Firefly Likely to be Cancelled

rscrawford writes "Zap2It is reporting that Firefly, one of the best science fiction shows to make it on to network television in recent years, is going on hiatus: read, getting canceled. Well, it was an interesting, well-written, provocative and intelligent show on Fox; is anyone therefore surprised that they're doing away with it? It lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. At least they're going to show the original 2-hour pilot in December. (And yet, somehow, Just Shoot Me continues...)"

Comments

Of course it's being cancelled

[slycer9]

It makes you think to follow the plotlines, there are no 'magic' answers to every problem, the characters have real-life type problems, and the dialog was halfway intelligent. Who'd want to watch that when we've got David Spade?! Seriously though, look how successful lowbrow stuff tends to be, versus 'the other stuff'. How long did Roseanne run?

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[Twirlip of the Mists]

My big gripe is that the dialogue was horrible

Mmm-uh? Just about the only thing that everybody universally agrees on is that the dialogue-- and the scene-level writing in general-- is some of the best on TV. How is that that this is the first thing you latch on to with which to find fault?

the plots, despite the fact that the show made a painfully obvious effort to not be Star Trek, were so obviously lifted from Star Trek

Which would that be? "The Train Job?" No. "Bushwhacked?" Also no. "Our Mrs. Reynolds?" Hell no. "Jaynestown?" No, most definitely no. "Out of Gas?" Maybe... ship blows gasket, crew abandons ship, heroic captain acquires new gasket and saves the day, but that episode wasn't driven by plot. It was driven by flashbacks, and was more inspired by Pulp Fiction than anything else (there was even an explicit homage). "Shindig?" Heh. No, definitely not. "Safe?" Nuh-uh. "Ariel?" Bite your lying tongue. I don't recall any episode of Star Trek in which Kirk threatened to blow Spock out the airlock... and really meant to do it, too, up to the very last second.

There are a lot of legitimate gripes out there about Firefly. Calling it derivative of Star Trek is definitely not one of 'em.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Man, oh man. Whenever the topic of TV comes up, some asshole has to pull this same crap. "I only watch Masterpiece Theater, C-SPAN, and those delightful Taster's Choice commercials, cheerio, pip-pip!" A common variation is to throw in one inoffensive guilty pleasure to try to increase your credibility; it's always something like "The West Wing" or "CSI" or "ER," never "WWF Smackdown" or "General Hospital" or "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air."

Stuff it, Lester. If you really don't watch TV, then keep your opinions to yourself and get your snobbish Thurston-Howell attitude the fuck out of this discussion. And if, as is far more likely, you're lying, quit puttin' on airs. Nobody will think any less of you if you admit that you get up early on Saturday mornings to watch reruns of "Chico and the Man" on your local Telemundo affiliate. We're all friends here.

The only thing worse than a snob is a guy who pretends to be a snob.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[NeuroKoan]

Kinda funny you mention Rosanne. Joss Wheadon wrote a few episodes back in the day. Source, IMDB

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[sweetooth]

Did it ever occur to you that this asshole is being honest and feels that the crap on tv is exactly that, crap. I could care less about Masterpiece Theater, C-SPAN or those annoying as hell Tasters Choice commercial. Also the British snob bs you threw in was a nice touch. C-SPAN is a waste of two channels for me, I get the most basic cable package available because my wife and I realized we didn't watch anything but C.S.I. and whatever happend to be on the Discovery channel. I watched sci-fi when andromeda or farscape was on and occasionally star gate, but those were rarities. So we reduced our cable bill by over $20 bucks a month and continued to watch the same two things.

I have no desire to watch ER, WWF anything, any soap opera, or the fresh prince. Sure I watched the fresh prince when I was much younger, and the wonder years and things like that. That was ten years ago. Today I find there isn't shit on tv worth watching other than Histories Mysteries or the various Discovery specials.

I recently got in touch with a friend from high school that had joined the army and had just moved back home after being discharged at the end of his service agreement. While we were catching up tv came up because he wanted to get cable internet access, but the cheapest way to get it was to get cable tv and intenet access in a package and he didn't want the cable tv package. His reason was that the only thing he could see himself watching was Discovery. Of course his wife wanted it for other things so I'm sure they'll get it anyway. The point is that we are completly differant and have the same opinion of tv. I'm a tech geek working as a system admin and developer for a very small company. He's going to school for achitecture. We don't share any of the same interests any more, and are as differant as can be, but both feel that tv is crap. Just because you don't feel that tv is crap and become insecure when other people let you know they think it is does not give you the right to make outlandish generalizations about them.

I could also give a flying fuck what everyone else thinks of me. If I cared about that I wouldn't be posting on Slashdot. Someone made a blanket statment about everyone loving the dialog on Firefly and I simply responded that I, like the parent poster, thought it was crap. I get up early on Saturday mornings to play Barren Realms Elite and have breakfast with my wife. If the television is turned on its to watch whatever we happen to have in from Netflix, not to watch cartoons, not to watch whatever the hell "Chico and the Man" is (Telemundo is the Spanish broadcast network right?). If they were showing loony toons first thing Saturday morning I might sit down and watch them. Power Rangers? No thanks.

Sure, we are all friends here, that's why you have to resort to calling me a snob, oh, even better, a guy pretending to be a snob. If you want to challenge what I have to say, please do so. However you could at least do it without outlandish generalizations and immature insults. Or better yet, come on over some time and watch tv with us. I think "When Dinosaurs Roamed America" is going to be on again and I didn't catch the whole thing last time. I'll make tea and we can have scones.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Way to put me in my place. I honestly did not think that you might really just not like TV at all; it seems like, if that's the case, this thread is a funny place for you to be posting.

Nevertheless, I respect the way you gave me a taste of my own medicine. The bit about scones really won me over.

If, however, you don't get a kick out of the writing on Firefly, then I have to respectfully stand by my judgment that you are-- and I say this with the utmost love-- a big, fat fuddy-duddy.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[sweetooth]

Actually I'm a tall skinny fuddy duddy. My wife claims that I'm very dull sometimes. I just find differant things interesting.

I honestly looked forward to Firefly in the hopes that network television could potentially provide an additional source of good entertainment. Especially since Sci-fi shows are so few and far between, and good ones are even more rare.

Now, my opinion of Firefly can be easily challenged being that I admitted right away I only watched the first two episodes. The dialog itself may not have been horrible, but I felt that the presentation was. With television or movies you have to have both for it to be enjoyable. I didn't find it enjoyable, and it turned me off from the show. You remarked that everyone loved it and I just felt I had to put in my two cents. That's the wonderfully annoying thing about the Internet. Anyone can chime in with thier two cents. The reason I was reading the thread is that I was hopeing there was some fairly interesting conversation or insightful comments on why the show should not be canceled. I read your comment on the technology spread to the primitive civilizations insightful, and very good. You tied it in well with reality which was a nice touch. I just wonder if things of that nature are enough to make the show worthwhile as a whole. I wanted to see if anyone felt the acting/dialog had improved. Apparently I'm in a minority in feeling that it wasn't that great. Oh well, you win some you lose some. Maybe I lost out by not giving it more time. Maybe I'm jaded by all the crap that plagues the various network channels.

I'm glad you liked the scones remark, the funny thing is, I didn't think it was that funny till I read it a second time. Then it just seemed fitting ;)

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Now, my opinion of Firefly can be easily challenged being that I admitted right away I only watched the first two episodes.

That's a shame. "Our Mrs. Reynolds" is a great one, and the last episode aired, "Ariel," is a better 44 minutes of entertainment than you get out of most movies. Not only are they tightly written, but they're also really well shot and directed bits of filmed entertainment.

Besides, any show that's brave enough to establish a hard-and-fast "no sound in space" rule deserves all the chances they want.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[stephenbooth]

I'd say it was closer to a rip off of Blakes 7 and Alien Ressurection than Star Trek. I suspect that it's similarities to Star Trek are more due to both shows having a common source, in western shows, than Firefly drawing directly from Star Trek.

Looking at the interviews Whedon has done, changes in his existing shows and what has happened with Firefly it seems that over the last year or so he's basically lost it. I have heard that he's been complaining, seriously rather than his previous joking complaints, of over work; especially on the studio/politics side. Maybe he needs to turn over the reins to someone fresher for a while and take a back seat till he can come back refreshed and with rejuvenated creativity?

Stephen

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[sweetooth]

I'd be curious to know how many viewers they actually had during the episodes that were shown. I get the impression the average television viewer is so used to Star Trek where the answer is a bunch of techno babble spewed out in the last few minutes of the show and anything is possible. Dealing with things somewhat realistically like, oh, actually reversing directions in space, are too confusing for most. Or are simply not as entertaining.

I can't tell you how many people that I showed homeworld to couldn't stand the game because they had to apply thrust in the reverse direction to stop or change course, and just pointing the nose of the ship where they wanted to go didn't take them right there.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[mpe]

It makes you think to follow the plotlines, there are no 'magic' answers to every problem, the characters have real-life type problems, and the dialog was halfway intelligent.

Having plotlines which need to be followed can cause problems where episodes are shown out of order (even with recaps tacked on the beginning). Unfortunatly out of order showing appears to be the norm with US broadcasters. Maybe Joss should move to Europe or Australia...

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[mpe]

My big gripe is that the dialogue was horrible, and the plots, despite the fact that the show made a painfully obvious effort to not be Star Trek, were so obviously lifted from Star Trek.

It's not as if Star Trek used original plots in the first place.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[JaredOfEuropa]

Hmm plotlines... I hate how these series have a few subplots going at once, which are all clumsily forced to conclusion at the end of the episode. ("It all falls into place"). I much prefer the way this was handled in Hill Street Blues (or ER I guess), with subplots spanning several episodes. I think this could have worked well for Firefly.

That aside, the show was well made, and the different settings for each episode were interesing enough, however I really didn't care for the cowboy/trucker look&feel of the series, right down to the theme music. Sure, it is plausible that a society of settlers out of touch with mainstream civilisation, would have old tech mixed with modern stuff, but I would at least have expected for their old tech to look somewhat different, and not like West World. Why? Because these people might not have all the modern equipment, they most likely do have access to libraries with modern science, construction methods, etc. It is no coincidence that things like the internal combustion engine replaced the horse in our own history, and I'd expect that to happen there as well.

Still... a shame it is being cancelled. I prefer Farscape myself, but Firefly is still way better than most of the crap on TV today.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[Ballsy]

I could care less about Masterpiece Theater,

Are you sure you didn't mean "I couldn't care less" here ? If you could care less, then you actually do care about Masterpiece Theatre, C-SPAN, etc. For some reason, that (rather common) slip up really bothers me.
Anyhow...carry on!

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[sweetooth]

Yes, you're right, I couldn't care less. Typical typo that I missed even with previewing before submission.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[ConceptJunkie]

Both versions work... one is meant sarcastically, and the other is meant literally. Someone anal enough to point that out should realize that. ;-)

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[ChannelX]

Now, my opinion of Firefly can be easily challenged being that I admitted right away I only watched the first two episodes.

IMHO thats part of the problem. The first episode of Firefly was pretty lame. Second episode was better but it got much better after those. I almost didn't watch it again after the first show.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Unfortunatly out of order showing appears to be the norm with US broadcasters. Maybe Joss should move to Europe or Australia...

Oh, no. The out-of-order thing has been quite the scandal; it's not the norm at all. There's been a vast amount of bitching among fans of the show, and even thinly veiled complaints from the writers and producers, about it. Joss is known for writing very continuity-heavy TV, and Fox is presently making that impossible for him. If it comes off of hiatus-- a possibility, but not a sure thing-- the rumor is that Mutant Enemy will effectively demand that they get a commitment from Fox to show the remaining episodes of the season in production order, so they can get their story-arc going again.

Re:Of course it's being cancelled

[bryan1945]

Why was this given an "Informitive" rating?

West Wing has not been canceled, and Sopranos was slated FROM THE BEGINNING for only 5 seasons, and it yet may still run past 5 seasons.

As for awards, I'm pretty sure that Sopranos and West Wing have won awards. I just don't know where to look on the 'net for awards listings.

Just Maybe ...

[Snoopy77]

the show was not as good as you thought it was. How many times have we seen recently stories lamenting the demise of (insert sci-fi show) and how the networks just don't understand how good it was.

Okay, maybe to a small minority (uber-geeks) it was great but you won't even get the whole /. crowd to agree it was good let alone the general public. It's time the /. crowd faced the facts ... the average joe would sooner watch Just Shoot Me than some weird sci-fi show.

Yes, you are a minority and as such big business is not going to care too much about you when they axe the show you love and keep another show you detest but is loved by the masses.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[satanami69]

sorry buddy, but this is the only show that both my girlfriend and I
watched together. She thought the guys were cute and enjoyed the drama,
and I liked the way it made me talk in a western accent for days
afterwards.

I really thought this show could become as big as any other. Too bad Fox
routinely makes bad choices on good shows.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[nukey56]

The demographics will save it from the dumpster. Look at OSDN. Then look at Firefly. Same demographic. Geeks with purchasing power, many of which buy high-quality goods. Notice that there are less car commercials and more circuit city-esque ads up, as well as less shampoo commercials, for that matter. Geeks, whether or not they are collective themselves, form a highly profitable segment of the population, which investors know they cannot simply ignore.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

[Just maybe] the show was not as good as you thought it was.

I think you have it backwards. You're equating good with popular. Sometimes the two go hand-in-hand; "The West Wing" is usually both good and popular. But often they're opposed to one another.

Consider Buffy. By any reasonable measurement, Buffy is not a popular show. But it's widely lauded, and generally considered to be very good. (This season, especially, has had more than its fair share of tight writing and "goddamn!" moments.) Or Sorkin's last show, "Sports Night." These are not examples of wildly popular shows. But they're generally-- not universally, but generally-- considered to be very good shows.

The difference is venue. Buffy has lasted umpty-bump seasons (six or seven, I think) because it lives on a third-tier network that can afford to take what it can get. Sports Night lasted two seasons on ABC out of pure charity; the ratings weren't good enough to justify it, but ABC gave it a shot anyway. Ultimately the show tanked because the numbers just weren't good enough for a top-tier national net.

Firefly is on Fox: a shit network that thinks it's a big network. If Firefly were on any other second- or third-tier net, it would be a small-scale hit with a loyal niche audience in a valuable advertiser demo, and would probably last for five years or longer.

In a perfect world, Mutant Enemy should take the whole thing in-house, produce episodes in DVD-resolution MPEG-4 format, and offer 'em for sale over the net for two bucks apiece. Never happen, though, because there's so fucking much piracy in the world, particularly so among Firefly's target audience, that the company would make about six dollars per episode and would go down faster than a two-bit whore.

I'll take that ideal DRM system any time, fellas.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Scrameustache]

the show was not as good as you thought it was [...] It's time the /. crowd faced the facts ... the average joe would sooner watch Just Shoot Me than some weird sci-fi show.

Then why the hell did they buy it in the first place?

Seriously, this is the thing that bothers people: They [insert evil MPAA member corporation's name] don't like the show, they don't give the show a good time slot, they don't promote it much, and they cancel it before its first season ends...why? Why bother? Why go through all this? Why not say "we're not interested" and let another network produce it?

Are they teasing geeks for fun? Are they frustrating people outta some weird deal with satan?

You're gonna say ratings huh? Then the question becomes: Are they really stupid enough to expect every single time slot to get excellent ratings?
Lessee...when has Firefly been on? It played on a friday night at 8...but the first they showed wasn't the first in the story, so it was confusing because they didn't explain anything (the bit at the end when the big bad guy dies was neat though...and the bit where someone said "did he just go crazy and fall asleep?" had me laughing my ass off). The second time it played was a saturday morning at around 12:20 am. Yeah, so late a friday night that it was the following morning. The third week it was on at 8 again (lots of people expected it later and missed it). Then the week after it was on at 12:05 am. Then back at 8 for a couple of weeks, and then it didn't play at all (I had Happy Gilmour on Fox and on another channel that plays it it was replaced by cheap old Andromeda). And this week it isn't on either...

Oh yeah, the bad ratings are really caused by the fact that its weird and to geeky, not because its nearly impossible to watch the damn thing huh?

Re:Just Maybe ...

[iabervon]

The networks ideally want time allotted to shows in proportion to the size of the demographics; that optimizes for viewers. The problem is that they seem to buy but not keep shows this way. So, for a minority demographic, they'll buy a show, cancel it (because only a minority watches it), find they don't have a show for that demographic, and buy a new one.

The problem, of course, is that this is the minority of people who like to follow long complicated plot arcs, and the networks give them the first year of a new show every year.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[stephanruby]

Consider Buffy. By any reasonable measurement, Buffy is not a popular show. But it's widely lauded, and generally considered to be very good. (This season, especially, has had more than its fair share of tight writing and "goddamn!" moments.)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer ?

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Uh... yeah. Wha?

Re:Just Maybe ...

[fferreres]

My all time favourite: Blade Runner (but very close to some other great, not-so-popular movies, and some very popular ones).

They lost a lot of money on that, but hell, the problem is not being a bad movie, the problem is the fans of the real sci-fi genre are less than "common normal/weird lifestyle" or "stupid fantasy" stuff. So they don't profit much.

To be able to pull a profit in the genre you either have to:

a) Stupidify the rengre all together (would have said: "Start Trek???", but I won't for respect to the fans)

b) Do it with low budget (not minimal, but relatively small) and keep the intelectual level.

It's not hard to see why most serious sci-fi lives only in books. Yes, only a selected audience reads it, but the cost is "one man labour" and some paper. Much easier ...

The only serious sci-fi movie that really did well (couldn't tell how well, was 1 years old or unborn at the time) was 2001. I really don't know why.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[mpe]

I simply can't understand the popularity of Buffy. After all the raving on slashdot, I decided to give it a shot. Pure cheese; it's what I'd call a teen drama.

"teen drama" where the title character is 21 and the possibly most popular character is nearing 130, shouldn't "teen drama" have mostly teenage characters?

idealized college campus life (clearly sanitized for the target audience),

What you mean that real US universities have more sacrifices and students getting killed by giant spiders :)

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Communomancer]

>idealized college campus life

Ack, you must have seen an episode from Season 4. No wonder you were disappointed :)

Seriously, though, "Buffy" has a very closed mythology, especially these days (it's in it's 7th season right now). (Most) Every episode is made better by the episodes that precede it, and those that follow it. This is part of what makes the fans fanatic. On the other hand, it makes it difficult for new viewers to get into the show.

The writer's abilities to portray "evil," in all its dizzying forms, is also one of the show's strengths. Sure, individual episodes may hit or miss in this regard, but when they hit, they're right on the money.

The dialogue is tight, much tighter than Firefly (imo...and I do like Firefly). The characters are deep. There is a strong feeling of continuity throughout each season (well, maybe not S6 so much).

On occasion, viewers are provided with that rare gem of an episode that defies some conventional TV wisdom, to great effect. Sure, "Buffy, The Musical" got a lot of press...but don't forget the episode with (almost) no dialogue, the episode with no music, the episode where Buffy isn't _The_ superhero of Sunnydale (complete with modified opening credits), the episode where conflict with the ultimate beastie takes a back seat to conflict with a lone zombie.....

I'm a fan :) It's an outstanding show, even if it's not everybody's cup of tea. But ignore the folks who tear into "Buffy" with harsh words, simply because _they didn't like it_. Folks should check it out for themselves and make up their own minds.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

For example if you cannot buy a movie and then sell it on to someone else after watching it, the movie is very different to other kinds of property like a house or a bicycle.

That's never even been suggested. What we're talking about here is DRM for ephemeral data, stuff that you don't buy, but merely rent. If you rent a movie from Blockbuster, are you allowed to make a copy of it? Absolutely not. Same thing.

I think that the information should be tied in to a physical token which embodies the right to use that information. For example, if you get an on-demand download of some music, your computer will spit out a small disc which gives you the right to listen to that music.

So... you're unclear on the whole idea of download-on-demand, huh? That's okay. It's not for you, I guess.

