Be Excellent To Each Other

So from Bits & Bobs I see there are still people who haven’t seen Firefly.

Please excuse me while I draw my fingers across my face and let out one long, exasperated sigh.

Okay. Here we go again.

What is Firefly?

Firefly is about freedom.

Every other science fiction television series set in the great void has somehow managed to chain itself to something. Babylon 5 dealt with people at the mercy of epic events, in the end fighting to save said galaxy. Star Trek dealt with a crew bound by a code of behaviour, honour and law – and more severely, a code of convention and expectation. They had to behave the way the fans expected them to behave. The TV series Stargate had its exploration-portal thing going on, with yet more galaxy saving. Battlestar Galactica was one big chase series involved with trying to escape fate. There was nothing wrong with these confines, but they pretty much meant that each show dealt all its cards early and that characters would always, always be subservient to the main plot.

Firefly was the first TV show set in space that had the wit to shoot off its chains. Every other show the characters were burdened with quests and mysteries and had to fulfil a grand destiny or lead people into the light. No one asked anything of Firefly’s crew. Malcolm Reynolds, the hero of Firefly, had no grand destiny. No special power. He was just a little quicker on the draw and could take a punch. He wasn’t even terribly bright. And the freedom lay in the only mission statement the show ever gave the viewer, ‘to keep on flying.’ Mal’s only concern was to keep his beloved ship – which is a character in itself - in motion and below the radar through air and vacuum. Whatever scrapes Mal got into were through his own choices, and that’s what freedom meant in Firefly. No one called the shots, and the main fear Mal had in Firefly wasn’t death, but to be in chains.

It is cowboys in space, and it goes beyond the frontier trappings and the horses, the clothes and the shotguns. Mal’s a drifter, but he isn’t looking for anything. For him to travel, to be on the move, is the only life he can tolerate. This is because Mal once had a cause, was once one of the big damn heroes you’d find in those other series. But he was beat down, and beat down hard. And in the dust he was kicked ‘till he couldn’t run, ‘till he couldn’t walk and nearly ‘till he couldn’t crawl. But crawl he did, he licked his wounds and bought a ship. And in this ship he’s running to stay free, free from great causes, rules and orders and even emotional attachments. Everything he cares about is on that ship, a ship with no particular mission.

But a man’s gotta eat and a ship needs fuel, so Mal finds that no man is an island. Sometimes violence and danger finds him, and sometimes he finds it. But he fights for no man but himself and his crew.


Leaving aside the wonderful special effects, the fantastic performances, the witty and charming script and just the entire feeling of the ship actually being really there, a real place you’d love to hang out in… leaving that aside, the most beautiful thing about Firefly was that it could have gone anywhere. It could have picked up any plot and dropped it. It could have stayed episodic or begun to follow the grand threads hinted at. But ultimately wherever Firefly the series headed, Serenity would always be able to fight its way upstream, to slip away from the great events that would threaten to overwhelm it. It is one of the reasons why the film was such a gut punch, not only because of the events that made grown men cry, but because for a time there Mal and Serenity had been corralled, had been chained to a cause. The best and happiest ending the film finds is not the overthrow of oppression, that’s never even an option in Firefly, but the regaining of the personal freedom that a ship with a tank full of gas, a belly full of food and a pocket of loose change provides. Firefly’s ‘verse genuinely offered infinite story-telling potential with no way of painting oneself into the corner. The crew of Serenity could always just slip under the radar again, because unlike almost all other sci-fi the show was about the little people.

Firefly was Roseanne, in space. Blue-collar sci-fi featuring an often bickering but ultimately loving family trying to stay afloat, and because of that it had all the wit and charm of that drama, whilst bringing it to a genre that had never known it before. As such, Firefly really was an exceptional show.

Plus, y’know, it had scary space cannibals and a baddy like the dude from Marathon Man and horses and space-whores and Badger and old war stories and awesome coats and the possibility of infinite adventure.

And THAT is why it still hurts.

Just go watch the gorram show, okay.

(Guns sounded a bit rubbish though. Why was that?)

Beautiful.

Interestingly Pete, the reasons why you state you liked Firefly, ie no overriding ethos, etc, are the opposite reasons you stated you liked B5. I also thought the reset button in Firefly was far too obvious, and detrimental, in that it didn't allow enough character development, and there was occasionally this magic forgive/forget which seemed to be as though they were individual episodes which coincidentally featured the same people. I would also argue that in a lot of instances, Farscape got there first, but lacked the Whedon humour - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just different.

Point. I did like B5 because it had a proper story to tell. But it was the first one that told it on TV. (It had of course been done, most obviously in LotR, countless times in books and on film.) Other sci-fi shows, spooked and excited by the possibilities of B5's novel-on-TV innovation took up the challenge. But since then I've found characters rather too subservient to the plot, and the entire notion of a small crew of heroes saving the day rather tired. BSG escaped that through having the 'baddies' as fascinating as the 'heroes' and ending in an unusual place where -

Firefly is a load of old bollocks.

