Firefly: I repent

Cafe Society
21

Sure. But that isn’t exactly what I object to. I have no problem with the degenerated frontier trope. What I dislike is the deliberate apeing of western film and TV cliches. Much of the series isn’t overbroad in that respect ( I don’t mind minor homages like using “lawman” for cop ) - but on occasion it got a little too obvious for my tastes.

And it ain’t brilliant. At least not in conception ( in execution, arguably ). I’m fairly certain that that concept/conceit is old as dirt in science fiction :). Nothing in the series is terribly original, really. The prostitute guild with high social standing, working-class spaceships, the idea that a Chinese creole would become a common lingua franca among a comingled human population, a large burecratic federation that isn’t truly evil - just bloated and inefficient. An evil corporation designing assassins ;). It’s all been done before, multiple times.

However in this case it was mostly all done well for the small screen and deserves all due credit for that.

  • Tamerlane
22

Er, that’s browncoat. The brownshirts are a whole different bunch.

23

I knew that. I knew it even as I was hitting the gorram submit button.

24

Robert Heinlein could have written Firefly. The women are Heinlein archetypes. The dirty ships, the scientific accuracy, the chinese subculture, the high-class prostitutes. large oppressive bureaucracy… Common Heinlein themes, all. And the most common thing is it’s got that cynical, quasi-libertarian feel that Heinlein’s fiction had.

No surprise then that one of the creators and main writers, Tim Minear, is a huge Heinlein fan. And in fact has just written the script for the movie adaptation of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

25

I, too, just recently discovered this show, when an officemate with the DVDs decided we all needed to see it before the movie opens. So far, we’ve seen the first disk (three episodes, including the double-length true pilot). And I’ll agree, it’s not terribly original.

So what? It’s very well-done. Yes, the characters are all archetypes, but they’re very well fleshed-out, and the acting is great. The plotlines have been seen before many times, but there’s a reason some plots get a lot of re-use. And they get bonus points for trying (and mostly succeeding) at maintaining scientific accuracy, a rarity for SF TV shows. OK, so they never explain the FTL system, but really, that’s probably for the best, since the alternative is meaningless technobabble: Better to be thought a fool, etc.

I won’t say that it’s my favorite SF show, but had it been given the chance it deseved, it might have become that.

26

Actually, Firefly has no FTL travel. All of the planets and moons are within a single solar system.

27

Cite?

No FTL would mean that all the action takes place within our own solar system. There’s no evidence for that.

28

Not necessarily. A colony ship set up with cryo chambers could make the journey with most of the civilians in deep sleep. There’s nothing that says Firefly takes place in the near future; it could be the year 6000 for all we know. Ship leaves a dying Earth in 2500, spends a few thousand years in sublight transit to a new star system, and everyone wakes up with much of the information from Earth intact (which explains the Earth-that-was references throughout the show).

29

The opening voice-over for the series when it originally aired said it was one solar system. And no, it’s not our own, and no, that doesn’t imply FTL travel.

The Firefly universe clearly has some form of constant-acceleration advanced propulsion technology. Given that, it makes complete sense that you can fly to another star system in a matter of years, and flit about inside a solar system in a matter of days or maybe a few weeks for the longest trip. The Firefly universe also has suspended animation, terraforming ability, and gravity control. Given those things, here’s how it could have happened:

You send 100 robotic scout ships out to the 100 nearest candidate star systems. Some arrive in a few years, others take decades. They report back what they have found, a process that also takes years or decades. Or perhaps you don’t even need the probes - advanced interferometry telescopes can directly image nearby star systems, evaluate atmospheres, even look for life. So you find a good candidate system - one with a few big gas giants, hundreds of moons, and maybe a dozen inner planets. Maybe a star system around a red giant, where the ‘habitable zone’ is larger than our entire solar system. Then you send robotic probes to that star system to terraform the main planets.

