What was good about Firefly?

[John Crichton]

I was hooked from the first episode that Fox aired - the one where Mal kicks the guy into the intake at the end. Some of the eps weren't great but they were always entertaining. The ongoing plot that was developing got better with each new episode. Showing them out of order didn't help things at all and may have hurt things overall for the general viewing audience.

I loved all the characters and the very anti-Trek vibe that it had going. The setting was great. It was refreshing to see a science-fiction show with just humans and no aliens as well. That and the crew was on a transport with very little weaponry - something different for a space-opera type show. It's best days were ahead of it which made its death that much harder to swallow.

 

[Staffan]

Hi all!

I would watch it if they had that Christina Hendricks who played 'Saffron' in it every episode. I must say I am quite taken with her.

She's in one of the unaired episodes as well.

 

[Umbran]

I loved all the characters and the very anti-Trek vibe that it had going.

I liked it, but I just didn't see an "anti-Trek vibe" there. It wasn't like Trek, true. But that's not the same as being against Trek. It was different, it prided itself on being different. But that doesn't mean it was trying to put other things down.

 

[Dagger75]

I liked the way the characters interacted with each other and the dialogue.


First season of most shows generaly aren't that good. Watching the First Season of ST TNG is almost painful

 

[Ariddrake]

I didn't get it, but I only saw one episode with some bounty hunter after the crew. I have a hard time mixing scifi with westerns. Cookie make us some space chili. Yee-ha! Except for Westworld with Yul Brener as the crazy robot cowboy.

 

[Villano]

I liked it, but I just didn't see an "anti-Trek vibe" there. It wasn't like Trek, true. But that's not the same as being against Trek. It was different, it prided itself on being different. But that doesn't mean it was trying to put other things down.

I don't think he meant that it was somehow against Trek, just that it didn't fall into the pseudo-science trap that many post Trek sci-fi series have.

In other words, the key to solving the crisis of each episode didn't revolve around reversing the polarity.

Seriously though, there were quite a bit of things that actually give it a vibe that was the opposite of Trek.

1.) The Federation was the bad guy.

2.) A dirty and used-looking future.

3.) Conflict

As for that last bit, I remember reading an interview with somebody associated with DS9 who said that, before the series went to air, someone from Paramount (or whoever's in charge of the Trek franchise) came to them and told them he didn't like the personal conflict between the characters. According to him, the company line is that no one in the Federation argues. They were forced to create more alien characters so that the humans would have someone to argue with.

That's my biggest problem with Trek; it's written by commitee. They want to keep everything the same all the time. Heck, I've heard Frakes got notes when he was directing to stop making the movies so cinematic and make them look more like tv.

Sorry, I don't want to be ragging on Trek, but when you compare the original series to what it's become, it's like the soul has been sucked out of it.

Put the staff from DS9 in charge!

 

[John Crichton]

I liked it, but I just didn't see an "anti-Trek vibe" there. It wasn't like Trek, true. But that's not the same as being against Trek. It was different, it prided itself on being different. But that doesn't mean it was trying to put other things down.

Villano touched upon the basis of my anti-Trek comment but I didn't mean anti as against, I meant it as being the opposite of what Trek is: usually clean and generally friendly, at least among the main characters/crew (DS9 not included). Well, opposite while still being a science fiction based show set in the future.

 

[Wycen]

It was some combination that worked for me and I really got a kick out of the scene with the henchman getting kicked into the intake.

I was intrigued by the possibility of the crazy chick having psi powers, but her actual character didn't appeal to me.

 

[S'mon]

Re: Re: What was good about Firefly?

Do you mean the first episode that aired, or the actual pilot than eventually aired as the last episode?

It was the first ep that aired in the UK. It started with the captain & co in a trench as soldiers (for who? don't think it was said) fighting the Alliance. A bunch of Alliance starships come down and the war's over. I thought this opening sequence was poorly filmed, poor costumes & mediocre direction.

Skip forward 6 years and the captain owns a Firefly merchant ship, etc etc.

 

[Pielorinho]

Re: Re: Re: What was good about Firefly?

It was the first ep that aired in the UK. It started with the captain & co in a trench as soldiers (for who? don't think it was said) fighting the Alliance.

That was the one originally intended to be the pilot episode -- and IIRC, it was the last episode aired in the US, the show's swan song. I suspect that it just takes awhile to get into the show's swing: I thoroughly enjoyed that episode, but maybe it's because I'd gotten to know the characters so well.

Another brilliant episode used flashbacks more effectively than any other show I've seen. It contained three interwoven storylines:
1) Captain Mal alone in a dark, cold Serenity, bleeding from the gut and trying to fix his machinery.
2) Captain Mal meeting the various members of his crew and purchasing a ship, years in the past. The wounded captain of the present is apparently hallucinating, remembering his initial meetings with the crew.
3) The immediate past, explaining how the Captain got into this mess of a situation.

The scenes alternate between the three stories very effectively, contrasting bright, hopeful scenes with the dread-filled scenes of the almost-dead captain on his empty ship; together, the three different stories build one cohesive narrative.

The episode's overall structure is well done -- but it's the little details that make the show so great. A member of the crew has obtained strawberries -- fresh strawberries! -- and it's cause for a party. An explosion in the hold threatens the crew, so they vent the oxygen from that hold, and the air swirls from the room in a burning horizontal whirlwind that was both beautiful and (apparently) an accurate representation of what would happen in those conditions.

Good stuff. Good stuff. Man, how I miss the show.

Daniel