The only thing is, I don't read their technology as advanced enough to move planetary masses into new orbits. The terraforming alone looked to have taken decades to perform.

Hmm - how can I wank this? They had to look hard for the best system to move to(not cannonical, but not contradicted by cannon). So they found something that could nudged into shape with a lot less effort than your normal solar system. The Terraforming was done simultaneously. What would produce such a system? They find it mysterious too - just happy to have run into it.

The reason I don't really try to hard to think about how to work out the few potentially glaring scientific issues in the Fireflyverse is that I know Trekkies, and listening to them try to explain, for example, the preposterousness of the universal translator makes my brain sad. If you can handwave FTL travel, which contradicts all we know about physics, an obscenely large habitable solar system shouldn't take more than a pinky.

I agree - a solar system with a large number of terraformable habital planets violates no fundamental physical laws. What it could bring it about (since advanced alien races, even extinct ones go agains the "no-aliens" spirit of Firefly) is another question. I'm not an astrophyscist. but I'll bet either a real one, or someone with good enough working knowledge to fake it on the internet could come up with a plausible low-probability explaination. Remember it would not have to be likely - just possible.

I agree - a solar system with a large number of terraformable habital planets violates no fundamental physical laws. What it could bring it about (since advanced alien races, even extinct ones go agains the "no-aliens" spirit of Firefly) is another question. I'm not an astrophyscist. but I'll bet either a real one, or someone with good enough working knowledge to fake it on the internet could come up with a plausible low-probability explaination. Remember it would not have to be likely - just possible.

You've been huffing off of the Infinite Improbablility Drive again, haven't you?

Now I'm envisioning a River composed entirely of different colored jellybeans beating the crap out of everyone in a bar.

Truly a sight that would be, in all definitions, shiny.

Now I'm envisioning a River composed entirely of different colored jellybeans beating the crap out of everyone in a bar.

I went to a place where Mal turned into a penguin. An angry penguin.

"You're turning into a penguin, Mal. Stop it."

Simon's words from the pilot:

"Money. And luck -- for two years I couldn't get near her, but I was contacted by some men, some underground movement. They said she was in danger, that the government was playing with her brain. If I funded them they could sneak her out in cryo. Get her to Boros and from there, I could take her... wherever."

Now does his rescue contradict that? From a certain point of view, namely mine, no. See, in my fanwank, the underground group helped him gain access to River in the first place but once he rescued her, he couldn't freely roam the streets of a core world where they were looking for her (and surely he was a suspect). That's why he had the same group put her in cryo and ship her to him in a less surveillance heavy section of the world (hence the "sneak her out" line), where he then caught a ride on Serenity in the pilot. Works for me.

Barry, it works. It just seems like a stretch to me.