Slashdot Mirror
Firefly Premieres Tonight
fm6 writes "Firefly, Joss Whedon's 'anti-Trek drama' premieres tonight, on Fox, 8 E/P. I normally despise hypespeak, but this time it's the only language that fits: this is groundbreaking, mind-boggling, totally original. I've seen a bootleg of the pilot (which, unfortunately, the network is holding back) and I promise you this is the most geek-friendly SF you've seen in a long time. Yes, more so than Star Trek and B5, and way past Star Wars. I've never seen the future so skillfully, realistically, and lovingly portrayed. Here is the Official Site and a leading fan site." This is the single new show this season I have added a season pass for to the old Tivo. But I'll probably watch it live. This looks like it could be as good as we hope.
This show's premise sounds like Blake's 7, a fantastic 70's Brit sci-fi show. Not quite as much under the gun as those characters were, but pretty similar.
Not that this is a bad thing; you can only churn out so many episodes with shiny happy future people like Trek has.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Andromeda rules!
with a girl in box has to be a winner.
"The ignorant fight to win, the wise win before they fight." -Sun Tzu
The prime audience has nothing to do on a Friday night ;)
Which is probably why I won't be watching it tonight, but maybe I'll download it later.
Here is an interview The Onion did with Joss Whedon:
By Tasha Robinson
Joss Whedon is a third-generation television scriptwriter, possibly the first one. As he tells the story, he never intended to follow in his father's footsteps: He started his career as a snobby film student who never watched television and intended to write movies, until he found out how much TV writing paid. Ultimately, he did both, working as a scriptwriter on Roseanne and the TV series Parenthood before selling his script to the 1992 Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie. For several years, he was a film writer and a script doctor, doing uncredited touch-ups on Twister, Speed, and Waterworld, and writing drafts of projects such as X-Men, Toy Story, Titan A.E., Disney's Atlantis, and Alien: Resurrection. But Whedon came into his own with the television incarnation of Buffy, which has, over the past few years, grown from a cult classic into a cottage industry. As the original creator of the Buffy character, Whedon--now a writer, director, and executive producer of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV show--has a hand in virtually all of its spinoffs, including the WB series Angel, a line of comic-book tie-ins distributed by Dark Horse, and an upcoming animated series and BBC TV show. Whedon recently spoke to The Onion A.V. Club about the Buffy phenomenon, his bitterness over his movie career, and the fans who share in his worship of his creations.
The Onion: So, how are you bringing Buffy back? [The character died at the end of this past season. --ed.]
Joss Whedon: Aw, I'm not supposed to tell.
O: I'm teasing. I know you get that a lot.
JW: Yeah, it's the first thing everybody asks, including my developers. And the answer is, I can't say, because that's why you watch the show. The one thing I can say is, I think we earn it. There's no Patrick Duffy in the shower, there's no alternate-universe Buffy. It's not going to be neat. Bringing her back is difficult, and the consequences are fairly intense. It's not like we don't take these death-things seriously. But exactly how she comes back, I can't reveal.
O: When your actors get questions like that in interviews, they always seem to answer with horrific threats: "I can't tell, Joss will rip out my tongue and feed it to wolves," and so forth. Do they actually get these threats from you?
JW: I'm a very gentle man, not unlike Gandhi. I don't ever threaten them. There is, sort of hanging over their head, the thing that I could kill them at any moment. But that's really just if they annoy me. They know that I'm very secretive about plot twists and whatnot, because I think it's better for the show. But anybody with a computer can find out what's going to happen, apparently even before I know. So my wish for secrecy is sort of pathetic. But they're all on board. They don't want to give it away, and a lot of times, they just don't know.
O: How closely were you involved with the making of the Buffy movie?
JW: I had major involvement. I was there almost all the way through shooting. I pretty much eventually threw up my hands because I could not be around Donald Sutherland any longer. It didn't turn out to be the movie that I had written. They never do, but that was my first lesson in that. Not that the movie is without merit, but I just watched a lot of stupid wannabe-star behavior and a director with a different vision than mine--which was her right, it was her movie--but it was still frustrating. Eventually, I was like, "I need to be away from here."
O: Was it a personality conflict between you and Sutherland, or was he just not what you'd envisioned in that role?
JW: No, no, he was just a prick. The thing is, people always make fun of Rutger Hauer [for his Buffy role]. Even though he was big and silly and looked kind of goofy in the movie, I have to give him credit, because he was there. He was into it. Whereas Donald was just... He would rewrite all his dialogue, and the director would let him. He can't write--he's not a writer--so the dialogue would not make sense. And he had a very bad attitude. He was incredibly rude to the director, he was rude to everyone around him, he was just a real pain. And to see him destroying my stuff... Some people didn't notice. Some people liked him in the movie. Because he's Donald Sutherland. He's a great actor. He can read the phone book, and I'm interested. But the thing is, he acts well enough that you didn't notice, with his little rewrites, and his little ideas about what his character should do, that he was actually destroying the movie more than Rutger was. So I got out of there. I had to run away.
O: What was Paul Reubens like? He seems to be the actor people remember most from the movie.
JW: [Adopts weepy, awed voice.] He is a god that walks among us. He is one of the sweetest, most professional and delightful people I've ever worked with. [Normal voice.] He was my beacon of hope in that whole experience, that he was such a good guy, and so got it. I mean, most of the people were sweet. Most of them were actively out there trying... They were good people. Paul was a delight to be around, trying to make it better. He actually said to me, "I'm a little worried about this line, and I want to change it. I realize that it'll change this other thing, so if that's a problem..." I'm like, "Did I just hear an actor say that?"
O: How early on did it occur to you to re-do Buffy the way you'd originally intended?
JW: You know, it wasn't really my idea. After the première of the movie, my wife said, "You know, honey, maybe a few years from now, you'll get to make it again, the way you want to make it!" [Broad, condescending voice.] "Ha ha ha, you little naïve fool. It doesn't work that way. That'll never happen." And then it was three years later, and Gail Berman actually had the idea. Sandollar [Television] had the property, and Gail thought it would make a good TV series. They called me up out of contractual obligation: "Call the writer, have him pass." And I was like, "Well, that sounds cool." So, to my agent's surprise and chagrin, I said, "Yeah, I could do that. I think I get it. It could be a high-school horror movie. It'd be a metaphor for how lousy my high-school years were." So I hadn't had the original idea, I just developed it.
O: You joke a lot in interviews about how you wanted to write horror because you experienced so much of it in high school. Did you have an unusually bad high-school experience, or was it just the usual teen traumas?
JW: I think it's not inaccurate to say that I had a perfectly happy childhood during which I was very unhappy. It was nothing worse than anybody else. I could not get a date to save my life, but my last three years of high school were at a boys' school, so I wasn't actually looking that hard. I was not popular in school, and I was definitely not a ladies' man. And I had a very painful adolescence, because it was all very strange to me. It wasn't like I got beat up, but the humiliation and isolation, and the existential "God, I exist, and nobody cares" of being a teenager were extremely pronounced for me. I don't have horror stories. I mean, I have a few horror stories about attempting to court a girl, which would make people laugh, but it's not like I think I had it worse than other people. But that's sort of the point of Buffy, that I'm talking about the stuff everybody goes through. Nobody gets out of here without some trauma.
O: How much of your writing made it into the final versions of Twister and Speed?
JW: Most of the dialogue in Speed is mine, and a bunch of the characters. That was actually pretty much a good experience. I have quibbles. I also have the only poster left with my name still on it. Getting arbitrated off the credits was un-fun. But Speed has a bunch. And Twister, less. In Twister, there are things that worked and things that weren't the way I'd intended them. Whereas Speed came out closer to what I'd been trying to do. I think of Speed as one of the few movies I've made that I actually like.
O: What about Waterworld?
JW: [Laughs.] Waterworld. I refer to myself as the world's highest-paid stenographer. This is a situation I've been in a bunch of times. By the way, I'm very bitter, is that okay? I mean, people ask me, "What's the worst job you ever had?" "I once was a writer in Hollywood..." Talk about taking the glow off of movies. I've had almost nothing but bad experiences. Waterworld was a good idea, and the script was the classic, "They have a good idea, then they write a generic script and don't really care about the idea." When I was brought in, there was no water in the last 40 pages of the script. It all took place on land, or on a ship, or whatever. I'm like, "Isn't the cool thing about this guy that he has gills?" And no one was listening. I was there basically taking notes from Costner, who was very nice, fine to work with, but he was not a writer. And he had written a bunch of stuff that they wouldn't let their staff touch. So I was supposed to be there for a week, and I was there for seven weeks, and I accomplished nothing. I wrote a few puns, and a few scenes that I can't even sit through because they came out so bad. It was the same situation with X-Men. They said, "Come in and punch up the big climax, the third act, and if you can, make it cheaper." That was the mandate on both movies, and my response to both movies was, "The problem with the third act is the first two acts." But, again, no one was paying attention. X-Men was very interesting in that, by that time, I actually had a reputation in television. I was actually somebody. People stopped thinking I was John Sweden on the phone. And then, in X-Men, not only did they throw out my script and never tell me about it; they actually invited me to the read-through, having thrown out my entire draft without telling me. I was like, "Oh, that's right! This is the movies! The writer is shit in the movies!" I'll never understand that. I have one line left in that movie. Actually, there are a couple of lines left in that are out of context and make no sense, or are delivered so badly, so terribly... There's one line that's left the way I wrote it.
O: Which is?
JW: "'It's me.' 'Prove it.' 'You're a dick.'" Hey, it got a laugh.
O: It's funny that the only lines I really remember from that movie are that one and Storm's toad comment.
JW: Okay, which was also mine, and that's the interesting thing. Everybody remembers that as the worst line ever written, but the thing about that is, it was supposed to be delivered as completely offhand. [Adopts casual, bored tone.] "You know what happens when a toad gets hit by lightning?" Then, after he gets electrocuted, "Ahhh, pretty much the same thing that happens to anything else." But Halle Berry said it like she was Desdemona. [Strident, ringing voice.] "The same thing that happens to everything eeelse!" That's the thing that makes you go crazy. At least "You're a dick" got delivered right. The worst thing about these things is that, when the actors say it wrong, it makes the writer look stupid. People assume that the line... I listened to half the dialogue in Alien 4, and I'm like, "That's idiotic," because of the way it was said. And nobody knows that. Nobody ever gets that. They say, "That was a stupid script," which is the worst pain in the world. I have a great long boring story about that, but I can tell you the very short version. In Alien 4, the director changed something so that it didn't make any sense. He wanted someone to go and get a gun and get killed by the alien, so I wrote that in and tried to make it work, but he directed it in a way that it made no sense whatsoever. And I was sitting there in the editing room, trying to come up with looplines to explain what's going on, to make the scene make sense, and I asked the director, "Can you just explain to me why he's doing this? Why is he going for this gun?" And the editor, who was French, turned to me and said, with a little leer on his face, [adopts gravelly, smarmy, French-accented voice] "Because eet's een the screept." And I actually went and dented the bathroom stall with my puddly little fist. I have never been angrier. But it's the classic, "When something goes wrong, you assume the writer's a dork." And that's painful.
O: Have you done any other uncredited script work?
JW: Actually, my first gig ever was writing looplines for a movie that had already been made. You know, writing lines over somebody's back to explain something, to help make a connection, to add a joke, or to just add babble because the people are in frame and should be saying something. We're constantly saving something that doesn't work, or trying to, with lines behind people's backs. It's almost like adding narration, but cheaper. I did looplines for The Getaway, the Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger version. If you look carefully at The Getaway, you'll see that when people's backs are turned, or their heads are slightly out of frame, the whole movie has a certain edge to it. I also did a couple of days of looplines and punch-ups for The Quick And The Dead, just to meet Sam Raimi.
O: I attended your Q&A session at a comics convention last year, and many of the people who got up to ask questions were nearly in tears over the chance to get to talk to you. Some of them could barely speak, and others couldn't stop gushing about you, and about Buffy. How do you deal with that kind of emotional intensity?
