Series We Loved: Firefly

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OVERVIEW:

Firefly is an American space western television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon, under his Mutant Enemy Productions label. Whedon served as executive producer, along with Tim Minear.

The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. Theensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity. Whedon pitched the show as "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things".^[1] The show explores the lives of some people who fought on the losing side of a civil war and others who now make a living on the outskirts of society, as part of the pioneer culture that exists on the fringes of their star system. In addition, it is a future where the only two surviving superpowers, the United States and China, fused to form the central federal government, called the Alliance, resulting in the fusion of the two cultures as well. According to Whedon's vision, "nothing will change in the future: technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today."^[2]

Firefly premiered in the United States on the Fox network on September 20, 2002. Despite high expectations for the Joss Whedon-led project, by mid-December 2002, Firefly had averaged only 4.7 million viewers per episode and was 98th in Nielsen ratings.^[3] It wascanceled after eleven of the fourteen produced episodes were aired. Despite the series' relatively short life span, it received strong sales when it was released on DVD and has large fan support campaigns.^[4][5] It won an Emmy in 2003 for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series. The post-airing success of the show led Whedon and Universal Pictures to produce a film based on the series, Serenity.^[4] The Firefly franchise expanded from the series and film to other media including comics and a role-playing game.

Why We Miss It:

I was drinking the other day with Shadow remembering the good old days when he would raid freely and I would run from the Space Guard and worked as a smuggler trying to make a living while they were right up my ass. I still long for the countless days on the run, hunted mercilessly, barely making it out of sticky situations. Brawls, gunfights. Good times, that reminded me so much of the tales of a fellow smugglers of a series called Firefly.

Where should I begin? This is probably one of the best (if not the best) Sci-Fi series I have ever seen. The reasons are many. First of all the theme of it. It is truly original, its a cowboy-western sci fi that mixes up every culture from chinese to arabian and so on. You can see that by the way people are dressed and act. The most interesting thing however as far as the theme, is that the whole idea of the world is that all nations and cultures are mixed up in such a way that there is little to no difference between people. You see many people from different cultures mixed together in a colorful mix of clothing, languages etc. Also it seems that even the lowest most uncultured person could speak Mandarin Chinese which is funny.

Another thing that really got me hooked up in this series is that it misses the whole "Space-Glamor" that exists in most (if not all) sci fi themed series and movies. Here you dont have the glamorous defender of the innocent, or the embassador-councilor that fights for the people. You dont have generals and a great army and an alien threat or something. Here you have people with an average (if not questionable) way of life. Their struggles are everyday struggles such as, how to stay alive, how to get a job. Off course there IS a bigger plot going on with the 2 fugitives and all, but overall you see that they are just average people struggling. It kinda lets you feel a bit closer to the show. Its more easy to approach it since the problems they have are not so different than many problems a person can experience in real life. Off course as a sci-fi, there are gunfights and spaceships involved.

Finally the thing that drew me in the most was the characters. Each one has a very specific down to earth character that someone can easily identify to. They are not good or bad, they are just people with different sets of beliefs and abilities however they are all bound up by the fact that they are all members of the crew. The other thing that was fascinating was the fact that you see that there are preferences between the group, meaning that some members might be more friendly or hostile to another member of the crew as everyone could show to be more of a friend to another person and less to another.

To end with, i REALLY loved the fact that they were kinda badass and random. They are not your ideal heroes that will fly to the rescue with shining armor and lightsabers or something. They are unorthodox and kinda chaotic, they are more likely to fly to the rescue screaming bloody-murder while shooting around, blowing stuff up while barely making it out alive. Not to mention that they are as likely to let a "bad guy" run away as the "noble" thing to do is, as likely as they are to shoot the "bad guy" in cold blood. Yeah, they are so my type of heroes.

TO END WITH, it was an amazing show that i will hold a deep grudge against Fox network for canceling it. Its a must see for everyone.

Commander out

P.S you will most likely say "OMG I would so do that as well" at LEAST once in the show with at LEAST one character. (I was saying that all the time with almost everything the captain did, and a lot of times I said that with Jayne, even Zoey and Nash. And the doctor.....And the shepherd)

Overlord's Edit: I couldn't resist to post the Firefly Theme XD