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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.
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'
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....
"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!
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
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
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"?
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.
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."
Wow, I think that's just about the most intelligent and responsible thing I've ever read about the influence of culture on behaviour.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
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.
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?
Or at least don't blatantly cut-and-paste them from other linked stories.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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'm curious as to how you got so hot on Firefly. Is the pilot better than the first episode? Here's my synopsis of the first episode: cowboy movie in space, to the max; cartoon-level bad guys, clownishly scary but not particularly amusing; entire plot telegraphed ahead of time in the most obvious ways; mystery set up for future episodes like a clay pigeon shoot. I guess I could do with a little less obviousness.
Some of the CGI was nice though, and it was well-produced overall. There didn't seem to be any actual plot holes, which is always a bonus. But in general, I got more of a kick out of the PS2 commercial that aired near the beginning of the episode, than the show itself. I'd say it's watchable, if you're not expecting too much. I wouldn't be raving about it.
Actually, I'm having more fun watching the show after it, John Doe. At least the whole plot hasn't been given away yet, 20 minutes in.
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
Slugthrowers are never, ever going away. They are simply too cheap and effective at what they do. Honestly, if you're going to kill somebody with a laser pistol, you're going to have to have one powerful enough to drill a hole right through them - and then you have to hit a vital orgain. With a slugthrower, even a hit to the foot can put someone into shock, removing them from the fight.
Repeat the mantra, student: The Future Will Not Be Like Star Trek.