JW: It's about the show, and I feel the same way about it. I get the same way. It's not like being a rock star. It doesn't feel like they're reacting to me. It's really sweet when people react like that, and I love the praise, but to me, what they're getting emotional about is the show. And that's the best feeling in the world. There's nothing creepy about it. I feel like there's a religion in narrative, and I feel the same way they do. I feel like we're both paying homage to something else; they're not paying homage to me.
O: Does knowing that you have fans who are that dedicated put extra pressure on you, or does seeing the show as something outside yourself make it easier to deal with?
JW: You don't want to let them down. The people who feel the most strongly about something will turn on you the most vociferously if they feel you've let them down. Sometimes you roll your eyes and you want to say, "Back off," but you don't get the big praise without getting the big criticism. Because people care. So. Much. And you always know that's lurking there. It does make a difference. If nobody was paying attention, I might very well say, "You know what, guys? Let's churn 'em out, churn 'em out, make some money." I like to think I wouldn't, but I don't know. I don't know me, I might be a dick. Once the critics, after the first season, really got the show, we all sort of looked at each other and said, "Ohhh-kay..." We thought we were going to fly under the radar, and nobody was going to notice the show. And then we had this responsibility, and we got kind of nervous. You don't want to let them down. But ultimately, the narrative feeds you so much. It's so exciting to find out what's going to happen next, to find the next important thing in the narrative, to step down and say, "That's so cool."
O: Are you ever surprised by your fans' passion for the show?
JW: No. I designed the show to create that strong reaction. I designed Buffy to be an icon, to be an emotional experience, to be loved in a way that other shows can't be loved. Because it's about adolescence, which is the most important thing people go through in their development, becoming an adult. And it mythologizes it in such a way, such a romantic way--it basically says, "Everybody who made it through adolescence is a hero." And I think that's very personal, that people get something from that that's very real. And I don't think I could be more pompous. But I mean every word of it. I wanted her to be a cultural phenomenon. I wanted there to be dolls, Barbie with kung-fu grip. I wanted people to embrace it in a way that exists beyond, "Oh, that was a wonderful show about lawyers, let's have dinner." I wanted people to internalize it, and make up fantasies where they were in the story, to take it home with them, for it to exist beyond the TV show. And we've done exactly that. Now I'm writing comics, and I'm getting all excited about the mythology. We're doing a book of stories about other slayers, and I'm all excited about that, and it's all growing in my mind, as well. I think she has become an icon, and that's what I wanted. What more could anybody ask?
O: Do you ever feel a responsibility to society, to use your massive power for good?
JW: Yes and no. I mean, I've always been, and long before anybody was paying any attention, very careful about my responsibility in narrative. How much do I put what I want to put, and how much do I put what I feel is correct? People say, "After Columbine, do you feel a responsibility about the way you portray violence?" And I'm like, "No, I felt a responsibility about the way I portrayed violence the first time I picked up a pen." I mean, everybody felt... It's a ridiculous thing to ask a writer. But you feel it, and at the same time--and I've said this before--a writer has a responsibility to tell stories that are dark and sexy and violent, where characters that you love do stupid, wrong things and get away with it, that we explore these parts of people's lives, because that's what makes stories into fairy tales instead of polemics. That's what makes stories resonate, that thing, that dark place that we all want to go to on some level or another. It's very important. People are like, [whining] "Well, your characters have sex, and those costumes, and blah blah..." And I'm like, "You're in adolescence, and you're thinking about what besides sex?" I feel that we're showing something that is true, that people can relate to and say, "Oh, I made that bad choice," or "Oh, there's a better way to do that." But as long as it's real, then however politically correct, or incorrect, or whatever, bizarre, or dark, or funny, or stupid--anything you can get, as long as it's real, I don't mind.
O: Speaking of sex and reality, the Tara-and-Willow relationship has been controversial from several angles, with one side of the spectrum accusing you of promoting a homosexual agenda while the other side accuses you of exploiting lesbian chic.
JW: You just have to ignore that. I actually went online and said, "I realize that this has shocked a lot of people, and I've made a mistake by trying to shove this lifestyle--which is embraced by, maybe, at most, 10 percent of Americans--down people's throats. So I'm going to take it back, and from now on, Willow will no longer be a Jew." And somebody was actually like, [adopts agitated whine] "What do you mean she's not going to be a Jew anymore?" I was like, "Can we get a 'sarcasm' font?" But, you know, the first criticism we got was, "She's not gay enough. They're not gay enough." We were playing it as a metaphor, and it was like, "Why don't they come out? They're not gay enough!" And eventually we did start to say, "Well, maybe we're being a little coy. They've got good chemistry, this is working out, why don't we just go ahead and make them go for it?" And, of course, once you bring it out in the open, it's no longer a metaphor. Then it's just an Issue. But we never played it that way. Ultimately, some people say "lesbian chic," I say, "Okay, whatever." Those criticisms don't really bug me. You look at shows like Ally McBeal and Party Of Five, which both did lesbian kisses that were promoted and hyped for months and months, and afterwards the characters were like, "Well, I seem to be very heterosexual! Thank you for that steamy lesbian kiss!" Our whole mission statement was that we would bury their first kiss inside an episode that had nothing to do with it, and never promote it, which I guess caught people off-guard at The WB. The reason we had them kiss was because if they didn't, it would start to get coy and, quite frankly, a little offensive, for two people that much in love to not have any physicality. But the whole mission statement was, "We'll put it where nobody expects it, and we'll never talk about it." I mean, there are people who are genuinely concerned--are we falling into a pattern that other shows are falling into? It's very possible. The WB was like, "We have gay characters on all our shows. Why didn't you tell us you were making characters gay?" "Well, I don't watch your other shows. I didn't know." I'm sort of not really aware of what's going on out there. So the accusations of, "You shouldn't have a gay character on your show," those people are just--they should just be tied to a rock. "Whatever, you dumb people." Not that I feel strongly. But the other ones, "Oh, you just do that because it's sexy"... Well, the writers, and the men and women on the set, are like, "Yeah, it is pretty sexy!" I mean, so were Buffy and Angel. If it's not sexy, then it's not worth it. Like those two guys in thirtysomething sitting in bed together, looking like they were individually wrapped in plastic. They did a scene with two guys in bed, and it was a big deal, on thirtysomething, and it was the most antiseptic thing I've ever seen in my life. They were sitting ramrod-straight, far away from each other, and not even looking at each other. I was like, "Ahhh, sexy!"
O: One aspect of your fans' dedication is that they become very threatened by perceived changes in the show, like Giles becoming a lesser character as Anthony Stewart Head moves to Britain, or the show itself moving to UPN.
JW: Change is a mandate on the show. And people always complain. [Agitated voice.] "Who is this new guy, Oz?" "Where'd that guy Oz go?" They have trouble with change, but it's about change. It's about growing up. If we didn't change, you would be bored. The change as far as Tony Head is concerned, the man has two daughters growing up in England, and he'd like to live there. The kids [on Buffy] are old enough now that they don't really need a mentor figure, and this is a period in your life when you don't really have one. So it made sense for him to go back, and he chose to be on the show as a recurring character. But change is part of the show, and people always have a problem with it. But I think it's why they keep coming back.
O: How do you think the move to UPN will affect the series?
JW: I don't think it'll affect it one iota. Any change that happens in the show will happen naturally because the show evolves. UPN has never said, "Skew it this way, do this thing," and they never will, because I'm not going to do it. I've had an unprecedented amount of control over the show, even for television, considering the show is a cult show. From the very start, The WB left me alone. You know, they collaborated, they didn't disappear, but they really let me do what I wanted. They trusted me. And UPN is on board for letting me do the show the way that works. I don't think anything will change. I mean, there'll be wrestling. But tasteful wrestling. Wrestling with a message behind it.
O: I've got a quote here from a recent interview with James Marsters [who plays Spike on Buffy]: "Joss likes to stir it up. He likes a little chaos. He likes to piss people off. He likes to deny them what they want. He loves making people feel afraid." Do you agree with that?
JW: First of all, if you don't feel afraid, horror show not good. We learned early on, the scariest thing on that show was people behaving badly, or in peril, morally speaking, or just people getting weird on you--which, by the way, is the scariest thing in life. In terms of not giving people what they want, I think it's a mandate: Don't give people what they want, give them what they need. What they want is for Sam and Diane to get together. [Whispers.] Don't give it to them. Trust me. [Normal voice.] You know? People want the easy path, a happy resolution, but in the end, they're more interested in... No one's going to go see the story of Othello going to get a peaceful divorce. People want the tragedy. They need things to go wrong, they need the tension. In my characters, there's a core of trust and love that I'm very committed to. These guys would die for each other, and it's very beautiful. But at the same time, you can't keep that safety. Things have to go wrong, bad things have to happen.
O: What's your method for balancing humor and drama when you're writing the show?
JW: We get bored of one, and then switch to the other. I thought we got very dramatic last year, and I was like, "We need more jokes this year!" Every year the balance falls one way or another. You've just got to keep your eye on it. All of my writers are extremely funny, so it's easy to make [Buffy] funnier. The hard part is getting the stuff that matters more. Our hardest work is to figure out the story. Getting the jokes in isn't a problem. We wanted to make that sort of short-attention-span, The Simpsons, cull-from-every-genre-all-the-time thing. "You know, if we take this moment from Nosferatu, and this moment from Pretty In Pink, that'll make this possible. A little Jane Eyre in there, and then a little Lethal Weapon 4. Not 3, but 4. And I think this'll work."
O: Does the writing itself come naturally to you, or do you have to set hours and force yourself to sit down and get it done?
JW: It's like breathing. I'm not un-lazy, and I do procrastinate, but... Some of my writers sweat. The agony, they hate doing it, it's like pulling teeth. But for me, it comes easy. I love it. I don't rewrite, almost ever. I basically just sit down and write. Now my wife is making gestures about what a pompous ass I am. [Laughs.] And she's not wrong. But that's how it is. I love it. And I know these characters well enough that it comes maybe a little more naturally to me.
O: Have you gotten good at delegating, or do you really want to be doing all the writing yourself?
JW: No, I have, and that was really hard for me. It was hard because I had such a specific vision, and nobody was seeing it. And so you have to do everything--props, costumes. Gradually, you surround yourself with people who do see it your way. I've worked for producers, and I know producers, who are true megalomaniacs, and need to write everything, and be responsible for everything, and get all the credit. And, although I am something of a control freak, if somebody does something right, I will not change a word. If the script works, if a costume is right, if an actor gets it, I'm not going to get in there just so I can have gotten in there. I've spent five years culling the most extraordinary staff, which I trust to share my vision and my experience. So if somebody gets it right, I leave it alone.
O: Do you think you'd ever be able to completely let go of a Buffy spin-off, leave it totally in someone else's hands?
JW: It's possible. It's possible that I could. A while ago, I would have said, "No." But now I'm working on what will be four Buffy shows and three Buffy comics, and eventually you sort of go, "Uh, maybe somebody else could do that other thing." Would I be able to not have any hand in it at all? I think I just said "yes" and meant "no." I don't want it to have my name on it if it doesn't reflect what I want to say. Because once you get to the position of actually getting to say something, which is a level most writers never even get to, and is a great blessing, you then have to worry about what it is you're actually saying. I don't want some crappy reactionary show under the Buffy name. If my name's going to be on it, it should be mine. Now, the books I have nothing to do with, and I've never read them. They could be, "Buffy realized that abortion was wrong!" and I would have no idea. So, after my big, heartfelt, teary speech, I realize that I was once again lying. But I sort of drew the line. I was like, "I can't possibly read these books!" But my name just goes on them as the person who created Buffy.
O: Now that you've actually appeared in an episode of Angel, do you have the acting bug? Are you going to write yourself into more scripts?
JW: I do and I don't. I've always had it, and I think it's part of being a writer and a director. It's knowing how you want things to be played. But I don't have the face--that's the problem--and I don't want the giant ego. I don't want to become Kevin Costner, singing on the soundtrack to The Postman.
O: If you had Buffy to do over from the start, this time knowing how popular it would get, would you do anything differently?
JW: Not in terms of popularity. I mean, there were certain things on the show that I learned the hard way, but not really. I love the show, and I love the people. I love the stories we told. I mean, I'm angry about every single edit, and line, and costume change, and rewrite, but that's part of the business. So ultimately, I wouldn't change anything.
