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.
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
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'
... 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?
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....
Either that, or Lexx.
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
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
Everything is a rip off of anything anymore.
Honeymooners->Flintstones->Jetsons
At least they picked good shows to rip off, instead of the absolute shite out there.
Incidentally, anyone see Star Hunter on TV?
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
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
isn't Oktoberfest in OCTOBER?
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.
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
I think you mean Hercules Moralizes in Space/Your Face, To The Horror of Someone Who Was Hoping For A Good Show. Poor Gene, indeed.
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
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
What about Outlaw Star? There's even a naked chick in a suitcase!
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
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.
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.
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."
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.
Is it a cool future of gadgets and super powerful, helpful AIs, antigravity, alien societies, incredibly advanced technology from mysterious lost races, see-thru tank tops, holographic projection and bionic augmentation,
No. No aliens, no latex in 'Firefly,'
or a dark future where a relative of GW's is still running the rights of the consumer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H citizens into the ground?
No, if it fits into any existing category, it's "Western", actually.
That's no big deal, I have one of those in the trunk of my car!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
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."
Such is life on Slashdot.
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
Try explaining that one to the cops. "I swear to God, officer she was moving around just a bit ago."
Maybe "Just give her a few minutes to thaw out, officer!"
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
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
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.
Don't forget: ;)
Gilligans Island->Voyager
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?
Andromeda is really up there alright. Up in the attic where I keep my collection of Space Rangers.
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.
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.
Thanks.
Outlaw star's a rip-off of Bebop, so it's either a sibling to O.S., or a rip-off of a rip-off.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
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
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.
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.
You're right, moderator. Statements of agreement are off topic. What the hell were you thinking, you tool?
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
Andromeda rules!
The First season and a bit did, but it's gone seriously downhill since..
very geek-friendly - one off lines that assume you know who Heisenberg is, or why time slows down when you near a black hole..
*sigh*
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
If I were you'd I'd avoid making proclamations about things in the nerd domain, even if you're technically right the karma won't come back.
I believe that both cowboy bebop and outlaw star aired around the same time, but Outlaw Star had been a manga previous to that. Of course, I'm sure I'll have my turn under the flame now of the Comic Book Guy. Perhaps he'll point out when and where Cowboy Bebop was serialized, or mention that Trigun predates the both, even though its only marginally related to FireFly.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Down-moderation is a punishment. Because the moderation system only allows a coarse level of granularity-- Insightful, Flamebait, Funny, Off-topic, etc.-- it is sometimes necessary to assign a moderation to a post when it doesn't quite fit.
See, there's no "-1, Quit your whining, moron." So "Off-topic" it is.
I hope that helps you understand things a little better, festers. Oh, and by the way, karma is not redeemable. You don't need to use the "post anonymously" button to protect it.
you do realise Futurama got picked up by cartoon network for adult swim. So dont freak out yet.
oh and family guy sucked
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
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
Psychics don't exist, and I can't get into a portrayal of a future that can't possibly exist.
I knew you were going to say that.
Bring it on, AC. The act of sucking surely holds no mysteries for you.
Yeah, but at least Josh Wheddon has a track record of ripping off good stuff to create even better stuff. I'm surprised no-one's mentioned how similiar Devil Hunter Yohko and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are.
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!
That's hardly "realistic" though now is it? The idea that genetic mucking-about can create a new sense that is not based on science in any way? That's pure fantasy.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Gilligans Island->Voyager
<THEME-MUSIC TITLE="Gilligan's Island">
With Harry Kim!
The Captain too...
The Rebel Pilot, and his wife!
The Ex-Borg drone,
Chakotay and Holodoc
Here on Gilligan's Voyager!
</THEME-MUSIC>
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
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.
" I can't get into a portrayal of a future that can't possibly exist."
interesting psychic statement.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
it's horrible
damn,
almost as annoying as MCd's big and tasty.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
and it that were all it were about you might have a point.
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.
I'm sorry but 15 minutes doesn't qualify you to have an opinion.