Oh, there is, by the way, absolutely nothing wrong with DVD region codes. The fact that you don't like it-- cries of "artificial" or "arbitrary" or "manipulative" or whatever-- doesn't meant that it should or will be changed or abolished. If you don't like it, don't participate in it.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Ed Avis]

If you rent a movie from Blockbuster you are allowed to show it to other people, or watch it on different televisions, before returning it. And the right to watch the film is clearly tied in to possession of the cassette or disc - it's not some arbitrary-seeming piece of software telling you what you can and can't do.

As for DVD regioning, it's not so much the manufacturers doing it I object to - after all they will always try find a way to squeeze more out of consumers in some countries than in others - but the fact that it becomes illegal to circumvent the region coding, and impossible if DRM is everywhere. Region coding is an unpleasant anticompetitive practice, but at least at the moment I have the choice, as you say, to not participate in it and use region-free players.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If you rent a movie from Blockbuster you are allowed to show it to other people, or watch it on different televisions, before returning it.

Sure, within reason. (You can't set up a theater and charge people to watch the video you rented, for instance.) And a DRM system for VOD may include those features, too. But it probably won't. And the fact that it doesn't is no big deal at all.

The choice is simple here. Either we get a comprehensive DRM system for ephemeral media, or we don't get HDTV VOD over the Internet. As somebody who would greatly enjoy HDTV VOD-- starting, like, today-- I strongly support DRM for ephemeral media. If you want to oppose it based on principle or some other damn fool ideal, that's your prerogative. But to most people, life is a question of compromises.

the fact that it becomes illegal to circumvent the region coding

Yup. Region coding is an effective access control mechanism. Circumventing it is against the law. So don't do it. This is not a matter that warrants getting to a big snit.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Ed Avis]

So you believe that the copyright holder should have full control over the conditions under which you can view the work? There will no longer be any first sale doctrine or any irrevokable fair dealing rights?

Do you believe that it's up to the copyright holder to set any conditions he wants, and use technological measures to enforce those conditions - even when this conflicts with fair-use rights for the consumer?

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I'm not going to get dragged into a copyright argument with you. Yes, my opinion differs from yours. Despite the fact that you have a different idea, I stubbornly persist in believing that I'm right. I am, at heart, a pragmatist, and when I hear people get all up-in-arms over fair use rights on a TV show, of all things, it brings a bit of a giggle.

Yell about your rights all you want. I prefer to choose my battles.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Dr. Spork]

So what you're saying is: "Idiots do stupid things." Thank you, genius.

But then you also seem to be saying: just because a lot of idiots are doing some stupid thing like watching Just Shoot Me, that somehow makes it a better show than Firefly.

You have some funny ideas about the notion of "good." Lemme guess... You're American!

Re:Just Maybe ...

[shayne321]

Why bother? Why go through all this? Why not say "we're not interested" and let another network produce it?

Are they teasing geeks for fun? Are they frustrating people outta some weird deal with satan?

I'll offer an off-the-wall observation here: I think all of the networks have been caught off guard by CBS's sudden success in network programming. According to this, they currently have 11 of the top 20 shows. Now that the "reality-TV" and "rehashed-gameshow-TV" crazes have passed, I think networks are just throwing shit on the wall to see what sticks in an effort to topple CBS. I think they are as surprised as we are that so far, what's sticking is the boring family-oriented sitcom of the 80's ("my life with bonnie", "8 simple rules", "my wife & kids", "grounded for life", "bernie mac", etc, etc). After the simpsons debuted and the politically-incorrect dysfunctional family was thrust into the limelight, we found network TV saturated with those types of sitcoms, so it seems now the pendulum swings back the other way.

Everyone seems to say "FOX/ABC/NBC/CBS is only pulling this show because the network execs don't understand it". No, what the network execs understand is that nielson ratings directly affect advertising revenue. If a given show doesn't get them enough eyeballs to cover the costs of the show AND profit from it, they'll drop it like a Vietnamese whore.

Honestly, I'm surprised to see John Doe stay as long as it has. In my opinion it is one of the best new shows out this year, because it has an interesting backstory (or rather, the fact that no one really knows the backstory is interesting, to me), and it makes you think to follow the plot.

But, in the words of Dennis Miller, those are just my opinions, I could be wrong.

Shayne

Re:Just Maybe ...

[perfessor multigeek]

In a perfect world, Mutant Enemy should take the whole thing in-house, produce episodes in DVD-resolution MPEG-4 format, and offer 'em for sale over the net for two bucks apiece.
Oh god, don't I wish. It would be a beautiful thing to see them loosen the network lease. On top of the obvious stuff, they would then be free to do whatever programming format they wanted. From what I've seen of Joss' style, I bet that he would love to, for example, be able to do a set of eight or ten minute eps on some one thing he's had crawling around in his head and wants to play with. Make 'em one dollar downloads (or less) and keep them up on a heavy duty site just pullin' in the bucks (a little at a time) for decades to come.

Never happen, though, because there's so fucking much piracy in the world, particularly so among Firefly's target audience, that the company would make about six dollars per episode and would go down faster than a two-bit whore.
Well, yes and no. Most revenue for shows like this is either in both being able to have *somebody* put it on the air (that brings in the initial dollars) and long-term syndication and single unit resale (DVD/download, etc.). The problems I see are both lack of a decent micropayment system out there, even now (wtf?) and short term DRM issues that mostly trace back to either the RIAA crowd or BillG. being (as usual) a dick.
In the long run I'm betting (no metaphor there since my company's future depends on it) that both of these issue will be resolved.

Here's hopin'
Rustin

Re:Just Maybe ...

[stephanruby]

Uh... yeah. Wha?

If you were going to be sarcastic, please use (sarcasm)(/sarcasm) tags. Buffy the vampire slayer is a horrible, horrible, show.

Re:Just Maybe ...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Buffy the vampire slayer is a horrible, horrible, show.

Your opinion is broken. There is no meaningful criteria by which Buffy could be considered a horrible show. The writing, story construction, acting, and technical aspects are all as good or better than any other show on TV.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[jasonditz]

If Firefly had C'tarl C'tarl in it, I'd have watched.

Good riddance

[brunes69]

If this is an "excellent" sc-fi show nowadays, then I fear the entire genre has gone to hell and back. This show was pure crap. It was probably the most boring show on TV, next to Dr. Phil or some other BS. I had the displeasure of watching it twice, decide dot put it on my blacklist after that. Who likes this stuff? It didn't even seem like sci-fi at all, more like a soap-opera in a giant tin can. Oh sorry, its in "a boat". My mistake. (Somehow, calling the ship a "boat" is supposed to make it hip and cool or soemthing)

Re:Good riddance

[jpt.d]

Can't agree with you more!

Boring is it.

I like other series like Andromeda mind you, they have some plot I like to it. Dare I say Babylon 5 (best one of all!)

Re:Good riddance

[geek]

"What would you call a good sci-fi show these days? (Serious question.)"

That's the whole problem. There isn't one.

Re:Good riddance

[brunes69]

Farscape is decent. I am not much of a fan or StarGate, but at least it is watchable and is sci-fi (unlike Firefly, which as I said is unwatchable and is a Soap Opera). Of course I used to like TNG and DS9.. I also like Enterprise (I am quite a trekkie).

Re:Good riddance

[Daemonik]

I also like Enterprise (I am quite a trekkie)

Okay, by that statement I take it that you watch Enterprise due to its loose connections to previous Trek series rather than any pretense that it is a well written and acted series, of which it is neither.

Enterprise is the worst crap that I have ever seen and I curse B&B for squeezing it out of their flaming assholes and subjecting us to it. Voyager was high art compared to Enterprise, and while they accentuated 7of9's body they didn't have to resort to Decon-goo rubdowns with hard-nippled Vulcans to gain viewership.

But then why resort to well written characters and plots when a little T&A brings in the crowds. Throw enough boobies at the audience and maybe they won't notice glaring contradictions like cowardly Klingons, emotional Vulcans, Romulans with cloaking devices prior to established canon, Ferengi, retread plots, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Re:Good riddance

[stefanlasiewski]

Certainly!

Check out the this B5 history guide for more info:

http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/history.html

Re:Good riddance

[taxman_10m]

The ads never made me want to watch it. FOX has cancelled much better shows like Space: Above and Beyond, Brimstone, and VR5.

Re:Good riddance

[PetriWessman]

If this is an "excellent" sc-fi show nowadays, then I fear the entire genre has gone to hell and back. This show was pure crap.

Frankly... what the hell is your problem? You've posted N messages here saying that you think the show is crap. Fine, we heard you the first time. Now go away. You don't like it fine, but a lot of other people love it and want to see it continue.

It didn't even seem like sci-fi at all, more like a soap-opera in a giant tin can.

Ah, I see. You're one of those people who equate "sci-fi" with technobabble, special effects and machines that go "beep". Fine, go watch Star Trek. Personally I like shows that put a bit more emphasis on character development and, you know, the story.

Re:Good riddance

[lactose99]

Whatever. I've yet to find a sci-fi show on television with the depth of characters that Firefly has. Stargate SG1 is a lame rehash and completely wasteful extension of what was once a lame 2-hour movie. Farscape was alright, kinda, until they started using the same empty plots for every freakin episode. Don't even get me started with Babylon 5 or any of the Star Trek repeat-o-crap series that keep coming out. Its like Roddenberry won't die!

Firefly really impressed me, and this is coming from someone who totally despises Buffy and other works of the producer. Every episode has been original, and the silent-pychological drama episodes are some of the best I've seen on television.

Re:Good riddance

[Wraithlyn]

Whoah! Did you just call Babylon 5 "repeat-o-crap" and liken it to the works of Roddenberry?

Babylon is ANYTHING but repetitive or derivative. It is quite simply the most epic science fiction saga every told on any type of screen. The series is structured like a novel, with each season in turn representing Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, Complications, Denouement. This is pretty much unique in American television, although B5's influence is starting to show up in other shows. Characters grow, love, laugh, hate, change, and die. Vast empires rise, clash, and fall. Conspiracies within conspiracies. Order versus chaos. Wars of aggression, idealogy, and liberation. Entire planets and civilizations burn. And every single episode ties into other episodes.. it's all interwoven so beautifully with a depth of foresight I've never, ever, seen before. Most episodes not only benefit from, but DEMAND repeat viewings to get everything from them. It also pioneered the regular use of CGI on a TV show, and was scientifically accurate enough for NASA to show a continuing interest. (Rotational gravity, realistic space flight physics, etc)

Now, I will agree that, strictly comparing FIRST SEASONS ONLY, Firefly has better character development and acting than B5. But overall storyline? Babylon is king. No contest. I have yet to meet ANYONE who has seen B5 in its entirety and claims another sci-fi show is better.

Do yourself a favour. Wait until Babylon 5 second season is out on DVD (should be early 2003). Borrow or rent the first two seasons. From season 1, watch "Signs and Portents", and "Chrysalis". Skip the rest of season 1 for now (go back once you're hooked to fill in the details), and then just start watching all of season 2, it's amazing once it gets going. And seasons 3 & 4 are even better. 5 is a BIT of a drop from the highs of 3 & 4, but it's still good stuff. And the series finale will leave you a tearful, emotional wreck... it's one of the bravest, most powerfully moving endings I've ever seen.

You DON'T know what you're missing.

Re:Good riddance

[Alex Thorpe]

My God! I thought that site had gone down a long time ago, and deleted my bookmark. Back in the mid-90's, it was the first website I'd learned the address of, before I had web access at home.(pathetic, isn't it?) That was back when it was hyperion.com, instead of midwinter.com. (and the cruiser Hyperion in "A Voice in the Wilderness" was named after the site!)

Re:Good riddance

[Alex Thorpe]

VOYAGER is high art in comparison? I find that statement shocking. I guess these are just opinions anyway, but I actually LIKE most of the Enterprise crew, which I can't say about, well, any of the Voyager crew, none of whom I'd have liked to have met in person.(well, perhaps the holographic doctor..) Both shows explore the unknown, but it seems more like it on Enterprise, where they're a little less sure of themselves and have a lot more diplomatic problems with people they just met(without degenerating into violence). Example: the people they mortally offended because they eat in public.

Re:Good riddance

[stefanlasiewski]

Yeah, I remember when the site was moved. For some reason, I have "The lurkers guide" burned into my brain...

Best show ever? IT SUCKED

[ppetrakis]

I even said so when it first aired.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=40356&cid=4301 310

My prediction came true too. :)

It just sucked on so many levels I don't know where to start. Oh, wait. The audience was supposed to immediatly get all the tounge and cheek humor etc etc right off the back. I mean after years of watching Buffy it shouldn't be a problem.

Though that was exactly it! It was Buffy in space! Same style of humor, different setting. Why the hell should I waste my time watching this??? I'd rather watch re-runs of the 5th Wheel.

I could write more about this piece of trash but instead I'll write another letter to SCIFI begging them to keep farscape. I'll be sure to mention to them that what's was firefly posing as their competition has decided to take a uh... vacation.

www.savefarscape.com

Peter

Re:Best show ever? IT SUCKED

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The audience was supposed to immediatly get all the tounge and cheek humor etc etc right off the back. [...] I could write more about this piece of trash but instead I'll write another letter to SCIFI begging them to keep farscape.

Anybody else catch the irony of this? At its best, Farscape was known to crack pretty wise, Peter.

Look at the view from orbit. Farscape had strong characters, conflict, a little sexual tension, humor, and muppets. Firefly has (had, whatever) strong characters, conflict, a little sexual tension, and humor; it lacked muppets, but it more than made up for them with its strict "no sound in space" policy and absolutely kick-ass production values.

Arguing that Firefly sucked while Farscape rocked just doesn't hold water. You're entitled to your opinion, natch, but don't try to dress it up as anything other than "I liked the Aussie show better."

Re:Best show ever? IT SUCKED

[Twirlip of the Mists]

There's really not one actor that that should quit his or her day job.

No? That's funny. Nathan Fillion was in Saving Private Ryan. Alan Tudyk was in A Knight's Tale and Wonder Boys. Adam Baldwin was in Full Metal Jacket, and about a hundred well-thought-of movies since. Ron Glass was in "Barney Miller," for chrissakes, and you don't diss any man who's shared the stage with Abe Vigoda.

This isn't an ensemble of nobodies, here. These guys aren't household names, but they're established character actors who've been around the block a few times, and who've got resumes that look a hell of a lot better than yours or mine, dude.

Re:Best show ever? IT SUCKED

[ttfkam]

After hearing the line, "...that's why I never kiss them on the mouth," I was hooked. If you don't remember the line, go back and watch the episodes again.

Totally deadpan. Perfect comedic timing by the entire cast. You're right, not one actor should quit his or her day job; This IS their day job.

Re:Best show ever? IT SUCKED

[jafac]

Sorry, it was the muppets for me. I just couldn't bear to watch it. I always expected the slug-king guy to break out into song every five minutes. (don't worry, I've always expected to see Kermit the Frog hanging out at Yoda's little mud hut on Dagobah).

Re:Best show ever? IT SUCKED

[Urox]

The acting is worse. The actors look like they are standing around the set uncertain of how their characters should act. Name one thing that "Ron Glass" character has done- one thing! Nothing, absolutely nothing. Name one thing the wacky girl has done - one thing! Nothing - Name one thing the whore has done - etc. The characters do nothing, they are boring and not at all engaging,

One (very memorable) thing Kaylee's done (the female engineer): did it with the previous engineer by firefly's main engine. Gotta give a girl credit for picking her place and objects of turn on ;).
One thing psychic girl's done: "corrected" the inconsistencies in the preacher's bible.

There are several things that each character has done. I'm not sure exactly how few episodes you watched to think otherwise. And exactly how many episodes have even been released? There's plenty of time for character development and I personally don't like everything packed into the first season while the rest contain the drivel of any other drama/relationship show.

Killing anything that isn't an instant hit

[Alien54]

They seem to have a mentality that says that anything that is not in the top ten, you cancel it.

Too bad each network has a few dozen shows to run each week.

This really gets back into the short term success syndrome that trashed Wall Street, among other things.

Re:Killing anything that isn't an instant hit

[Chemical]

Is that so surprising? The networks don't care about putting out quality shows. Nor do they care about the shows fans. They care about selling advertising. Shows are just filler for the ads. A show could be the highest art ever created, but if no one is watching it, then advertising revenues will be low and the show will be pulled. It's not to their benefit to wait and hope a show catches on. For them it is better to replace it quickly and hope whatever fills that time slot will get more people watching ads.

Re:Killing anything that isn't an instant hit

[ameoba]

I think the whole entertainment industry is going the same direction. The music industry is also going for flash in the pan one hit wonders, ignoring the artist development aspect of things. Why wouldn't they? An unknown artist, or even just a pretty-face w/ good dance moves, is going to get a lousy contract on their first record. After the first record they're in a better bargaining position, since they have a fan-base. The record company is just concerned about the bottom line & sticks to the high-margin stuff where they are completely in control.

I'd have to assume that TV shows are similar. It's easier to hype new shows & the producers don't have much leverage in contracting. Barring a major hit, it's easier to get people to watch a new show than it is to build up a loyal fanbase.

Re:Killing anything that isn't an instant hit

[tcc]

>This really gets back into the short term success syndrome that trashed Wall Street, among other things.

My point exactly. By giving us 1 or 2 seasons of each new show, and killing them off the bat, you piss off an audience... do it 3-4 times, and that audience will either not bother, or wait a year and download/grab recorded tapes of all of the previous episodes to catch up, or do exactly EVERYTHING exept what they'd hope they'd succeed by doing that.

Let's see... B5 crusade, cancelled at S1, leaving all of the suspense and not even bothered to end it in a "plausible" way. Simply cutted off.

Birds of prey, S1 cutoff. not that I really enjoyed the show that much (that telepathetic girl, I just can't look at her face). But still, there's was potential there.

Firefly, just when I was grasping the roles and started to want to follow it every week, bang, I hear it gets cut off.

Family guy, who doesn't like family guy? Cut off it seems as well.

Meanwhile you had Xfiles running for over 10 seasons and sucked more and more, southpark beating the same dead horse and not being funny anymore, buffy that litterally sucked 10x worse than any of the cancelled show in it's 6th season where she shoud have remained dead and it would have been one of the best series ending they would have got for such a show (at least they catched up a bit this year), etc etc...

My point is if I'm to get into a show that will get cancelled, I might as well buy a book, or make it a freaking 2 hours TV special or mini series, don't call it a new staroff or spinoff if you're not going to keep it.

The analogy I'd give is that on a windows system, Format C:\ and reinstalling it doesn't cure all of the problem, especially if the user made a bad manipulation or installed crappy software and reinstalls it after reinstalling windows, you end up with the same problem. Same goes with shows on TV, they use the same concept to another plot/time/blabla, and they hope this time the mix will work.

Then again, when you see stuff like Dr. Phil picking up ratings through the roof, you wonder how bad the target audience is ;).

Re:Killing anything that isn't an instant hit

[Alex Thorpe]

Sounds like an unfortunate truth, but there's NO show out there in the history of TV that'll make me pay attention to the damned ads!

Not according to Fox...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was browsing the Fox firefly boards (fox.com/firefly) today and a lot of people there know about this "hiatus" already.

It's possible show has been cancelled but, AFAIK, the "official" word from Fox is that they are going to "heavily" promote the show in December (next new ep is Dec. 6), and see if the ratings pick up. If not, it's gone.

Currently the show has 13 episodes filmed (I think, don't quote me) and a few more (up to 4) scripts ordered. If they were going to cancel it I think they would just come out and say it, rather then beat about the bush like they seem to be doing.

It would be a shame, IMO, if they cancelled it. Some of the eps were not very good (including the pilot...) but others ("Out of Gas", "Our Mrs. Renyolds") were fantastic.

Did fox even try?

[stefanlasiewski]

Damn, I like the show. Flawed characters, dark universe, and plots that didn't always wrap up cleanly at the end of the hours. It's like the first season of Babylon 5, which ended up being the-best-scifi-show-ever (At least in my universe of non-cable TV).