_
Click here for cool 3D Animated Windows Cursors
I'm really looking forward to this.. Whedon is brimming with talent, and he's really hitting his stride recently. If anyone can breathe new life into sci-fi TV, I believe it's him. He said he used Buffy as a sort of "film school" for himself, and you can really see his art and technique flourish from season 1 to season 4.. then he started putting more energy into Angel. It'll be interesting to see what he can accomplish now with a fresh start.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Firefly will probably be stupid. After all, everyone knows that Star Trek is the real future. Captain Kirk forever, knock-offs never! Beam me up, Scotty.
How ya like dat?
This looks like a rip off of Cowboy bebop!
http://www.ajaygautam.com
Ermm, I don't mean to nitpick, but how exactly have you arrived at the "realistically" portrayed part? Got a magic 8 ball and a lot of questions? :)
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Admittedly, I've only seen the 30sec trailers, but to me the series looks an awful lot like
Outlaw Star (with maybe a dash of the `Scape thrown in for good measure.)
Still looks damn promising...
... but the trailers for this thing have made it look more like Baywatch in spaceships with retread lines.
:-)
It just doesn't seem believable to me... but I'll have to watch it and see.
What's wrong with Star Trek, anyways?
This space for rent.
I'm not saying that Star Trek/Wars is much better, but at least they *tried* to have characters. Firefly is looking like an old war movie with "The Black Guy", "The Loose Cannon", and of course, "The Pointexter."
And what's the gripping premise?
Oooh, groundbreaking stuff there.So give me a break already. Yeah there's a new sci-fi show. If we're lucky, there'll be some new hot chicks every week. But don't make the mistake of thinking this is groundbreaking, original material. Enjoy it for what it is.
Got Rhinos?
fp suckas!!
ok, im lame.
Keep in mind the best line from X-Men was Whedon's...
"How do I know it's you?"
"You're a dick."
"Okay."
Or something like that....
I didn't know they had internet access in prison, Mr. Traficant.
Did they at least let you keep your hair hat?
So... When is code going to be added to Slash to allow users to block Slashvertisements? I know OSDN is getting desperate, but really!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Ahem.
It's on FOX at 8:00 PM EST, 7:00 Central. Or check your local listings.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Its Friday night and its Oktoberfest!!! Go out and drink beer!
annoying voice: but I want to stay home and watch "fire fly" its the season priemier.
me: Shut up!
Really, is any sci-fi original anymore? I can think of little in sci-fi that hasn't been done already. Not to say this will be a bad series, but I've already seen a lot of what's in it in other places.
In fact, for some reason this show reminds me a lot of Outlaw star, just less cartoonish. Must be the girl in the box thing that makes me think of that particular Anime series. And the fact they are tooling around in a ship doing odd jobs for a living. And the fact that they have no real home port anymore after they have to blast their way off of the one place they called home.
You could also say they play the Hon Solo angle a bit as well other than the fact they have more to their crew than just a wookie.
I'll give it a watch regardless, it could be fun and maybe it will be surprisingly original, but I'll withold any hype or wild statements until I've actually seen the first few episodes.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Will there be curfews and indeterminate detention, rampant search and seizure, investigation of private activities, invasion of thought and conviction of free-speech?
Sweet! Count me IN! I want to see what the U.S. is in for!
I think that Star Trek was ground breaking, for lots of reasons, not the least of which is the first inter-racial kiss on television. I also think that it gave the other sci fi writers lots of ideas on why/how things work in the future and space. This sounds more like a badly written DnD adventure. "the pilot"? "the doctor"? what are they, character templates? I'll take one level of pilot and two levels of captain, please... of course, its Fox, and they did bring us LOTS of good Sci Fi shows, so I'm not saying its going to be bad, just not "groundbreaking".
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Excellent, another Sci Fi series we get to see canceled prematurely. I say we get a heard start on the "save our show campaign" this time. I'll go start a petition to not cancel it at Petition Online (because those always work, ya know) and someone else go register www.savefirefly.com.
;).
I figure our chances are much better if we start before it actually canceled this time
If this show turns out to be even half as good as the hype, it may very well be bumping Enterprise off the TiVO Season Pass list.
Whedon's Buffy has become a whine fest, relationship soap opera and I fear that Angel will soon devolving in the same manner. Whedon has talent when he harnesses it properly, and perhaps this vehicle will allow him to put it back on display.
I am particularly excited to read here that it will be very "geeky". I am so sick of watered down sci-fi where they don't make use of ANY scientific mumbo jumbo. Sure, the tech-speak should never rule (and thereby ruin) the show, but good sci-fi should have SOME technobabble! =)
-Michael (Aristotle@Threshold RPG)
http://www.threshold-rpg.com
They killed the Lone Gunmen?!?
You know what other show I'm pretty sure started with new episodes..here's a hint.."Woah..I am Metaluna!"
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
wow a show about a bunch of people in a ship who fly around getting into "Situations"!
That's just so fucking original!
TV rocks my world!
YEAH BABY!
TV RuLz0rz J0r s0x0rz!
ok now that i'm done reading slashdot time to "Stick it to the man" by sitting on my ass eating putrid foodstuff from TriConGlobal and watching ads for SUVs in between hacknied sci fi rehash.
NOT.
I'm definitely looking forward to Firefly, but that doesn't mean I want to lose Farscape.
Currently, Farscape is still cancelled but is being considered by other networks. Help save the show!
The original "save Farscape" headquarters has been unavailable for a few days: Save Farscape
Another US Sci-Fi show I really want to watch that will get to Canada in it's 5th season only to be cancelled.
Wait, Kazaa lite just grabbed farscape 3x06 "eat me"
Pretty much sums up what I think of canadian carriers that don't keep up with the US or UK. (can you believe it took 7 years to get only the first season of RedDwarf?)
Funny thing is, they call grabbing shows like these from P2P networks illegal. What's illegal is keeping people 3 years behind in programming.
{Rant off}{Apologize}
-Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
...do we hear the roar of engines in the vaccuum of space?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
This better be worth losing Futurama and Family Guy.
If it is THAT good, it won't last long on FOX.
Unless US TV has gotten alot more liberal in the past week this show is gonna be a poor man's Lexx.
Naked space chicks = good sci-fi.
Why go into space otherwise?
Of course the greatest sci-fi show of all time is Red Dwarf, hands down.
Rimmer: Need I remind you of Space Corps Directive 914?
Kryten: 914? "No crewmember with false teeth should attempt oral sex in a zero-gravity environment"?
It would be a killer show if T'Pol and/or Seven-of-Nine end up on Firefly with yet another time-travel story.
Imagine T'Pol and Seven-of-Nine teaching those early immature earthen how to handle space the right way.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
No? Well, then, I guess this show doesn't "realistically" portray the future.
Might be a good show anyway, though. :-)
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
...do we like Firefly today?
;)
Sorry, couldn't resist as this question almost always gets modded up as 5, insightful...
es, more so than Star Trek and B5, and way past Star Wars.
Not to geek out here but:
I always thought of Star Trek being much more fantastical and silly than the Star Wars movies. Star Wars had interesting politics (revolutionaries vs an empire), no teleportation beams, gravity/flight dynamics, death, drama, etc.
Star Trek always came off, at least to me, as more Joe Sixpack friendly with its sexy aliens, Kirk's unstoppable libido, uninspired sets, and lackluster storylines. Even TNG has a lot of this plus they made the set look more like a corporate office than a military ship.
Perhaps the poster take issue with the religious and paranormal aspects of the force. I'm as non-religious (some would call me anti-religious) as they come, but as an element in the film the force works perfectly and the films would be worse off without it. ST could write off the vulcan mind-meld thing and no one really care or probably even notice.
Nice fan site. How long will it be before Fox's copyright cops shut it down for infringement?
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
This looks like it could be as good as we hope.
I didn't know you were qualified to use the royal pronoun, Taco. When did you get promoted from Cmdr?
Someone's decided that your post was flamebait. I found it interesting, though. Sadly, I am without my mod hammer this week.
It looks like a microphone and two dildoes!
Seriously, B7 was pretty good back in the day! I remember that they weren't afraid to kill off the title character, leaving the sleazy weasel (Avon) in charge.
From what I understand most of the catchy slang on Buffy are original Whedonisms. I can hardly wait to see how he approaches the traditional hurdle of technobabble in a sci-fi setting.
For those complaining about this being derivative, art happens when archetypal themes are translated in a way that allows us to see how they play out in our lives. Successfully interpretting traditional themes into new forms or genres that speak to a particular audience requires both artistic vision and a knack for the craft of writing. I have found Whedon to have a stong ability to create internally consistent and interesting worlds. Moreover, he's a masterful wordsmith.
I have high hopes for this series.
How can there be a fan site if this show premiers later tonight??????
Dammit. They have a Baldwin brother in the cast. I hate the Baldwins. Weren't they all supposed to move to Canada if Bush got elected?
Funny, from miles away from my Tivo, I seem to have the distinct problem of not being able to add a Season Pass at the moment.
So, Taco, is this just an attempt to mock everyone who won't be able to watch it, and are now far too late to record it?
Looks like I'll be hammering the P2P networks this weekend...
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Family Guy has ended???? Oh no, Ive just been downloading a load of episodes cos they're funny as fuck and its not shown much here in the UK. I knew futurama had ended but family guy as well!? *sob*
But really, who cares if it is is an advertisement or not? It's information that some people here in this site's demographic wanted/could use/would like to have. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't mind advertisements when they're targeted properly and aren't obnoxious.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
From the previews I've seen Firefly seems to take a LOT from Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop. I mean a girl curled up in some sort of stasis box? Complete governmental restructure where outlaws are the norm? It even has the same feel as the anime.
All that's missing is a bunch of star ships with arms waving around doing some sort of mechanical kung fu.
Honeslty though, the story is great and I'm personally looking forward to see where they take it.
All the images I have seen so far scream "Outlaw Star". I'd bet there's a "Galatic Layline" equivalent in the main plot...
Of course, I also thought there were eerie similarities between "Titan A.E" and "Mysterious Cities of Gold", so I might be the one seeing things.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Me, I'll take good writing and characters I care about, thanks.
Is it Geek-Friendly 'cause it's Science Fiction? Most of the good SF I have read does not translate well into the Geek ouevre of Wookies and Mind-Melds and big-boobied Borg babies in catsuits. The best SF, in my experience usually does not translate easily into episodic TV at all.
Are you calling Firefly "good geek TV" because it is both SF and intelligent? Someone mentioned someplace (maybe on this board) how wonderful FireFly would be because there would be no sound heard when things exploded in space. Well, Oh boy, Roy! Sounds like a best-Drama Emmy candidate to me! Let me race upstairs to set my Tivo...! Hopefully, the writing will extend beyond the use, or non-use, of special effects.
Which is not to say that I don't have high hopes for the show as well. I'm a huge fan of Buffy -- another show Whedon created -- but not because someone "finally got vampires right." I just find it extraordinarily well written, with believeable characters well acted.
Is Buffy "geeky?" Whom do I ask to find out? You?
>as good as we hope.
"We?" Who's "we?" Linux SysAdmins? SlashDot Editors? Buffy Fans? You and your room-mates? Surely you don't expect all SlashDot readers to ever be on the same page on any single topic, do you?
I hope, for Mr. Whedon's sakes, Firefly catches a buzz which extends far, far beyond the parameters of "geek-itude."
How about Buffy: TVS stealing ideas from "Devil Hunter Yohko?" Manga authors freely steal ideas from each other, but at least they're usually up front about it. "All artists are thieves and magpies." - Elvis Costello
and Outlaw Star, and I forget how many other shows... That guy sure didn't go to the Firefly's message board, that's for sure.
Such is life on Slashdot.
That's ok, I heard a rumor that Fox was working on a live actor version of "Futurama"! It'll be great!
So far, from the commercials this almost looks like a live-action attempt at Outlaw Star. But then, it IS probably just me....
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Only on Slashdot would somebody rant and rave about something clearly answered in the story. And still get modded up for it.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
the person who modded it flamebait was the one doing the flamebaiting. Go figure.