And I think Whedon just saw an episode of Cowboy Bebop, and said, while his nursey cleaned the drool from his chin, "I wanna do dat!". Then nursey decided that the Japanese cartoons had excited Jossy too much, and banned him from watching them. But Jossy had seen enough to write his new series! In green crayon. On an old tablecloth.

I think Pundy likes Firefly.

Anyway, I thought we (and by that I mean 'you morons') had decided that sci-fi is a setting not a genre (even though it's clearly a genre) and therefore the subtitle should be 'not like other fantasy-futuristic-cow-punk'

This made me laugh far more than it should have!

I fucking love Firefly. That is all.

Pete,

Can't say I agree with there being no grand cause. Despite the episodes being more or less stand-alone, with the wacky crew doing one thing or another, the entire series was really about River and what had happened to her. Equally, other than one example*, which was probably just from awful writing, Mal certainly kept to a code, even if it wasn't enshrined by law.

It was still a very good show that could have become great.

Awful cheesy theme music though.








* and seriously that one episode, The Message, sucked so much because of it.

Yeah, I never really saw River as a grand cause. Just someone on the run like he was, someone wanting to be free, but not a tool to decide the fate of billions or anything. Soon as she was on his crew she fell within his limited monkeysphere. That's how I read it anyway, obviously the film somewhat moves against that. I agree with you on the code too, but Mal could fall away from that code, or reinterpret it. He wasn't bound to it as fast as other sci-fi show heroes.

The Message really is quite infuriating. It has great character work, a great dilemma and one of the most emotional bits Firefly has done - and some of the best music I've heard on TV courtesy of Greg Edmondson. But the writing is so sloppy when it comes to plotting I can't enjoy it. The entire thing with the organs just doesn't make any sense whatsoever, nonsensical on many levels. Not a terrible episode but yes, infuriating, because it could have been so great. Rrrgh.

Baffled that some people dislike Safe, too. I really like that one. And Shindig.

I'm more upset with 'The Message' because...

River's story wasn't 'a cause' until Serenity. Before that, anything that happened on River and Simon's behalf was as a result of them being part of the crew. They didn't drive the direction at any point until the film.

My favourite episode of Firefly is Objects in Space. Brilliant ending.

Out of Gas is my favourite. The ending is so, so brilliant.

Did that just happen?

Oh my word.

L-LOL, though.

I must admit, I don't understand where Serenity fits in with Firefly.

Afterwards.

My view may well be coloured from having seen Serenity before Firefly, but it seemed pretty obvious that the entire point of Firefly was River's story arc.

It's the ship.

Well, only because it was, if you see what I mean.
If the main plot of Serenity had been about Book, then that would have been the point of Firefly.

I need to rewatch Firefly.

Hmm, I'm not sure that's true.

River was the outside element in the whole thing, and as such more of the focus for the ongoing plot.

But she's not Mal's cause in Firefly, which is what I was responding to. In fact, she's a nuisance obligation for much of it.

She's not Mal's cause in Serenity either. Miranda is.

The other thing to bear in mind is the gap. It's like you get the first half of season 1, and then the end of season 2 as Serenity. Annoying.

..........................................

Did you watch it in context, though? It's really an extension of the series, and I imagine it must have largely nonplussed everyone else.

Six episodes into this now and it's pretty good so far. I do have an issue with the pacing of it sometimes though. In particular, the endings to Bushwhacked and Our Mrs Reynolds seemed a little rushed. It's as though they were plodding along nicely then realised the pub was about to shut.

I'm ashamed I have never watched it but I did enjoy the movie Serenity

I love Firefly! I still pull the boxset out and watch it almost back-to-back at least once a year.

My favourite episode is "Out Of Gas". As well as the excellent main story, I love all of the little flashbacks that show how Serenity's crew came together.

Just watched that one actually.. good stuff.

So far, this stuff strikes me as being Frontier - the TV Series.

For them's who are interested - http://www.tv-links.eu/tv-shows/Firefly ... episode_1/

Awesome.

All watched now, including Serenity.

I'd probably go with Out of Gas as my favourite episode, with all the back story explanations. Odd how the film seemed to be more sci-fi than the series though.

Rewatching all of these.

On episode 3 - the alliance soldiers are all wearing Starship Troopers Mobile Infantry costumes, without changes other than a bit of purple paint. Heh.

I believe they cropped up in a couple of other films too.

WTFF?!?!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1593655/

Looks awful.

Yup.

"Budget:$20,000 (estimated) "

Fan films, eh?

Amazon have an exclusive on a UK-shaped BluRay box for £25. I bought it. Hel and I are watching it. Hooray!

What's the transfer like?

As long as you're in to take it from the delivery man, pretty smooth.

Yoink! Thanks!

Pretty good? It shows up some cracking detail in hair, moustaches and CGI cityscapes, but some shots seem out of focus. I think someone filmed it wrong, in parts.

We've only watched a couple of episodes so far.

The theme song sounds weird.

Browsing through some of the cheaper Play.com tat, I noticed that Serenity is £2.49 now so I thought I might as well get a proper copy of it.

(The two Bill & Ted films are less than three quid each too)

The blu ray is now £11.99 at amazon, I'm told.