This is exactly the problem with a lot of TV today - it's designed to appeal to the lowest common attention span. Only the most banal and sensationalist can survive that.
Sunday = Adult Swim, the soon to be home of Futurama
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
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
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
(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.
> 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 took it more as an anti-Andromeda. But with characters in bas-relief rather than the expected bigger-than-life stuff.
And BTW, it will have to be real damn good if I'm going to have to listen to country music to watch it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, what else was it about then? A priest, a psychic and a bunch of hillbilliy space people following frontier space justice? This is just FOX living up to it's low standards.
This isn't SciFi, it's just dumb demographically planned programming or worse (i.e. FOX's ultra-conservative bent.) Star Trek is much better SciFi because it at least it occasionally deals with or includes scientific ideas. Where was the science in this show? Isn't that an important part of SciFi? A train robery? Give me a break. A train robbery is what you come up with when you're in your fifth season and you can't think of anything new. Too bad, but I'm canceling my TiVo Season's Pass for this show though I probably will watch a few more episodes to see if it gets better.
...on the East coast, and soon on the West. So? How was it???
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I laughed so loud my wife woke up.
But the one moment of [great] joy didn't sell me. I have a TIVO.. if I'm bored watching other shit, i'll try this out again.
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
You forgot the baddies. Claw. Or is it Klaww?
Don't forget the storm troopers in the "train".
And was that a mix of a Gary Oldman in "Lost In Space" + a leader of the 3rd reich?
I totally agree. This show was a total piece of crap. I was very underwhelmed but i stuck it through and caught the show after it, John Doe. That one was excellent. I really liked it. But yeah I don't see Firefly lasting more than a few weeks. Very poor scripting. Corny lines. Boring. It was like some really stupid glimpse of a future that returns us to the wild west or something. yawn.
> though, it was an excellent way to get me to start watching john doe
Feh, a Pretender clone. Did they give us any reason to care if Mr. Doe stepped in a manhole and died?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
"John Doe" isn't a Bourne Identity rip off, it's a rip off of "Pretender," "Now & Again," "Bourne Identity" and twenty zillion other "I don't really know who the heck I am, but I'm a genius at everything" stories.
That said, having watched both Firefly and John Doe, I prefered John Doe. Better lighting, less ER camera work, less soap opera style makeup, etc.
Firefly will probably turn out to be ok, but I'd still rather have Dark Angel. Fox sucks.
I don't give a rat's ass how good or bad it was, no movie with Dan Hedaya could ever be shudderworthy. He just rocks. Joe vs. the Volcano was good because it had Dan Hedaya in it. Dick was good because of Dan Hedaya. The remake of Shaft was good because Dan was in it. And yeah, Alien Resurrection was good-- why?-- because of Dan-the Man-Hedaya. And also that gratuitous thong shot. But mostly Dan Hedaya!
Kiss my ass if you don't like it.
(I'm drunk.)
Amazing how this mind bogglingly, realisticly, original and lovingly portrayed future includes present day fashion, hairstyles, and makeup.
First of all, if the fashion, hairstyles, and makeup were different, it would detract from the overriding purpose of the show, which is to tell a story that entertains. If you can't relate to it, it's not entertaining. You're right up there with the guy who said he can't accept any story that has psychics in it. Guess he hated The Matrix because of that Oracle chick, huh?
On the other hand, who's to say that these things don't go in cycles that recur? Eight hundred years from now everybody dresses and wears their hair like we did one hundred years ago, because the really wacky stuff has fallen out of fashion.
(It's been 47 seconds since I last posted a comment. 'Scuse me while I stall a bit.)
I don't know why you were modded down. I agree completely. Not too long ago I was the world's geekiest Farscape fan. Now I'm just not that bothered about it's pending and possible cancellation. Like you said, they were phoning it in.
On the other hand, I just finished watching Firefly, and I'm hooked. For me, this was the deal-closer:
Mal: This is all the money that so-n-so paid us in advance... (big speech here)
Bad Guy #1: Keep the money! I will hunt you down and blah blah blah.
Mal: Darn.