Who's sig is it that says, " Because my opinion differs doesn't make it flamebait"?
KFG
The first time I saw the preview for this show, I was watching it with a friend, and we both said the same thing: it looked like a "real-life" version of Outlaw Star. Then they started showing more previews, and I kept thinking that it looks more like a cross between OLS and Cowboy Bebop--done with real people. Maybe that might be good for the show--who knows?
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
text to poin? :)
KFG
Call me crazy ("ok, you're crazy!") but if this falls flat say goodbye to any non-trek sci-fi for another couple of years while networks wash the bad tase out of their mouths. I will tape and watch later, we'll see if it sucks. But I'm going to give it only this one chance to grab me. I don't have time to watch more crap (I bet you don't either.) I do hope it's good, I really do.
Nothing can be greater than Babylon 5. None but the Master could ever mix the perfect amount of superb dialogue with the perfect amount of utter cheese.
Still, Firefly has a girl in a box. A girl in a box! That alone will make me watch the premiere.
And I don't know quite why. I tell you this, though, they're certainly not going to try to appeal to hardcore sci-fi fans. It's on *primetime* for the love of Valen.
Slashdot would edit the article just to make you look like a jackass instead of them.
The next thing you know you'll be telling me the FBI is reading my books or something.
Damned conspiricy theorists.
KFG
While the alien races had artificial gravity, no Earth vessel did. That's why Babylon 5 spins on it's axis. And that is also why the earth destroyers spin. (although I have noticed that on both of them only part of the ships spin, and yet the entire thing has gravity. Go figure.)
Blake's Seven was created by Terry Nation who created the Daleks, IIRC, and wrote many Doctor Who episodes. Furthermore, the two shows shared a number of guest stars and, occassionally, props. The look and feel is also very similar to Doctor Who.
"Please click here and download Flash 6. It's free."
Cool...where can I get the source code?
Idealistic. You have a valid point, but if Firefly rejects idealistic conventions, it could be said to be realistic, if only because the characters behave true to the nature of people. I guess it depends on your point of reference. Star Trek, with its multicultural cast, and prime directive, etc. was idealistic. Compared to Star Trek, Firefly is realistic. Compared to "real life", its just a TV show.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I hope it lasts longer than these other shows that were on Fox Fridays:
Millenium (3 seasons)
Strange Luck (17 episodes)
Brimstone (12 episodes)
and of course Harsh Realm which was hyped to death and cancelled *3 days* after the pilot aired. I think they ran 1 more episode.
What else am I missing?
When he flips off cyclops with his middle claw after setting off, and destroying, the metal detector.
That was the one thing Marvel has always wanted to do with Wolverine.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Poor Gene? Don't think so. Have you actually paid attention to most of his work? Having seen most of his TV work from the 1960's, 70's and 80's I have come to the conclusion that Gene Roddenbury got lucky with Star Trek and that if it were not for Gene L. Coon, that would have gone into the crapper as well.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
thank you! i have been saying that for a long time and now i want to see how similar it will be
Supplies!
Star Wars isn't Sci-Fi.
Just having lasers and spaceships don't make it sci-fi. Star Wars is a myth. It's about religion and destiny.
It doesn't even take place in the future, for chrissakes!
[Then again, I think Blade Runner isn't sci-fi, its Noir]
It almost sounds like Andromeda's plot but from the crew's viewpoint there at first.
I'm honestly looking forward to seeing it, because I need to desperately fill the hole in my life on Friday since Farscape is gone for the rest of the year, and then only a meager few episodes next winter. Bummer.
I'm hoping it'll be better than the previous show that time slot area, Dark Angel. I was disapointed it was canceled, but I saw the reason. It was getting kinda lame.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
He's credited on IMDB as having written Alien: Resurrection.
Shudder shudder shudder.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
I don't know, one idea can be driven into the ground and still profit. The idea of "Communists in space" has been the driving power behind 5 sf tv shows.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Or at least don't blatantly cut-and-paste them from other linked stories.
Just how many times can 1 character die and then be brought back to life?
It sounds like Tale Spin to me.
"Shoot them... alot!" - Don Carnage
That's just sad that people are going to be home watching geekTV instead of interacting with people... especially on the weekends. Just record the show and watch it when you're bored, not when you have a great chance to get out.
Producer: NEXT!!
Ralph Wiggum: Chicken necks
I loved Brimstone! It was a great idea and the cast was perfect! It's too bad it didn't last. >:(
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
River - "The Fugitive" - Borderline psychic, River can read most minds and tends to speak not only what is on her own mind, but others' as well.
Psychics don't exist, and I can't get into a portrayal of a future that can't possibly exist. If a science fiction story has to give into telepathy, prophecy and other anti-scientific mumbo jumbo, then it isn't *science* fiction.
I dislike the implication that comes with lumping Star Trek together w/ Babylon 5. While I like Star Trek, it was very inconsistant, had a tendancy to recycle the same plots over and over, and has many one-dimentional characters. B5, OTOH, had levels upon levels of plot, amazing character development, and was entirely self-consistant -- first episode to last. Plus, they had a great musical score, and even had believeable physics in the space battles. If Firefly can be better than this, wonderful -- but I think you'd have to work real hard to make a sci-fi (or any other genre) TV program better than Babylon 5.
There is no way your regular Joe is going to watch this show. I'm a geek, and it doesn't look at all appealing to me. No way Joe Sixpack is going to watch this. A space western? Uhh...OK.
You're right, moderator. Statements of agreement are off topic. What the hell were you thinking, you tool?
From the commercials it reminds me of outlaw star. Naked girl in fetal position found in box by a couple outlaws with a hightech space ship. But, who am i to argue with a bunch of buffy fanboys who think joss whedon is the second coming of shakespeare? Jeez, they'd give him credit with inventing the wheel of they could. So, i'll just wait and see if it sucks or not.
Anti-cliche of a lone band of outlaws who are actually "good guys" and find a girl in a box who winds up being the most empowered woman in the universe is sooo cliche. All I want is good story telling, even if it is a rehashed fomula.
That being said, can anyone send me a VCD of it? I don't have Tivo, and I'll be away from my TV tonight attending a wedding.
It's an OSDN (tm) tinfoil hat for helping block out the RF waves the evil transnational corporations are using to control you. Let your friends call you an irrational alarmist but you know down deep inside that they are just agents of the corporate overlords.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
This is clearly not offtopic. The grandparent complained that Slashdot didn't have the show's details, when it was listed in the first sentence of the write up. The parent post pointed this out, and gets an "offtopic" for it? Sheesh.
How about Buffy: TVS stealing ideas from "Devil Hunter Yohko?"
Too bad they didn't use the Go Nagai style "Nudie Transformation" in Buffy, I might have watched more often.
As we all know Tivo is the only thing in the world that can record TV programs. VCRs are a myth.
So is good news, not just for TV SF, but for the whole genre. As bad as the idea-deficient Hollywood SF writers are, they're easier to take than all those bloated-epic writers who think that a clever idea is all you need. Somebody needs to teach all these people the basics of good storytelling, and Whedon is just the person to do it.
:-)
Farscape follows a similar formula; that is; avoid formulas, and avoid cliches.
Joss Whedon ain't the only one changing the face of television.
Of course, his latest show smacks highly of Farscape... which is unsurprising, given how good Farscape was.
Go to:
Save Farscape and support the show
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Hire ad company to run a grassroots campaign
Design fan websites
Make ad company employee submits posts to Slashdot
Actually get your advertising blurb posted as a story on slashdot instead of banner ad.
Thousand of naive nerds give story instant cred
cause they saw it on Slashdot.
hey perhaps this ad as a story is the new
Slashdot business mdoel
>>
Inara - "The Ambassador"
A "Companion" by trade, Inara has her own space on the ship's shuttlecraft. She is a high-class courtesan in a time when prostitution is perfectly legal on most planets. Why she is on the decidedly working class Serenity remains a mystery.
What mystery? Ratings.
Actually, that's not quite true. Kirk and Uhura never kiss in that scene (in Plato's Stepchildren). Editing and camera work were used to imply kissing, but they don't touch lips. Roddenberry was forced to shoot it this way by the network suits, who were afraid the scene would cause an outcry in the (U.S.) South.
Details are in Shatner's book Star Trek Memories. This book is full of interesting
facts. Another Uhura-related tidbit Shatner mentions is how Nichols wanted to quit because Uhura wasn't doing much besides answering the phone, and Martin Luther King talked her into staying as a role model.
First kiss or not, Roddenberry still pushed the envelope about as far as he could in those days. Even before ST, he wrote scripts for mainstream TV, and worked in social themes (such as racism) way before network TV was ready to hear about them. (Setting a show in the far-off future actually made it easier to introduce controversial topics because the people most likely to be offended were less likely to pick up the meaning.)
I just saw the preair.... it stinks if you ask me :(
Something i might watch if im really bored though....
While I'm not going to say that psychics exist, I don't think the concept is impossible. True, Miss Cleo and the psychics on the board-walk are usually full of it, doesn't mean the the possibility of picking up on someone's emotions or thoughts is truly inconceivable. Hell, we all emit brain waves (all be-it too weak to pick up from too far away), we all have detectable auras (it's been proven that meditation can alter these fields to a degree), and a lot more. True, today psychics may sound far-fetched... but in the future with evolution, slight mutation from pollutants, etc... who's to say that it won't be possible eventually. Sorry, forgot my login... What distiguishes Fantasy from Science Fiction is that Sci-Fi tries to explain how things happen throughh science. That doesn't mean the author has be correct or know "How to create a wormhole", he/she must merely be able to justify it with scientific theory. On the contrary, simply saying a magic wand turned Bill into a jellyfish in a poof of smoke is fantasy.
There's nothing I'd like less in a TV show is what you watch. It's called diversity, the bios page also simplifies down the cast. Television shows have to be accessible, but it's also been shown that in doing this Joss Whedon can weave some fairly complex characters and an artistically brilliant/entertaining television show.
Look at Buffy. You can simplify down all the characters in that series. "Slayer" "Father" "Geek" "Screw up" "Little sister". But guess who has been getting the ratings and the critical acclaim? Not you. So go die, now.
s200.org - visit it (me), love it (me).
the branch fall, what's happening to thee
God damn jesus christ. It's not geeky, it's totally dorky. Another lame, self-adulating, mind-desegrating, bora-boring endless saga to market to the dork heads of America. Wake up! From Star Wars dorks, to Trekkies, to Andromeda dorks, to Babylon 5 dorks, it's all dork stuff! And you dorks buy it!
I am what you can call a real nerdo. I love computers, cartoons and movies. I like using confusing terms. I like putting on unsolvable riddles and I love not to be understood.
But i HATE all this boring Sci Fi crap. Shit for no-brainers. Think youre intelligent? Think again, you're wasting all your good brain cells on such mind-numbing crap.
HEY GUYS! it's the Buffy the Vampire Stupid Teenage Girl we're talking about! A genius? Come again please!
You forgot Space: Above and Beyond (which I loved)
Geek-friendly? What exactly is geek-friendly? Pandering to the Slashdot set by putting together a space-themed show so they can sell Dell and Apple computer ads? Scheduling a show on Friday, normally a ratings desert, because the sterotypical geek is single and doesn't have a date for Friday? Whatever. Oh yeah, and the official site's insistence that I download Flash 6 because "It's what Joss would want" really makes me feel the Firefly love.
From what little I've seen about the show, it's hardly original, and definitely is not "ground-breaking, mind-boggling, totally original." First, the characters, as others have stated, are right out of the textbook: rogue (but really a nice guy), pilot, doctor, etc. Even the space hooker isn't original: Battlestar Galactica had those. Secondly, there is simply no way this could be as ground-breaking as Babylon 5. Babylon 5 was an expansive, epic saga written for television spread out over 5 years. I can guarantee Fox has not bought more than 13 episodes of Firefly, and if the ratings aren't astronomical, the rug will be pulled out from under it so fast Joss will get rugburn. Fox can sell ads to Dell and Apple during The Simpsons, and they'll use Fridays to dump more American Idol-like crap onto the teen/pre-teen market.
