of the two worlds leads up to a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious universe. The Alliance may have some elements of a monarchy. In "Serenity," Malcolm Reynolds (Serenity's captain) said "I'd like to be king of all Londinium" and many of Inara Serra's customers are Lords. However, "King of all Londinium" may just be an idiom (i.e., "king of the world" in modern usage) and Lord could merely be a political title. There is also evidence that the Alliance may have some elements of a technocracy, as in a flashback within the episode "Safe", Simon Tam's parents chastised Simon's fear for River as potentially threatening his future, including the possibility of becoming the medical-elect, presumably the equivalent of an elected Technocrat representing the Medical sector. In Serenity, the movie set in the Firefly universe, it is revealed that the Alliance is run by a Parliament, as well as a prime minister. This invites the possibility that the Alliance is a constitutional monarchy and Westminster parliamentary system with the inclusion of technocratically elected members, where outside of the central planets, oligarchies through lordships represent local colonial governance. It appears that this Alliance was a melding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States of America (USA). The Alliance retains a mixture of both Western and Eastern cultures from the "Earth-That-Was", the original home of all humans, spearheaded by the Americans and the Chinese. Generally, the Alliance is rather authoritarian, although Joss Whedon, the series' creator, has said this is at least partly because the show is seen from the viewpoint of those hostile to the Alliance. Whedon himself admits that sometimes, the Alliance is like the predominant view that the United States saw itself in World War II: doing "very good things", helping people and spreading democracy. At other times the Alliance can tend towards black ops and power-grabbing, although rarely more so than any real-world democracy. Due to the melding of American and Chinese influences in the Alliance, most people in the Firefly universe are equally adept in speaking both English and Mandarin Chinese; some characters on the show speak Chinese at times (usually when using obscenities, so Whedon wouldn't have to bleep anything out and ruin the suspension of disbelief), and many signs are printed in both English and Chinese. Additionally, during the episode "Out of Gas," Serenitys warning messages over the intercom are repeated in both