIGINAL CREW. 😍😎😙💖💋

A quality story will have well-rounded, multi-layered characters who evolve and cannot be pigeon holed into just one narrow perspective. NO ONE IS 100% GOOD and even the most horrible EVIL of humans can have a soft side for a rare select few who can attest to their uncommon congeniality. As an adult, I have stopped watching or reading material searching for the villain and the hero. Now I explore the individuals to see how they behave and communicate in the situations created by the authors and directors. Loved Firefly and own the series on DVD. 🤗😍💋

Chaotic good. They do what needs done. YOU CANT TAKE THE SKY FROM ME

The older I get the more I believe the union was wrong

Wait... River didn't naturally have mind powers. She was a really gifted kid which made her the perfect candidate to experiment on and create someone with powers. The alliance made her what she was.

I know this video is ancient but the rancher and the Baron he mentions ARE alliance. They own the rights to their planets by the laws of the alliance. The alliance enforces their laws arbitrarily in the frontier. Let’s wealthy people run whole planets like personal theme parks. The Baron who rules Jayne’s mud planet was operating under the auspices of the alliance. That’s the whole point. There’s nowhere that the alliance doesn’t rule *on paper*, they won the war so they rule the solar system. But they can’t be everywhere, and they choose to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses on the frontier because it’s far away. As long as they know that whenever they want, they can show up and demand taxes or whatever.

Those are some bad faith arguments in favor of the alliance...

OMG Cody Newsboy! in the End credits, what a time capsule

I heard, “Blah blah blah, our government is worse than the Alliance” and that’s not necessarily untrue.

Sad but true assessment

How did I miss this 9 years ago? This was a treat to see some of the old cast in something "new".