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Date Posted: 19:52:11 12/21/02 Sat
Author: Rattletrap
Subject: Re: CW's Writer's journal for Serenity. (Spoilers for the ep.)
In reply to: Cactus Watcher 's message, "CW's Writer's journal for Serenity. (Spoilers for the ep.)" on 17:48:00 12/21/02 Sat

"Inara’s suicide kit"

Was it a suicide kit? I completely missed that--I had assumed it was a first aid kit, but didn't hear anything definite one way or the other. If it was, that certianly merits thinking about. Must rewatch . . .

"At the port - The sign above the grill reads ‘Good Dogs’ - They ain’t hot dogs."

I loved that little subtlety--one of those things that made the world seem suddenly very real. Another moment like that for me was Book's first conversation with Kaylee, where he tells her he'd ridden on an older model Firefly, before they'd lengthened the stabilizers (or whatever)--pure technobabble, but also very in keeping with the sort of year to year model changes that are made on planes, cars, and boats today.

"Crazy Ivan - So called because of the Russian glorification of air-to-air ramming in battle. As I understand it, there never was a policy in the Soviet air force advocating ramming. However in the extremely dark early days of the German invasion of the USSR in World War II, any accurately reported act of fighting to the end was important for keeping up morale. ‘Taran’ as the tactic is called in Russian wasn’t often successful, but it did give the hopeless some hope of at least doing equal damage to the enemy. Crazy Ivan as the American military knows it refers to the somewhat less desperate tactic of violent maneuver to fly straight at the enemy to feign suicidal behavior. It is similar in intent to “Playing chicken” in combat."

You've proven time and again that you know your stuff on Soviet history, so I wouldn't question this one bit, but here is an alternative interpretation that I think makes more sense in context (it was my first thought, any rate)--taken from Tom Clancy's novel The Hunt for Red October--"Crazy Ivan" is a term used by American submarine drivers to describe a common tactic used by Russian sub drivers. The engines in their old subs were on the noisy side, and the noise filters in their sonars were not the best because the electronics usually weren't up to snuff. That meant they could hear in front and on the sides adequately, but the noise from their screws fouled up the sonar behind. To make sure no one was following them, Soviet sub drivers would make periodic sudden, hard, unannounced turns, just as Serenity does in this weeks episode. I wouldn't swear that this is the origin of the phrase (tho' Clancy's usually pretty good on that kind of stuff), but this is certainly where it entered the American popular lexicon given the popularity of the book and the later film version.

Just my $.02 -- okay, this was a long post, $.04

'trap

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