But I see that I'm in the minority.

Fox never even tried:
- They never showed the pilot, which probably explained some of the 'why' behind the creepy universe
- Never seen an ad or promotion for the show outside of ./ . Honestly.
- It's on Friday night. Most Friday night shows seem to fail. Firefly is the best show that I never watch. Why? I'm usually doing something that night, and I'm the idiot who always forgets to program his VCR, comes home at midnight and slaps his hand against his forehead.

It never had a chance to get off the ground. But then, this is Fox: Beater of dead horses.

Re:Did fox even try?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It's on Friday night. Most Friday night shows seem to fail.

"Lise, when you get a little older, you'll realise that Friday is just another day between NBC's Must-See Thursday and CBS's Saturday night Crap-o-Rama."

Once again, everything I really needed to know about life, I learned from "The Simpsons."

Re:Did fox even try?

[SnakeEyes]

The problem with fox is multi-layered.

First, they did not air the pilot episode, which right out of the gates, was a mistake. I have seen the pilot, entitled "Serenity" (thank you, Kazaa!) and let me tell you, it rocked. Who needs aliens when you have Reavers!!

Second, the episodes that *have* been aired have all been out of order. I think the order they have showed them in is three, four, seven, eight, nine or something like that.
The reason? Fox didn't "get" some of the episodes so they aired them in the order they liked.

The terribly ironic part of this is that most people unanimously agree that the show got MUCH better as it went along. Lets face it, the first few episodes were mildly amusing at best, but the last 4 or so have kicked all sorts of ass.

Finally, as for why the show has been placed on hiatus. Fox really liked the last episode aired ("Ariel") and the decision was made to get it out of friday night hell. It was going to be moved to the wednesday 9pm/ET timeslot. The problem? WB announced earlier this week that Angel (another Joss Whedon show) was getting that timeslot.

Fox had no place to put it (Note: please please please make it monday at 9pm) for now so they have decided to place it on hiatus for now.

I don't think its necessarily cancelled. It certainly would be a small tradgedy. First family guy now this.

Re:Did fox even try?

[NeuroKoan]

Oh this is great. You quote the Simpsons (save for a typo) and you get modded as (+1 Informative). I want to find the moderator that did this and give his moderation a (+1 Funny).

Oh yeah, your post would get a (+1 Funny) from me if I had points.

Re:Did fox even try?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

To both you and NeuroKoan: not a typo. Bart doesn't say "Lisa," he says "Lise." Pronounced like "lease."

As to why it was moderated Informative, I will not pretend to understand.

Re:Did fox even try?

[PetriWessman]

The terribly ironic part of this is that most people unanimously agree that the show got MUCH better as it went along. Lets face it, the first few episodes were mildly amusing at best, but the last 4 or so have kicked all sorts of ass.

Yeah. The original pilot (which they didn't show) kicks ass. The first two episodes they showed were mediocre - not bad, but not great. Then comes "Our Mrs. Reynolds", which made me go whaaaat? at one point and for good makes it clear that this is not Star Trek. Trek would never dare to do the things that this episode did. So now I have a problem, I'm really starting to like the show and now it's possibly getting cancelled. First Farscape, now this..

To people who didn't like the first few episodes... watch the third episode. If you don't like that fine, the series is not your cup of tea. But don't judge it on the basis of the first few eps, they don't do the show justice.

It's clear that this is a series that mixes genres, and if you want your science fiction in the squeaky clean Star Trek fashion you will not like this. But please don't go around spouting nonsense like "it's not science fiction, it has some low-tech in it!". Go to the library, read a pile of good science fiction - start with Ken MacLeod if you will - then come back and discuss.

Related Story on 'Ain't It Cool'

[Remik]

The re-tooled fox schedule can be seen here.

They leave hope that 'Firefly' may be moved to the Monday 9/8c timeslot at a later date. Hiatus doesn't always mean a show is canceled. 'Andy Richter Controls the Universe' is coming back soon after an extended break, for which I am thankful.

-R

Re:Related Story on 'Ain't It Cool'

[mshiltonj]

'Andy Richter Controls the Universe' is coming back soon after an extended break, for which I am thankful.

You said it! That's one the few funny shows on TV left. I haven't miss a single one of the (four?) episodes aired so far. Looking forward to the new episodes.

Crazy like the FOX NETWORK!

[very]

It is no surprise because it is not Malcolm in The Middle in the eye of FOX executives.

FOX is not SCI-FI friendly.

Remember FUTURAMA, it's been on the edge of cancellation almost every season.

Doesn't matter iof FIREFLY is a good show, it is no TEMPTATION ISLAND!

FOX is the greatest, FOR ME TO POOP ON!

Only THE SIMPSONS remains.

Re:Crazy like the FOX NETWORK!

[Dr. Spork]

Oh no... this Simpsons is my favorite show bar none, but I must say that I would rather see it die than to see Firefly canceled. The Simpsons is completely out of ideas, and for a real fan, watching an episode now is torture. For the last six years or so I've always had friends over for The Simpsons. They brought beer, I cooked and we were all great fans. Well, guess what... they're not invited anymore. The low quality of the new episodes usually leaves in such a foul mood that we now prefer to go out to drink and eat on Sunday night.

Firefly isn't like that. Each Firefly episode is better written/acted/produced than 80% of the movies from Hollywood. Believe me, I am incredibly picky about both technical and story details, but I can't find anything in Firefly to object to. And the episodes are interesting, funny and ... just fucking good.

If Firefly were on SciFi, it would be by far their biggest and best show, because they would at least promote it right.

I liked it......

[ericdano]

I thought the 5th episode was rather good. The pilot, which you can download off Kazaa was really what they should have showed first. That really was well done compared to the first episode they showed (the train heist one).

But really, compared to Enterprise, it was different and interesting. Some episodes are better than others, but the last few were getting good.

It is too bad we really are locked into this Star Trek type of Sci-Fi on the main channels. You have to get SciFi to get Farscape, and most people don't get SciFi.

Is there some petition somewhere to save the show?

Firefly is way cool

[dfn5]

I discovered Firefly two months ago when it was a Slashdot poll and now I'm hooked. That would totally suck if it was cancelled... I reckon.

Re:Firefly is way cool

[jmauro]

I like the show, which is usually a death nell for any show on TV. It's going to be cancelled.

Re:Firefly is way cool

[shayne321]

I like the show, which is usually a death nell for any show on TV. It's going to be cancelled.

Haha, glad to see I'm not the only one this happens to. Of the new shows this year, here are the ones I like(d): MDs (on hiatus, will probably be cancelled), Push Nevada (cancelled before they even aired all of the episodes they PAID for), Fastlane (still on the air, but they're giving it Firefly's time slot, look for it to be cancelled by february), Firefly (future obviously in doubt), and lastly John Doe (haven't heard much about future direction for it).

Maybe I should do the world a favor and start liking crap like Dawson's creek, buffy, and american idol. blech.

Shayne

Unexpected answer to earlier story

[bstadil]

(And yet, somehow, Just Shoot Me continues...)

This would have been a perfectly good answer to the story earlier about likelyhood of OpenSource going mainstream. Why would anyone want OpenSource to do just that.

Joe Doe

[ericdano]

You know, I wish Fox would can that lame John Doe show, and would promote Firefly more. Joe Doe is total trash. Nothing new in that show.

Re:Joe Doe

[ericdano]

John Doe? High Brow? Right......NOT

It's a rip of Pretender. We've been there, done that. It's predictable. Very predictable.

Firefly really should have started with the first 2 hour pilot. I think the writing could have been better on some episodes, but there is a lot of potential in the show......

Maybe UPN will pick it up.........?!?

Re:Joe Doe

[unitron]

Actually John Doe is much more a plagarizing of Coronet Blue than it is of The Pretender.

Bucking the trend gets you hammered...

[silentbozo]

Firefly is a great example of a show that runs counter to every trend on tv today. It is not dialogue driven - instead of shooting two pages of script per minute (like Friends), they're content with shooting maybe a half a page. There is no formulaic bad guy vs. good guy, with predictable special effects climax every episode. It is serial - every episode builds on previous episodes to develop the characters, instead of waiting a few seasons to give each character a defining moment.

Basically, it's a throwback to TV of maybe 40 years ago, with a deliberately slower pacing. As a result, it's pissing off executives, all of whom grew up on MTV and who are twiching for more dialogue, more scenes, more explosions. They don't feel that they're getting their money's worth, thus, lots of pressure on Josh to either change the show, or get quashed.

I only hope someone on one of the cable channels (SciFi, or Showtime) picks up Firefly, so I'll be able to catch the rest of the series when they syndicate it...

Mark my words, eventually all you'll see on network TV is Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, and America's Most Dangerous Police Chases, and the crap that they like to pass off as the nightly news. I only hope that we can limit the brain-damaged execs just to network tv, and keep stuff like PBS and cable relatively uncontaminated.

Re:Bucking the trend gets you hammered...

[geek]

gee it couldn't just be that the show sucks could it?

I mean your points may very well be valid, but honestly, I don't know a single person that likes the show.

Re:Bucking the trend gets you hammered...

[Ed Avis]

I don't think slower pacing is something you can associate with older TV. Compare a 1956 episode of Bilko with a present-day episode of Days of Our Lives or equivalent soap. Pacing depends on the genre. If anything shows seem to be getting slower - or maybe it's just that I am becoming more impatient.

The Trouble With Sci-Fi TV

[USC-MBA]

Its really quite simple: it's a question of finding and developing a market. If you can do this, you're sold. If not, you're welcome to find a spot on the giant heap of failed products to toss your burnt-out husk of a show.

A Sci-Fi televison show is one of the trickiest of products to sell because the consumer base is much too fragmented. You have your "hard sci-fi" fans, your sci-fantasy/space opera buffs, your military SF fans, your fans who always want a "Politically Correct" message, etc.

With such multipolar market psychographics, the tendency is to try to be safe and give the show "something for everyone". Of course, the result is invariably a fragmented mess of a show, and the viewers stay away in droves: thus Firefly. Occasionally, a television show will be able to pull off the trick of satisfying most if not all of the sci-fi consumer market, Star Trek: TNG being the classic example, but such instances are far and few between.

A simpler strategy is to go for a single segment of the target market, and hope that a cult following develops, one which may even blossom into a mass following. These types of show are usually seen in syndication or on smaller networks. Successful examples of this type of show include Buffy The Vampire Slayer (target market: Goths) and Xena, Warrior Princess (target market: Lesbians).

In retrospect, it is obvious that Firefly was much too ambitious a show. The producers of the show took a big chance, and they failed big-time. It didn't help matters that the show was badly written - they couldn't even get the title right: how many sci-fi fans are going to get excited about watching a show called "Firefly"? - and shown in an unfriendly time slot. Television programmers developing future sci-fi shows would do well to pay better attention to the people who watch them.

Re:The Trouble With Sci-Fi TV

[mpe]

First, Star Trek in its latest three incarnations either didn't do well in the ratings(DS9)

Yet oddly quite a few fans very much like DS9

or were reviled by most of the ST fans (Voyager and Enterprise).

Voyager was critiques as being ST-PC and Enterprise for rewriting ST history

Second, what think are the target markets are questionable. Goths for Buffy? Buffy's target audience, if anything, is women 18-30 (whether they are goths or not, which incidently is too small a demographic.) And, while Xena had a cult lesbian following, its main audience was 14+ boys/men (hey how can you resist the cleavage?)

Buffy also attracted a cult lesbian following too, possibly even exactly the same people as Xena. Since in both cases they wanted the show rewritten to suit their worldview.

Re:The Trouble With Sci-Fi TV

[mikerich]

First, Star Trek in its latest three incarnations either didn't do well in the ratings(DS9), or were reviled by most of the ST fans (Voyager and Enterprise).

Oh be far - it wasn't just the ST fans who reviled 'Voyager', those of us who hate and loathe all things ST despised it as well.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:The Trouble With Sci-Fi TV

[fishexe]

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (target market: Goths)

I don't know a single goth who likes Buffy. In fact most of them can't stand it. Now I know many geeks who posess a few goth tendencies (vampire larping, avoiding sunlight, wearing black) who absolutely love the show, but they don't make a lifestyle out of the goth culture and hence aren's really goths. Just geeks.

Re:The Trouble With Sci-Fi TV

[Dr. Spork]

While I agree with you that "Firefly" is a stupid show title, I vehemently disagree that the show was written badly. God damn. There has not been better writing on television ever. Ever! Maybe the Simpsons in their prime had tighter writing. Maybe occasional stretches of the Twilight Zone. Maybe Hitchcock. But in my opinion, no season of any show ever made has been as consistently well-written as the first season of Firefly. This is the sort of thing I might say when drunk, when I tend to exaggerate, but today I'm quite sober and still feel the same way.

Goddamn it! I wanna see more episodes!!!

It has to be said

[Obiwan Kenobi]

This is not flamebait.

I watched Firefly for a few episodes and found it very boring. The only part that was slightly interesting (the hidden crush thing) was overcome with the hokey idea of the gunslinger in space theme that, while interesting, was never taken advantage of, and therefore it lost viewers.

I'm sure showing the pilot would've helped the show, but the first three episodes that aired (the only ones I watched), just got more and more drab. It would've been nice to actually seen the origins of these characters but, gathering what I did on those that aired, the whole thing was a misfire. Regardless of its cult-like status (whenever a show is beginning it falter and the three people who like it complain, suddenly there's a "cult"), maybe Josh Wheadon doesn't have the golden goose.

You want to see a high-concept new show that's actually worth your hour? Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing. While it can't be this good for long, it sure beats Firefly.

Good riddance.

Re:It has to be said

[quantaman]

Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing.

Did you watch the same John Doe I did? All it does is find horribly contrived situations in which to demonstrate his super intellect which half the time doesn't even make sense, what does leg length and shoe size have to do with a theoretical maximum sprint speed?!? Is it a popular show? Maybe I don't know the numbers, but I have never heard it refered to as a good show. Firefly is a good show, it may not be popular among a wide audience but I'vwe seen very few bad reviews. The advantage of John Doe over Firefly is John Doe has one essentially 1-1/2 dimensional main character and a couple of subcharacters with relatively plot lines so you don't have to get into it. Firefly on the other hand has a pile of major multi-dimensional characters with complex plot lines. When it comes down to it Firefly can never be wildly popular, it's just too complex, too many characters and a too involved plot. Was Babylon 5 widly popular or is Buffy? No, both have a very dedicated audience but never had huge numbers, they were just too involved for the average viewer. Name a single widly popular show with more than a few complex main characters. X-files had 2, the origional Star Trek had about 4, Seinfeld had 4. Firefly is just too complicated not to mention the episodes were out of order on top of it making even harder to get into to ever be popular but this doesn't mean it won't be good.

Re:It has to be said

[Squideye]

What's the difference between John Doe and The Pretender?

Firefly, like Futurama, was something we hadn't seen before at all. What's amazing is how well they were done off the bat.

Re:It has to be said

[British]

The Pretender had a strong story line behind its main theme. Sure, Jarod disguised himself as someone to befriend the bad guy and teach him/her a lesson, but the constantly unraveling story of his past(trying to find his parents) and Ms. Parker's drama versus the Centre always kept strong.

That's what made it good. Real shame it was canceled for the flop known as the XFL.

Re:It has to be said

[mshiltonj]

Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing.

Solid writing? Surely, you jest.

Here is a line of dialog from the show. I will never forget it:

"You're ball-and-chained and you don't even know who your sig-other is?"

It's so bad, it's funny.

Re:It has to be said

[Black Parrot]

> I'm sure showing the pilot would've helped the show, but the first three episodes that aired (the only ones I watched), just got more and more drab.

Sounds like you stopped watching just about the time it got good.

The down side, at least as far as popularity goes, is that you had to watch it regularly to understand the characters and their relations and motivations. Someone who watched the most recent episode out of the blue might have been baffled about what was going on - let alone why it was going on - but anyone who had seen the character-building episodes leading up to it would have been dazzled (if they like the genre at all).

> You want to see a high-concept new show that's actually worth your hour? Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing.

Oh, please. JD's writers aren't trying to do anything but jerk your chain every week, and they're not even doing a good job of that. JD is targeted squarely at the mass market, not at fans of SF or The X Files. Google for the surveys on rec.arts.sf.tv and see how SF fans' respect for the show has plummeted since about the third episode, and compare that to their response to Firefly.

FOX decided to keep JD not because it's a good show, but because it makes a mass-market appeal to the world's bon-bon eating couch potatos. That sells lots of bon-bon commercials, you know.

Re:It has to be said

[Apostata]

Quote: "All it does is find horribly contrived situations in which to demonstrate his super intellect which half the time doesn't even make sense, what does leg length and shoe size have to do with a theoretical maximum sprint speed?!?"

Would you like to go back in time, think for three seconds, and re-type that?

Re:It has to be said

[J. J. Ramsey]

"I watched Firefly for a few episodes and found it very boring."

Understandable. The first couple episodes of Firefly weren't that impressive. Somehow the tension was lacking. From the episode "Out of Gas" onward, though, Firefly had gotten up to speed.

Re:It has to be said

[jafac]

The only part that was slightly interesting (the hidden crush thing) was overcome with the hokey idea of the gunslinger in space theme that, while interesting, was never taken advantage of, and therefore it lost viewers.

If anything, the "gunslinger" theme, I thought, was the show's weakest point.

For me - it represented a huge forced inconsistency for style's sake. For example, the clothing, the weapons, the furniture, the architecture - all represents a primative technology - and while you could accept that culture might "devolve" to "America old-west" in a post-colonial development and expansion period, which is what this show represents - there's just no damn good reason why the people should wear handmade vintage clothing, eat on old rough-hewn wooden tables, pump water out of the ground with a hand pump, fight with swords or .45 cal. revolvers.

Do they mean to say that back on earth (or on some backwater planet) there still aren't sweatshops full of illiterate children with non-white skin mass producing clothing and furniture for $2.00 a month? Do they mean to say that there's any significant advantage in a fight-situation to using an antique revolver compared to a plasma pistol with laser sighting?

The concept is nice, but it's over done to the point of illogic, and needs more work. (or at least more thought). In my opinion.

However, I really do like the show, watch it fairly religiously (when my DishPlayer doesn't fuck up) and will miss it.

I agree on John Doe. It's "The Pretender" with at least half a brain. (best part: bad guys who fail to "get" the good guy, are killed for their failures. Fired would even be good enough.) But I assume they'll cancel this one too.

Re:It has to be said

[jafac]

though, if I were the Centre, I would have fired Ms. Parker about 6 seasons ago for gross incompetence. That part always really pissed me off, and this one small thing just made the show completely unwatchable for me.

Re:It has to be said

[mikerich]

You had me until you called Seinfeld's four main characters "complex".

Look, I could write a PERL script to be George. All it would have to do is whine and piss me off and grunt and writhe around when I kick it lots of times in the balls. I REALLY hate that character.

OK, maybe I shared too much. : )

Yes, but don't you feel better for doing so?

Best wishes,
Mike.

for the better

[kosipov]

Shows like Firefly give bad name to scifi genre. I've seen every episode of the show except for the pilot and everyone of them was a shameless ripoff of a 50's spaghetti western show dressed up as scifi. It is difficult to translate good science fiction literature to film and even more difficult to translate it to TV series because the best scifi (IMHO) deals with a new ideas and how these ideas shape the environment and behavior of people. I consider books by Neal Stephenson or Vernor Vinge to be in this category -- they are popularly known as hard scifi. The other end of the spectrum are the books that use unusual setting like space ships or exotic planets to suspend disbelief in order to expose fundamental and unchanging elements of human behavior by putting characters into unlikely situations. Solaris which is coming out on big screen is allegedly this kind of a movie. Succeeding in this category requires a truly gifted director who can get the most out of actors and the human elements of the script.

