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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...)"
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?
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
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.
/. 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.
Okay, maybe to a small minority (uber-geeks) it was great but you won't even get the whole
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.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
If Firefly had C'tarl C'tarl in it, I'd have watched.
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.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
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).
./ . Honestly.
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
- 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.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
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.
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.
Help fight continental drift.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wait, let me get this straight...
New TV shows are actually rehashing old plots?
Oh the travesty!
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."
I write in my journal
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.
I write in my journal
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.
> ... 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.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
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.
I write in my journal
Per fox's PR7
http://www.fireflyfans.net/news.asp?newsid=32
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.
Fox can't really change their audience quickly, so they just drop the good stuff.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
(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.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
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.
I write in my journal
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
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Exactly. The show is clearly a ripoff of Cowboy Bebop.
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.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
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."
I write in my journal
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.
I write in my journal
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.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
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.
Software Wars
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.
> 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.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
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?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
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.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
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.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.