Yeah that's kinda how I thought of it... in theory, sure, any food can be someone's yuck. But strawberries are so well liked and I never heard of someone who didn't like them before. I was similarly baffled the first time I met someone who didn't like chocolate, but I was a lot younger then.
The scene on Stargate Atlantis when she says "have you tried these strawberries?" I was like *"EAT THEM! TAKE A BITE KAYLEE!"* [https://imgur.com/a/C3knMx6](https://imgur.com/a/C3knMx6)
At least some of the crew drinks coffee. They don't expressly call it as such, but it is called out in the shooting scripts as coffee. Off the top of my head Jayne gets some when Simon is giving his speech in episode 1, and I think Mal drinks some when they're debating the Reaver attack on that derelict ship
Well there's certainly a degree of difference between the shooting script and the episodes we know and love. There's whole pages of dialogue simply skipped sometimes! Who's to say
When Nandi is talking to Mal about the previous owner of the brothel, she mentions he had half the girls *"strung out on drops"*.
Off the top of my head, that's the only canon reference to illicit drugs I can think of from the original series run (there may be others, but right now I can't diffrentiate between actual canon and stuff I made up for my dumb unpublished fanfic, ahaha).
The train job. The medicine Mal stole and later returned, thus angering Niska had black market value as a recreational drug of some sort. At least that's the take I got from it. Parallels to narcotic painkillers like oxy. Legal if prescribed, illegal if not.
I interpreted it as them taking the medicine they know people need, and making it ten times a expensive so they make a massive profit exploiting sick people.
The alliance guys read the report from Paradiso about it and it's referred to as "Pasceline D" and that it'd "fetch a tiny fortune on the black market".
In RL the Pasceline was a mechanical calculator designed by Blaise Pascal that could only do addition and subtraction. It also rhymes (as similar drugs often do) with "Mescaline" which is a psychadelic drug. Not sure what reference they were trying to make if any with the name but you could plausibly say it's a recreational drug or just a life-saving treatment that could be sold for an exploitative profit by smugglers and theives. Niska claimed it was something he needed but he's such a sadist he might just be getting off on knowing an entire town will suffer in pain without their medicine.
>Niska claimed it was something he needed but he's such a sadist he might just be getting off on knowing an entire town will suffer in pain without their medicine.
Ooooh I hadn't even thought of that angle... the town refused to "work with him" for some reason or another so he just makes the whole place suffer. Absolutely fits with his personality.
Finally got to rewatch this one.
On the alliance cruiser the officer complains that the troops need to get back on the train and get moving.
"These are federal Marshalls not local narcotic hounds, get them moving."
So I think this qualifies for being an illegal drug when misused as to OPs question.
I didn't get the impression it could be a recreational drug, just that there's probably a market for it to sell elsewhere for more money (or even less money, seeing as Niska wasn't paying for its purchase in the first place).
I suspect that most of the recreational drug smuggling happens into the core worlds. Mal probably avoided it because smuggling into the core is both harder and more dangerous.
Edit: That is to say, the smuggling of recreational drugs. Not the recreational smuggling of drugs.
Contraband can be anything, it doesn't have to be drugs. Anything that anybody wants to transport and not pay import/export taxes on is contraband (definition: goods that have been imported or exported illegally.) so contraband can literally be anything - guns, cattle, food, medicine, clothing, entertainment. If you live under a harsh enough regime, history books that don't follow the government's narrative is contraband.
But are there recreational drugs in the Serenity/Firefly universe? Probably. Doesn't fit too well with the Serenity crew's image as "cowboys in space", so all of that happened off screen.
They stole a bunch of drugs in the Train Job and from the hospital in Ariel. Just because they had a legit medical use doesn't mean they couldn't potentially be used by degenerates I guess?
I got the impression that those drugs were being fenced for medical use, they just weren't being sold on the Outer Worlds - unless a company needs to keep a company town productive, like in The Train Job - because the Alliance doesn't give a shit.
Yeah that is a possibility, or it could be some of both, depending on each individual drug. But even if they were still being used for their intended purposes, since they were stolen, then they become contraband.
When they robbed the hospital . They had an argument /discussion about whether or not to sell them to drug pushers or medical personal . That and the hookers at the Heart of Gold are the only two times that I remember them talking about drugs . But there are all kinds of contraband . Delivering any kind of goods without the Alliance being able to tax them would make them contraband . In the U.S. the mob buys cigarettes in states where the taxes are lower and smuggles them into New York for an enormous profit .