Sucked at first, got a LOT better

[Control-Z]

The first few episodes weren't great at all. I was about to stop watching, but somebody lent me a couple more taped episodes and they were really good. Good old Josh has struck a great combination of interesting characters, unusual situations, and funny dialog. There's just something appealing about a honorable thief and his crew of misfits.

If it really gets cancelled I will definitely miss it, best SciFi since ST:TNG.

Re:Sucked at first, got a LOT better

[ericdano]

Exactly! I really think the 2 hour pilot should have been showed first. That was really well done in my opinion.

Re:Sucked at first, got a LOT better

[Dr. Spork]

All I can say is: Try to watch all the Fireflys in order, and then watch some ST:TNG episodes... and you'll puke. I'm serious. I was a HUGE TNG fan, and my girlfriend and I recently got every single one of the Voyager episodes and we are watching them all in order. Anyway, this is good bonding time, and I want to keep doing it (we have it set up so we watch from bed), so I've strictly forbidden her from watching Firefly, because I am really scared that if she saw an episode, she'd think the whole Star Trek think is just really really stiff and stupid and preachy and ugly and very badly thought out and full of plot holes and bad acting.

Firefly is what Star Trek might have looked like if Roddenberry were a more intelligent and less prude man.

Unfortunately, this is not the time that Americans like to think of the world from an "outsider" perspective... you know, from the point of view of people opressed by a big and technologically advanced empire, people who are forced to rely on centuries-old technology to simply survive. Americans don't want to consider the notion that such people might be the good guys, because they are too much like the Afghanis and Iraquis that our empire is so busy trying to kill and demoralize.

I wouldn't be surprised if this political element played some role in the crappy timeslots, lack of advertising and eventual cancellation. Remember, FOX is pretty much the official news network of the Cheney/Rumsfeld administration.

Recurring Theme... lesson learned

[Kaypro]

I'm not surprised.

I got hooked on "Space Above and Beyond"... canceled
I then got hooked on "Earth 2"... canceled

I knew as soon as I got into Firefly that it would probably have the same ending. It seems the general population can't appreciate simple, innocent humor and are too impatient to let the characters develop. If the orginal Star Trek didn't have such a cult following I wouldn't have been surprised if TNG got canceled after the first season as well (which obviously turned out to be a great show ! :)

Yet another sign of societies seemingly downward spiral... hopefully not I hope.

I'd rather watch Red Dwarf

[Mustang Matt]

Red Dwarf was much more entertaining than firefly.

The one episode I saw wasn't terrible but it wasn't great either.

Re:I'd rather watch Red Dwarf

[G-funk]

Red dwarf is more entertaining that just about anything... Don't think it'd go down well with the unwashed american masses tho, or the new generation of "baby americans" they're breeding in the rest of the world who believe friends is the pinnacle of mankind's creation.

Re:I'd rather watch Red Dwarf

[Alex Thorpe]

Red Dwarf is great, but I know some people, including relatives, that just don't get 'British Humor', and have no use for Red Dwarf, Monty Python, Black Adder, etc.

Re:I'd rather watch Red Dwarf

[G-funk]

True, but as a rule I don't like british humour either... Very little monty python amuses me, i hate black adder, i loath bottom and the young ones, and mr bean got real old real quick. But bugger me I love the dwarf :)

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[leonbev]

Honestly, I wasn't a fan of this show, either. The whole "Gunsmoke in space" theme wasn't working for me, as I REALLY can't believe that human beings will still be having sword fights and rustling cattle two centries from now.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

the whole show was just a ripoff of Outlaw Star anyway.

That bitch is about five months out of date. Before the show debuted, lots of know-it-alls were comparing it to Outlaw Star. Since the show's been on, the only people to draw that comparison have been people who've never watched Firefly.

Complain all you want, but at least make a passing effort to stay up-to-date.

HEY

[Valar]

I like just shoot me!

Somebody mentioned nielsen earlier...

[sawilson]

I'm thoroughly convinced the entire nielsen
system needs scrapped. It's outdated, and
not representative anymore. How hard would it
be to come up with a better system? How inexpensive
would it be to poll directv customers to see if
they'd be cool with having their viewing habits
monitored? Or cable customer for that matter? In
this age of computers, how hard would it be to
compile data if every single viewer ELECTED to participate
in this type of monitoring? Not very hard me thinks.
Those nielsen ratings are why morons like Barry Diller
decides he doesn't like "space shows" and why
they do dumb shit like show freaking Braveheart
on SciFi now.

Re:Somebody mentioned nielsen earlier...

[Wraithlyn]

Yeah, but look what happened when the music industry started tracking every single record sale. All of a sudden they realized Hip Hop sold like mad, and now it's everywhere.

Polling everyone is only going to confirm that most people like lowbrow garbage. Most people are morons, so we will continue to be shovelled cheap, instant gratification drivel.

Counter trend? Look to daytime TV

[brunes69]

There is no formulaic bad guy vs. good guy, with predictable special effects climax every episode. It is serial - every episode builds on previous episodes to develop the characters, instead of waiting a few seasons to give each character a defining moment.

Sound familliar to another genre perhaps? You don't have to go back 40 years to see this style. As I said above, Firefly is nothing more than a crappy space soap opera. That is why it is being canned. Sci-Fi fans like me don't want to watch Days of Our Lives on a "space boat". We want interesting, believable stories with a scientificlly plausable background at least (not some faster than light boat that uses a gear powered engine). The show was horrible. It is over with. Move on.

Re:Counter trend? Look to daytime TV

[blincoln]

(not some faster than light boat that uses a gear powered engine).

Maybe you can clue us in as to what a real FTL drive looks like?

Why is it so implausible that technology from 500 years in the future still has some mechanical components? Just because Rick Berman and Michael Pillar explode in a jizz-supernova every time their design department comes up with a new neon-tube-covered warp core with no moving parts doesn't make that the authoritative statement on what it would look like in real life, assuming it were possible.

Re:Counter trend? Look to daytime TV

[mpe]

We want interesting, believable stories with a scientificlly plausable background at least (not some faster than light boat that uses a gear powered engine).

What exactly is wrong with a FTL drive with components which spin. Not that is unique to "Firefly". Landing using swiveling engines looks a lot better than having some invisible AG drive too.

Re:Counter trend? Look to daytime TV

[RobinH]

not some faster than light boat that uses a gear powered engine

So, apparently you hated _The Time Machine_. After all, the idea of having to use kinetic energy during the process of converting energy from one form to another is completely implausible.

Re:Counter trend? Look to daytime TV

[Dr. Spork]

Right, and besides, there have been endless rants written on how the warp drive is a totally stupid notion, and how the people who conceived it did not even have an undergraduate understanding of relativistic physics.

The thing you forgot to mention is that Firefly is not a superluminal ship. I've seen all the episodes (not the pilot) and there has been no mention that it can travel faster than light.

Though it does seem like they get from place to place pretty fast... maybe that's just a plot gap to keep the FOX executives happy.

They cancelled a good show

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Remember they cancelled another good scifi show they could show this tripe. Dark Angel was infinitely better then Firefly IMHO.

Re:Time slot to blame

[geek]

It's Dark Angels old time slot. That's why Dark Angel got canceled. I mean Jessica Alba rocks but on a Friday night I'm looking for the real thing.

I hate Firefly with a passion, it wouldn't have done well in any time slot, but that slot sucks for any show.

At least they didn't have sound in a vacuum

[_UnderTow_]

One thing that Firefly got right was that whenever the camera was in the vacuum of space there was no sound. That's one thing that's always bugged me about sci-fi shows.

Why the show failed (in my own case)

[tftp]

Sci-fi is an abbreviation of "science" and "fiction". Not much of that can be found in a souped-up version of a western. Myself, I am not interested in cattle, dances around fire, or various other intrigues of the sort.

The show failed because it never had an audience. Science aspects of the show (as much as I could suffer through) are abysmal; one can find more science in "The He-Man" :-) Fiction aspects (human relationships) are hardly appealing to technologically inclined. Style of a western best caters to my grand-grand-parents. So who is left there to watch?

For me, the show was not interesting. I watched only 1/2 of an episode; could not tolerate more. If there are good scenes elsewhere, I will never see them, because I am not willing to dig through a huge heap of junk for that. Yes, episodes are available on the Net. But they are not worth a blank CD.

However, Lexx is interesting, and Farscape, because these are shows which build their own Universe and play by the rules of that Universe. These show's writers have imagination. I like that.

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[Daemonik]

Sci-fi is an abbreviation of "science" and "fiction". Not much of that can be found in a souped-up version of a western. Myself, I am not interested in cattle, dances around fire, or various other intrigues of the sort.

Well, when they get around to making Junkyard Wars in Space, I guess you'll be in heaven. No character development, no plot, just a bunch of rewired tech for the sake of rewiring tech.

For me, one of the wonderful things about Firefly was the fact that they treated technology naturally, just something that you used and no big deal about it. Nobody goes about their daily lives discussing how to rework a dilithium matrix to increase efficiency that extra .001%.

The fun was seeing how this Universe worked, how there could be a vastly technological core of planets vs. outer colonies reduced to using wagons and horses. Sometimes the interesting bits are the most overlooked.

Lexx is interesting

Okay, you bitch about the representation of technology in Firefly and then say that Lexx was interesting? WTF?!? Have you no values?

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[ttfkam]

In how many episodes did they tend cows? I only remember one and it was only in the tail end of the episode (the last minute or two). You're overreacting.

You want to know all of the details? Do you care about the details of a street light? How about the details of your car's air conditioner? How about the portable space heater? How about the fabric blend of your sweater? These are all things that four hundred years ago would have been absolutely shocking and exciting. Light without fire!?! Wow! But in reality, most people (even geeks) just take the light on the streets for granted, think air-conditioner == freon + compressor that keeps you cool, a heater is just an electrical resistor that keeps you warm, and the sweater is 30% cotton and also helps keep you warm. Would you watch a show where they examined the tech behind a streetlight for the whole episode, would you find that terribly stimulating? I wouldn't.

Now remember that Serenity is a simple, not very flashy, old, stand-by workhorse freighter. Are there some details? Sure. The mechanic is always elbow-deep in the details. She's constantly talking about tweaking this and that and the other. But there's a minimum of blinking lights and what widget X or Y gets them faster than light doesn't matter. Let's say they tell you the blow by blow schematics for the faster-than-light drive. Then what? It can't drive a show. It's pointless. FTL doesn't exist and any "explanation" of how it works is useless technobabble that appeals to folks who can't grasp personal interaction.

You speak of Picard's ability to reason his way out of a situation. I challenge you to demonstrate a moment on the show where the captain of Serenity was given a simple problem or solved a problem in an unreasonable fashion.

Tractors require fuel. Constantly replenished sources of fuel. Fuel on any non-trivial scale is dependant upon refineries. You don't just hook up a gas tank to a natural oil reserve. So, assuming that there is a ready supply of fossil fuels, they must also build and maintain a refinery. Otherwise they must get their fuel supplies from off-world. They constantly talk about trips from planet to planet taking from days to weeks. If the people on the planet are poor and basically just surviving, how can the costs of transport for that fuel on a recurring basis be handled?

The fact of the matter is that horses are cheaper to raise and maintain than a tractor is. And a horse generates fertilizer. A tractor just spits out fumes.

Right now, you can go just anywhere on the planet within one day. But imagine it took three weeks to get to Japan from Brazil. Supply lines would be much more expensive, communication would be much more limited, casual trips would be rare, and the one without as many natural resources would be reduced to poverty and meager subsistence.

This is why I like Firefly. No rubber ears. No green people. No transporter accidents. Just people trying to make a life for themselves -- and they happen to be in a very plausible future.

Human interaction is and always will be more important than psuedo-tech minutia just as family, friends, my girlfriend, and my community are all more important to me than my computer. If your tech is more important to you than these things, I pity you. I really do.

Re: Why the show failed (in my own case)

[Black Parrot]

> Sci-fi is an abbreviation of "science" and "fiction".

Sit down, I have some news that may shock you.

Science fiction isn't about science. It's just a setting; all the usual requirements for good storytelling still apply.

If you want science, go to grad school in a science field. If science fiction shows peddled real science they would be somewhat less popular than Alan Alda's Scientific American Frontiers. (I say "somewhat less" because even PBS's science shows tend to be watered down with a lot of human interest fluff. Take that out and the viewership would be even lower.)

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[mpe]

The fact of the matter is that horses are cheaper to raise and maintain than a tractor is. And a horse generates fertilizer. A tractor just spits out fumes.

Horses also self repair and produce new horses. There is also a lot more meat on a horse than on a tractor.

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[mpe]

Is it too much to assume that in 500 years from now a pocket battery can be more powerful than 1000 horses?

Do you really want to put something like that in your pocket? Anyway in order to be useful you need machines to charge and use this 1,000 Hp battery. How much would these cost, maybe more than a thousand horses.

Now I know why all farmers in USA switched to horses, away from their tractors and harvesters :-) The *real* fact of the matter is that horses get sick, injured, want to eat, and they can drag only one plow blade; a tractor can manage tens of blades, can be repaired (or replaced), and can be refueled in a moment.

It wasn't that long ago that farmers in the US used horses. A tractor being easy to fix and fuel requires a huge infrastructure to make that the case. There are plenty of examples of agricultural machinary sent to countries without that infrastructure proving to be worst than useless, since waiting for fuel and spare parts can take longer than using horses, oxen or even humans to do the job.

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[SuiteSisterMary]

Go look up the history of western science fiction, and you'll find that it pretty much did, in fact, start out as 'westerns in space.'

Rather than the evil Robber Baron cheating Miss Goodnpure out of her ranch, only to be rescued by the mysterious Cowboy, you get the evil Galactic Emperor cheating Princess Goodnpure out of her peaceful planet, only to be rescued by the mysterious space rouge.

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[jafac]

yeah, I can buy the whole cow thing.

But you can't tell me that it's more likely that someone doing manual labor to farm and build a new world, working hard to survive, is going to hand-fashion clothing and furniture, who is going to have the time? The megacorps would have factories spitting out Gap jeans, Nike sneakers and Tshirts. And those products are going to be much more accesible than the costumes these people are all wearing in the show.

There are simply many technological conveniences that people would not be without, if they could not get them, they'd manufacture them using modern techniques - because they have the knowledge, whereas folks in the REAL 19th century did not.

You'd better believe that if fossil fuels DO exist on these worlds, SOME person's going to build a refinery to extract and exploit it, and find buyers either on their own planet or offworld. And it would not take long. The only reason for humanity to go to other worlds is to exploit resources. Period. There's simply no other reason.

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[ttfkam]

I challenge you to demonstrate a moment on the show...

I can't do that. I got bored instantly. What I say is my personal opinion, however incomplete it is.

Ever heard the saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover?" Name one show where *every* episode in its first season was absolutely the best you have ever seen?

If the people on the planet are poor and basically just surviving, how can the costs of transport for that fuel on a recurring basis be handled?

Light, wind, water, steam, geothermal, nuclear, orbital mirrors/microwave... they are supposed to be well aware of technology. Is it too much to assume that in 500 years from now a pocket battery can be more powerful than 1000 horses? Can't they buy a powerplant from an old spaceship, at very least? They aren't even *trying*. I don't like when people are not trying. Then they deserve what they get.

The "best and brightest" are at the galactic core. This documents everyone who was forgotten and discarded. Also it shows the people who didn't want to be under the thumb of a galactic empire. When you attempt to live out of the range of a dominating power, you tend to be remote enough so as to limit the resources you have available. You can't easily get some of the most recent processors when you live in the middle of the Sahara. Does this make everyone who lives in the Sahara lazy and backward because they don't build a fab lab? You need to travel more my friend.

Now I know why all farmers in USA switched to horses, away from their tractors and harvesters :-) The *real* fact of the matter is that horses get sick, injured, want to eat, and they can drag only one plow blade; a tractor can manage tens of blades, can be repaired (or replaced), and can be refueled in a moment. That's how humans ended up with enough food for everyone. Industrialized nations - that's the name :-)

And tractors break down. When you are far enough from supply lines, replacement parts just can't get there in time for the harvest. With a small enough population, a few horses and plows are more than enough.

Those people are more than aliens to me, they are totally incomprehensible.

Yes! Exactly! They didn't include aliens because people can be sufficiently alien. If the aliens are completely comprehensible (and yes, I'm taking pot shots at B5 and Star Trek here), they aren't really aliens. Do you honestly believe that life out there is going to be like the Centauri? That, like in the case of G'Kar, they'll be just like humans in form and reactions but with slightly different pain thresholds and emotions? Do you believe that everyone in an alien race will have basically uniform beliefs and political goals? Kosh shmosh... He stopped short of saying things, tightened up his helmet sphincter, and everyone lauds him as complex and wonderfully mysterious.

Why hasn't everyone noticed the Babylon 5 was populated with humans who have the customs and beliefs of the U.S. and Western Europe (less so the latter)? Oh yeah, I forgot; The U.S. is the best there is and all people in the future will be emulating folks from the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Thank goodness for a show like Firefly. This IS hard sci-fi. It's an honest look at life in the future instead of a future we'd like to see. Examining people that we don't fully understand is the whole point. If all you are doing is watching people that you understand, you're just treading water and never moving forward.

The tech should never be the focus in a realistic story. Even "Snowcrash" spent more time on the characters and how they reacted to one another than on the tech around them. The tech around them only served to explain the people. Take "Ringworld": If you were born there, would you constantly marvel at it? No. It would be all that you ever knew. It would be like everyone on the planet constantly talking about the moon. Sure people talk about it, write about it, and sing about it, but not on a daily basis and not in detail each time. What would be the point? After we discuss its composition, its size, its distance from us, how people act wonky when it's full, etc., why would we need to keep talking about it on an hourly basis unless we learned something new about the moon?

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[ttfkam]

What part of "outside the galactic core" didn't you understand? I'm quite certain the technology you describe exists in the Firefly universe. That doesn't mean that everyone has access to it. Just because advanced technology brought them to the planet doesn't mean they have equal access to that technology.

That would be like all of those Irish and Italian immigrants from the 1800s and early 1900s. Just because they were able to scrap together sufficient funds to book passage to America on a steamliner doesn't necessarily mean that they suddenly gain the ability to build a steamliner.

If an American travels to Zimbabwe, will they automatically have a car, grocery stores, and gas stations like they had in the U.S. made available when they get there? Why not? Can you think of a plausible way to get around that? If so, many people in the world would love to hear about it.

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[ttfkam]

Funny, people for thousands of years found the time to make their own clothing. It's not that crazy a concept. Just because people are "backward" doesn't mean they have forgotten the principles of division of labor.

By all means, take a trip to Iran. Go ahead. Pick up a couple of pairs of the newest Nikes. And there are Gaps everywhere. It's by far the most accessible type of clothing no matter where you go. ...whatever.

Oh! So you have your own fab lab, machine shop, and produce your own x86 compatible computers? Impressive! And if you moved to Papua New Guinea, because you have learned to use a computer, you could reproduce a modern one quickly and easily? After all, this isn't the 19th century! The knowledge is readily available. At least you could make a 68000 or 8086 right? You could build an Eniac from scratch at least right? The point isn't whether or not it can be build simply and easily. The point is whether or not *you* can build it simply and easily. Never underestimate infrastructure.

With regard to fossil fuels, perhaps not all planets have abundant supplies of fossil fuels. Perhaps oil simply isn't valuable enough anymore to justify transport. You think the FTL drives run on petrol or a hydrogen fuel cell? Why would anyone build a refinery if there was a lack of natural resources, a lack of qualified people, and/or lack a people that could pay for the output and maintenance of that factory.

Small settlements don't need refineries or tractors. Maybe when they get bigger, they'll look into it.

The only reason for humanity to go to other worlds is to exploit resources. Period. There's simply no other reason.

Political reasons? Religious persecution? Evasion of a government agency? Expulsion from your home forcibly? Post-war treaties? Seeking solitude and isolation?

There are other reasons.

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[ttfkam]

The reason is that there is no infrastructure to support such luxuries.