Now, of course, I haven't seen it yet, and I could be wrong. And even if I'm right, it could still be a good show. But there's no way it can live up to this hype.
--Mythos
If Joss wants me to use Windows, he can kiss my hairy can. And Fox can suck my hose. Why would I watch a show written by a microserf?
Let Farscape go. Something better will come along. Maybe even something without muppets.
Try Babylon 5... They did a good job with most of the ships.
I noticed the gally/lounge looks bigger than most of the boat, and that it's laid out like a regular kitchen (ie:sudden maneuvers send stuff flying!) They should have had a sailboat designer on staff.
A show is only as good as it's web page (see farscape has a cool website and its a good show) the 2 websites look like a fucking geocities space vampire site - so i'm assuming the show will SUCK BALLZ
Do it! I'll sign the petition immediately.
Miko O'Sullivan
A valid point. I was kind of stuck for a proper adverb. What I was trying to say was that the feel of the show is very real. There's a scene in the pilot where Shepherd Book is wandering through a spaceport. The place is full of ordinary life: people going back and forth on foot, bicycle, horse, and flying car; there are children perched on piles of cargo and vendors cooking and selling food from crude stalls. He stops and peers up at the Serenity, which is towering over him. We see it from his POV: it does indeed look like a giant firefly beetle, and there are other spaceships and aircraft going back and forth in the background. The sense of reality is quite disconcerting!
LOL! Chat me: lolita27@hotmail.com
I noticed that tonight's airing is immediately preceded by a Giant's game on KTVU.
Who wants to bet the game runs long and they either start Firefly late, or (more likely, since it'd be a national feed of Firefly after a local feed of Baseball) just cut into it, missing the all-important first show set-up? Best to tack on 5 or 10 minutes of post-record time just in case they shift it.
I'm actually sort-of-friends with Haken, the owner of fireflyfans.net. He hacked it together from ASP and other ActiveX technologies. I agree he did a very good job. People are often suprised when they find out he built it from scratch -- if using standard web components counts as "from scratch".
By contrast the official site is a simplistic HTML/Javascript/Flash thing, obviously done by a total newbie working sparetime and using FrontPage or something similar. If Fox or Mutant Enemy were going to spend a lot of money on web presence, I think they'd start by hiring a proper webmaster for their own site, before branching out into bogus fan sites.
The PR for Firefly is pretty hopeless. Like the page you mention. They also did this really horrible poster by somebody who thought a firefly was a kind of house fly that glowed. Like most shows, the publicity has almost nothing to do with the actual content.
I'd rather have a Mosix cluster of these.
Hmm, how weird. First a karma whore rips off a rant that I directly linked to when I submitted this story (I wrote the rant too). Then they post the karma whorage as an AC! I think this most be the same strange person who keeps reporting the death of Steven King!
Fox canceled Dark Angel to make room for Firefly... which is so funny. Like they had no weak spots in their lineup to put it in? Let's see, they have Sunday locked up with the Simpsons+King of the Hill, then Monday... umm, Tues.. no wait.. ummm. Frelling idiots.
I wonder if the Sci Fi channel outsourced their programming services to Fox?
The previews for the show I saw did anything but entice me to watch. It portrayed it as nothing more than "Friends" set in the future. There has been nothing so far to make me want to watch this show.
I'll give it *ONE* shot tonight, but if it sucks, forget it. I just hope they dont have a laugh track...
Kevin
Psychics are considered fair game in SF largely because John Campbell believed in them. He created the word "psionics" in order to make it sound more scientific. He had the idea that these powers occured naturally and those who have them would eventually lead us to a new paradise. As such, it was against the "rules" to have bad-guy psychics in that era SF. This is why otherwise hard SF, such as Niven's Known Space or Asimov's Foundation have them. For authors, it allowed the writing of classic fantasy stories in SF drag. Later writers, most notably Dick, explored the darker side of psychic abilities and it has since disappeared from "serious" SF. Except on TV, of course
Worst of all, Star Wars is very bad science fiction. I mean, sounds in a vacuum have become conventional, but how can you sit still for spaceships that behave as if they had airfoils? And armor that doesn't protect its wearers against rocks and sticks? And space pilots who think a light year is a unit of time?
I know, I know, because it's fun. Just ignore me, I had a lousy childhood.
greedy bitch, think it was vp or somthin....canceled dark angel at last minute when it was already decided to keep it she is the same bitch that limited cameron for season 2, tellin em that he couldnt sign certain people for a 2nd season...thus reducin popularity...the whore was makin room for her own show she needs to get off wheatons shit as far as im concerned wheaton is a whiny little bitch that needs to grow up
Yeah, Brimstone was good. Nicely acted, nicely written, very sly sense of humor. But how can you expect a show based on the nastiest parts of the Old Testament to survive? I mean, the biggest recurring villain was a pagan priestess who thought it was terribly unfair that she should suffer eternal damnation just because she sacrificed her own daughter to the gods. One of my favorite TV bad guys, but no show with a character like that could possibly last!
And face it, Farscape is beginning to get stale. Like the continuing pop culture references, which were very funny at first, but which are now a cliche in their own right. The fact is, if I weren't anxious to see all the plots resolved, I might not be sorry that Farscape got cancelled.
"But he hates hackwork.."
oh, for a second there I though we where talking about the same guy that does Buffy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One amusing edit: Rob changed "the leading fan site" to "a leading fan site".
Fox can't shut themselves down for copyright infringement.
As somebody else pointed out:
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Another example is such minor technology as the six-shooters that most of the character carry. Most people have been assuming its just part of the "stagecoach in space" theme. But in fact it's part of a complicated set of hard SF assumptions and interences that only a self-proclaimed geek like Joss Whedon would care about. Here's a thread on the subject.
Oh.. you mean cowboy bebop the movie?
Seriously, only watched about 15 minutes of it, but looks pretty crappy so far.
About seven minutes into the show, the only think I could think of is how I'm never going to insult the Enterprise theme song ever again.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Saw the first five minutes. Same old garbage.
So far, it has hot chicks, guns that look like guns, and a sick bay that looks like a place of medicine.
The only bad thing so far is the country music, but hey, even that's tolerable.
Expect Firefly to be cancelled by the end of the month.
Remember that pilot for a show starring that sickening dude who used to be the disk jockey in Northern Exposure? Well, not quite as bad as that, but...
Funny thing about hype. Rumour is that Buena Vista is "hyping" some of their products through "grassroots" promotion. So that "fan" saying they like a disney product, may not be a fan. Look for more on this in the future
and to be completely honest, it sucks so far. What a disappointment.
That background music has got to go...other than that, *stupid pun alert* it looked pretty fly
"He hacked it together from ASP and other ActiveX technologies. I agree he did a very good job. People are often suprised when they find out he built it from scratch -- if using standard web components counts as "from scratch"."
Microsoft could always use him in one of their ads.
"The webmaster of FireflyFans.net using Microsoft web technologies such as ActiveX and ASP, built his site in under two days."
They cancelled Dark Angel for this?
First off, country music in a sci-fi show really doesn't work. The score isn't bad, just out of place and horribly so.
The acting is horrible. I still can't make out a plot, and the character development so far is non-existent.
I can vaguely guess the captain was in some war years ago. Its not clear if he was agood guy or bad.
I get the feeling watching it, that it's Young Guns with spaceships. They're using revolvers for crying out loud. I mean 500 years from now revolvers wont even exist, they barely do now.
This is the first and last episode I'll be watching. John Doe which airs afterwards looks a lot better than this.
I'm heart broken Dark Angel was cancelled for this horrible mess.
Firefly "borrows" from a lot of sources. In particular, there's a conspicuous influence from those old John Wayne/John Ford westerns. (Which Whedon admits he has seen, and is a big fan of. Wonder if that's also true of the creators of Outlaw Star?) There are obvious derivations for other genre movies as well: Alien, Mad Max, Night and the City, lots more. There's even shades of the X-Files.
But Firefly has a look and feel that's uniquely its own. If you're assuming it's just of variation of something else, you're mistaken.
What is geek-friendly about a f***ing psychic?
Cripes... Yet another hackneyed space western. And this is supposed to be new show? If it makes it more than a few weeks before getting pulled, I'll be surprised.
When all else fails, run.
I'd do buffy.
Look, I'm no trekkie, but Star Trek was way better than this. "Anti-Star Trek," indeed.
it's horrible
damn,
almost as annoying as MCd's big and tasty.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Anyone else notice it, it's really annoying, like your standing with the cast.
very lame,
bring back Alba,
on anynight but the friday night death trap.
I missed getting laid to see this.........
well, I guess I'm getting fucked one way or another
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Friday nights are meant for Lan parties. Beer, Chips, and Death matches. It's the only way to wind down from a 55+ hour week.
Why can't they show this on Sunday when there is nothing else on? Oh Well, I have to wait until it goes into syndication.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Every character but the sheperd guy looks like they stepped out of a gap commercial. Amazing how this mind bogglingly, realisticly, original and lovingly portrayed future includes present day fashion, hairstyles, and makeup. The writing isn't bad, it's funny in some places, but the acting is neither. That Baldwin guy is alright, but that's about it if you ask me.
Sunday = Adult Swim, the soon to be home of Futurama
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
It sucks as much balls as it was obvious it would suck from the "hype".
Looks so much better......even if it is a borne identity rip off
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Shouldn't everyone in 500 years be a mixed race?
Here's an interesting question, with all the immigration, celebrate diversity and multiculturism of today, what must have occured to allow white people to exist 500 years in the future?
Did he kick that ugly guy into the engine intake? I mean it was cool, but how the hell did they get that through BS&P?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
and the show is really slow moving. But time will tell...
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Tell me there wasn't a collective outburst of laughter across america when he kicked that guy into the engine and turned to the other guy "This is all the money..."
That was funny shit... I'm sold.
I just finished watching it as well.. I have to agree, it sucks. However, always keep in mind that all SCI FI series tend to suck in the beginning, remember back to the beinning of ST:NG.
To me "John Doe" looks good, going to watch it next. Meanwhile, I'm awaiting, "The West Wing" premiere.
Take Red Dwarf, expand cast 300%. Reduce silly to 20%. Reset universe for human expansion. Add near equal parts western. Shake. Serves about 2 - 3 million.
I just got finished watching this thing, and I do have to say, it's pretty good as crap this fall is going so far, but it's still below par. It's almost like market research at Fox showed that the same demographic wanted westerns and space ship adventure. Well, have to wait and see how it goes though, as long as Sci-Fi is running reruns at 8pm (EST) I'll be watching this...
Speaking of sci-fi westerns and the sci-fi channel... Stargate SG-1 stars Richard Dean Anderson... who also stared and I believe produced Legend. And Fox placed Firefly on Fridays in a time slot where it wouldn't go head-to-head with Stargate SG-1... Maybe I'm seeing a pattern where there isn't one... Maybe not... Maybe I should just get more sleep...
This has to have been one of the worst sci-fi (not even science fiction) shows I've ever seen.
Inconsistent, pointless, and juvenile.
Random observations:
Let's see, in four hundred years they haven't invented anything better than 20th century shotguns and four wheelers (powered by internal combustion engines no less).
Stetsons and dusters?
Train robberies?
Frankly, as far as "retro" science fiction, "Earth 2" did a better job of presenting a "frontier" ambience.
Final score... Ugh!
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
I didn't think it was very good.
I hope it will get better.
Just saw it. It was *okay*.
But, can we trade it in for another season of Farscape?
Ha ha.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
An interesting, thought-provoking, original and fan-friendly show on Fox? I give it four episodes, max, before Fox kills it. Remember "Space: Above and Beyond"? Or "Harsh Realm"? Or "VR5"? "Millennium" only lasted two seasons because it had Chris Carter's name on it. And "X-Files" only lasted as long as it did because it started when Fox was just a brand new network that hadn't invented trash TV yet. "The X-Files" wouldn't have lasted long at all if it started this season.
Nothing against "Firefly". Honest. I'm really looking forward to it, because I like the way Joss Whedon thinks. I'm going to a party but we've set the VCR. But Fox as a network sucks. Really. It does.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
(No spoilers here.)
