There was a marathon so I Tivoed the series in the proper order and “Serenity” is on the 23rd.
I can see where they took some of the Firefly ideas for Castle so is it any wonder I love them both and I now get the “Space Cowboy” reference in Castle’s Halloween episode (I couldn’t figure out what it had to do with the Steve Miller Band :rolleyes: )
My big question is how in the world Fox expected people to understand the characters without the original pilot. Maybe that’s why they thought moving the episodes around would help.
You are giving Fox too much credit. They were out to kill the show from the beginning. The exec who green-lighted the project left, and his replacement killed everything that was in production. I regularly heap curses upon his head for that.
One can look at it from management’s perspective and see that they weren’t being totally idiotic, only mostly. They wanted an exciting opening episode, sense be damned. It would have worked much better if they weren’t always fighting for their survival and could have dictated their demands to the network. It was a great show, but IMO Joss made the mistake of thinking that major TV network was interested in his show and ended up ruining it; if he took it to a smaller broadcast network or cable station he may have done better, although in those cases you’re not sure if they could meet the budget.
I just finished watching for the first time, and I agree. Along with Serenity, the story and characters have just enough arc to make it an almost perfect little gem as opposed to a long, drawn out saga that would have lost it’s sparkle over many seasons.
I disagree with this. Both *Buffy *and *Angel *got better over time, because Whedon’s greatest strength is his characters. The longer his characters exist, the more story he’s able to build up around them.
Anyone other than Whedon, I’d be inclined to agree with you.
While any show must inevitably reach some point where it’s getting stale, and must therefore have some optimum length shorter than that, I have a very hard time accepting that the optimum length would be half of a single season.
They did eventually show the pilot. But the ‘new’ pilot (Train Job), if you watch for it, you’ll see it’s exactly what it was supposed to be -
It was more action packed / adventure, like Fox wanted.
It still had a lot more exposition than a normal episode, which a pilot needs. The scene in the bar tells us all we need to know about the Browncoats without having to actual, for examplely show the battle of Serenity Valley in a flashback. They do similar things with the other characters reminding us who they are during the course of their dialogue.