Exactly! They spend their time on the frontier.

So, let us assume, for the moment, that there is "no plausible way to get around" these problems on that part of our planet. (Ignore, for the moment, that the reasons for such great disparities between the "haves" and the "have-nots" of this world is largely due to politics, and not any great technical barriers.) It is currently not possible to have all of the manufacturing of all of the parts for a car, the refinery, etc., etc., in one area. Currently, parts of the world must trade with each other to maintain an industrial standard of living.

I did not mean in perpetuity. I meant as of today. And incidentally, I'm not ignoring the haves versus the have-nots. That's precisely the situation you have in the Firefly universe. If trade is limited due to very large distances and an inability for one party to trade in equity with another, you end up with haves and have-nots.

Now, let us assume that a replicating machine, or "fabricator", is invented. This fabricator can take raw materials and energy, and produce a large selection of items, including all parts necessary to build another fabricator. Someone will take one of these machines to Zimbabwe. The fabricator will produce the parts for another fabricator, which will then be assembled. More and more fabricators will be produced, until eventually, everybody has one, assuming the raw materials are available.

Fabricators to my knowledge don't exist in the Firefly universe so it's a moot point. But I'll stick with you for a while. Let's say fabricators exist. You can't transform one piece of matter to another piece of equal mass. Otherwise it would be the equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. So we accept that there will be loss. This loss would probably be exhibited as radiation or simply lots of heat along with waste mass.

Now let's say that heat/radiation is contained and waste is dumped somewhere (buried in everyone's equivalent of Nevada...I don't know). Someone can drop a boulder in it and get a turkey dinner out of it. A random boulder would probably not have the same constituent elements as a turkey dinner. So we must assume that it reassembles atoms. This sounds conspicuously like it involves fission/fusion. Sounds like a perfect target for terrorists. Normal people wouldn't have one for food as people who hated the Alliance would most definitely steal them so that they could use them as a weapon. Note that I didn't say to make weapons. I mean *as* a weapon. Something that can take in any given mass and manipulate it on the subatomic level would be ridiculously destructive. It would be the galactic version of atomic weaponry and most certainly would be feared and controlled as much as possible. This would entail an absolute minimum number in existance and a ruthless hunting down of anyone who steals one.

If the Alliance had replicators, it would have that much power or presence. If they didn't, they'd sure as shit make sure no one else did.

There are technological as well as political reasons why it won't happen. Because of this, there will be haves and have-nots, some people's lives will be luxurious and other people's lives will be at or below the minimum accepted levels for survival. The ones in the center will have access to most goods and services and will live well. Those on the edges will not have access to most goods and services and won't live well. Hmmm... Sounds like the Firefly universe.

That a "replicator" would solve all problems sounds conspicuously like the misplaced optimism that declared that the Internet would solve all problems. This is humanity we're talking about. Technology doesn't solve problems. People solve problems.

Re:Why the show failed (in my own case)

[Hast]

In this case you are talking about the poorest and most disliked people in the galaxy. (They were rebels and they lost the war, they are as far from the center of the universe as possible.) Sure it could be that somewhere there is incredibly high-tech ways of farming. As someone else pointed out, the people we see in this series are not the powerful G8 nations, it's the farmers in Africa or Afganistan and similar places.

No wonder they don't have high-tech, someone just bombed them back into the stone age.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[stickyc]

Wait, let me get this straight...

New TV shows are actually rehashing old plots?

Oh the travesty!

Did we see the same show?

[John Jorsett]

The melange of a futuristic society with Old West paraphernalia and situations was just too much to allow the suspension of disbelief. I watched 3 episodes and have the rest on my Tivo; I can't bring myself to watch them.

Re:Did we see the same show?

[geek]

I've actually made an effort to not watch it. This should really tell FOX something. I love John Doe so I do watch FOX on Friday nights, but I hated Firefly so much I purposely have found something else to do during that 1 hour time slot (warcraft3).

It's one thing to be indifferent to a show and watch it because nothing else is on, it's another to purposely avoid it. The only show I hate more is M.A.S.H., the very theme songs makes me hurl.

Re:and they cancelled Dark Angel for it too...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Oh, leave it out. Dark Angel was okay for about six episodes. The concept was entertaining, but they never went anywhere interesting with it. The chemistry between the leads was good, but then they blew it with that incredibly convenient virus subplot or whatever it was. Dark Angel started strong, but just went nowhere.

I'm very dissapointed

[Talonpest]

I'm dissapointed in two things, actually- first that Firefly is getting mistreated by Fox, and second that the majority of the posts on here are anti-Firefly.
Seriously, the writing for this show is great. I like the dialogue, and I think the acting is passable even at it's weakest moments. I happen to LIKE the Buffy sense of humor- it's dark, sarcastic, and funny as all hell. The only problem with it that I notice is that they're a little inconsistant with when they use their southern drawl, but if they actually get a fair run in a decent time slot I'm sure they'll clean that up.
They've got some pretty ingenius stuff in there that no one else has the guts to do: for example, every so often the characters will break into a little rant of Chinese. And they're the only scifi show I can remember that's actually done the no sound in space thing. It's not formulaic at all- it doesn't steal from Star Trek or Star Wars, though it's closer to Star Wars out of those two. It's the best example of genre-blending I've seen in a long time.
Some individual responses:
Blacklist Blacklist: Sounds like you just need to learn how to use your Tivo- Firefly's on Fox, Everybody Loves Raymond is on CBS, and Just Shoot Me's on NBC. Oh, and King of the Hill is lame.
Leonbev, Anoynymous Coward #1, It's the first bloody season. Let them work out the kinks before you condem them based on the first episode. As for the sword fight, fencing has been a sport for hundreds of years, and I don't see it going out of style anytime soon.
Zaren:
What you saw wasn't the real pilot, Fox is just retarded. That big bad guy hasn't been in any of the other 9 episodes, or even mentioned. And I for one thought it was hysterical when the big buff guy got kicked into the engine. Dark humor rules.
Snoopy77: I think a more likely explaination is that it is every bit as good as I think it is, but people watch too much Friends and trash like that to be able to appreciate it.
Bowie J. Poag: Um... there's one black chick. Other than that, there's eight white people. You dazzel me with your intellect.
Brunes69, you like Enterprise... I just don't know how to classify you other as than someone with no taste whatsoever. Lemme guess, you liked Voyager too? What're you, 12? These last two shows have nearly killed one of the greatest franchises of all time with lame ass writing. Enterprise couldn't even come up with an original ship design that fit into the era it's supposed to take place in- they just stole the design from the Akira Class. They have way too much technology too. I could go on for pages about why Enterprise sucks.
Jpt.d, Andromeda was something they fished out of Gene Roddenberry's trash pile.
Ko5mo, I don't know what show you've been watching, but there's been virtually nothing BUT character development.
Ppetrakis: You're just bitter 'cause they canceled Farscape. The ONLY thing this show shares in common with Buffy is the humor, which, as I said before, I find very funny.
Xagon7: John Doe is a ripoff of The Pretender. It was ok... but it didn't really grab me after the first couple of episodes like Firefly did.

Ok, I've given my 2 cents. It's a good show, dammit!

WTF is wrong with FOX?

[phillymjs]

I watched the first two episodes of Firefly, and just thought it was okay. It didn't put the hook in my heart like 24 did after I caught one episode. Still, I can feel the pain of those who loved the show. FOX has fucked us all at one point or another-- for example, I stubbornly refuse to remove Family Guy and Undeclared from my TiVo's Season Pass list, for sentimental reasons.

Someone needs to start up a cable network just for all these promising and/or loved-by-a-small-but-loyal-army shows that were killed prematurely-- maybe make it a pay channel like HBO, and let the subscribers vote on the schedule. Then we discriminating viewers will have something to watch while the majority (read: morons) are enjoying "American Idol 8," "Celebrity Bukkake" and "World's Wildest Snuff Videos."

~Philly

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I REALLY can't believe that human beings will still be having sword fights and rustling cattle two centries from now.

Why the heck not? We are still having sword fights and rustling cattle today, after all. We live in a world where 747s and Bedouins coexist. We have soft-serve ice cream, HDTV, and artificial limbs, but we also have subsistence farmers, yak herders, and those stone-age people they discovered in New Guinea a few years ago.

If you go to Australia, you can drive a couple of days from a 21st century city of four million people into the middle of the desert where people live pretty much the same way they did 40,000 years ago. But once you get there, you'll probably see somebody wearing an Adidas tee shirt or a pair of Reeboks.

The writers of Firefly just expanded this idea. Instead of having a few population groups living pre-modern lifestyles scattered across the globe, they have a few planets full scattered through a solar system. And just like in the real world, those scattered groups of "primitives" will have a few pieces of modern technology at hand, surrounded by whatever they could make themselves.

It's a much more plausible idea than you may realize.

Re:Too Outland-ish

[tz]

but without Sean Connery. I had trouble finding a character I could identify with, much less care about, and found it confusing - they have hyperdrives, but need people-power for 1800s technology for things like railroads, food, and mining. Much of the rest was cliché - in fact it seemed like a collection of them.

Another thing was too many characters, all with some complex secret past that wouldn't be fully revealed until a 4th season. No one was on screen long enough to make enough points to be 3-d.

I still have the episodes on my PVR, and may scan through them yet. Some of the later episodes seemed to begin to explain things.

Many people seem to want to watch anything labled "sci-fi" that isn't really good, or has no science. And part of the problem is too much is PC so I doubt any real issue will be tackled which was the redeeming feature. Simply writing a plot that occurs in the future, or in a fantasy or spirtual meta-world doesn't redeem the plot, or the characters.

And especially if there is bad science. Farscape at least had one character admit it (we can't have been shrunk since the oxygen molecules wouldn't shrink so we wouldn't be able to breathe). It is one thing to ask me to suspend disbelief. It is another thing to push absurdity or contradiction.

SciFi is interesting because of the wonder of exploring new worlds.

But I find many cartoons (and I don't mean Animé which almost always achieves a high level) better than something like FireFly, at least as it started.

Firefly was followed by "John Doe" which was more interesting and had the scifi elements including a main character that knew everything about everything except himself and this created tension from the first episode. It replaced Dark Angel which also had a similar tension (though the last episode of the first season and the transition pegged my absurdity meter).

Maybe it will pick up, or maybe it will be cancelled. But I don't think it will be the death of SciFi. They will need to wait for something more innovative and something that does take chances.

Let's Try Another Alternative, Folks...

[Cliff]

Step back. Breathe. Now chill out a bit.

Being the kind of guy I am, when a likely potential presents itself, which does not depend on me thinking the worse of other human beings, I will tend to latch on to it in the hopes that such common sense thinking will prevail.

Let's look at another likely occurance here before throwing up the age old (but experience-proven, I will grant you that) addage of the average intelligence of your network executive and *gasp* give them the benefit of the doubt here for a second.

Firefly episodes will run thru December.

Farscape, which also airs in that exact same "Timeslot of Doom" will begin its run of final (Yes. I know. That argument is neither here nor there. Save it for 2003. I'll be there in the trenches with you.) 11 episodes starting in January.

Can we see a pattern here?

So a hiatus with the provision that the show will return in a different timeslot than it's main competition in the genre this year makes a bit of...well..sense, doesn't it?

Quite possibly Firefly will move to Monday's at 9pm, but I don't know how well that will fit, with Boston Public likely to stay in the preceeding timeslot. But as long as I don't have to compete with Farscape and Firefly on at the same time, my scheduling duties will be that much less of a hassle and if this prooves to be true, I will be grateful to the execs at Fox...

That's assuming we all aren't right back here again within 6 months.

Experience-worn truths are usually that way for a damned good reason.

Re:two words to save Firefly

[klevin]

Oh, you mean like that incredibly moronic Andromeda episode, "Slipfighter the dogs of war?" `Course, Andromeda doesn't air on Fox last time I checked (syndicated), but still.

I didn't like the show.

[Blaede]

It just wasn't my cup of tea. I like SF shows, but this one just didn't do it for me. My reasons for not liking it shouldn't matter to you, so they won't be listed. If you liked it, more power to ya. In a perfect world, we'd all get to see the shows we like. Anyway, you guys should already know that "quality" in art is subjective. One man's treasure, etc.

Re:I work at a network.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You want art? Paint a fucking picture. Want to be entertained? Watch our shows.

The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, you know.

Although if you're talking about ABC, NBC, or CBS, they probably are. The last time I saw anything risky or artistic on one of those three networks was the pilot episode of ABC's short-lived and shamelessly political 1997 anthology series, "Gun." The pilot episode starred Daniel Stern as a struggling actor who interrupts a robbery at a convenience store and becomes a hero and a celebrity. It's got a "Sixth Sense" style twist to it, years before that movie was made, and it's brilliant. It also featured a subtly ironic theme song: "Happiness is a Warm Gun" performed by U2. None of the "big three" networks have done anything even remotely like it since.

Want to be entertained? Watch their shows. Want to be entertained and challenged? Change the channel. TV like that is out there to be had, but you won't find it on the low-numbered channels in prime-time.

Re:Too Outland-ish

[hoggoth]

> ... the problem is too much is PC ...

Too much PC?!

You mean politically correct like kicking a bound bad-guy through your engines because you didn't like his attitude?

Or do you mean politically correct like having a prostitute lauded as the most socially acceptable member of the crew?

Or perhaps you meant politically correct like having the captain toss his first mate out the airlock for mutiny? (yeah-yeah I know he changed his mind before he died...)

Or you must mean politically correct like having the "naive" female engineer's first meeting with the captain with her dress around her ankles as she screws the previous engineer?

Yeah, you're right. This show is too timid to do anything that wouldn't be deemed "PC".

You must be watching a different Firefly than I am. I am watching a show with the most 'real-life' characters I've seen on any TV show.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:and they cancelled Dark Angel for it too...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Dark Angel had Jessica Alba in tight hotpants. It didn't need a freaking plot.

True, kind of. That young lady definitely had the best ass on television at the time, but that, by itself, somehow wasn't enough to hold my attention. I suspect it's because I knew this was a network-- Fox, yeah, but a network nonetheless-- and the chance for a glimpse of thong or, bless my stars, of butt cleavage was precisely zero.

Wanna know how to make the highest-rated show on tee vee? Put Jessica Alba in tight pants and have her run around a lot. Guarantee-- right there in the ads-- that there will be at least one gratuitous shot of Jessica's peekaboo thong per episode. Watch the ratings share for male viewers between 12 and death climb steadily toward 100%.

These are pearls I'm giving away here. Pearls, I tells ya.

Re:Typo? Should be "one of the worst"!

[eMartin]

Actually Joss Whedon wrote the theme himself. Apparently it was the first thing he did after getting the show approved.

Re:Lame show

[hoggoth]

> they didn't understand the difference between a galaxy and a solar system

heh heh... you noticed that?
They fixed it in later episodes. Now the opening dialog doesn't say 'a new solar system' anymore. Now Mal says 'galaxy' or 'planets' or something that makes sense.

For the record though, I love the show.
I didn't realize it was in a bad time slot because I have Tivo. I only know that there's usually a new Firefly for me to watch by the weekend.

Fox is not canceling it..

[tenchiken]

Per fox's PR
http://www.fireflyfans.net/news.asp?newsid=327

They are going to trade it. BTW, Zap2it has been ragging on firefly since day one. Take anything they say with a grain of salt.

Thank goodness

[nedron]

"Firefly, one of the best science fiction shows to make it on to network television in recent years"

Hmmm, there must be another series called Firefly that I missed. The ones I saw were even less believable than Andromeda!

Lack Of Promotion?

[istartedi]

This is the first time I've heard of it. Yet, you can't watch Fox 5 minutes without seeing an ad for an upcoming episode of Just Shoot Me which I can stand to watch for all of 15 seconds before experiencing spontaneous clicker spasms.

Maybe they should promote it during Futurama... oh... wait.

That, and it says something about how sucky your promotion is when you don't find out about the show until it's about to be concelled, and you find out about it on Slashdot.

Let's Not Forget...

[Etriaph]

...Earth: Above and Beyond. It was one of my favourite sci-fi series, lasted one season on Fox. I think it has something to do with the viewer audience Fox gets. Judge Judy, I mean come on. I don't think the regular viewers of Fox are capable of rooting for something with intelligence, something engaging, and something original. Now E:A&B wasn't so original, very much like Starship Troopers, but next to Babylon 5 is my favourite sci-fi series.

Fox can't really change their audience quickly, so they just drop the good stuff.

Re:Let's Not Forget...

[stephenbooth]

Sure you don't mean Space: Above and Beyond?

That was a good show, IMHO. Reasonably intelligent plots, most of the time, with enough bangs and flashes to keep non-plot driven viewers interested. It also had the best, again IMHO, space combat sequence I've ever seen in the final dogfight in "The Angriest Angel" between McQueen and Chiggy Von Richoven; the fact that it was preceded by the "God doesn't want to speak with me right now" speech just makes it all the better.

I do think they should have dumped the plot with West and his girlfriend (even better just dumped West out of the nearest airlock) cos that just didn't fit.

Re:Let's Not Forget...

[Mike Van Pelt]

"Spaced: Abort, Retry, and Ignore"?

Good?

This is obviously some new definition of the word "good" that I have not previously encountered.

It had the potential to be good, but the people making it decided to go for the "90210" audience who dropped "90210" because it was too cerebral.

Does any military, anywhere, use highly and expensively trained fighter jocks as ground-pounding cannon fodder like they did in that show?

(Sheesh. Next, someone's going to be praising that "Squid Trek" thing of Spielberg's.)

Re:Let's Not Forget...

[JFMulder]

I don't think the regular viewers of Fox are capable of rooting for something with intelligence, something engaging, and something original
Even tough the last season were somewhat dull, The X-Files produced quality, original and engaging TV experiences in the first 6 or 7 years.

Re:Let's Not Forget...

[kindbud]

...Earth: Above and Beyond...

That game rocks. EA and Westwood did a good job. I've been playing for a few weeks now, and have finally cancelled my AO account. Anarchy Online was silly as a space-based MMORPG, mostly because players fight mobs by standing two feet away and shooting at each other point blank for five minutes until someone dies. Earth: Above and Beyond avoids that embarrassment by dropping the FP planetside combat, and allowing for space combat only.

Now, when you fight a mob, you're in a ship standing nose-to-nose, shooting at each other point blank for five minutes until someone dies. This is much more believable and engrossing.

Blame fox...

[sega]

Dark Angel was a good show. I thought that the 2nd season was getting a tad weird but they could have dramatically improved it over a 3rd season. The cost for producing Dark Angel was cited as the main cause for opting for Firefly. Well, IMO they could have just spent less on the 3rd season instead of axing the entire show. IIRC Firefly wasn't even going to make it as the 3rd season of Dark Angel had been pretty much confirmed but it was at the very last minute that fox went with firely at the detriment of dark angel. Ahhh well...blame fox!!

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Assuming people move into space, then all those people in space would be of the same heritage and desire the same technology

No, not under these rules. The premise behind Firefly isn't that the people who felt like it moved to other planets; the mission statement of the show starts with, "After the Earth got used up." Migrating to other planets wasn't optional. This results in a blindingly diverse universe in which to set one's stories.

All colonies and space-faring civilizations would tend to use as much tech as they could get their hands on & I'm sure companies would be perfectly happy to sell them that tech for a fair price just as they do today.

First of all, imagine being a Bedouin and wanting to buy a DVD player. To you and me, a DVD player costs about $90. To a Bedouin, that's more money-- equivalent exchange value, that is-- than he'll see in five years. Not to mention the fact that he's somehow going to have to get his hands on an electrical generator to power the thing.

And that's just in our world, where getting DVD players to Bedouins is only marginally more difficult than getting them to suburban teenagers. Imagine a setting in which you'd have to send an entire cargo ship across millions of miles of empty space to do the same job. Suddenly the barriers to trade become very real.