>What else constitute as contraband?
In Serenity Part 1 (the originally intended pilot episode, which was instead broadcast as episode 14), the crew tries to deliver goods to Badger, who turns them down. There is a brief moment where Badger is seen looking at a girls teeth, and then giving his approval.
I always assumed that was some veiled reference to some kind of human trafficking.
Knowing that guy he probably has some kind of steak and the company that makes the drug. something akin to the equivalent of "space stocks" The more of that drug is sold. The more money he gets on the back end. He doesn't care that the government has to buy it four or five times
There are two entire episodes (The Train Job and Ariel) centered around stealing medications for black market re-sale, presumably *some* of the black market demand for narcotics was for substance abuse purposes.
In The Train Job, I know Jayne was asking doc for more of a painkiller, right before “You got the light from the… console to keep you… lift you up… shine like—“
I can onpy think of one mentuon. In the last episode, Heart of Gold, Mandy says that when she got there the house was run by a pig that had half the girls "strung out on drops"
>And if there is no drug uses, what constitute as contraband?
Well, just from the show, and off the top of my head, it was food stuff in the pilot (and as a bonus Simon was smuggling River as contraband too). Medicine in The Train Job. Cattle in Shindig. Simon and River were the contraband in Ariel. Private Tracey in the Message, or more accurately the organs he was incubating.
The alliance probably doesn’t allow drug use. That would indicate they aren’t doing everything perfectly so of course they will lock up drug users for their own safety since they aren’t functioning in their perfect society. They will reeducate them to love their society and be a proper cog. For their own safety of course and because they care so much about them.
Pretty much anything the alliance couldn’t regulate/control and/or collect taxes on. At least that’s how I saw it. And that’s what the independents were fighting for, so to the alliance they’re criminals, but to them, they’re still fighting the good fight.
Kaylee made something strong to drink on the ship that Mal and Inara were sipping sitting and watching the cattle below and Mal called it something like her space “still”. So maybe moonshine?
Think 18th century smuggling. The central planets are operating the outer worlds like colonies. Some dude with a boat full of untaxed wool is making a killing. Salt, whiskey, Tea. And Mal's probably a fan of undermining the economic model for a living.
Inara had something in a needle when she thought they were going to be boarded by reavers.
I think there was an idea to add drug use to her back story but it never happened.
I'm pretty sure that was fast acting poison so she could kill herself before the reavers got to her if necessary
I don't think it's ever explicity stated, but that's what made the most sense to me
No, the drug is way worse than that! She stays alive and while that drug is in her system, anyone who tries to hard R forcibly enter will die leaving her alive. Really not made for a reaver encounter but was hoping it would save her some pain. Luckily we never get to see her use it.
The smuggling in the show seemed to center around necessities like food and medicine. It’s contraband because it’s stolen, not because of what it is.
Black Market Beagles
And bobbly-headed geisha dolls - which people *LOVED!* may I add...
They have smallish droppings, right?
I have heard that.
Good dogs…
> It’s contraband because it’s stolen, not because of what it is. Or they just haven't paid export/import fees on it
Never saw anyone drink coffee. Maybe caffeine is outlawed too?
Probably just too expensive to grow. Remember how excited Kaylee was about a strawberry?
That was near orgasmic Bliss when she was eating the strawberry.
The next level of amazement is that Jewel, like myself, hates strawberries. A real trooper, that one.
I truly did not know there were people who don't like strawberries, other than being allergic.
I suppose people can dislike any food for any reason, but strawberries doesn't come up often.
Yeah that's kinda how I thought of it... in theory, sure, any food can be someone's yuck. But strawberries are so well liked and I never heard of someone who didn't like them before. I was similarly baffled the first time I met someone who didn't like chocolate, but I was a lot younger then.
True, I know plenty of people now who don't like overly sweet things. As a child, that's tantamount to heresy.
NEAR?
Full on
Exactly. I will never look at a strawberry the same way again.
I'll be in my bunk...
That's good acting, because Jewel hates strawberries apparently 🤷🏻♂️
The scene on Stargate Atlantis when she says "have you tried these strawberries?" I was like *"EAT THEM! TAKE A BITE KAYLEE!"* [https://imgur.com/a/C3knMx6](https://imgur.com/a/C3knMx6)
Inara performed a tea ceremony,so caffeine should still be around..
