Firefly

The quick version

I have two words for you:  Space Cowboys.

via LadyRedDarkness on deviantart

NO.  Not like that.

Closer, but still no.  Oh, Cowboy Bebop, you glorious thing.  We'll get to you eventually.

Ah.  Here we are...

In 2002, Joss Whedon (who brought us 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and, more recently the blockbuster movie 'Avengers Assemble') created a show called 'Firefly'.  Only 13 episodes were made and only 11 shown before it was cancelled by FOX television.  Yet this short run of less than 3 months produced a fanbase that's as die-hard now as it was 10 years ago.

So what was this 'Firefly' thing about anyway?

It's a simple enough set-up.  In a possible future, humans have moved away from Earth to colonise space.  They land on a planet, terraform it to make it possible to live there, and set up home.  Planets nearer the centre of this colony tended to be better resourced and more 'civilised' while the border planets were often mined for their raw materials, with the people there scratching a living as best they can.

Then the richer planets formed the Alliance and proposed that the entire system be governed centrally through them.  Resistance to this idea (largely from the border planets and rebels known as 'Browncoats') led to a war that the Alliance ultimately won.  Malcolm Reynolds was one of the soldiers on the losing side, and has since assembled a crew for his Firefly-class ship, 'Serenity' and shipped out.  The series follows the crew as they smuggle, embezzle, hijack, and generally thieve their way across the system at the expense of the Alliance, trying to make ends meet and keep body and soul together.


This is often a far more complicated and entertaining venture than it has any right to be...

"We shall rule over this land and we shall call it... This Land!"
"I think we should call it your grave!"
Get used to these dinosaurs.  Everybody loves this moment.

Why everyone likes it

• It's imaginative.  Joss Whedon's idea was that in the future only two super-cultures would really survive; the Chinese (who were in the middle of their boom at the time) and that good old inescapable US of A.  Although casting decisions meant that no Asian actors made it onto the ship, Joss still insisted on cramming as much of this cultural mashup into the show as possible.  The visual design, use of language, and even character names and outfits all explore this idea.

• It crosses genres.  Obviously there's a spaceship here so it's technically a sci-fi, but some episodes took place almost completely on the ground and were more like genuine Westerns.  Then there were the creepy episodes, the action episodes, the little touches of romance or war films.  There's even a philosophical existentialist episode!  All this in a 13 episode series?  No wonder it had something for everybody.

• It's a show about outsiders.  Literally.  For various reasons these guys are trying to avoid the Alliance's attention, and so are forced to the very edge of liveable space.  Who doesn't love a show about the underdog?  Even the theme song is a folksy 'stick it to the man' tune, that everyone simply has to sing to the end every time they hear the opening lines.

Here they are again.

• It's funny.  It's really really funny.  Every other line is either dripping with needle-sharp wit or oozing gleeful sarcasm.  Firefly is incredibly quotable, right down to descriptive words like "Shiny" for anything good (because in a world of rusty  rumbling ships, anything still shiny is worth having!) and comments that come dangerously close to breaking the fourth wall ("It's like something out of science fiction!" "We live in a spaceship, dear.")  I'm not even going to bother with a drinking game this time round, because all I'd have to say is "Drink every time you are amused" and you'd be in hospital by the end of episode 2.

• We love the crew.  Honestly, you can throw all the CGI you want at people, but if they don't love the characters and the story then they won't stick with the show.  There's an almost 50/50 split of male and female crew members, and each of them has their own backstory and motivations puttering along under the main plot of the episodes.  There's a preacher, a pilot, a mechanic, a prostitute, a doctor, an ex-soldier, a mercenary, a... whatever River is, and of course our grumpy, wise-cracking captain Mal.  Everyone has their favourites, but all the characters are interesting, and the dynamics between them are even more so.

And again. 

Why everyone hates Fox now

So the Fox TV network was responsible for airing Firefly, and they had it cancelled.  This is bad enough on it's own, but what's worse is that they apear to have deliberately scheduled it in such a way that they could justify cancelling it.  Which is a really weird way to run your business, in my opinion.

Naturally the fans practically burnt the studio down, the show gained cult status, and enough of a fuss was kicked up that the movie 'Serenity' got made to pacify everyone, finish as much of the story as they could, and give us all some closure.  We're obviously still cross about it, as it was popular enough that there was really no need to cancel it.  It was a pre-emptive strike on the part of Fox that turned out to be completely unfounded.  We've never quite forgiven them.


BUT

I have another theory about why we still love Firefly so much...

It's the curse of all great TV shows that it's hard to get them to end.  Programmes designed to cover 3 seasons are extended to (in the case of LOST) 10 seasons once they become popular, the story then has to be stretched, loses momentum, and the fans lose interest.  Or, like Supernatural, it just becomes harder and harder to invent more peril every week and still have fans emotionally invest in the wellbeing of characters that repeatedly survive.  Usually these shows just peter out into nothing, and pulling off a good ending episode is hard (Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a pretty good job.  We'll get to that).

Because it was cancelled, Firefly will never suffer that fate.  Therefore it will always be perfect.

The 13 episodes capture that initial rush of ideas and creativity, the fresh story lines, the raw untapped potential.  It's like the sweeping summer romance you had on that holiday when you were young.  That person you met was so sexy, and so funny, and seemed to know what you wanted without even asking.  If only you'd had time to get to know them a little better you might have discovered that they didn't share your taste in music, always forgot birthdays, and farted in bed.  However, since you never got to find out all this stuff, that one short summer has etched them in your mind as a perfect Adonis.  That's Firefly.

Since that initial rush of potential never got solidified into five (Or eight.  Or ten) seasons of Firefly, we'll never know if it would have been good or bad.  All we'll know is what it could have been, and that may well have been everything we'd been dreaming of.  And we'll always have those unspoilt dreams.

Like the theme song says, "They can't take the sky from me"