Firefly Update with Alan T

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

And it was in the only commerical for the show, where they gave away the plot by saying... " and what happens with the mysterious girl in a box" the next day all the anime fans were saying how the show had to be a rip off of Outlaw star. But I gotta tell you sprig, there were no episodes of OS and Firefly that were alike enough to justify the charge of plagurism that the fanboy websites have leveled. If anything the only similarities were this, it was set in future, in space, and it had a cowboy theme.

Firefly follows a very family oriented crew of folks living on the edge of the law, yeah they smuggle, and do less than legal things sometimes, but sometimes they just take bobbleheads from place to place. their ship is unarmed, they lose most of the time, but manage to just barely stay above water. there are no hyper advanced robot girls, there are no shapechangers, there is one girl with a slight psionic ability. If anything Firefly is a cross between Have Gun will travel Blakes 7 and Traveller the RPG.  

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I wouldn't say it is family oriented. For one, one of the main characters is a prostitute and proud of it. Also, on another of the shows, where some farmgirl was trying to seduce the captain, our family just had to turn it off halfway through.

Nevertheless I'll probably watch the movie(s).

[Fellfrosch]

I think he meant that the crew was family-oriented, not the show. Which isn't really true either, but truer.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

what fell said.,,, What I meant to convey is that they functioned like a family onboard.


She ended up not being a farmgirl either...
she was is a cunning thief with no morals who has a very homicidal mind.

She gets whats coming to her though.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

well it sounds like we didn't miss anything

[fuzzyoctopus]

well, good.

[Skar]

I just finished the DVD series.  Great show!

But I agree with OOkla and MDJ both.  

I wouldn't want to show some of the episodes to my kids until they're adults simply because they're pretty amoral when it comes to prostitution, and sex out of wedlock and using sex to entrap people.

I own the DVD set and will be keeping it and I really liked it but there were bits I fast-forwarded through.  There was one episode "Heart of Gold" I almost didn't watch at all because it's the standard Hollywood portrayal of Prostitutes "with hearts of gold"  That profession is falsely and wrongly glamorized by hollywood ad-nauseum and I was quite disappointed in the show for having gone there.

In the end I think that's why the show got such low ratings.  The initial audience would tend to be the same as for Star Trek and all its spin-offs and that audience wants something the whole family can watch.  Inara and her friends and rivals were not kid appropriate.  Hollywood lives by the maxim "sex sells" but that's not true everywhere or even most places that aren't hollywood.

[Entsuropi]

One of the often-stated reasons for liking star trek is the niceness of it all - its a nice, clean society full of happy people who have good jobs and personal freedom. DS9 was one of the least popular and also one the darkest show out of the lot.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Now, while I'm not disagreeing with Ent in the least (I too, think the optimism of Rodenberry's vision explains much of the popularity), I want to go on a side note.

I didn't like DS9 either, but not because it was dark. It was because I couldn't just pick up and watch an episode ever without having this larger, series-long plot arc that I didn't understand shoved in my face. I also though many of the characters were, well, dumb.

But also to play DA, what about Babylon 5? That was, by my understanding, comparable in tone to DS9 and it was pretty popular. Though the counter-argument I assume would be that it wasn't as popular as series like Next Generation.

[Fellfrosch]

I would counter by saying that you can't properly judge the characters of a show that you admit not watching. In my opinion they were the best of any Star Trek series, but I readily admit that you had to watch the show very faithfully (and pretty much in order) to get it.

I think Firefly is a tough call--they were going out of their way to be non-Star Trek-ish, which is what made them unique but almost certainly contributed to the lack of widespread interest. I think you can be a successful sci-fi TV show without being Star Trek (as Stargate SG-1 has proven), but Firefly went about it the wrong way. I haven't seen enough of Stargate to comment on its morals, but I'm inclined to agree that Firefly's often promiscuous nature was a big point against it.

[fuzzyoctopus]

Well Stargate doesn't involve a lot of sex.  There's some implied seductions on one planet or another, while being kidnapped by crazy aliens.  Nothing like Firefly.
They're pretty big on doing the right thing, what with being the government and all, (and they said screw the whole prime directive thing, which I find to be more realistic.)

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I can judge the presentation of the characters in a series when I've watched several shows. When I say I didn't watch it, I mean I never made an effort to catch much of it, because the few episodes i saw annoyed me.

I'll admit that part of it is that I just hate the Ferengi, which I found to be a poor choice in both villains and character. They're all like a cross between a retarded gnome and a sleezy pimp. How can I take anyone seriously when that's their presentation? And there are at least three major Ferengi in that series. Plus Sisko and his son... talk about cardboard. The kid was like a watered down wesley and Sisko was always indignant for incomprehensible reasons. Shouldn't I be able to understand at least SOME motivations during an hour-long show?

[Fellfrosch]

No, you shouldn't, if that's all you watch. That's like pulling random chapters out of a book and expecting to know where the characters are coming from and why they're doing what they're doing. Like I said, it's an excellent show if you put the time in and watch the whole thing. I don't think I've ever seen better characterization on a TV series.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I submit that while that analogy is acurate, it makes for poor television writing. I would argue that more responsible for the lower popularity of DS9 is the fact that you can't just pick it up. TV is a vastly different format than a book. With a book, you always have the ability to turn back to the first page and start there. You don't have to begin in the beginning. With TV, you may not EVER have the option of going back to the beginning and starting there. Good TV writing means that even if you have a large story arc you're in the middle of, the casual viewer should be able to start anywhere. Or else you lose viewers. And yes it can be done. SG1 actually does a good job of this. Heck, most comic book series (not all) do a pretty good job of this, and back issues are much more accessible than previous episodes.

So, I disagree. I should have been able to get something from a 60 minute cut. That's how the show is presented. The book is not presented like that, so as I said, even if the analogy is valid, it only goes to show that the writing is weak, in that it fails to take into account the viewing of much of it's audience.

[Fellfrosch]

That wouldn't make the writing weak, it would make it misguided. And I can give you that. It's still my favorite show.