Furthermore, how long do you think that DVD player would hold up strapped to the ass-end of a camel in the middle of a desert? The sand alone would turn it into a $90 boat anchor in a few months' time, and boat anchors are of even less use to the Bedouins than DVD players are.

So we have three things: (1) the poorer settlements simply lack the resources to trade for even moderately expensive goods; (2) the moderate cost of these goods is multiplied many times over by the extraordinary cost of transporting them to the outer worlds; and (3) the rough-and-ready lifestyle of the frontier colonists puts serious limits on their demand for technological goods, either because they lack the infrastructure to support them, or because the goods just aren't durable enough.

One of the most durable pieces of electronics I've ever seen is an old Walkman that I've had since the late 80's. That thing has been hauled all around the world, dropped, submerged in water, you name it, and it still works. So I probably could give it to a Bedouin with reasonable confidence that it's not going to fall apart in a week of exposure. But where's he going to get the batteries for it?

In general, when cultures merge, the more primitive one adapts to include the technology of the other. This is evident in the lives of american indians, eskimos (enuit ), numerous tribes in africa, and most in south america that have had contact with the outside world.

Um... actually, in most of those examples you just named, the more "primitive" (for lack of a better word) group has been wiped out by the more "advanced" group, either through active genocide, or through disease. The Europeans became the dominant group on the North American continent because smallpox killed off most of the natives.

But if you look at examples where two groups of wildly disparate technologies meet without war or disease in the mix, a different conclusion presents itself. Consider the native peoples of Siberia, or of Mongolia, or the Australian blackfellas that I mentioned earlier. There's some cultural and technological assimilation along the borders, but for the most part both groups continue to exist as they did before they met. In most cases, of course, the more "advanced" group has grown at a dramatically greater rate than the "primitive" group, so from a certain point of view it looks like the "primitive" group is dying out, but that's not really what happens.

The simple reason that there are areas where people live like they are in the stone age is because they have yet to either meet people more advanced, or have yet to learn how they can trade their goods for more advanced ones.

That's not true. There are stone-age peoples in South America, Australia, Africa, and the Pacific islands, and probably lots of other places that I'm not thinking of right now. They're not living in huts or caves and chipping tools out of flint because they don't know any better; they're doing it because, whatever each member's personal motivation, they want to.

Even tribes in south america that had never previously seen outsiders were more than willing to trade goods for knives made of steel.

Sure, but that doesn't mean that they're clamoring to move into condos and drink inexpensive but charming California chardonnays and rent movies from the Madang Blockbuster.

I imagine if they had seen or heard of a gun, they might have tried to bargain for one so they could use it instead of a spear to hunt with.

Not once they realize that it takes a shitload of infrastructure to supply oneself with bullets. These particular examples we're talking about are called stone-age peoples because they don't typically work with metals at all. They're cool with the idea of a knife made out of carbon steel, because it's useful as long as you rub it against a rock every so often to keep it sharp. But if you try to tell them about gunpowder, and mining minerals to make gunpowder, and melting lead to make bullets, and so forth and so on, their interest will turn rapidly back to the ka-bar on the other table.

If there is a better, faster, cheaper way of doing something (and likely there is)... people will use it over primitive technology anyday.

Yes. But "better, faster, cheaper" means different things in different settings. To an iron- or steam-age group-- say, like a medium-sized town out of the old west-- the idea of manufacturing bullets to use in their expensively bought rifles makes sense. But to a stone-age group, that's about as practical as microwave popcorn.

Joe Shmoe yak herder would be instantly working for acme corporation pushing paperwork after the mojo corporation found a better way to do his job for less $ on his planet.

Except... that's not the way it happens in real life.

Cowboys? please, they'd have electronic collars on all the cattle, robots, and cow kibble instead of real oats and grains for the cows in no time.

Not if electronic collars cost the equivalent of $5,000 each, and cow kibble went for hundreds of bucks per pound. Branding irons are easy enough to make from raw iron, and grass is free.

Re:Low sci-fi appeal

[IdahoEv]

Low sci-fi appeal?

Are you nuts?

Take a look at any list of the top grossing movies of all time. Here's one from July 2002:

1: Titanic
2: Star Wars (*)
3: E.T (*)
4: Star Wars I: The Phantom menace (*)
5: Spider-Man
6: Jurassic Park (*)
7: Forrest Gump
8: Harry Potter I
9: Lord of the Rings I
10: The Lion King

Four of the top ten are sci-fi, and three more are fantasy or comics, sharing much of the same demographic. If you'd looked just a year ago, instead of the newer movies you'd see two more Star Wars movies, Terminator 2, and Independence Day.

I've seen survey results that over 2/3 of americans consider themselves fans of "Star Trek". This is a TV franchise that has been going on for what, 36 years now? On it's fifth show, with weekly viewerships still in the tens of millions? And which has spawned 10 movies? Can any other show anywhere make claims like that?

On the whole people LOVE visual Sci-fi. Fewer people read it, but in the film/video worlds it's a genre with a great deal of pull for most Americans.

-Evan

Not surprised

[buss_error]

Well, it was an interesting, well-written, provocative and intelligent show on Fox; is anyone therefore surprised that they're doing away with it?

Not particularly surprised, no. Imagine that you have a product to sell. Now, do you want to sell to thoughtful, intelligent, and insightful people (that can see through hype, false analogies, and while they may ogle the cheese/beef cake, won't let it influence buying decisions), or do you want to sell to a drooling Cro-Magnon that doesn't have the IQ to pour p*ss out of a boot, and will buy anything you put a sexy model in the ad? It is sad, but Galliger's remark about the brightness knob is true*.

Television execs are anything but stupid. They know where the bread is buttered.

--=--

*"They ought to have a knob to turn up the intelligence of Television. It's got a knob called brightness, but it don't work!"

Do you know anyone who watches these shows?

[Coventry]

Successful examples of this type of show include Buffy The Vampire Slayer (target market: Goths) and Xena, Warrior Princess (target market: Lesbians).

Waho... flamebait, eh? How did this get modded up?
Exscuse me, but I'm not a lesbian, and I liked Xena. In fact, the majority of viewers of Xena were Male, like myself.
Also, you're use of the term 'goth' has many problems (almost as many as your broad and incorrect market audience for Xena) - not the least of which being that no standard definition of 'Goth' exists to even market to! Do a search on google for 'goth definition' - every site will have its own. I know many people who watch buffy, and most of them would never want to be called 'Goth'. I know middleaged housewives who watch the show. How many people do you know who watch it? Apparently not many, since you seem to have written off its audience using a stereotype. Funny thing is, from the sort of things advertised durring Buffy, I'd have to say the average demographic is much different from your generalization.

Ireguardless of the quality of firefly, I find it disturbing that the moderators have 'modded up' a post containing such gross generalisms. I thought the slashdot crowd was better than this - or are we all label-users at hearts?

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Gulthek]

Exactly. The show is clearly a ripoff of Cowboy Bebop.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[nhavar]

Two factors that you fail to take into consideration are aversion and poverty. Just because technology exists and existed to get the people to where they were doesn't mean that it was either affordable or that they were eager to continue it's use. It's the means to an end debate. Would a group of people in the near future, seeking a puritan lifestyle, use technology to find a world where they could live free from technology? Possibly. Lesser of two evils.

Additionally you don't include the price of war on societies. Then there's disease, climate changes on worlds not fully studied (think Wrath of Khan), and then there are governments and/or people who would choose to control what gets used and by whom.

In today's America where we discuss the digital divide and talk about how to get everyone a computer, meanwhile the Native American population struggle with how to get running water, electricity and phones to more than half of their population that "need" it. And this is with the government being minutes to hours away. What happens when communications takes weeks to months and travel likewise months to years?

In the past we have seen the rich sell everything they have to move to strange new lands. It then often took those families generations of squaller to build it back up. What's to say that the same thing doesn't happen again?

The last point I would make is that you assume that because native peoples of today use some conveniences that it was by choice. Often in today's world it is by necessity and survival that they must take on the modern trappings. Other times it's because someone else told them that they must. Just because the south American tribesman is shown wearing a Camel shirt and has an outboard motor on his boat doesn't mean that he's scrambling to buy an HDTV or has a microwave. To say that we scramble to use the latest in technology is not a true assumption. Even today we have technology in continual use that's been outdated by a generation (space shuttle, air traffic control, automobiles, trains, airplanes, naval fleets, etc). Will that gap shorten or lengthen when space travel occurs between planets.

Re:Well, here's my opinion...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

How did these "primitives" get off of earth in the first place, if they don't have advanced technology?

This isn't a new idea in science fiction; for a point of reference, read either The Legacy of Heorot or Destiny's Road by Niven. They're both very easy reads, and they tell the story of extrasolar colonies that are basically designed on the seed-pod principle.

A plant normally needs light and nutrients to grow, but a seed is buried beneath the soil and has no roots with which to feed. So how can a seed sprout? A seed-pod contains both the embryonic plant itself and also a bit of tissue that feeds the plant while it's sprouting. As the plant sprouts, it "digests" that bit of plant-stuff to get the energy it needs to grow.

It's easy to imagine a colony that works the same way. The spacecraft-- a giant slow-boat, in this case-- is packed to the gills with lots of useful stuff: mining tools, farming tools, seeds and bulbs, livestock, pre-fab housing, a certain supply of prepared food, and so on. When the boat lands and the colonists get out, they have a great big party and start making babies willy-nilly, and then the next morning they start tearing their spaceship apart. All the stuff inside, and even the structure of the spaceship itself, gets turned into houses and mines and farms and fields and stuff to eat and build and use. This is like the seed-pod; it gives the colony enough stuff to set up a basic community, with shelter and sources of food and of minerals and all that, but that's all. After that point, the colony has to start squeezing out the pups and getting back to nature. Till the soil, milk the cows, real frontier-type stuff.

So to get the whole world off the planet, we have to postulate some of the spaceships. How many? Well, let's start by guessing that there are about 8 billion people on Earth when the shit starts to hit the fan. Due to disease and famine, say that population drops by 50% over a century: 4 billion people. Of those, half are going to get left behind, either because they're too old or too sick or too young or whatever: 2 billion.

Figure each spaceship can hold about 200 people, and the tools, equipment, and supplies they need to start a colony on a habitable world. That comes to 10 million spaceships. Ten million spaceships, each filled with stuff like goats and guns and clothes and lumber and pigs and wrought iron and seeds and medical supplies and books and ploughs and anvils and chickens, with a little room left over in the corners for the passengers.

Who could build such a vast fleet of spaceships? Oh, let's say in the West it was a joint venture of the National Geographic Society, the Gates Foundation (can't sell Windows if humanity is extinct, can you?), and Fox. (Fox got in by selling the ad rights to a yet-to-be-produced series called "When Space Colonies Go Bad." Check your local listings.)

The government of China, of course, accepted the responsibility for migrating its vast population upon its own shoulders; in 2250, Chairman Ken (China having become surprisingly Westernized in the past couple of centuries) proclaims the Great Leap Upward, and they start building Little Red Spaceships in low Earth orbit.

Improbable? Of course. Impossible? Probably. But remember that the fundamental purpose here is to establish a setting in which stories can be told. Maybe the number of people who got off the Earth is a lot smaller than 2 billion. Maybe it's more like 2 million, which would only require 10,000 spaceships, which is a hell of a lot easier to imagine. But whether you go with the high or the low figure, it's just plausible enough to make the reader, or watcher, or whatever go "Oh, okay, that's all right then, now get on with the stories."

Re:Too Outland-ish

[NeuroKoan]

Actually "Nowhere Man" was on UPN. This was when "ST: Voyager" first took off and UPN thought it would be a good idea to make good shows. Turns out they were wrong and it is better to make feel good (crap-tacular) comedies.

I used to love "Nowhere Man" and I was a bit miffed that they canceled the show and didn't even let them try to tie the story together (although it probably would have been hasty and very, very bad). Oh well, real life goes on!

Fox is the worst network right now

[pauldy]

The only show on fox worth watching any more is the Simpsons. Even the Simpsons makes fun of the stupid stuff fox does. They took off dark angel and I quit watching anything on fox. I want them to die a painful death. Seeing that firefly is on the way out doesn't supprise me it is probably a ploy to increase ratings. I won't be watching.

Re:Friday Night?

[Sloppy]

Or maybe I should just get a ReplayTV like I have been thinking about?

This is the dilemma: the people who are able to watch the show (Tivo and ReplayTV owners), don't watch commercials.

Fox's choice for a pilot was poor

[Chairboy]

The first episode shown was badly chosen. If it wasn't for a mistake setting up my ReplayTV, I would not have caught any of the following episodes and realized that it was a good show.

A much better choice for the first episode would have been the one where they flashbacked to each crew member being added. That was very funny, and it got my wife hooked too.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

climate changes on worlds not fully studied (think Wrath of Khan)

(Hang on a sec while I wave goodbye to the topic as it recedes in the distance. Bye-bye, topic.)

See, that always pissed me off. Wrath of Khan is a movie so close to being flawless as to make no difference, but there's one glaring thing that drives me positively bat-shit every time I see it.

They put Khan on Ceti Alpha 5, right? Fifth planet out from Alpha Ceti, which is the brightest star in the constellation Cetus, the Whale. (Astronomy geek.) Six months later, Ceti Alpha 6 (the next planet out) explodes. The shock shifts the orbit of Ceti Alpha 5, and that planet becomes a barely inhabitable rock.

Got the mental picture? There's Ceti Alpha 1-4, then Ceti Alpha 5 (Khan's planet), the smoking crater in space where Ceti Alpha 6 used to be, and then (just for sake of discussion) Ceti Alpha 7.

Years go by. Chekhov and whahisname come by and take a long, hard look at what they believe to be Ceti Alpha 6. They beam down, find Khan, learn about the whole Ceti Alpha 5/Ceti Alpha 6 mixup, have a good laugh, all hell breaks loose, and so on.

How the hell did they end up landing on Ceti Alpha 5, thinking it was Ceti Alpha 6? The way I figure it, it's impossible.

Let's say Chekhov and his buddies come flying in to the Ceti Alpha system and start counting planets. There's 1-4, there's 5 (better stay away from there, that's Khan's hood and we don't wear his colors), and there's 6. (Remember, 6 blowed up, so what they think is 6 is actually 7.) They beam down to Ceti Alpha 7 (which they think is 6) and find... nobody. Because Khan's gang is one planet sunward.

So they must not have counted planets. Instead, let's say they just started looking where they believe Ceti Alpha 6 should be-- based on the radius of its orbit-- and find a planet. Assuming that it's Ceti Alpha 6 (it's really 5), they beam down and get into all sorts of trouble.

But for that to have happened, Ceti Alpha 5 would have to be in a more distant orbit than it used to be. This is possible, thanks to orbital dynamics; if Ceti Alpha 6 exploded while Ceti Alpha 5 was either ahead of it or behind in orbit, the "shock wave" (yeah, I know, but nitpicking only goes so far, you know?) would give 5 a push, either speeding it up or slowing it down, which would have the net result of increasing the semimajor axis of its orbit. In other words, the orbit would become more elliptical, with its aphelion farther from the sun than it used to be. If you balance everything just right-- making the explosion the right size, and putting Ceti Alpha 5 in the right place relative to it-- Ceti Alpha 5 could be at just the right distance from its sun when Chehkov's ship arrives to pass for Ceti Alpha 6.

But what are the odds? Remember, Ceti Alpha 5's new orbit isn't circular; it's a more eccentric ellipse with a perihelion inside Ceti Alpha 5's original orbit and an aphelion near or outside Ceti Alpha 6's orbit. So the planet is only at the right distance from its sun to pass for Ceti Alpha 6 twice a year. The odds that Chehov and crew could show up at precisely the right time of year, and that they could, out of laziness or criminal misconduct or whatever, skip the part where you start at the sun and go "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, okay that's the one we want," are just too high to accept.

And that doesn't even get into the fact that an orbit sufficiently elliptical to put Ceti Alpha 5's aphelion at or near Ceti Alpha 6's original orbital radius would almost certainly render the planet completely uninhabitable, not just mostly so.

Why does this bother me so much? Simply because it would have been so easy to avoid it in the scriptwriting stages. If their target had been Ceti Alpha 4 instead of Ceti Alpha 6, no problem. Offscreen, Ceti Alpha 4 explodes, so when the white hats show up, they assume Ceti Alpha 5 is Ceti Alpha 4 (because 4 isn't there any more), and all is well with the world. Simple, easy, and with no impact whatsoever on the rest of the story.

The only reason I can think of for the writer's wanting to use Ceti Alpha 6 instead of Ceti Alpha 4 is simple euphony: Ceti Alpha 6 really rolls off the tongue, while Ceti Alpha 4 feels like you're chewing when you say it.

Okay, now that I go back and re-read this, I realize that this was a really long and essentially pointless rant about a matter of trivia so meaningless that other trivia looks at it and goes, "Pfff, whatever." Sorry about that. Can't do anything about it now, though; the backspace key on my keyboard is mysteriously broken all of a sudden.

Ah crap..

[doormat]

That Jewel girl is really cute. I'm gunna have to go download all the eps now =^/ damn fox for killing good shows.. Family Guy, Futurama, now Firefly..

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[mshiltonj]

I REALLY can't believe that human beings will still be having sword fights and rustling cattle two centries from now.

The most recent episode took Serenity and crew into the core system. They were in a city that could have been Trantor or Corsicant, or whatever that city was that Bruce Willis lived in, in The Fifth Element. Totally high tech, and well done fx for tv.

The outer planets, where most of the shows take place, is relatively dirt-poor fringe-folk. They are the beaten enemy of a civil war. Mostly second class citizens of the government. It's like the difference between New York City and some unnamed village in Afghanistan. In that context, it makes good sense.

Weren't Luke's aunt and uncle water farmers on Tatooine? For a space opera, that was pretty low tech.

Buy my television

[wormbin]

The only two shows that I make sure to watch are Futurama and Firefly.

Anyone want to buy a cheap TV, barely used?

Campaign to Save Firefly

[Sean Clifford]

First, "officially" Firefly is not being cancelled:

The current time slot occupant "Firefly" will go on hiatus. Fox Entertainment President Gail Berman stressed that "Firefly" has not been canceled. New episodes will continue to air throughout December and the network is considering a new time slot for the series.
Electronic Media (article link)

Call me a skeptic, but I've heard this before and it will certainly make a lot of people think twice before jettisoning Firefly out of the airlock if you join the campaign to save the show.

If you want to support what many (including me) consider to be the best show on television, join the campaign to support Firefly by voting to save it at SaveMyShow.com, by sending a postcard asking Fox to save the show to:

FOX BROADCASTING CO
ATTN: SANDY GRUSHOW, CHAIRMAN, FOX ENTERTAINMENT GROUP
10201 WEST PICO BLVD
LOS ANGELES CA 90035

Donate (via paypal) to Firefly: Immediate Assistance to support the campaign to save the show.

Put a banner, graphic, or link on your web site to support the show.

Re:Well, here's my opinion...

[jismay]

Indeed. For another excellent and easy read which perfectly illustrates your point there is the Pern series by Anne McCaffrey, most particularly the Dragons of Pern. Big colony ships high technology, and the establishment of a brand new low-tech society.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has said this before, but why wouldn't you use a six-shooter? If you go with the premise of the show (a central core of high-tech planets and outlying low-tech planets), which is going to be easier to repair and find ammo for on a backwater planet? That sparkly new laser/death-ray/BFG9000 or the pistol? You're still dead, whether you are ashes on the ground or a corpse with a hole in it.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[fferreres]

Yeah, but I don't see how other won't embrace the new technology to kill the idiotic guy with the gun. I mean, of course I like the mixture, but it is not realistic. It's deliberately not realistic, so I can accept that. Maybe they could think of a reason why that works that way (military prohibition of advanced weapons, with areas scanned permanently would work for me). I still preffer gun to the i**otic weapons used in star trek (an "aimed" laser? Come on, aiming with what should be a super hi-tech, best of the herd gun? NO WAY.

Re:Well, here's my opinion...