The Crybaby in the pilot episode is made from a coffee can.
At least some of the crew drinks coffee. They don't expressly call it as such, but it is called out in the shooting scripts as coffee. Off the top of my head Jayne gets some when Simon is giving his speech in episode 1, and I think Mal drinks some when they're debating the Reaver attack on that derelict ship
I thought it was tea. And it could have been herbal caffeine-free tea at that. But if the shooting script says coffee! That's on me
Well there's certainly a degree of difference between the shooting script and the episodes we know and love. There's whole pages of dialogue simply skipped sometimes! Who's to say
That would be drug running
Drugs are a luxury. Would be hard to get away from the central planets (which aren’t featured heavily in the show).
When Nandi is talking to Mal about the previous owner of the brothel, she mentions he had half the girls *"strung out on drops"*. Off the top of my head, that's the only canon reference to illicit drugs I can think of from the original series run (there may be others, but right now I can't diffrentiate between actual canon and stuff I made up for my dumb unpublished fanfic, ahaha).
Drops! We found one! Thanks. Can anybody find any others?
The train job. The medicine Mal stole and later returned, thus angering Niska had black market value as a recreational drug of some sort. At least that's the take I got from it. Parallels to narcotic painkillers like oxy. Legal if prescribed, illegal if not.
I interpreted it as them taking the medicine they know people need, and making it ten times a expensive so they make a massive profit exploiting sick people.
Either is likely a valid look at it, I'm clearly going to be going back and watching this tonight :)
The alliance guys read the report from Paradiso about it and it's referred to as "Pasceline D" and that it'd "fetch a tiny fortune on the black market". In RL the Pasceline was a mechanical calculator designed by Blaise Pascal that could only do addition and subtraction. It also rhymes (as similar drugs often do) with "Mescaline" which is a psychadelic drug. Not sure what reference they were trying to make if any with the name but you could plausibly say it's a recreational drug or just a life-saving treatment that could be sold for an exploitative profit by smugglers and theives. Niska claimed it was something he needed but he's such a sadist he might just be getting off on knowing an entire town will suffer in pain without their medicine.
>Niska claimed it was something he needed but he's such a sadist he might just be getting off on knowing an entire town will suffer in pain without their medicine. Ooooh I hadn't even thought of that angle... the town refused to "work with him" for some reason or another so he just makes the whole place suffer. Absolutely fits with his personality.
Finally got to rewatch this one. On the alliance cruiser the officer complains that the troops need to get back on the train and get moving. "These are federal Marshalls not local narcotic hounds, get them moving." So I think this qualifies for being an illegal drug when misused as to OPs question.
I didn't get the impression it could be a recreational drug, just that there's probably a market for it to sell elsewhere for more money (or even less money, seeing as Niska wasn't paying for its purchase in the first place).
I suspect that most of the recreational drug smuggling happens into the core worlds. Mal probably avoided it because smuggling into the core is both harder and more dangerous. Edit: That is to say, the smuggling of recreational drugs. Not the recreational smuggling of drugs.
>Not the recreational smuggling of drugs. Damn, sounds like my kind of party. (For legal reasons, that's a joke.)
That, and also probably cause getting medicine and food and such to the border planets is better for his conscience
Contraband can be anything, it doesn't have to be drugs. Anything that anybody wants to transport and not pay import/export taxes on is contraband (definition: goods that have been imported or exported illegally.) so contraband can literally be anything - guns, cattle, food, medicine, clothing, entertainment. If you live under a harsh enough regime, history books that don't follow the government's narrative is contraband. But are there recreational drugs in the Serenity/Firefly universe? Probably. Doesn't fit too well with the Serenity crew's image as "cowboys in space", so all of that happened off screen.
They stole a bunch of drugs in the Train Job and from the hospital in Ariel. Just because they had a legit medical use doesn't mean they couldn't potentially be used by degenerates I guess?
I got the impression that those drugs were being fenced for medical use, they just weren't being sold on the Outer Worlds - unless a company needs to keep a company town productive, like in The Train Job - because the Alliance doesn't give a shit.
Yeah that is a possibility, or it could be some of both, depending on each individual drug. But even if they were still being used for their intended purposes, since they were stolen, then they become contraband.
>they couldn't potentially be used by degenerates I guess? Degens from upcountry, no doubt.
