Series/Firefly

Talk about Firefly here. Surprised that there hasn't been any thread for this yet.

So apparently this is an holyshitamazing show that got canceled after...like what, 14 episodes? Huh. This is in my (very large) Must Watch list and how good is this?

I'm pretty sure that there was a topic, maybe it fell through the void of abandonment. Nevermind, I just started rewatching the series (for the 3rd or 4th time). Im about halfway through. I first watched it about 1 year ago because I heard so much about it. I was really mad when I finished because it was too short, even though I knew beforehand that it was long over.

Well, we still got Fan Fic. Check out "Forward" it's pretty good. Unfortunately, its pausing currently.

14ish produced episodes. It was canceled after about ten.

Personally, I think it's a great show that has its worth inflated by the fact that it was canceled injustly and prematurely.

edited 11th Oct '11 11:15:30 PM by TParadox

I have a rather bad opinions on canceled shows. I think that for those shows, either the creator didn't feel like it or it wasn't that good. -shrugs- But since people talk about it so much, I figured that I might as well as take a look at it.

The premise sounds...a bit stupid, if you ask me, but guess I'll have to hold my judgement and watch the show. It's not that long, so it shouldn't be any problem.

Cancellation rarely has anything to do with the creator of the show. It's entirely about whether the network the show is contracted to has decided it's in their best financial interest to continue allotting airtime to it or not.

In this case, I think the reason Fox didn't like it was because they wanted Whedon to do a Buffy-type show for them, but phrased it as "Joss Whedon, creator of two hit ABC shows, give us a mega hit!" "Okay, I have this one idea—" "We'll take it!"

edited 11th Oct '11 11:32:53 PM by TParadox

BTW: for all fans http://www.whedon.info/article.php3?id_article=8136 here is a script for an unproduced episode.

Gail Berman, one of the Fox execs actually publicly apologized for Firefly getting the axe, several months ago, but then tried to defend the decision by saying that ratings were still bad, and the show obviously weasn't popular then, and blah blah blah.

Firefly is a decent show IMO. Not GREAT, but still much better than most of Fox's other shows at the time.

I'll probably get flamed for this, but I can kinda see why Fox didn't like the intitial pilot, saying there wasn't much action. The pilot does come off as kinda slow paced and tedious. The show just doesn't really pick up until after River gets revealed. The pilot also suffers from massive Ending Fatigue, with each character getting some kind of "closing scene" (and keep in mind, there's 9 main characters).

Other than that, the show overall is really good. Bushwacked, Jaynestown, Safe, Ariel, Heart of Gold, and Objects and Space are excellent episodes. The whole "space western" thing is oddball to be sure, but it's different, and there's nothing really wrong with that.

The movie Serenity is AWESOME, and a great conclusion to the series as a whole (though I'm still hopeful for another film, but if there is a film I seriously hope they don't go with Alan Tudyk's idea of a prequel film, but that's only because I think there'd be no logical way to include the characters Simon and River. Especially when you consider the fact that Summer Glau is obviously older than she was when the show was on the air).

Another reason I like Firefly, is because it introduced me to Summer Glau and her bare feet.

Tudyk wants a prequel to the whole series? I thought the general idea was that if the story were to be picked up again, it'd be either between Objects in Space and the movie, or pretending that the movie didn't happen.

The ratings were clearly engineered to be terrible. There were almost as many time slots as there were episodes, it was shown before prime time, it was shown late at night, it was shown on Friday evenings, it was shown when they knew it'd be pre-empted by baseball games...

^ Don't forget about the whole airing the episodes out of order thing.

How badly out of order was it? The main thing I hear when people say "aired out of order" is that Serenity wasn't shown until after they were done running the episodes.

Original air date order: 2,3,6,7,8,4,5,9,10,14,1 and did not show 11,12,13.

You can look up the original episode air dates on the other wiki.

edited 12th Oct '11 8:24:58 PM by nightwyrm_zero

I recently bought the whole show (and watched Serenity sometime beforehand) and watched the first two eps.

So far I'm actually liking it. It isn't really great but it's pretty decent. The premise to me was refreshing and a bit more original than most shows these days even if Space Western sounds weird.

Besides I'm slowly becoming a Whedon fan.

Huh, that's quite a mess. Is it intentional on Whedon's part?

Nope.

I know it may sound strange, but Whedon intended for them to be shown in order.

Fox jumbled them because they wanted the action bits first or something.

Here's the interview where Gail Berman "apologizes" for cancelling Firefly.

I was mistaken. She is FOX's ENTERTAINMENT PRESIDENT, not just an executive as I thought.

I love how she still pushes the blame on other execs for making the decision to run the shows out of order. Um... what she had no power to tell them not to?

edited 14th Oct '11 10:32:11 AM by Brandon

So I just watched Serenity... I am very sad now.

Poor Wash, poor Book...

Damn it, Whedon. Why can't you write happier things?

edited 15th Oct '11 1:47:09 PM by Mukora

Because he is a nasty, nasty man.

I watched the whole series plus the movie last week and absolutely loved them. Now, since I'm home from university for the week I'm rewatching it with my mother; the show has universal appeal!

Fuck you Rick Berman! Ya ruin this too? Stop ruining— oh. What is it with Bermans?

I'm watching more of the show and I finally saw the Big Damn Heroes ep.

Also I'm really loving Kaylee, she's the most upbeat and likeable character in this entire show. That dress and her smile show it.

I'm in love with Inara. You know, she's kinda like Troi done right.

The cinematography and lighting on this show sucks. Presumably, that would have improved with a better budget.

I would agree that the lighting sucked if it wasn't supposed to be like that in the first place... The cinematography? Debatable...

And I say this because even though it was on Fox, and was screwed over and all that, it was still done by Whedon. And since Buffy's third season, he hasn't exactly had problems coming up with money for his work...

edited 27th Oct '11 7:40:16 PM by Swish

There's some really nice lighting on the show — the med bay always looked particularly good, I thought (Train Job and Pilot particularly). And I recall there being some damn nice cinematography in Objects In Space.

A lot of it is unusual, but I think lot of that was due to experimenting with stylistic things, as opposed to just being bad. It would have settled into a grove eventually.

Yea. If Fox didn't suck.

Having just rewatched Serenity, I feel the need to vent.

Wash's death was completely stupid. Not the fact that he died, but the way he died. Impaled by a random spike? The only reason to do that is shock value. If he had died during the crash, from an explosion, cracked glass, sure, but having him die right after he "survives" is just annoyingly and obviously just there for the shock effect. It really brought the movie down, in my opinion.