Once the main planets look good, you pack up a large ship with a couple of hundred people in suspended animation and thousands of frozen embryos. The trip takes maybe 10-20 years. Once they arrive, they set up a colony on the best, richest planet. Once the colony is established, Earth starts sending convoys of large cargo ships and more passenger ships, transporting Earth’s culture and essential artifacts and historical material. The ‘central planets’ become rich, and over time they start terraforming the moons on the outer worlds. A couple of hundred years go by, and the ‘core worlds’ are fully technological and populated with billions of people. The outer worlds and moons are backwards and poor. A strong government arises that decides its best to keep those outer worlds poor because they are full of rabble rousers, and restricts trade to them and otherwise keeps them oppressed. War breaks out, and the browncoats on the outer worlds lose.

There’s your Firefly universe. No FTL, no aliens, no magic required. Gravity control would be the most magical part of the whole scenario.

Chronos: I’d be interested to hear your opinion after you see the second and third DVD’s. That’s where the real meat and potatoes of Firefly are. The pilot was good, but the next two episodes were only mediocre for Firefly. Starting at episode 4, the series really takes off. I think your opinion is likely to get much stronger yet.

30

Oh, good. Sam Stone’s already explained it.

I’ll just add that (movie spoiler, not plot-related):

There is a holographic visual of the system early in the movie. It’s shown in conjunction with a brief history lesson.

31

Firefly: I regret that I have twice fallen asleep on you

Due to the many praises of “Firefly” I actually purchased the DVD set. Twice, I have tried to get through the pilot. Twice, I have fallen asleep.

Someone, kick me in the ass, give me some sort of incentive to venture on!

I remain unrepentently yours.

32

Careful! You’re likely to be sucked into an engine!

33

Will this rope and that tree do?

Git her!

:smiley:

34

'Bout, gorram time, fusoya! :smiley:

Eleven more days left till the release of the best damn movie in the history of the 'verse!

35

I believe my days of underestimating you are slowly coming to a middle.

36

Basically, do what I’ve done:

Tell everyone to see the movie; force them to watch the trailers; Tell them to see the movie again on opening weekend if possible; lend them a copy of the season only DVD and insist they watch it.
Never stop until you’ve exhausted everyone you know with your insistence that they see this movie.
Then start on people you don’t know. . .

37

I didn’t even know about the show while it was broadcast. I got it from a friend on DVD and I sat down to humor her and watch the show, but then I watched another episode, and another and another and then I switched DVDs and watched that DVD. I covered the entire series in less than 36 hours. I couldn’t get enough.

I went to DragonCon a few weeks ago and attended the Firefly panels. I’m a card toting fan and proud of it. Now if only we can make sure the movie becomes a trilogy because let’s be honest, if Star Trek fan’s couldn’t get Enterprise to renew (not that I was in favor of it), we won’t be able to get Firefly to begin again. It will simply go down in history as the greatest travesty of television CEOs.

38

…And then in a couple of years some exec will say, “You know, that Firefly show wasn’t given a chance. People seem to like that stuff. So let’s make a new science fiction show just like it! It’s got to have a preacher, and a lovable mechanic, and a funny pilot, a Han Solo-like captain, and a tough mercenary guy. They’ll engage in wacky adventures, there will be lots of comedy. See if Braga is available to produce it! The fans will love it.”

Then some crappy second-hand parody of the show will air with lame dialog, technobabble, and silly, unbelievable plots. No one will watch, and the suits will look at each other and say, “hmmn, I guess there really is no demand for space shows on TV any more.”

39

They already did that. It’s called Andromeda. :smiley:

40

At the time, I didn’t know that Sci-Fi would be airing the series. If we had known, it might have been better to wait for that. I wonder if the fact we just went through and discussed all the episodes contributed to killing the discussion when it aired more recently. As the eps have come through on Sci-Fi, I’ve only seen a handful of posts about them, generally tacked to the film festival threads.