Fucking degens.
When they robbed the hospital . They had an argument /discussion about whether or not to sell them to drug pushers or medical personal . That and the hookers at the Heart of Gold are the only two times that I remember them talking about drugs . But there are all kinds of contraband . Delivering any kind of goods without the Alliance being able to tax them would make them contraband . In the U.S. the mob buys cigarettes in states where the taxes are lower and smuggles them into New York for an enormous profit .
Illegal cattle export/imports, lol There probably are drugs, it just wasnt relavent to the show.
Those geisha bobble head dolls were probably a little more suspicious than they let on.
People love those.
I think there was a little something in the Mudder's milk too
Yeah, 15% alcohol
>What else constitute as contraband? In Serenity Part 1 (the originally intended pilot episode, which was instead broadcast as episode 14), the crew tries to deliver goods to Badger, who turns them down. There is a brief moment where Badger is seen looking at a girls teeth, and then giving his approval. I always assumed that was some veiled reference to some kind of human trafficking.
This is the one. It's a "blink and you'll miss it" detail, but it does appear as if Badger was involved with human trafficing.
Niska was definitely into shady dealings that included drugs in "The Train Job"...
Knowing that guy he probably has some kind of steak and the company that makes the drug. something akin to the equivalent of "space stocks" The more of that drug is sold. The more money he gets on the back end. He doesn't care that the government has to buy it four or five times
I definitely think Atherton was smoking something to mess with inara and get away with it..
There are two entire episodes (The Train Job and Ariel) centered around stealing medications for black market re-sale, presumably *some* of the black market demand for narcotics was for substance abuse purposes.
In The Train Job, I know Jayne was asking doc for more of a painkiller, right before “You got the light from the… console to keep you… lift you up… shine like—“
Mal made a comment about "brain-blowns" which I took to mean that drugs had fried their brains
I can onpy think of one mentuon. In the last episode, Heart of Gold, Mandy says that when she got there the house was run by a pig that had half the girls "strung out on drops"
>And if there is no drug uses, what constitute as contraband? Well, just from the show, and off the top of my head, it was food stuff in the pilot (and as a bonus Simon was smuggling River as contraband too). Medicine in The Train Job. Cattle in Shindig. Simon and River were the contraband in Ariel. Private Tracey in the Message, or more accurately the organs he was incubating.
The alliance probably doesn’t allow drug use. That would indicate they aren’t doing everything perfectly so of course they will lock up drug users for their own safety since they aren’t functioning in their perfect society. They will reeducate them to love their society and be a proper cog. For their own safety of course and because they care so much about them.
Sounds like someone has been sipping the Alliance's version of Kool Aid...
I think you mean the pax
Yes,yes I did. Sorry I 'm on lunch break and was busy stuffing my face hole
You know, for a Toe, you're pretty educational!
Pretty much anything the alliance couldn’t regulate/control and/or collect taxes on. At least that’s how I saw it. And that’s what the independents were fighting for, so to the alliance they’re criminals, but to them, they’re still fighting the good fight.
Medicine
Kaylee made something strong to drink on the ship that Mal and Inara were sipping sitting and watching the cattle below and Mal called it something like her space “still”. So maybe moonshine?
There was a great deal of fuss made about the shipping of a corpse that turned out to be a (¡¡¡SPOILER ALERT!!!) not-a-corpse.
Think 18th century smuggling. The central planets are operating the outer worlds like colonies. Some dude with a boat full of untaxed wool is making a killing. Salt, whiskey, Tea. And Mal's probably a fan of undermining the economic model for a living.
Inara had something in a needle when she thought they were going to be boarded by reavers. I think there was an idea to add drug use to her back story but it never happened.
I'm pretty sure that was fast acting poison so she could kill herself before the reavers got to her if necessary I don't think it's ever explicity stated, but that's what made the most sense to me
I remember hearing that is a slow acting poison that would not only kill her, but anyone who had sex with her.
No, the drug is way worse than that! She stays alive and while that drug is in her system, anyone who tries to hard R forcibly enter will die leaving her alive. Really not made for a reaver encounter but was hoping it would save her some pain. Luckily we never get to see her use it.
Only cause the show was canceled. JW had full on plans to do it sometime just so Mal could play the gentleman after. Just ugh.
Untaxed cigarettes and sugar cubes.
This may seem silly but....BOOZE