Miranda
From The Firefly and Serenity Database
The furthest out planet in the system, Miranda is right at the edge of the Burnham quadrant, embedded deep into Reaver territory.
Once thought only to be fictional, Miranda in fact was an experimental colony where the Alliance tried to chemically modify its populace to be peaceful. This worked perfectly; it eliminated violence, but in the process it had a fatal side effect. The inhabitants lost all ambition—they stopped doing any work, stopped talking to each other, stopped reproducing and eventually stopped even feeding. On the other hand, for 0.10% of the population it had the opposite effect and caused extremely violent behavior, beyond mere psychosis but animalism. The "survivors" of Miranda are the Reavers who started to menace the Rim planets.
The Alliance managed to cover up their mess fairly well, erasing all official records of the planet. For those who have heard talk of Miranda, heard false tales that terra-forming was attempted but ultimately failed, and the planet is an uninhabitable blackrock. Of course, being in the middle of Reaver space, not many folks make the trip to see if it's true or not.
River Tam had knowledge of Miranda, which is one of the reasons the Alliance sent the Operative to retrieve her. At risk of their lives from both the Reavers and the Operative, the crew of Serenity used Mr. Universe's broadwave equipment to transmit a recording of what the Alliance did on Miranda to every planet and moon in the system.
[edit] Behind the scenes
Miranda may be named after the heroine of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. While Ariel was known as the loyal servant, Miranda was the peaceful maiden of the play.
