Serenity Spoiler

Here's a question for the rest of you Browncoats out there.

I'm home today watching my beloved Serenity DVD (Yes. Again.) and it's the sort of movie where, every time you see it, you notice something you've never seen before. Maybe it's a two second shot of a character's reaction that elaborates on their emotional state and explains in greater detail their actions.

Or maybe it's a gorram city in the middle of nowhere.

Here be spoilers. If you don't want to know details about Serenity, look away, look away.

At one point in the film, the crew decide to make a journey to the edge of the galaxy and investigate a lost planet. When they land, they start scouting through a big shiny city that, let's be honest, is all Allianced up. Anyone with any familiarity with the Firefly series knows that the division between the core worlds and the outer planets is the difference between Star Trek and Wagon Train. Core worlds get the nice clothes, the high tech medical technology, and they waltz beneath levitating chandeliers. Border settlements get brown coats and horses and they have to slap iron just to survive the season.

In some circumstances, settlers got a blanket and a hearty farewell before leaving to go make their way on a brave new world, so I have a really hard time believing that, beyond all the crappy planets where blue collar laborers go "t'ain't" and "t'other", the Alliance decided to go to the furthest world on the map and build, to quote Zoe, "dozens of cities" that 12 years of neglect later, still all look like they could pass muster on Ariel or Sihnon.