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May 22, 2006

A Weekend of Serenity

I got a birthday gift last week from Jeff & Steph - the Firefly DVDs. I had not watched them, just heard passing comments about them. About the only advice I got was "Don't watch them around the kids." So, with wife and daughter out of town for the weekend, I watched the entire series - then went out and bought Serenity (on sale this week at Target for $10!) and watched it.

Wow.

Babylon 5 is the high mark for me as far as TV science fiction goes. Firefly still doesn't beat it, but it was a whole lot of fun. I liked that it made space BIG. Science fiction shows have a tendency to (for storyline reasons) make space small - travel and communication are instant. It makes for an easy crutch. In Firefly, space is more like the Old West. If the ship breaks down in the middle of nowhere and you're hosed but good.

I still think Mal should have let Jayne be sucked out of the ship after trying to turn in River.

Steph posted a long entry a while back about why the show was cancelled. After watching it, I doubt it's as sinister as being too much about honor and personal responsibility. The show had the requisite amount of sex and violence to overcome that. I think it just has to do with the ratings system. Networks want an instant audience now, and don't have the patience to build one. With hundreds of choices, shows are rarely given "a shot" anymore. I really wonder if any of the mega-networks will ever give a science-fiction show a chance again. More than likely, Sci-Fi and the independents will get the nod, instead. Reality shows are cheaper.

Posted by Nemo at May 22, 2006 11:07 AM

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Comments

Don't spoil my fun ;-)

I'm glad you liked it! Between Firefly and B5, life is good. It really is the most "realistic" sci fi show I've ever seen.

Posted by: MamaLynx [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 22, 2006 2:22 PM

Although ... Fox didn't even give Firefly a passing nod at a shot. They aired the episodes haphazardly, here and there, and out of order. It seems like it was aired grudgingly. That's not even giving a show an *honest* shot.

Posted by: MamaLynx [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 22, 2006 2:25 PM

I think that if it had had a full run, Firefly would have outdone B5. It had the right characteristics to do that.

And Steph, that's what Fox did with Space: Above and Beyond, too. The truth seems to be that Fox is utterly worthless. As, apparently, is Paramount (B5). And the SciFi channel (Farscape).

In other words, there are people out there with good SciFi ideas, making good SciFi stories, but there isn't a channel for those to be distributed successfully. I still think that that channel is independent production and distribution over the Internet, or going underground like a lot of anime.

Posted by: Jeff Medcalf [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 22, 2006 5:44 PM

Hmmm, if I were to list the five greatest sci-fi shows ever, I would probably go with: Farscape, B5, Firefly, Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone. Interesting that four of the five were cancelled prematurely (or in B5's case, near enough to cause problems).

Posted by: Brian Medcalf at May 23, 2006 3:26 AM