Firefly: Cultures: The Alliance

A government  established after a bitter civil war six years earlier.

They command the whole region although they do not necessarily want to bother with some of the worlds at the frontier.

“The war to unite the planets happened in 2711, and the victorious Alliance spread its control further and further throughout the galaxy. Those who had fought for independence had no choice but to live by Alliance law. Some never would, like Captain Mal, and those few found themselves flying to the furthest reaches of the galaxy to escape.” {abbreviated excerpt from the pilot episode}

The Alliance is supposed to reign over a Solar system, but many times the show tells us that they have some control over much wider areas like – the galaxy.

The Alliance have huge resources at their command – among them, are a range of space cruisers with laser weapons. It’s difficult to see any other ship having the nerve to attack a Lav. Cruiser.

Besides powerful defence, they have considerable technology available to terra-form planets and moons. They also have systems set up to provide gravity to all spaceships.

It seems that athe yare not too keen to share this technology however, since many of the frontier worlds can only fabricate their own weapons even though it would probably be cheaper to buy in energy weapons.

The Alliance also have an number of covert activities such as one called the Alliance Academy. Here they take gifted students and mess around with their brain for reasons which we have yet to work out. People who manage/maintain/protect this facility have blue hands!

We’ll no-doubt learn a lot more about them in the coming episodes and also something that Joss Whedon mentioned in a recent interview – the Blue Sun (?!?!)