(Mal kicks Bad Guy #1 into Firefly's engine intake. Bad Guy #1 is turned into strawberry jam, which is then incinerated. Bad Guy #2 is plopped down in front of Mal.)
Mal: Now, this is all the money that so-n-so paid us in advance.
Bad Guy #1: Yeah, yeah! I'm with you all the way!
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
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.
Except that happens in the as-yet-unaired pilot... This took place in that episode we may never see (They need something special for the DVD right?)...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Everything is fantasy, until it becomes real. The difference between fantasy and science is merely a matter of timing.
Or, if you prefer, you can use the same turn of phrase Arthur C. Clarke coined: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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.
true john doe kicks the crap outta firefly, but I thinks its a real direct rip off of bourne identity, if you've seen it it's just too similar, the guy wakes up, is rescued by a fishing boat.... discovers he speaks multiple languages, and then goes out into the world.
However I was laughing when he won at the track, then lost, then got back up again from $2
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Hmm. I have to reject this argument because of A Night at the Roxbury. I'm sure you'll understand.
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.
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?
-
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
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...
Well, it could be the sound of the engines as experienced by the people inside the ship.
For me, the acid test is acceleration and deceleration. Does the ship always fire its engines when travelling towards a planet, accelerating towards the surface? I mean, does the ship turn tail forward and fire briefly to deorbit, or does it fire up its engines and drive towards the surface of the planet like a Winnebago on I-90? Will Whedon break Sci-Fi (Godzirra, Star Trek, anime, Star Wars, as opposed to SF, which is Heinlein, Clarke, etc.) and stop using the impossible visual model of the automobile to depict orbital mechanics?
...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.
Races survived ten thousand years or more because there were no easy ways of breaking up with a local tribe and move thousands of miles away. It was a matter of time and logistics.
Now we have planes, ships, and cars to move from region to region, and all of Europe and most of the Americas as a mixing bowl.
Vanish in 500 years? Dunno. Hm. They will melt together in specific areas, ie Europe and the Americas, far faster than in Asia, Africa and the Pacific nations. I would guess 500 years would be more than sufficient to melt the groups together. Look at Hawaii and the native Americans groups -- pretty fast merging.
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
Family Guy is the funniest show I have ever seen in my life. Don't knock it if you don't understand the humour (or just don't find it entertaining).
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
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)
I can't get too excited about Firefly yet, although there were a few good scenes, including the one you mention, plus some excellent CGI.
But I thought John Doe (which aired on Fox right after Firefly) had much more drama and tension, and while a little corny perhaps (and a total Bourne Identity ripoff in the beginning), at least didn't have such obvious setups of plot elements.
Later, I saw part of an SG-1 episode on the scifi channel, and that too seemed much more taut than Firefly. Firefly just seemed too relaxed, chatty, even boring in parts. I guess these episode one setups are tough to do, though, especially with so many characters to introduce, so it may improve.
Fox may be dumb but don't mistake it for ultraconservative. Murdoch goes into a country, looks for a niche and fills it in order to make money. The US, with its 85%+ Democrat newsmen made Murdoch properties head towards the right wing and it's been a financial winner. If you look at Murdoch outlets from other countries, you'll be surprised at how far left some of them go.
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.
Let's look back a bit further young boy: it is a rip off of the olde cowboy/western theme. So, instead of horses, we have spaceships. Whoop dee doo.
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
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.
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...
My problem is that it's a Model 93 Winchester. There's a reason that the Air Cavalry don't run around with those any more -- there are better designs available, guns that can handle more powerful ammo, guns that are more durable, guns that take more of a beating with less maintenance. The guys in Pakistan who make weapons by hand make AK-47's, not Winchester '93's.
If they had re-invented cars, wouldn't it surprize you if they opted for the 1903 curved-dash Oldsmobile instead of, say, the Jeep, which would give them significantly better functionality?
As for swords, well, they do have the advantage that you never need to reload, and maintenance is pretty minimal. I can see where they might be the most efficient solution to a given problem.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
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.
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.
...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