The Great Celestial Ship of the North

The Great Celestial Ship of the North

"Production came to an end 

on Buffy, Season 3 [1999], 

and over my Summer vacation, 

I was reading The Killer Angels, 

about the survivors of 

Gettysburg, and it immediately 

made me think of the 

Millennium Falcon.

You know, as most things do."

— Joss Whedon

"The great thing about writing 

Science-Fiction, is that it's basically 

like writing everything in History 

that interests you --

You can take from anything, because 

every piece of History is a piece 

of Human Nature.

It's Season Three of Buffy, I get my two-week vacation, 

and the second book I read is 'The Killer Angels', 

which is about the survivors of The Battle of Gettysburg; 

and right after that, I sort of become obsessed 

with the idea of Life on The Frontier, and that 

of course immediately made me 

think of the Millennium Falcon -- 

because, of course, most things do. 

I wanted to tell a story about people who are living in space, 

but not living in grandeur, and not living in great portent, 

but who are more the fringe -- people that the Enterprise 

would have just BLOWN right past, and never noticed --

Here we are, five hundred years 

in The Future, and we've used up 

The Earth; where once we had new countries 

to explore, we have new planets; we've terraformed them 

all to be useful for Human Life, and it's a vision 

of The World, more or less as it is today.... 

The one thing I did that I thought 

was a little utopian, was the idea 

that since America and China 

are the two greatest superpowers 

on The Planet, that once we went out, 

forward and created new planets, that 

they had merged into the beginnings of 

The Alliance, and that is why everybody 

who's American, speaks Chinese. 

That these two cultures actually settle 

their differences and become, you know, 

one great superpower, feels very, 

very real, because that's what's going on 

right now -- power-companies are 

merging into more and more 

powerful conglomerates.

As the more advanced cultures 

become more homogenised and 

spread out into the other worlds, 

where Life is tougher, and where 

people are more diverse, 

there's conflict. 

I was dealing with the idea of 

a Civil War, and every building, and -- 

people who had lost The War; 

This is something that's, you know, 

a big part of American fiction -- 

There's very little American fiction 

about the people who WON The War, 

about The North.... 

The people we all like to be identified with, 

we're all interested in, The South because 

They LOST -- and We love Losers. 

We love a sense of loss in American fiction, and 

even though Mal wasn't fighting for Slavery, 

I'm happy to say, he is someone who fought at a time 

when he was just crushed 

by the opposing force, 

and it changed him --

The forming of The Alliance causes A Power 

so great, that there's NO WAY it can justly rule 

over the entire universe, and so I'm dealing 

with the people on the fringes, who are going 

"You don't belong here, you don't belong on our soil;

Yes, you guys are progressive, you've got great Medicine, 

incredible Healthcare-plan, you've got Freedom of Religion, 

you've got all these great things, but we don't have that stuff 

and some of our customs are arcane, and some of them are 

maybe a little barbaric but We have 

A Right to be ourselves --"

And that's where The Utopian Vision stops, 

because whenever you create some kind of Utopia, 

you find something ugly working underneath it, 

and that's basically what this movie is about --"