[mpe]

How did these "primitives" get off of earth in the first place, if they don't have advanced technology?

Just because someone understands advanced technology dosn't mean that they can replicate an advanced technological infrastructure from scratch. Also consider the difference between buying a plane ticket, buying a 747 and building a 747 from scratch.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[mpe]

Even tribes in south america that had never previously seen outsiders were more than willing to trade goods for knives made of steel.

A knife made of stainless steel is very obviously a better knife than one made of other materials. It is sharp, stays sharp for a long time and can be easily resharpened.

I imagine if they had seen or heard of a gun, they might have tried to bargain for one so they could use it instead of a spear to hunt with.

Guns require different hunting techniques compared with spears, they also require a supply of ammunition and make a loud noise when fired. (The latter a big drawback if you need more than one dead prey animal to feed everyone in a tribe.)

In the undying words of Bender:

[RPoet]

"Another classic science fiction show cancelled before it's time."

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[mpe]

In the past we have seen the rich sell everything they have to move to strange new lands. It then often took those families generations of squaller to build it back up.

Especially if the transportation is expensive, both for people and cargo.

Re:Firefly is a good show, but a weird show.

[cruachan]

If you look carefully (I'm in europe so watched it from download) you'll see that the guns are decidely not 1900s pistols. I think the idea is that they're much more high-tech, but look 'western' by design.

It's just a tv show so it doesn't have to completely be rational, but I think there's more to it than meets the eye on casual viewing. IMHO the shame is that if it is cancelled we'll never know the back-story - and there sure is a hell of a lot of that.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Hast]

Actually Trigun is a pretty close match. Well if you only count the atmosphere. Trigun has a much more complicated story behind it as usual.

Perhaps it's time for SF writers to go to a 13 or 26 (half or two season) format instead. Just like they often do with anime. That way they'd have a goal to get the story in within that time and they're likely to be cancelled in any case after that time frame.

Re:This sounds familiar...

[mpe]

The problem with the Lone Gunment was that they focused more on their dorky, fish-out-of-water antics than on their hacking and general cool activities.

There is also the little problem of the first episode being overtaken by real world events.

Firefly and B5

[jhughes]

Nowadays I consider Babylon 5 as the best all around Sci fi show I've ever seen. I picked it up in the second season when a friend recommended it to me, enjoyed it from then on. When TNT showed the reruns I finalyl got to see the first season to pick up the pieces.

If I had started watching B5 right away with the first season, I probably would have given up due to the simple msitakes that others have mentioned, like poor dialogue, actors not seeming 'in tune' with their characters and such. And if I had given up, I'd have missed the best sci fi ever.

Since then I've always though that a new show should be given a shot despite initial showings. Firefly has great potential, once the actors really get in tune and people get used to the different universe, it could really take off.

Pathetic..

[Fweeky]

.. Firefly is the most promising sci-f[ai] series I've seen since Babylon 5.

It's less cheesy than Farscape, less predictable than SG-1, more interesting than any series of Star Trek ever, and infinately less lame than the hugely pathetic Andromeda.

Like B5 it has a Universe I want to see more of, it has interesting characters it's actually bothering to develop, the dialogue isn't totally predictable, it's not depending on unlikely (and suspiciously human-like) aliens, it's got an interesting looking story arc, and despite being odd at first, it has a really nice style that works suprisingly well.

And now they're preparing to axe it before it's even past introducing itself. I personally blame that lame "Earth got used up" speech at the start -- I'm sure it has nothing to do with Fox being mindless rating chasers, or the average TV viewer being barely capable of watching TV and drooling at the same time.

*grumble*, we don't even get Fox over here; I've only seen ffly as VCD, SVCD and XviD. Bah.

Hard SF versus soft SF

[Silverhammer]

Blockquoth the poster:

Science fiction isn't about science. It's just a setting; all the usual requirements for good storytelling still apply.

"Hard" science fiction most certainly is about the science. What you're describing is "soft" science fiction.

Re: Hard SF versus soft SF

[Black Parrot]

> > Science fiction isn't about science. It's just a setting; all the usual requirements for good storytelling still apply.

> "Hard" science fiction most certainly is about the science. What you're describing is "soft" science fiction.

Could you give a familiar example?

boring? John Doe good?

[Ender Ryan]

Firefly, boring? You sir, have A.D.D.. I'm sorry, but you do. IMO, ADD is not a physical disease, it is a disease caused by the MTVification of teenage life. I'm guessing you're under 24?

And you think John Doe is good? I'm not saying it's bad, but it sure is extremely contrived. Every episode of late has made it appear as John Doe would find out the secrets surrounding his predicament... That's not suspenseful, it's stupid.

You can help!

[Snaller]

Don't forget the rescue efforts.

Many Firefly fans decided that instead of waiting to see if the show would be canceled they would start a rescue effort right away. Firefly support has been raising money, and on December 9th they will run a full page add in Variety supporting Firefly, they are sending copies of that issue to advertisers and to the execs at Fox. They have also used some of the money raised on producing T-shirts and bags with the Logo of the support campaign, this too will be send to Fox execs.

One guy in American Mensa paid for an add to telling other members about this new program, another guy in Ohio bought cable adds to get other people to watch. And tons of people have been writing the advertisers thanking them for supporting the program, and generally oozing goodwil towards it.

Its not over yet. There are two episodes and the pilot to be shown in December, and two more episodes already in the can. I you like the show, make a different spread the word, send a postcard, take a chance on something which is not the usual premasticated gruel. If you hate the show... don't do anything, no need to actively annoy other people is there?

http://fireflysupport.com/

Think its sick to try to save a TV program? A sign of looserhood? Perhaps, but it makes more sense to fight for something you like, as opposed to spend effort on something you dislike, no?

Re:Run your own network

[SuiteSisterMary]

It's annoying because nowadays, a new show gets an average of two or three episodes in which to 'prove' itself, and that's just bloody stupid.

This also trains the viewer to have a much shorter attention span, leading to shorter, less 'deep' shows, perpetuating a vicious cycle.

Re:John Doe

[SuiteSisterMary]

You know, I love Birds of Prey, and I hate that it's getting cancelled, but every episode, I think 'it would be a plot twist IF it wound up not being the standard plot twist.'

Like if Helena's friend who shows up out of the blue after seven years winds up NOT being the mysterious assassin who also just showed up in New Gotham.

Or if the metahuman who just showed up chasing a serial killer winds up NOT actually being said serial killer.

Of course, it doesn't help that now adays, even hour long shows in America often don't have any real continuity or multi-episode plot arcs.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[binaryDigit]

Dude, he said "city" not "planet". Or are you implying that he lived in a city called "Earth"? and instead of having mayors, they have a President (President Guiliani anyone?)

Re:Low sci-fi appeal

[JFMulder]

You're right. Appart for James Bond who spawned 20 movies so far, and doesn't seem to slow down a little, Star Trek might be the most succesfull Sci-Fi saga/serie ever.

Re:Low sci-fi appeal

[aiabx]

People will cheerfully line up once every six months to see a big special effects laden space opera, but that doesn't make them fans. It doesn't make them obsessive enough to tune in every week to watch something much less spectacular on TV.
My personal opinion is that the hard core nerds they are trying to appeal to have more interesting things to do than sit around watching a lot of television. I know I do.
-aiabx

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[binaryDigit]

Dude, chill out. The reason they made the mistake was that they were counting IN from the edge of the solar system since that was the direction they were traveling. Now this may still be a glaring mistake, but at least more plausable. After all, theoretically there'd be no problem with doing it that way, though you'd think that unless CA5 assumed CA6's orbit, they would have noticed that something was amiss.

Conspiracy Theory

[jafac]

Keep in mind that they cancelled Dark Angel to open up the time slot for Firefly. . .

1. Get marketing data from Tivo or Replay, or Satellite companies who offer Tivo-like systems (Dish), and look on Gnutella et. al. for illegal copies.

2. Find shows which are being watched more often by the "skippers". (and therefore are getting less eyeballs per ad than other shows).

3. Demographically, sci fi fans are geeks, and geeks are more likely to Tivo, Replay, or Gnutella.

therefore -

Sci fi, or any programming which appeals to the Tivo demographic is doomed.

Re:boring? John Doe good?

[jafac]

ahh, but those under age 24 were not around to experience those first 2 or 3 really GOOD years of MTV when the videos were good, experimental, breaking new ground. And that's all they showed. Of course, after that, MTV became tired, boring, and with the addition of MTV2 and VH1 (et. al.) redundant.

Re:John Doe

[jafac]

I liked the concept behind Birds of Prey - (Batman and Catwoman had a fling, and had a daughter).

But it has to be said: Birds of Prey is an attempt to use the very successful "90210" formula on the geek demographic.

Just like Smallville. Just like Charmed. prolly a half dozen other crappy shows I never watched.

Oddly enough - Buffy is a similar formula, but with gutsier writing, it does not cause intense pain.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[jafac]

after all. We live in a world where 747s and Bedouins coexist.

Sorry, I don't buy that. Bedouins and Quakers live their backwards lifestyles out of religious conviction. You expect me to believe that a zillion people on hundreds of different worlds all suddenly agree to adopt a cult-like belief that "the simple life is best"? And if that's the case, how come it's not ever mentioned in the storyline? Simple - because no thought was ever put to it. It's 100% stylistic.

Style is fine and dandy - but why cant they at least put a little thought to it?

For instance, the clothing. I know it's really important to convey the "western" style that these people on backwater worlds are wearing handmade vintage clothing. Who is making it?

Here's how I see things.
Earth's used up.
Big megacorps launch pre-fab factories to the other planets, and settlers come looking for work. They'll be the exploited third world labor of the future. This is the culture, clothing, and architecture you'll see in the future on these backwater worlds. Not some glorified historical re-enactment society.

Pern?

[Bilbo]

> How did these "primitives" get off of earth in the first place, if they don't have advanced technology?

Ever read "The Dragon Riders of Pern"?

Basic "primitive" society on a different planet. You don't find out until quite a few books into the series, but it was simply a matter of a high tech civilization going to another planet, and finding that they didn't have the resources to maintain all their gadgets. There were lots of unexpected hardships (big surprise on a new planet), and things like power cells eventually broke down to the point where they had to learn how to do things by hand.

Remember, most of the technology we are familiar with has literally thousands of years of history behind it. Throw it at a brand new environment, and there's a significant chance that it will simply collapse, and people won't know what to do to fix it.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Bedouins and Quakers live their backwards lifestyles out of religious conviction.

WHAT? Your ignorance is showing. The Bedouin are the desert-dwelling nomads of the Arabian peninsula, and the Negev and Sinai deserts. The live their "backwards" (oh, the arrogance) lifestyle out of tradition and preference, not out of religion. The Bedouin traditions go back much further than Islam; before 600 AD, the Bedouin practiced a polytheistic and animistic religion. Now they're Muslims. There's nothing in the Koran about living the life of a desert nomad; they do it because that's their tradition and that's what they choose.

You expect me to believe that a zillion people on hundreds of different worlds all suddenly agree to adopt a cult-like belief that "the simple life is best"?

Nope. The world-- and, by extension, the fictional solar system in which Firefly is set-- is a big place. Some people prefer the simple life, free from government interference but largely bereft of luxuries. Others live in big cities-- or on highly developed planets-- trading a degree of independence for comfort.

And if that's the case, how come it's not ever mentioned in the storyline?

Jesus, dude, it's right there in the prologue, for chrissakes. "Here's how it is. The Earth got used up, so we moved out and terraformed a whole new galaxy of Earths. Some rich and flush with the new technologies, some not so much. The central planets, them as formed the Alliance, waged war to bring everyone under their rule. A few idiots tried to fight it, among them, myself."

That's it, right there. All the premise you need in about ten seconds.

I know it's really important to convey the "western" style that these people on backwater worlds are wearing handmade vintage clothing. Who is making it?

Uh... they, themselves, are? That's what "handmade" means. If you want to put socks on your kids' feet, you'd better either own a sheep or buy some wool and knit them yourself. If you get a hole in the seat of your best pair of dungarees, you get a needle (which you paid dearly for) and some thread (ditto) and you sew it up. You don't just throw them away and pick up another pair at the Try-n-Save.

Here's how I see things. Earth's used up. Big megacorps launch pre-fab factories to the other planets, and settlers come looking for work. They'll be the exploited third world labor of the future. This is the culture, clothing, and architecture you'll see in the future on these backwater worlds.

Okay, now throw in the impact of a system-wide civil war, armed revolt, and the mass exodus of the independently minded souls to the outer planets where they could live on their own terms. Somehow your premise and the show's premise end up in the same place.

Re:Well, here's my opinion...

[mikerich]

It's also used by Peter F. Hamilton in his 'Night's Dawn' trilogy. Earth has become an environmental nightmare thanks to uncontained energy useage and they are dumping people off as fast as they can manage.

Pop people in the freezer, dump them on a backwater planet with limited technology and get them to use the indigenous resources to start a viable colony. If you don't have high-tech, then go back to steam, no expensive alloys? Use wood.

So you have things like fusion-powered wooden paddle-steamers coexisting in a Universe with faster than light star-ships and energy weapons.

Oh and they're also damn good books.

Best wishes,
Mike.

It did suck.

[fishexe]

Firefly has (had, whatever) strong characters, conflict, a little sexual tension, and humor; it lacked muppets...Arguing that Firefly sucked while Farscape rocked just doesn't hold water.

Au contraire! You said it yourself, it lacked muppets. Therefore, sucked. QED.

And none of those movies are TV shows

[cryptochrome]

Comparing movies and TV is very much a matter of apples and oranges, despite the superficial similarities. A 2hr story built around a short story with limited originality is a far cry from 26 episodes spread over the better part of the year.

Most SF isn't franchised, and when it's not the viewers are low (for reasons I won't go into here). Of course any franchised show is bound to go stale eventually. Obsessive fanboy types are what keeps Star Trek on the air. The ironic thing is that SF should be by definition original.

Furthermore, 3 out of 4 of those movies were only SF in the perfunctory sense (it's got aliens, so it must be SF). Only one (Jurrasic Park) is SF in the true sense (i.e. it takes a speculative look at our future based on what we know today).

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The computer had all the old orbital details of the original set of planets and said "6 should be about _here_"; they went "there" and found a planet (5's orbit being more elliptical, now extending out as far as 6's used to be, and they were unlucky enough to find 5 in a place that would be reasonable for 6) and didn't do any more checking.

But, like a said before, an orbit that elliptical would result in a planet being completely unable to support human life. Khan and his posse survived on Ceti Alpha 5 for decades post-explosion. It doesn't add up that way, either.

How often would they find any situation in which that would give them any surprises?

Given the number of solar systems in the known galaxy, the number of starships visiting those solar systems, and the probability that an event like this is going to occur, I'd say fairly regularly.

Let's say each starship visits about 50 unique star systems per year. And, just to pull a number out of the air, let's say there are 2,000 starships in the fleet. (The US Navy has about 400 ships; Starfleet covers not only all of Earth but also the whole Federation, so it's fair to assume that it's proportionately larger.) That comes to 100,000 visits per year. (Yeah, lots of those are dupes, but let's ignore that for the moment.)

Those calculations give us a mental picture of a galaxy-- or a part of it, anyway-- that's fairly teeming with starships, coming and going hither and yon. With all that activity, the odds that a starship is going to end up in a solar system where something interesting has happened become pretty significant.

It's unreasonable to think that a notional starship wouldn't use at least some form of dead reckoning, if for no other reason than to make sure that they're where they think they ought to be. When you zap into the outskirts of a solar system, take a quick look to make sure that it includes the right number of stars and planets, just as a sanity check.

Yes, the whole premise of a fleet of starships zipping across space is absurd all by itself. But there's no reason to make it any more absurd than it has to be. This whole thing could have been avoided simply by replacing the name "Ceti Alpha 6" with "Ceti Alpha 4" in the screenplay. What a waste.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Dr. Spork]

It's exactly because of idiots like you that this show, the best sci-fi show ever bar none, is getting canceled. What's staying? Enterprise? Gimme a fucking break. Talk about "hard to believe..."

Re:Well, here's my opinion...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I gave up on the show after 2 or 3 eps, but was any of thiese expalnations you give even hinted at in the show?

You mean apart from the fact that it's all covered-- albeit in super-brief summary-- in the V/O prologue? Well, it's a TV show, you know? The purpose of the show is to tell entertaining stories. While some people get entertained by this sort of "here are the rules" exposition, most people don't. So no, you probably won't see a "here's how we colonized this particular rock in space" episode.

But, for the record, the complete backstory is included in the series bible. I don't remember enough details of it offhand to quote chapter-and-verse, but it's there, and it's plausible enough to build stories on.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Dr. Spork]

Thank you! At least one person is paying attention. I agree with the analysis in your comment, and further I think it shows just how much thought went into the making of Firefly. I find this premise a thousand times more interesting (and plausible) than Star Trek ("the navy with aliens who speak english") and other shows in the genere.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

"the navy with aliens who speak english"

Yeah, speaking of which, my respect for the guys who make Stargate SG-1 went up a few notches when I read the FAQ they publish on their web site. One of the questions is, "Why does every group of people SG-1 encounters speak perfect English?" The answer was, basically, "Uh... they don't. Each group has their own language, but they're close enough to Earth languages to make it possible for Dr. Jackson to learn them relatively quickly. Just assume that part happens off-screen. Look, it's only an hour-long show; do you really want to spend that time watching language lessons every week?" I have a lot of respect for a group of storytellers who aren't afraid to invoke magic when it's in the best interest of the story.

This comes up in Firefly, too. How does the artificial gravity work on the ship? Magic. It actually says that, right there in the series bible. Artificial gravity works by magic; it's not relevant to the story-- and never will be-- so it's not important enough to bother explaining.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[jafac]

WHAT? Your ignorance is showing. The Bedouin are the desert-dwelling nomads of the Arabian peninsula, and the Negev and Sinai deserts. The live their "backwards" (oh, the arrogance) lifestyle out of tradition and preference, not out of religion.

I don't see the difference. And don't get all PC on me - I use backwards not as a "cultural imperialist" term, but as a relative descriptive term, which more quickly and efficiently communicates my idea, without offending anyone who might possibly be reading slashdot. Except for those wired busybodies who live vicariously through the opressed of the world.

"Here's how it is. The Earth got used up, so we moved out and terraformed a whole new galaxy of Earths.

But this almost certainly did not happen overnight, and almost certainly was not backed or funded by "homesteaders" or political refugees. Perhaps the term "terraformed" is used quite liberally, but it's already well-established that interplanetary travel itself is quite expensive, colonization quite a bit more so - and my whole point is - without the availability of mass-produced goods, and exploitation and industrialization, it's just not very believable.

I can see how things like mass media and communication might be absent - and your local convenience store - but basic technologies which are enormously time saving, and make our modern lifestyles possible - at the very least, in the absence of petroleum products and technologies, solar power?

All I'm asking is for a little more rational thought about the presence of mass-produced goods. My complaint is that apparently, nobody put any thought to it - it's all stylistic.

Uh... they, themselves, are? That's what "handmade" means.

Who has the TIME to make this stuff? 19th century settlers did it because there simply was no alternative. The people of Firefly would almost certainly have alternatives that were much cheaper.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

And don't get all PC on me - I use backwards not as a "cultural imperialist" term, but as a relative descriptive term

Yeah, but it just kind of rubs me the wrong way when people use terms like "backwards" that imply a directionality to these sorts of things. I'm right in the middle of getting ready for a primitive camping trip-- we're leaving in the morning, and we're hoping to spend Friday through Sunday in a place far from other people, or the things of man. The only metal items I'm taking, apart from things like aluminum tent poles and such, are a handgun (just in case), a couple of good knives, my cast-iron skillet and my dutch oven. Everything else will be stone age all the way.