:)), with a good story and good, likeable characters. I hadn't realized Alan Tudyk (28 Days, A Knight's Tale) was in it, which just makes me want to watch it more.
:)
Not that it was the greatest show ever, but it was (at least to me) realistic, anti-cliche (pointedly so at least once
I would definitely consider this, at least thus far, a step up for sci-fi shows. I plan to add it to my weekly schedule. No rubbing stuff all over naked babes though.
Don't forget the use of modern slang, and the humans hadn't even evolved any in 400 years! And what about the improper mixture of hydrogen and oxygen in the water! I mean really!
http://www.linkdj.net/
The episode shown wasn't the same as the spoiler review I read, but that's OK.
John Doe lost me at 8:12 when he figured out a system to beat the horses.
even though it makes no sense for someone to have so much knowledge, there is more tech in this show than firefly (namely his paper thin cell phone, and imacs ;-) )
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
This show should have been on scifi, where crappy scifi goes to die. I hate baldwins.
It sucked. BAD! Cliche and it reminded my of Brisco County Jr., Which is a better show and will probably out last this. WTF!? Sawed off shotguns and six shooters IN SPACE!! I think I'll write another letter to SCIFI telling them "look, this is the crap they're putting out in farscape's place since you guys have raised the bar so high everything else pales in comparison". This show wont last 12 episodes. The story and the setting aside, the acting was pretty good. Maybe thoses guys will find better jobs elsewhere :-)
Peter
www.alphalinux.org
I had high hopes for Firefly, and I got burned. That was so incredibly dull. It's a damned western. My channel went out (thank you shaw cable, morons) during the last twenty minutes and quite frankly we didn't notice.
...on the East coast, and soon on the West. So? How was it???
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
According to IMDB, David Hayter should probably take credit for that. Joss apparently had nothing to do with X-Men.
:)
It does sound like a very Jossy line though
John doe was so much fun
though, it was an excellent way to get me to start watching john doe :)
:)
firefly left me cold.
john doe left me wanting more "i know kung-fu" and "oh shit where's a notepad so that i can write this stuff down"
I stuck through the first episode, but I'll be shocked if this effort survives a month. Even the anime they ripped off (Cowboy Bebop, et. al.) had more depth of character in the first episode than Firefly.
I kept thinking that somewhere Roddenberry is spinning in shame that someone took the "wagontrain to the stars" phrase literally and tried to make a show about it.
A train robbery? The whore with a heart of gold? Six guns? Shit, why didn't they tie the damned ship to a tree as an anchor to finish off the list of lame cliches!
Fox killing off a solid show like Dark Angel for this drek, and SciFi trying to kill off Farscape just proves that there truly are no "entertainment" execs who have a clue. Then we've got John Doe which looks like a cheap last-minute knock-off of The Dead Zone (I'll give it a chance, but have zero hope of it being worthwhile.)
I wish Fox would take a clue from their cable sister "FX", which stuck by The Shield despite objections from advertisers and the religious groups. While it might not be everyone's idea of a great show, it's the only time in the past decade or so that I've seen a network support a show that deserved the support.
And these morons are worrying that people might pirate their shows with digital HDTV feeds???!!! *LOLOLOLOL* Don't worry, Mr. TV Executive -- with this kind of drek you really don't need to worry about piracy...
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I have learned through the years that the first few shows and sometimes the first season isn't always that great. I guess it's partly having the cast and writers finding a groove that makes the show work and also getting to know the characters. A good example is Seinfeld, which I now practically associate everything in my life too. [i know, sad, but what I can say]
... damn, I don't know anyone's name, but that was funny. Oh great, now I sound like a freakin' Chris Farley sketch. Anyway, having him slur the lines being half doped was pretty humorous.
I wouldn't say the first episode sucked, in fact, there were some pretty good scenes.
1) The captain kicks the big "russian" dolt into the engine. That was just classic and a refreshing change from the typical captain that would have just let him go
2) When they drugged
3) Not sure what she does yet, but the hot hair brushing chick.. keep it coming.
All in all, I'll definately watch it again, especially if they have those great cgi shots in between. I think next time I'll TIVO it though so I can skip past those annoying commercials.
Live web cams
That would explain why no one ever watched M*A*S*H*
dipshit
Check it out!
http://www.jossisahottie.com/index.html
Damn credits and their half-truths....
Final thought: Firefly reminds me a lot more of Galaxy Quest the TV Show than a straight parody of Star Trek.
Which is ultimately a better show than anything else that anyone has mentioned.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I've been waiting impatiently for Firefly since it was first announced, and thought it was pretty good while watching it.
Then John Doe came on. It's not sci-fi (or is it?), but it's definitely geeky and entertaining. A good old barrel-o-fun. So much so, that I can't imagine that it can keep it up.
Next week's Firefly looks cool though.
Overall assessment: If given a choice between watching further episodes of Firefly and letting 418 rabid ferrets gnaw out my eyes, I'd have to go with the rabid ferrets. At least they're entertaining.
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
Despite the whining, I thought it was cool. After my eyes adjusted to the alledged "Western" set, I realized that it wasn't "Western" or tech cowboys but a very good dramatization of the Fallout universe...or a ripoff of it.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Yea is this a Western or a SciFi show?
The acting except for Baldwin(of course) is actually much better than that of Enterprise, but overall I don't think this is what people expected.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
"It is like taking the candy from a babychild."
Firefly was okay. I think it was too heavily oriented towards being a western, if anything, and not enough science fiction. One test for sci-fi is if the story works once you take the science out of it. The Firefly pilot, with all the science removed, would have worked just fine as a standard western. So it was an okay show, but as a sci-fi show I'd say it was just passing.
I like the characters, although they aren't fleshed out at all yet and there are two many of them. I counted eight or nine major protagonists. Farscape only has six or seven. Buffy had nine at max -- and people quickly started dying when it got that high -- but the show started with only three or four. I fear the weight of all that characterization is going to drag this show down. We'll see.
John Doe sucked. That was a disappointment.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I thought it was pretty good... I liked the humor elements, it seems most of the characters are interesting, the FX were excellent... the story is fairly standard fare, but it's only a single episode, let's see how it goes.
One thing I REALLY like was... SPOILERS, IF YOU MISSED IT...
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Near the end when the captain kicks the bad dude engine intake (I'm guessing that's what it was anyway)... this was actually a little shocking because the whole episode was basically showing us how this guy is really a good person down deep, and then he commits cold-blooded murder (whether the victim deserved it or not)?? I didn't see it coming to be honest, and I like that. Hopefully Whedon continues to pull tricks like that, I'll keep watching.
Certainly worth checking out the next episode in my opinion. No major, unforgivable flaws that I could see like, oh, I don't know...
HOW DO THE ALIENS IN SIGNS HAVE SUCH A PROBLEM WITH FUCKING WATER?!?
They're smart enough to get here, they're smart enough to more or less herd us for whatever nefarious purposes they have in mind, but they can't invent a damned WET SUIT?!? I mean, have they never encountered water before or something?? It takes what I otherwise thought was a fantastic movie and almost completely ruins it for me. I can suspend disbelief. I can even excuse some stupid plot holes.
BUT WATER FOR CHRIST'S SAKE?!?!?!?!?!?!?
If my sig was encoded as a crop circle, it would look like a bunghole.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
They preempted it for a baseball game..
Any one who has ever seen the anime Outlaw Star could watch 2 seconds of the preview commecial and come to the same conclusion as I. "Hey thats looks like a live action Outlaw Star!" I would go into more detail but I dont feel like geekin out anime style right now. trust me, RIP-OFF.
Heh. Nobody else got your comment, but I did.
Turns out it started at 5PM on our cable system here in eastern Oregon. Did anyone else get the feeling that Starbuck or Apollo might show up at any moment?
Yeah you forgot to include a cute orphan who will make the perfect adopted child for whichever character has the most baffling emotional problems and/or agonized past.
And I do hope they're flying on a ship that can be crippled by 99 cent technology once in a while and/or it runs on a kind of fuel that's based on living material or some such fragile dangerous scenario.
Which is probably why I won't be watching it tonight, but maybe I'll download it later.
No, you probably will catch it when it runs, because FOX pre-empted it with FUCKING BASEBALL.
Fox comes through for us yet again.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Fairly decent episode listing, cast listing, etc.
l et/showid-2218/
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainServ
folks chill out. It's sci-fi for one. its different. new. and we dont' get much sci-fi that lasts for very long.
second. it just started. give it a season before we thrash it.
third. joss whedon. buffy. angel. he knows how to write.
fourth. what have you written lately?
-
I just executed the Off Command. It might have stood a chance, but they made the unfortunate decision to tape the show in VomitVision, where they're constantly swinging the camera around even in non-action indoor scenes.
Every single shot is done as if the cameraman is drunk off his ass while trying to stand on one foot and bat away a swarm of wasps attacking his head. It makes it impossible to watch the damned show.
moderators can suck my ass
FUCKING COCKS!
Why on earth would you still need one of these?
esp. the already mentioned scene with the engine intake, I was already rolling my eyes at the usual 'let-the-baddy-go' stupid plot, that when it happened it took me by surprise ;)
The only scene that really didn't work for me (I changed channel for a sec, it was like pulling teeth) was the one between the sister of the doctor and the guy who gets drugged later: her delivery/lines seemed totally cliche and really yanked me out of the show.
SPOILER:
There was a plot hole IMHO, though, when they were stealing the cargo on the train, and the stormtrooper came busting in, they just whacked him on the head or something, not killed him, so how come he didn't point them out later?
-- the cake is a lie
Kinda like Indiana Jones is about to fight a guy with swords, takes out his gun and shoots the guy, and then shrugs.
A very good but very wierd ep... If you haven't seen it you're gonna like it.
Hmmm... It's around here on some toilet paper...
It's pretty comparable to Firefly, I think.
As other have said, the best moment is at the end. That was just... cold.
Didn't seem like a pilot though. Isn't there a two hour pilot or something that's supposed to be airing later on? I kind of felt lost, like I walked into the series halfway through...
The "Crazy" girl from the Academy for some reason made me think of the Ghosts from Starcraft. Being altered to become a psychically enhanced assassin?
As for the plot, it served it's purpose. Come on, people are always complaining about horrible plots with gaping holes in them. As simple and straightfoward as it was, it was executed well.
I'm guessing this will be a show that will rely on the strength of its characters.
And I liked them thus far.
This series has promise.
Then again, I rather enjoyed the Enterprise pilot and look where it got me...
Lexx! it was THE perfect anti-trek series, heh, just try and talk Stanley Tweedle into following the prime directive!
This comment gets me.
"I normally despise hypespeak, but this time it's the only language that fits: this is groundbreaking, mind-boggling, totally original."
Have you ever watched Farscape you fucking idiot!! That was ground breaking, mind-boggling, and totally original!!!
Firefly looks like horse fly shit! And a total rip off of the greatest show on the the planet, Farscape.
I feel better now!!
no, you's a beeyatch
What do you base that statement off of? Revolvers may not look as "cool" as a Desert Eagle but they work, they're reliable and in the hands of the right person nearly as fast to reload as an autoloader. Simple, reliable, and here to stay. Take a look or actualy shoot a Freedom Arms revolver and you'll see what I mean.
...the nothing-is-good-enough-for-whiney-slashdot-posters bandwagon...
I thought the premiere was excellent and I am quite looking forward to more. Though the preview of next week's episode looks like your typical trek/farscape "ooh look a haunted abandoned ship floating dead in space how spooky let's stay here for the whole episode", I give Whedon enough credit to hope that he might just be trying to poke some fun at that cliche.
>this is groundbreaking, mind-boggling, totally original
Bullsh*t. I guess you must not watch that much sci-fi, because very little of it, if any, would qualify as such.
Gee, let's see...we have the captain/leader, a 'sensitive male'-type doctor, several hot females thrown in as eye candy and one of whom can kick azz with the best of 'em, a macho idiot, and a flakey navigator. They're thieves but not thieves, as evidenced by the captain's decision to bag the mission since they're stealing medicine that's badly needed (of course it's badly needed, otherwise there's no point for the friggin' episode). Wow...who'da thunk the cap would grow/remember he has a conscience and decide to do the right thing? And who could've guessed they would survive and no one dies except one of the bad guys? Sh*t, even some of the 'good guys' died on the original much-derided Star Trek, even if it was just some nameless, clad-in-red security officers.
