Firefly
Before jumping into any more seasons of Gilmore Girls, having completed the first two, we switched to Firefly.
First, it was utterly insane of Fox to have broadcast the movie length pilot episode last, as I seem to remember hearing that they did. That’s like saying “we’re going to start broadcasting this show from the second episode, without giving you the setup. Not only that, but we’re going to take something that is arguably tighter and better than the later Serenity movie and broadcast it after we’ve screwed you over by ditching the show.
Why does Fox bother to have the “cool” to pickup good shows in the first place when it’s only going to jerk them around like a stodgy old network anyway? It’s schizoid behavior. Almost as if one arm of the organization is charged with deciding on shows to run, and another arm of the organization is charged with shooting them off the air like so many clay pigeons.
As implied, the first episode was superlative. If I’d watched it as a pilot, they’d have had me at the musically catchy, lyrically libertarian theme song, never mind hooking me fanatically by the end of the show. And yet… I felt that it made more sense, having watched Serenity the movie (the first episode of Firefly is also named Serenity) first, getting a full explanation of the diaspora, reavers, and what’s up with River. In the pilot of Firefly, we don’t get any explanation of how these humans got where they are, or that it’s all one solar system.
I did keep making Star Wars references throughout the episode, like “welcome to Mos Eisley.” But hey, it’s hard to eliminate that sort of thing.
For those who have read their Peter Hamilton, Malcolm Reynolds struck me as very Joshua Calvert. I could almost see his character as “inspired by,” which is all the more intriguing in light of the use of the ship and place name “Serenity” by Joss Whedon. If you were casting the Night’s Dawn trilogy for film, you could lift Mal straight out of Firefly, change his character name, and run with it. If I had to guess, I’d venture that similarity as more intentional than any Star Wars homages. The other thing that reminded me of Hamilton was the reference to people being dumped on newly terraformed worlds with limited supplies and technology, and left to do what they could do with what they had.
After the pilot episode plus having seen Serenity, I highly recommend Firefly. Presumably I’ll have more comment later.
And what’s funny is FOX, back in the beginning actually used to give shows a chance. X Files comes to mind. After I got the Firefly DVDs, it was a real joy to watch everything in order, and some of the unaired episodes were some of the best.
Posted by Ith on 02/02 at 01:34 PMIf I remember right X-files almost didn’t make it through the first season.. Fox was going to pull it.
Posted by Wayne on 02/02 at 02:46 PMHaving just finished the last disc of Firefly last weekend, I was dumbfounded that Fox didn’t stick with it. It was far superior to X-Files, imho, and I loved X-files.
Posted by jen on 02/03 at 12:18 PM
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