I do this for fun. My idea of a perfect vacation is to go out into the middle of nowhere and live off the land for as long as I can; I'll take some food with, like pancake mix and rice and potatoes and some meat, but I don't pack enough food for the whole trip. If I can, I fish or scavenge to make up the difference; hunting is usually not allowed where we go, and anything bigger than a rabbit would be wasted anyway. In the worst case, we stretch our provender out a bit to make those extra two or three days; it's not a bad way to drop a couple of pounds of flab.

My point is that I do this for fun. I do it because I like it. Calling that sort of life "backwards" implies that modern life is the acme of human experience, and I just don't buy it. I don't mind expressions like "primitive" or "advanced" to describe relative lifestyles, but calling people who live in the woods and who don't watch TV "backwards" just kinda bugs me.

But that's more about me than it is about you, so don't worry about it.

I can see how things like mass media and communication might be absent - and your local convenience store - but basic technologies which are enormously time saving, and make our modern lifestyles possible - at the very least, in the absence of petroleum products and technologies, solar power?

Solar power for what? Electrical items are, for the most part, substantially less durable than their non-electric equivalents. Compare a kerosene lantern to an electric lantern. After a year or ten, the electric lantern's bulb is going to burn out, and it'll be useless until that bulb is replaced. Ever tried to manufacture your own electric light bulb? A kerosene lantern, on the other hand, will remain useful forever as long as you keep it stocked with fuel (which can be made more easily than manufactured goods, and thus would be far more readily available) and wicks (which can be made from old rags, or from rope, or from just about any pulped and dried plant matter).

You're thinking of the people on Firefly as being deprived; don't. It's not that electric lanterns don't exist any more, or that it's impossible to get them. It's more about the fact that kerosene lanterns are a hell of a lot more useful in that environment than electric ones would be.

Who has the TIME to make this stuff? 19th century settlers did it because there simply was no alternative. The people of Firefly would almost certainly have alternatives that were much cheaper.

Well, first of all, if you need a pair of socks and you can't buy them, you find the time to make 'em. In fact, you start making them in the spring, because you know you'll need them in six months when winter comes.

Now, as to why they can't just buy 'em. Imagine you live on another planet-- say, Mars-- and yours is the only pair of socks there. Literally, I mean; you're wearing the only pair of socks on the entire planet. But they're starting to wear thin, so you decide you need a new pair.

Where are the socks? Earth, millions of miles away. On Earth, you can buy socks by the truckload for almost nothing; they're manufactured in such vast quantities that the cost is acceptable to even the desperately poor.

But you're on Mars. In order to get socks, somebody on Earth will have to put a pair of socks in a rocket, and fire that rocket off toward Mars. Not an inexpensive proposition; the cost of blasting a pair of socks into orbit is only slightly less than the cost of blasting a person into orbit, and that cost is huge. So if you want to get socks from Earth, you're going to have to pay a fortune for them.

What can you pay with? You don't have anything remotely like the money it would take to pay for the cost of shipping your socks; you have to trade somehow. What will you trade with? You're living a subsistence lifestyle as it is; you don't have the energy budget to go digging for rubies to ship back to Earth in exchange for your socks.

Long story short: you can't buy socks. There's just no way to make it practical for anybody on Earth to ship socks to you on Mars.

So what do you do? By god, you go out to the pasture and you shear a sheep and you whittle a couple of knitting needles and you make your own socks.

Re: Region coding is effective?!

[Twirlip of the Mists]

First of all, when I said "effective access control mechanism," I meant it in the sense that the law means it: left alone, region codes work to prevent DVDs from one region from being played in another region. That's the legal definition of "effective."

Anyway, yeah, you're right, it would be theoretically possible for you to just buy one DVD player from each region so you can watch any DVD in your home. There's nothing wrong with that idea at all, except that I believe it's illegal to import non-region-1 DVD players to the US. (I'm not positive, but I've been told this by people who ought to know.) A better idea is to have a friend smuggle a region-free NTSC/PAL DVD player in from Australia or the Pacific Rim. If you can get it past customs-- and you almost always can-- it's a good solution. You'll need to put an adapter on the electrical plug, but that's all.

None of that is illegal under the DMCA, because it doesn't involve circumventing the region coding system. You're merely using the correct tool to view DVDs from different regions. (Importing DVD players without region controls is a different matter; that's covered under trade laws, not copyright laws.)

But if you "de-regionize" your DVD player to turn it into a region-free device, that's against the law under the DMCA. That's circumventing the access control mechanism itself, and that's a no-no.

Bible?

[Snaller]

How does the artificial gravity work on the ship? Magic. It actually says that, right there in the series bible.

Where did you get the bible?

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[perfessor multigeek]

Think about it. They zoom up to a solar system and bang, they're at the planet. How much time would they have to stop and stand there to watch which way the planets are going to calculate new orbits?
Um, how about, "as long as they need"? They're working for a famously obsessive scientist who just finished reaming them out about having to be sure of everything because they are choosing a planet to be utterly obliterated and reconstructed on the subatomic level.

Yup, it's bothered me too since the moment I saw the scene.
"Botany Bay? Botany Bay ?!?" Checkov, you're a dimwit.
At the very least. The circumstances of Khan's stranding and the use of shipping containers as transfer vessels always made it obvious to me that there would without a doubt have to be damn near indestructable transceivers sent down with the "genetic criminals" with a heavy duty "Stay away! Stay away! Very very bad people here" IFF* on permanent repeat and designed to be unreachable/unmodifiable by Khan's crew.
But then, I lost hope of ST making sense when they had them in those big-ass space suits that were supposedly for maintenance work back in the first ST movie. Even then I knew enough to know that suit design was heading towards something closer to bike shorts material or current wet suits then to anything that bulky.
The only thing that redeemed the tech for me was the whole idea of a major plot point being built around the importance of understanding systems and how they can be hacked. After all this is the movie with both:
"You have to learn why things work the way they do on a starship" and "I got a commendation for original thinking".**
How could I *not* love a movie that revealed that James Tiberius was a hacker?

*Identify Friend/Foe - automated and extremely standardized signal output device whose sole purpose is to say "This is me. I'm a (blah) registry, (foo) type vessel of reg number (zorch)
**(Those quotes refer to hacking the command systems of the Reliant and reprogramming the simulator for the Kobiashi Maru test for those of you with lives)

Yup, as the old Be OS pocket protectors say: "We be geeks".
Rustin

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You call yourself a trekkie?

An emphatic no. I liked Wrath of Khan quite a bit, but the rest of it pretty much leaves me cold.

Besides, look elsewhere for my comments on why the whole counting-from-the-outside thing doesn't work.

Re:the "look" of Firefly

[perfessor multigeek]

Oh brother, it's that whole "why do they have to make it look like the American West bullshit again! I am so sick of this pathetic ignorant claptrap.
Okay, let's start with the whole clothing thing. Do you know what herders and ranchers wore in the old Roman Empire? Hmmm....try big floppy hats, leather breaches, heavy footwear, and usually carrying around lengths of rope or leather that they were using to tie things closed/harness animals/etc.
Oh, but that's gotta be an exception. Yeah, sure.
South American "cowboys"? Same thing.
China, modern backwoods or just old days backwoods? Same thing.
Europe in the Middle Ages? Take a look and there it is.
Do I need to keep going or have I made my point?
When you're in the sticks and tech and money are in uncoomfortably low supply you wear leather or equivalent because it's tough, flexible, and comparatively soft. You wear big hats because they keep the sun and wind and rain off; you probably wear ones made of soft fabric so you can pull down the sides or push them up or simply because even if they start out crisp, they don't stay that way. You wear a few bits of "fancy" patterned fabric because it doesn't show the dirt while still letting you go into town. Heavy boots or shoes should be obvious. Rope should be too. A mid-sized knife, ready to hand, is just gonna happen. Thick but short gloves, some kind of scarf. All of these are just the choices that become self-evident when you're doing that kind of thing.
Heavy frame houses with dropped in bits of ornament and dusty windows come along too.
Back when I was a wee lad I was taught to call a bandana an "A.P.", as in "all purpose". That's because we were taught to use them for everydamnthing. Since then I've used them as hats, headbands, bags, liquid carriers (for short distances), tie-downs, cushions, placemats, wrapping for stuff from machine tools to chopsticks, bandages, dust covers, and more. And that's just stuff I've done while living (pretty much) in the city. The same is true of a dozen other "western" cliches.
Personally, I tend more towards what people think of as modern English country (baggy tweed jacket, long substantial scarf, twill pants or jeans, lighter shoes but still heavy socks) but I'll tell you that I reached that because I found that it worked. The style came after the function; not the other way around.
The "western" look predates the white/black/hispanic settling of the American West by thousands of years and will still be current out at the ass edge of wherever as long as there continues to be such a place.

There. Are we done now?

Rustin

Some actual *facts* re future worlds

[perfessor multigeek]

Well now, tftp I've got a suggestion for you. Get a fact (any one will do) and come back.
Okay, where do I start? Hmm. . . let' s start with the horses.
First of all, here and now on our own little planet, more and more rural folk are switching *back* to horses or mules. They don't need roads or level ground, they can (if necessary) find their own way home, they can be "fueled" with a much broader range of materials, they are quieter, less polluting, and are self-replicating if you care for them right.
Want some specifics? I can tell you that in Vermont and Oregon, enough small lumber companies are switching back to affect what woods are coming to market, who is willing to have their land selectively lumbered, and how. People are finally learning that sometimes the switch to mechanical tech everywhere is just plain marketing. Are tractors or other mechanical devices better for, say, plowing? Yes, reliably so. Are they better for transportation? Depends on where you're going, what you're carrying, and how soon you need to get there.
Want another example? Police departments all across the industrialized world are switching from cars to a mix of foot patrols, bicycles, horses, SUV-type vehicles, and cars to handle the rest. It turns out that horses are better for crowd control, bikes are the fastest way to move on a crowded city street, and foot patrols are a lot more likely to, for example, notice the anomalous sound that will lead to catching a burglar.
Another? The newest trend in wastewater treatment is fields of reeds and other plants. Cheaper, faster, more reliable. One of the biggest advancements happening in building design is putting plants on the roof. Insulates them, makes the roof last longer, cuts stormwater treatment needs, and cleans the air. The cities of Stuttgart, Toronto, and Chicago have all made greenmantle a major municipal priority. New York City's government just had sixteen (count 'em, sixteen) municipal departments sit down together with a bunch of experts in this stuff and spend a day going over options (and you heard it here first).
In terms of the whole "low-tech" look, I think I covered that one just fine in the post higher up.
Oh, and by the way, what sort of cockamamie ignorant city boy thinks that horses or cows are "low tech"? Do you have any idea at all of the computer power and state of the art infrastructure behind modern cattle breeding? Texas alone has more Star Trek-looking gear for stud work then half the dot coms in California combined. We've got this stuff now, it's called "genetic engineering". Maybe you've heard of it.
Ever been in a biology lab? We've got some real purty stuff now, looks just like real technology and everthin'. Got blinkin' lights and hummin' disk drives and them watchamacallems; you know, oh yeah, parallel processors.
Now personally, I haven't done tech in a bio lab since the early nineties, but even then it was pretty clear that not all the fruits of modern science have QWERTY keyboards attached to them.

So, tell me again, why exactly is it that a backwoods impoverished frontier in the far future will necessarily look like Ronald Reagan's bright shiny idea of a space station?

Rustin

Re:Some actual *facts* re future worlds

[perfessor multigeek]

Not to flog a dead *ahem* horse, but COME ON!
You clearly still don't get the point.
"prehistoric"? My point is that in some cases horses and cows and wooden houses and all that are modern. Advanced. Even, *gasp!* futuristic!
As for this absurd "it's all set in the Old West and thereby irrellevant/obscure" claptrap, clearly you *have not* read the other posts. I'm not going to say all over again the reasons that this is big ol' barrel of hogwash but I will say yet again that it most certainly is.
As to your preferences, both for televison and in life, I can only say that I hope that you are young and will broaden your mind in the years to come.
Moving on as well,
Rustin

Re:and they cancelled Dark Angel for it too...

[Alex Thorpe]

Hmmm, visualizing.. damn. Perhaps that would get me to tune in! ;-) She's got some damn fine genes, and I don't mean her character!

Well, *we're* here to bitch. And you?

[perfessor multigeek]

I love how everyone that posts to slashdot is an armchair expert in whatever they're posting about, be it tv demographics, marketing, computer security, whatever.
Uh, first of all, I hate to break it to you (no, I don't) but some of us *are* experts in TV demographics (see TwirlipOTM), marketing (no certain examples this thred, they turn up), computer security (well, that would be about five percent of /., which, btw, includes most everybody writing, implementing, hacking, or documenting the field), whatever.
Ya see, if you check the posts, you'll find fanwing comments from aircraft materials designers, media comments from Wil Wheaton, chip design comments from chip fab experts, and so on.
Kinda reminds me of a party I went to once when somebody got pissed at a comment I made while I was still working on wiring systems for missiles and fighter planes. Some dimwit got snotty and yelled at me, "what are you, a rocket scientist?" and a little cluster of engineers I knew all started laughing and said, "well, actually, yes, he is."
You wanta point that comment at me? Go ahead. My site should give you some of it. Otherwise, bio labs? Let's say that I started as an assistant helper guy at NYU Med Center and last did tech work at (among other places) the genetic engineering labs at Rockefeller University.
Hell, even the "what would they be doing with horses" guy sounds like he probably has some relevant tech background.

But even beyond all that, I don't know about you, but I come here to chat. If you care to tell me that the discussions here are even a tenth as off-base, ill-informed, or done by people without professional standing in the subjects being discussed as the appalling grunts and ego ballooning about football sure to be happening all around America this very day, then you simply aren't paying attention. Sure, we ramble; this is our off time. You want formal overviews? Go to the IEEE or APS.

And yes, I really am pissy today, aren't I?
Rustin

Re:and they cancelled Dark Angel for it too...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

She's got some damn fine genes...

If you're wondering, her father is Mexican of Spanish extraction, and her mother is French Canadian with Danish roots.

They say, what with modern migration and transportation and all, that some day everybody will be a mix of various proportions of every ethnic group and racial type. If Jessica Alba is any evidence, oh, how I long for that day.

I'm doing my part; I'm white-bread American boy, and my girlfriend's Vietnamese. I hope our kids look more like her than like me...

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Hrothgar The Great]

But then they couldn't milk their success and stay on several years too long like the X-Files.

Re:Just my opnion, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Ah, but maybe the weren't numbered in order of distance from the star. They were probably numbered in order of discovery.

Possible, but that's not the way we do things today. Since the movie still uses the Bayer naming scheme, it's reasonable to assume that they're also using the same numbering scheme for planets that we use. Note that I'm not talking about the solar body catalogue system you're referring to. I'm talking about the Bayer system that uses Greek letters (and Roman letters) to name stars in order of apparent magnitude, and gives us names like Alpha Ceti (or Ceti Alpha). By the Flamsteed system, for instance, the star would be called 92 Ceti instead of Alpha Ceti (or Ceti Alpha), but the planets in it would still be numbered in order from the sun outward.

Re:goodbye to that junk

[Hrothgar The Great]

You're right. From now on, all shows about the future should describe everything in the exact same, most plausible way. After all, who wants anything outlandish, odd, or creative to ever happen in anything? WE WANT ABSOLUTE REALISM IN OUR SCIENCE FICTION!!! oh wait...

Bring back Blake's 7!

[Bill Kendrick]

With the Friday evening timeslot, I never got a chance to watch Firefly until I got a TiVo recently. It wasn't awful, but I haven't been sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the next installment. For a prime-time show, and especially one on Fox, I can understand how it might not last (at least in the eyes of the network). It was pretty different from the tried-and-true Trek crap that's been getting pumped out lately. (Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Enterprise. And, thanks to TiVo, I've been getting to see a lot of DS9 lately; I forgot how good that show was - at least back in the early seasons.)

Anyway - I guess I should get to my point. Firefly reminded me of Blake's 7, the old BBC sci-fi about rebels flying around the galaxy and going up against the evil empire. (Not evil like Darth Vader... a more 'creepy' evil.) There was a lot less 'western' in that show, though. (Heh, understandable, being a British series.)

Fortunately, the entire B7 DVD series is coming out in 2003, so I'll have SOME good sci-fi to watch each week. :^)

Firefly vs "Just Shoot me"

[Felinoid]

I guess Chris isn't a fan of comedy but as he brought it up I'll use his "Just shoot me" to explain why Firefly was doomed from the start.
Firefly is a frighteningly innovative show. I mean it's great. The two eppisodes I watched were exelent. I was hooked.
I cought one show in passing and the next as it was cancled.
It's not like anything else on TV.
This is frightening for TV executives who are settled on what works.

Now for "Just shoot me"
A well done comedy. The formula here is open for innovation so Just shoot me is free to act under certion guidelines.
Of comedys it's the better I think of the available mostly dreck comedy showa.

But Just shoot me never threatons the tv exe comfort zone.
The forumula execs like in sifi is "Star Trek wanabe" Firefly is certonly not.
With the Internet anyone fed up with the drek can get better stuff from online text fiction and comics.
Most of Firefly's target audence don't watch tv anymore.
My fav shows
Amercan gothic, Asif & Firefly.
Dam it...

50's spaghetti western show

[ronfar]

50's spaghetti western show? 50's spaghetti western show?!?! Hmm, that's so wrong, on so many levels, that I can't figure out where to begin. (It ranks up there with a radio gaff my Dad loves, "the Boston Tea Party Massacre.") 50's tv shows were not spaghetti westerns. Spaghetti western refers to Italian Westerns, which tended to have a rougher world view than American Westerns, and were created when American Westerns started to dry up in the 1960s even though the Western was still very popular in Europe.

This is not to say there weren't plenty of thoughtful, well written American Westerns, just to explain the term Spaghetti Western...

Frontier Science Fiction is a perfectly sound sub-genre of science-fiction, a lot of Heinlein's early stuff like Tunnel in the Sky dealt with it, and arguably much of Asimov's Foundation trilogy dealt with a similar theme.

Joss Whedon's Mistake

[Thag]

...was to try and start up this show this season, while he was still doing Buffy and Angel. He would have been better off starting Firefly after Buffy was over, next season, for a number of reasons:

• Lots of Buffy fans with timeon their hands wanting something else to watch.
  
• They could have tried to take over Buffy's old time slot, and not gotten the Friday Night of Death.
  
• It would have allowed them to plan out the series more, and work on the setting.
  

I think the last one is the kicker. Firefly is good, but it needed to have been thought through in more depth.

The frontier setting just doesn't convince. It needs less Little House on the Prairie, more modern day third world. I mean, hoop skirts? The way they're doing it now screams "Space Rangers" when their show is grim and gritty.

Moreover, it seems to me that he's making up the larger setting as he goes along. He probably had a couple pages of notes, bad central alliance, good rebels on the fringes of civilization, that sort of thing. But nothing like the depth and subtlety of Babylon 5. He did the same thing on Buffy, but got away with it because the background was the real world, and needed no justification or work to develop. With Firefly, I'm seeing a bunch of pieces that really don't seem to fit. In the core worlds, we have seemingly "modern" societies and the 1984-ish Alliance. On the frontiers, we have Amish farming towns and some kind of Old South-style aristocracy. The two don't fit together. And it's not just the society: the astronomy and technology have the same kinds of huge holes in them. The background just needs more work.

Lastly, he could have condensed the cast: there are just too many characters on that ship. Nearly every episode wastes time getting some of the characters off-stage. They need to go from nine regulars to around five. Make the rest recurring parts. Like Inara, or Book, both characters who could come and go and sometimes take other ships and still run across Serenity from time to time when the plot called for it.

Anyway, let me end on a positive note: I still like the show, and hope it continues. I like the characters, the actors, and the writing. And I like the fact that the show is different from other sci fi on TV. So, good luck to Joss and company!

Jon Acheson

Great Analysis

[bryan1945]

Good stuff. But one difference that I would note- as a suburb kid, when we went camping, we called toilet paper "AP". I guess suburban kids don't use bandanas a whole lot in those ways, since we always called them "bandanas".

Just wanted to say that for whatever little worth that merits.