To be fair, I like the aforementioned hotties and the special effects, but beyond that, this episode is just old stuff served up under a different name.
500 years from now, with spaceships and all sorts of cool gadgetry, they still use revolvers and handguns??
Actually, it looks kinda like the Canuck series StarHunter, only the guy who plays Dante Montana could be so much better casted as Brian from Queer as Folk...
:)
In fact, the whole show has characters who haven't quite slipped into their roles yet, who really remind me of ones from other shows. We have the Captain, who is a clone of Brian Kinney, the first officer, who is exactly like the black brit girl from StarHunter, the quirky younger engineer, also from StarHunter (actually, she's practically a clone), etc.
On the other hand, scriptwriters know to generate their movies from patterns and formulae, so duplication of a pattern or two that worked in other shows (including Buffy, for example) is to be expected. Otherwise they wouldn't be billing the show as "From the makers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer," etc.
I personally like the show. The CG is almost as good as that in Farscape.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
I can't believe it either, that they cancelled Dark Angel to bring THIS on!?! The previews sounded like it might be somewhat interesting, but it was a HUGE let-down. I read the newspaper during it, that's how boring it was. Its only good point, IMHO, was that it actually had a strong female who was willing and able to join in the fights rather than wimpering in the corner waiting for someone to save her.
:(
John Doe was slightly more promising, and I'll probably tune in to that again next week to see if it improves. But, Firefly is DOA as far as I'm concerned.
I don't suppose that they'd bring back Dark Angel when Firefly dies
*sigh*
This is almost a direct rip on Outlaw Star, an Anime series currently running as part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim Saturday night action lineup. Fuck Firefly.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
> where you got the idea that the whole ship had
> simulated gravity?
He probably got the idea from the fact that the bridge of the Omega class was often shown with gravity.
So many years of Star Trek probably has him (and many others) conditioned to believe that the bridge MUST be prominently placed on the top of the ship, like a big hood ornament. Such a placement would preclude the bridge of the Omega class being in the rotating section.
Personally, I always thought that was a damn stupid design decision.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Firefly: I threw the "science fiction" label out the window as soon as they mentioned finding a "new system with hundreds of [habitable, or at least, terriformed] planets". But that's OK. The show doesn't take itself seriously; neither should the folks hyperventilating here about it. (That is, they shouldn't take themselves so seriously.) (Or the show.) My wife loved it; I enjoyed it.
..bruce..
The real irony in comparing Firefly with Star Trek is that the original Star Trek series was pitched to the TV studios as "Wagon Train to the Stars" ("Wagon Train" was an actual TV series, one that I'm old enough to have watched). Star Trek, of course, wasn't like Wagon Train at all. Star Trek's actual genesis was, I firmly believe, "Forbidden Planet" (still one of the 10 best SF movies of all time, even nearly 50 years later); watch it sometime and tell me it isn't a classic Star Trek episode, except with better acting and effects. But if Gene Roddenberry had pitched Star Trek as weekly episodes of "Forbidden Planet", the series would likely have died a-borning. (Now _there_ would be an interesting alternative history short story--recast the cultural history of the last 35 years w/out Star Trek.)
By contrast, Firefly really is "Wagon Train to the Stars", but with tongue firmly planted in cheek. It mocks both SF and westerns, two quintessent American media genres. It was entertaining and enjoyable, which is more than I can say for most of what's on TV.
John Doe: I was disappointed in this one. It's a "Pretender" variant, except the main character isn't as sympathetic as Jared. I'll give it a few more episodes, but I have less hope for this one. Look for a mid-season replacement.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Do you have any IDEA of the energy density that would be necessary in a portable storage cell to power a Star Trek style hand phaser? Or even a Star Wars style blaster?
.45, for example, has been essentially unchanged for over ninty YEARS now. And who's to say that Colt or Winchester won't still be around and selling guns in the future? After all, there are only SO many "human interfaces" that work if you're building something to shoot people with. Would you rathar they were shooting lasers out of dustbusters, ala first season ST:TNG?
(And have either contain enough juice for more than the smallest number of shots, that is)
It's perfectly plausable that even when people are flying around in FTL starships (powered, after all, by very NON-portable reactors), that the dominant hand weapon will be the same old "bullet propelled by an explosive charge" that we have now.
This was one of my favorite aspects of Cameron's "Aliens". The colonial marines used hardware that was obviously far in advance of our own, but was actually a plausable evolution.
As for the designs, there's an old saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". The Colt
And if you want to get MORE primative, more than a few SciFi authors have re-introduced swordplay in their futures. And I don't mean lightsabers. I mean those pointy metal things. Mostly, I think it's because they think it would look cool if their work ever ends up on screen. But the explanation (again, quite plausable) usually given, is that projectile/energy weapons would rupture the hull and depressurise the comparment, killing EVERYONE.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
I didn't see anyone saying that Star Wars is bad (personally, I didn't like any of the Lucas-directed ones), but it didn't even make an attempt to be grounded in reality. Travelling between galaxies at light speed in minutes instead of centuries? Time and speed units being used interchangibly?
So, Star Wars isn't bad, it's just not scientifically correct; and it can be quite entertaining, to a ten year old.
I see I'm not the only one. But wasn't the lone "exceptional individual" theme done before on TV?
I really liked that John Doe show...much better in my opinion.
In this house, cable TV is a myth.
but still it needs to be said. by now you've figured out firefly is a blatant ripoff of outlaw star. why is slashdot supporting this? Always up in arms about such and such company patenting something someone else invented or in the hype of music trading.
this comes down to something a lot more basic in nature. it is NOT cool to steal someone else's idea and claim it as your own.
yeah... right...
(if they do make it, i deserve royalties dammit.)
Plotline for every episode : "Ambassadors" solving crimes by day, sleeping with rogues, thieves, cops and diplomats by night. you need the busty blonde, the fiery redhead, the short haired athletic brunette, the curly haired brunette who runs things, or mix up your stereotypes liberally.
FFS. Done. like that Pamela Anderson series ViP. a walking soft-porn ad for victorias secret cataloge models & bikini models. well, as long as it keeps them all paid, should be another FOX hit, expect to see it before Firefly gets canned.
We can't get that channel here. Maybe some kind soles could rip it and net it for us poor foreigners?
Say...this reminds me of something...oh, yeah, Cowboy Bebop!
Now, that's not neccessarily a bad thing. This series could garner interest in Bebop, which is a great character-driven series with a really wide potential appeal. Firefly looks to be pretty good from the premiere. Given time, it could very well turn into something truly great, like Buffy did.
--
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
Joss Whedon writes or approves some snappy dialogue, and appears to have a firm enough moral sense to create plots that work decently because things of significance (love, honour, power, rabbits) are portrayed as being expensive; I'd say he's one of the best people working in television today.
That doesn't mean he's good, though. The average level of television writing is at about the level of a high school black-out skit. I'm not the snob I'd like to be, I watch a fair amount of TV...but for a few years I didn't, and I remember how _bad_ it all looked until I had been fully drawn into it again.
Honestly, the first time I saw the "Buffy,..." movie I thought, "Why are Donald Sutherland's lines better than everyone else's?"
Excellent SciFi, the best show and potential I have seen this season, I work in the industry and I admit I held my breath hoping that this would be a good show. And the darned thing was excellent, Way to go Fox. I was enthralled from beginning to end. The last segment when the captian kicked an arch-villian through the intake of a jet engine sets the premise of an excellent series to come. Honestly, this is the best thing since the original Star-Trek that has come across my radar screen.
Top Kudos! I surely hope you Geeks climb on board.
This is one quality show.
OK, I'm not saying Firefly is a rip-off of this, but there are at least 2 sci-fi "universes" with similar premises: BattleTech and Cowboy Bebop.
In Cowboy Bebop, the guns and western stuff are ultimately a stylistic thing.
The BattleTech Universe actually directly correlates to events in this show. The Inner Sphere of planets form the Star League, which in turn fights a Reunification War to bring all major stellar nations under their rule. While highly advanced technology becomes commonplace in the rich, bountiful worlds of the Inner Sphere, the outer planets are treated as secondary citizens, and must make do with 20th/21st century technology . This is an oversimplification of just one aspect of the expansive BattleTech universe, but hey, my point is this has been done before, and there's even a certain logic to it.
--Mythos
Ok, I watched the show, and now im going to bitch.
That was some of the *worst* dialog and acting I have ever seen on television. Ever.
Spaceships and horses is stupid.
Tell me why, 500 years in the future when they have (apparently, by the looks of it) perfected "hot ion drives" but are still cooking on stoves with aluminum pots? Asthetic?
Mixing genre asthetic is an art. Its in art in the same way that writing a symphony is an art, not the same way that sitting on a stool with a *bleep* up your *bleep* and reciting feminist poetry in front of a horrified audience is an art.
However, John Doe was pretty good. I'll definitely be catching that again next week. There were a couple of sticky techie bits in John Doe; but I could tell that they tried very hard to get it right. Trying very hard is good enough for me.
but then again, strawberry icecream is not chocolate or mint-chocolate-chip either. Thing is, I like them all and have different cravings at different times. I would not consider this show more 'geek friendly' as by that definition there would really need to be a plethora of factoids (geek is really anyone who is gaga over any particular subject and enjoys knowing all the facts possible about it). Since it was light on technobabble ("Captain, overnight I solved a 200 year old problem by realigning the plasma manifolds with the tachyion inductors, while inverting the power couplings with an anti-matter stream") as it is light on details like planet positions, names, historical aspect, etc then it is not really a geeky show I think. However, I was more than pleased that it was NOT another Buffy or Angel. No stupid, cheesy demons, much less a cheesy bastardization of the entire concept of demons and vampires. (yeah, I too am scared of latte sipping demons with funky faces that hang out in bars)
Let's see, in four hundred years they haven't invented anything better than 20th century shotguns and four wheelers (powered by internal combustion engines no less).
The fact that the technology exists does not mean that it is available to everyone.
The show is basically a sci-fi version of the post-Civil War American west. Let me tell you, Los Angeles probably looked pretty goddamn different from Paris or London or New York in 1871, both technologically and culturally. More distance to travel means fewer people and less resources.
Stetsons and dusters?
Train robberies?
These are in their because they're just fucking cool, and if you can't see that then I'll just shed a single tear and move on.
On the contrary. Firefly is, so far, probably the most realistic vision of the future I've ever encountered in the medium. The way people work on this show is the way people work. Just like Whedon's other creations.
was way better than this crap.... Again FOX did a bad decision........ sigh...
Does anyone know if this well be re-aired before they next friday?
Star Trek done right: Enterprise
Cowboys in space? Ridiculous. What's next? Super powered teenage girls fighting the undead?
Actually, I was feeling pretty disappointed until that bit at the end when the captain is trying to return the money. That scene made me feel that there's hope for this series!
Yahoo has been running these horrifically obnoxious floating style sheet based ads for firefly that obscure about 30% of the screen. How bad do these things have to get before people just go away???
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I can't say anything more that is clearer that that! WAPOS
Shadowy sets. Supposed to be mood setting I suppose, but I really prefer the well lit Star Trek sets. Why should the making of 100 Watt bulbs be a lost art in the future?
"Obtuse Anger is that which is greater than Right Anger" - Lewis Carroll
I have watched it yesterday night. I think They took a sci-fic theme and farwest theme mix it and give it a bad taste. The original sci-fic theme seem to be good, but adding the farwest costume and mentality doesn't seem to fit at all. It doesn't look good. The costume of the alliance trop seem to be the same one use in starship tropper. The costume of the other personage seem to be from the time of the old farwest all this crap doesn't fit. They look like they have been doing a historical film and were forced to keep their clothe when going travelling in the universe .
Tell me why, 500 years in the future when they have (apparently, by the looks of it) perfected "hot ion drives" but are still cooking on stoves with aluminum pots? Asthetic?
