Firefly: about the show

Though it might seem that I'm an obsessed Star Wars fan, and I am a fan (I had my ticket pre-booked for May 19th like anyone else), my true fanboy heart lies with a little show called Firefly. This is a tragically short-lived sci-fi show that aired in the US in 2003 on the Fox network, and didn't even last a full season before they took it off the air. It is a mixture of Star Trek-ish space opera without the silly-foreheaded aliens (but with actual believable three-dimensional characters who develop and grow during the shows and interact in a realistic way), gunslinging wild west show, and has many dramatic, funny and mature elements to it to boot.

To give you a slightly better impression of it I'll describe two scenes ealry on in the series: after narrowly escaping an ambush while trying to deliver some stolen goods, Captain Mal Reynolds and a couple of his crew escape the pursuers by stealing their horses and galloping to catch up to their space-ship midflight. In another scene, a fight breaks out at a bar, and the camera cuts to an outside view of the bars window. One of the ruffians who are involved in the fight gets thown though the window in typical wild west fashion, the only difference being that the window in this case is a hologram, so instead of shattering after the guy passes through it, it just re-forms itself. Also to add to this already rich universe Joss Whedon has created (yes, the same Joss who made 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Angel', but you definately don't have to be a fan of those shows to 'get' this), the backstory behind it is that theres been some big world war thats happened in the past, and the two main powers that govern the worlds are America and China; this inter-cultural mix can be seen practically everywhere - there are Chinese symbols around the ship, the crew regularly use chopsticks to eat, there are heavy Chinese influences in the clothing of civillians, highly respected geisha-esque 'companions' travel though the worlds offering their 'services', and (in a bid to get around the censors) whenever someone swears profusely, its in Mandarin. Another little detail I only noticed recently while rewatching an episode, was that when the ships' computer was repeating a warning about life support systems being down, the message was alternating between English and Mandarin. Another very cool aspect of the show is that whenever you see the space ship from space, like in a battle or whatever, there is no sound effects (like in Kubrik's 2001: A Sapce Oddysey), just a few wild western guitar twangs. Unfortunately, as is the case with many smart and unique shows, Fox were frankly unsupportive of the show and werent sure how to market it or what to do with it. They totally messed up the airing of the show; they thought the feature-length pilot was 'too slow and needed more action' so they demanded Joss and co-creator Tim Minear to write a brand new pilot episode over the space of just a weekend, which they did, they showed the episodes in the wrong order (leading to much confusion as many of the characters had ongoing arcs which ended up making no sense), barely advertised it, and eventually took the show off the air after only showing 10 of the 13 episodes that were filmed. Though they finally did get round to showing the propler pilot episode - last. However, due to the power of its already huge internet fanbase, Fox did in the end release the series in the correct order on dvd - and then were understandably surprised when the boxset kept selling out - its even recently made the top Amazon.com 20 dvd sales list.

Anyways, things are now definately looking up for the future of Firefly - soon after the series was cancalled, Joss persuaded Fox to let them option the show as a movie. Soon after Universal bought the movie rights, and, to cut a long story short, the movie (named 'Serenity', after the name of the ship) will be coming out on Spetember 30th in America and October 5th in the UK. There is a trailer out which I suggest you all see, even if you've never heard of Firefly. Even more good news, is that if the movie is successful (and I can't see how it won't be - at recent preview screenings which sold out in record time, some slightly over-zealous fans actually threatened ushers to let them it to see the film) Universal have offered to make a second and third movie.

Also, the respected sci-fi author Orson Scott Card highly rates the series - see his review here

Firefly related links:

Official Serenity trailer site

Official 'Serenity' movie site

Buy the 'Firefly' dvd boxset from Play.com - only £26.99!

SerenityMovie.net fansite

FireflyFans.net fansite

Buy stylish unofficial 'Blue Sun' t-shirts & caps

Video interviews with some of the 'Serenity' cast

'Finding Serenity' book by Jane Espenson - a collection of essays and musings about Firefly and various aspects of the show, with a section written by Firefly actress Jewel 'Kaylee' Staite - only £8.46 from Amazon.co.uk

'Serenity - Unofficial Firefly movie blog'

Starfury 'Serenity 2' UK convention - a weekend dedicated to the show and movie, where you get to meet the actors from Firefly/Serenity, ask them questions, get their autographs , have your photo taken with them, and generally have a really shiny time.

Funky Firefly mini-posters designed for fan guerilla marketing and spreading the word on the show and film