Universe
The two worlds that make up the "core planets" (the first worlds to be terraformed) are Sihnon, a mostly East Asia-themed planet, and Londinium, a world with mostly American and Western Europe influences. The alliance of the two worlds leads up to a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious universe.
The Alliance may have some elements of a monarchy. In "Serenity", Malcolm Reynolds (Serenity's captain) said "I'd like to be king of all Londinium" and many of Inara Serra's customers are Lords. However, "King of all Londinium" may just be a catchphrase (i.e., "king of the world" in modern usage) and Lord could merely be a positional title.
In Serenity, the movie set in the Firefly universe, it is revealed that the Alliance is run by a branch of the government called the Parliament.
It appears that this Alliance was a melding of the People's Republic of China and the United States of America. The Alliance retains a mixture of American and Chinese culture. Generally, the Alliance is rather authoritarian, although Joss Whedon, the series' creator, has said this is at least partly because the show is seen from the viewpoint of those hostile to the Alliance. Whedon himself admits that sometimes, the Alliance is like the predominant US view of the USA in World War II: doing very good things, helping people, spreading democracy. At other times the Alliance can tend towards black ops and power-grabbing, although rarely more so than any real-world democracy.
Due to the melding of American and Chinese influences in the Alliance, most people in the Firefly universe are equally adept in speaking both English and Mandarin; some characters on the show speak Chinese at times (usually when using obscenities, so Whedon wouldn't have to bleep anything out and ruin the suspension of disbelief), and many signs are printed in both English and Chinese. Additionally, during the episode "Out of Gas", Serenity's warning messages over the intercom are repeated in both English and Cantonese. The Chinese spoken is based on Mandarin (intermixed with Cantonese), but the pronunciation is heavily corrupted from the real-world language by the actors. Chinese appears to be the superior language in Alliance society as it is used for written public communications and for polite address between strangers. For example, when the Alliance agent McGinnis, answers the intercom in the episode Ariel, he says, "你好" (ni hao) rather than hello.
Read more about this topic: Alliance (Firefly)
Famous quotes containing the word universe:
“To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“... if we take the universe of ‘fitting,’ countless coats ‘fit’ backs, and countless boots ‘fit’ feet, on which they are not practically fitted; countless stones ‘fit’ gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions ‘fit’ realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.”
—William James (1842–1910)