Can you think of a better way to get heat into food?
Seriously, man, stories don't have to be different for the sake of being different in order to be interesting. Besides, if they had used something other than stoves with aluminum pots, there'd be about a million posts on Slashdot from people either criticizing what they used instead, or accusing them of ripping off Star Trek.
I don't know why people like you watch television anyway. Unless you just enjoy ripping on things.
Oh, wait. I think I just answered my own question.
"More 'geek-friendly' than Star Trek? Really ?!
Time to trot out my time-worn tagline:
"Star Trek is okay, but I prefer science fiction."
U.S. Democracy: born 7/4/1776, died 12/12/2000 R.I.P.
What network in their right mind would have a fan site slicker than an official site? That just don't make sense.
Please point me to the most reasonably priced Smith + Wesson firearm with a *stun* setting. Lasers, of course, won't ever have such a setting either; but some kind of electromagetic weapon could potentially disable without killing.
There are lots of reasons that something might be replaced despite the fact that it is cheap, and effective in some narrow sense. Let me quickly list some which might apply to small arms:
1. Non-lethal capability ("stun" setting)
2. Ability to penetrate yet-to-be-invented defenses or countermeasures (better body armour, some kind of energy screen or force field).
3. Any of longer range, greater endurance of fire, or more silent operation - all present-day factors - may become more critical.
4. Political controls. Some weapons might be banned as too dangerous, at some future time, leaving a vacuum to be filled by a less troubling weapon.
I'm sure there are more possibilities.
You can't possibly know what kinds of weapons will prevail *centuries* from now.
-- Mike Greaves
that the soldiers on the train were wearing the old hand-me-down Starship Troopers costumes?
I wanted to like this show, I really did, but I just...can't. Low-slung gunbelts, sawed-off shotguns, dirt streets (even though they had force-field windows), wooden sidewalks and HORSE-HITCHES!! for crying out loud.
Not to mention that the worn-out Western cliche train robbery was the centerpiece of the whole show.
I was expecting a sci-fi with a western-style society--little rule of law, frontier independence, and live-by-the-skin-of-your-teeth, not a Western dressed up in drag.
Sorry, but there's still nothing on TV.
>Can you think of a better way to get heat > into food?
Yes. Microwave ovens. Even today theyre tiny, light, and fast. Sure, they don't have the kitchy draw of aluminum pots and gas stoves on a spaceship that looks like a galloping horse, but they make more SENSE.
I'm not asking for different. John Doe is an obvious rehashing of Quantum Leap and every show like it, but its twists are *interesting* and the dialog doesn't sound like it was written by a highschool student with a fetish for crazy girls.
The crew of the Lexx ate the Lexx's excretions. The crew of Moya survived for nearly two seasons on cheap food cubes. Even the crew of Voyager had a cook that used technology appropriate for the era.
I do enjoy ripping on things, its quite true, but I also know damn good television when I see it, and I don't think its too much to ask for the producers of a sci fi series on Fox to pay the kind of money that good writers demand.
Microwave ovens only heat one thing: water. They're really not terribly effective for anything but melting chocolate and TV dinners. And they're incredibly inefficient compared to good old radiant heat.
For sake of argument, though, you can just assume that the stoves and ovens aboard the Firefly are fed by thermal superconductors that carry waste heat from the ship's engine. Does that make you feel better?
Even the crew of Voyager had a cook that used technology appropriate for the era.
As I recall, the crew of Voyager had a cook that used aluminum pans over gas burners.
As for your opinion of Whedon's writing, it's so far out of whack with the general consensus as to be practically meaningless.
As for ripping off all these bebopping outlaw japanese cartoons, you cant make anything without there being an anime (or pornime!) knockoff of it in japan. They have cartoons about rival toilets, where drama ensues when rainbow colored toilet paper is unleashed.
What would I change about Firefly? Thanks for asking! I would redo the opening music, make the random insertion of loud violin music less intrusive, less often, and maybe a different instrument. I would send the psycho girl back to the second or third season of Angel where she came from, and fire the token tough black lady from Ally McBeal. Maybe give her job to Jessica Alba. I heard her weekly fashion shoot was cancelled.
Hmm... yeah. I never watched a lot of DS9, actually. I got the sense that in many ways, it strayed from the philosophy traditionally guiding the Star Trek series.
For example, it seemed to negate much of the emphasis put on "people no longer needing money" that Picard liked to preach about in TNG episodes. The Ferrengi certainly seemed fixated on the concept of money and wealth....
How about the terraforming aspect? If I heard the narration properly, Earth has been abandoned, or reasonable equivalent. All of this action is supposed to have taken place in another stellar system, where early settlers terraformed a large number of worlds.
How long would terraforming a world take? What would a candidate for terraforming look like?
SETI Astronomers posit a zone where a planet would have to be to have possibility of liquid water. It is narrow. Two planets in this zone is probably the limit, not the multitude that the shows creators have.
Could those settlers have moved Titan sized bodies to the habitable zone, for terraforming? That would take a lot longer than a few hundred years. Terraforming, even with nanomachines, and perfectly genetically engineered bugs, would take a lot longer than a few hundred years.
One thing I feel sure of, no culture that had the tools for terraforming at its command would still employ labour intensive hard rock miners.
...that the letters are so small...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Hey, you fell into that one
Uhm, have you ever registered a domain? You have to submit name, address, phone number. Of course, registrars never check these, so people who want anonymity just make something up.
I do think that Fox shot itself in the foot by holding back "Serenity". They spent a lot of money making it, and so the production values were fancier, there were more fancy effects, etc. Worst of all, "The Train Job" had to hurriedly re-introduce a lot of characters and plot points that were established in a leisurely and interesting fashion in "Serenity". I think that's really going to hurt the shot. People hate coming in on the middle of a story.
Also, that tightwad Josh Whedon has yet to pay me for all my shill work. I'm pissed I tell you!
And if you believe that, then I guess you couldn't be bothered to to check out the the 1660 comments and 40-odd stories (11 accepted) that I've posted on Slashdot over the last two years. Wait a minute -- 1660? I gotta get a life!
People make do with what they can afford to buy. Which is not always the latest and most sophisticated. I'm not a gun person, but people who are tell me that this is particularly true of firearms. New, fancy kinds of guns are always being invented, but never widely adopted. A few people like Winchester, Kalashnikov, and Uzi have come up with designs that have stood the test of time and are easy to reproduce, and their work predominates.
This is gonna be even more true when you have a lot of people living on remote planets with little or no industry. They might have their levitating trains and their force-field bar windows. But these would be imported, at great expense, from industrial planets. So mostly people will make do with what they can manufacture locally -- and a Winchester rifle is a lot easier to manufacture than a ray gun.
Just saw it (had taped it).
Anyone else wonder why a squad of lilac coloured mobile infantry from Starship Troopers was on that train? : )
You can't take the sky from me...
I thought it was better than average, but not great. I'd give it somewhere around a 7.5 out of 10 for the first episode -- Enough for me to come back and check it out next week to see if it might make my weekly viewing schedule.
The early buzz on the show was great. The summer buzz was fairly negative after Fox thought the original pilot wasn't a great opener and had this episode put in instead. I guess we'll find out whether or not this was a good idea when the original pilot airs in December. Something tells me that the Slashdot audience would probably have liked the original pilot better, but the "mainstream" audience needed a different introduction to the show.
With 9 regular cast members, I can understand why Whedon wanted a two hour premier to introduce them all. One hour really didn't seem like enough time to introduce the crew and pull off a plot episode at the same time. Whedon took two hours of premier episodes to introduce the 8 recurring cast members of Buffy, for example. With only 4 recurring cast members in the Angel premier, it only took an hour.
As for the "it will be cancelled quickly" naysayers here, let's not forget that the Slashdot audience doesn't exactly have a great track record when picking television that sticks around. The last TV thread I jumped into here was where Slashdotters were busy telling us how bad CSI was - Hey, if you don't like it that's fine, but just because you don't like it doesn't mean it will be cancelled.
Some people are upset because Dark Angel was apparently cancelled in favor of this. While Dark Angel lost me shortly into its second season, we all hate to lose shows we like ("Sports Night" and "Now and Again" were two of the biggest losses for me). However, you should be judging Firefly on its own merits, *not* hating it simply because it's not Dark Angel.
Then there are those here who fault Firefly for using ideas from other shows. Give me a break - After 50 years of television and centuries of books, there are very few *new* ideas out there. Almost every plot point of every show/movie/book has been used so many times it isn't funny.
Let's look at some other examples just from this season so far - If you've followed the news of the fall premiers at all, you've probably heard how there are two shows ("Do Over" and "That was Then") that have a person return through time to high school. Of course, it's easy to point to "Back to the Future" as a predecessor, and I'm sure someone can remember a work that did it even earlier.
The most blatant rip-off of the season has to be "Fastlane". Cop in flashy clothes and car seeks to avenge his partner who was killed in a bust-gone-bad. Cop drives to climatic showdown at night with the street-lights reflecting off the hood of the car to the beat of Phil Collin's "In the Air Tonight". I'm sure there were more, but these elements were *identical* in the Miami Vice premier 15 years ago.
Does this make any of these a bad show by default? Absolutely not.
The strength of almost any show is not in presenting new concepts, it's *how* they use the concepts that have almost certainly been done before. It's in the delivery, the set up, the execution.
Did Firefly pull this off in its premier? Barely, but yes - As I said originally, "above average, but not great". But the hope I have for the show isn't in how well it delivers one episode, it's in the fact that Whedon likes to weave episodes together to create a strong continuing storyline. Just look at Buffy and Angel as examples.
I made the mistake of judging an "arc" show too early once before with Babylon 5. I'm not saying that Firefly is the next B5, or Angel, or Buffy. I'm just saying that the premier didn't turn me off completely, and I'll be back next week to see where it goes from here.
OK, I speak from a total ignorance of gunsmithing, but I think the answer has to be the same as for any technology: an AK-47 is only easy to make if you have access to all the related technology. And the related technology was, shall we say, inaccessible in 1876. As it would be in 2576, if you lived on a remote planet that cannot afford to import every technology that might be of use.
There was some stuff in the news a few years ago, about a concept for a device that would fire two co-linear lasers, strong enough to ionize two parallel columns of air. Then a "non-lethal" electric shock was transmitted to the target person. IIRC.
"Let me tell you, Los Angeles probably looked pretty goddamn different from Paris or London or New York in 1871, both technologically and culturally."
You know, you must be right. I've seen so many paintings and photographs of trebuchets, pikemen, and armored knights in the American west. I mean, using your logic they should have been four hundred years behind New York.
"The way people work on this show is the way people work. Just like Whedon's other creations."
Creations? Plural? The only thing I can think of that he's done is "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". And that's not much in the "great shakes" world for me. Oh, I forgot, he also worked on the lamentable "Alien 4". So he's got three strikes now for me.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Which is evidence of what? Your story doesn't relate to anything I said.
666
Far more likely (I'm really guessing here; would some gun enthusiast mind joining the conversation?), those third-world gun smiths rely on hardened metals that are available on every scrap heap even in the remotest parts of the planet. Which would not be in abundant supply on some farflung planet.
Ferrengi are not people.
...the "they did that because they were stupid/we don't do that because we're smart" theory of history. It's kind of out of fashion, but that doesn't make it wrong!
Let's see, in four hundred years they haven't invented anything better than 20th century shotguns and four wheelers (powered by internal combustion engines no less).
So what?
People still use chopsticks even though arguably better utensils have been invented.
In this show, there were huge battles and problems in the world in the next 500 years. There are other weapons available, but people are still using shotguns, presumably because they are cheap and easy to create. They are mechanical, not electronic. Etc.
Seems entirely plausible in this version of the future.
Train robberies?
You conveniently leave out the fact that the "train" is some sort of high-speed, levitating train. Are you saying that if such a train was invented in the future, there wouldn't be people trying to rob it?
If you don't like it, don't watch it. But please stop bitching about things which make sense in context.
"And like that
Sorry for mailing this article, I've obviously made a typo (168!=186) ....
that's the price for being up all night and doing some "quick"
checks before you go to bed
-- Herbert Rosmanith
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...