Firefly Movie Gets The Green Light

An anonymous reader writes "According to FireflyFans.net and Ain't It Cool News, Universal has greenlit production of 'Serenity,' the motion picture based on Joss Whedon's cancelled TV series 'Firefly.' Both sites point to an article from Variety that says the film will start production in June, and be ready for release in 2005." The informative Whedonesque weblog is also monitoring developments regarding this much-deserved resurrection.

Comments

firefly

[panxerox]

OIC firefly is good enough for a dvd set and good enough for a movie but not good enough for a series. Sometimes I wonder about the people making the decisions. Are they making a decision to not do a series because of business reasons or just well because they say so and those weenie viewers arent going to change our minds because they might get it in their heads that they matter. Yes I'm bitter. Its like they say "come here viewers come check out this great new series!" then they go "SUCKERS !! haha no show for you !!".

Re:firefly

[eatenn]

"OIC firefly is good enough for a dvd set and good enough for a movie but not good enough for a series."

Financially speaking, I would say that Firefly may actually be better suited to movies than television. Whedon's shows are excellent... and also extremely expensive. Having to spend huge amounts of money for 22 episodes every year means that the corporate heads demand a pretty big payback pretty damn quick. Fox couldn't really afford for viewers to ease into the show (and God knows a Friday night time-slot didn't help). It's for similar reasons that Buffy left the WB and Angel was recently cancelled.

As a motion picture though, they spend the big bucks once and reap the benefits for months in merchandise, rentals, etc. You don't get that kind of a pay-off with TV (at least not that quickly). I love Whedon's serial storytelling, but I'm excited to see how he adapts to the big screen.

Re:firefly

[Issue9mm]

Hopefully he's improved on his big-screen capabilities since the original Buffy and Alien 4. Ick.

Actually tho, seeing how he much time he's taken in perfecting the series runs he's had, I have little doubt that Serenity will be spectacular. I just hope that he's able to work within a 2 hour movie. His best plots have taken seasons to develop, much less a few hours.

-9mm-

Re:firefly

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully they will do this for Angel as well, but this is really good news. Firefly was a great damn show. These networks are dammn crazy for canceling them.

Re:firefly

[Cecil]

Its like they say "come here viewers come check out this great new series!" then they go "SUCKERS !! haha no show for you !!".

I'm pretty sure that's actually the thought process they go though. Good call.

In case you couldn't guess from the URL of my website -- I'm bitter too. Firefly rocks. Futurama rocks. Family guy rocks. Fox sucks.

Re:firefly

[teraph]

Hopefully he's improved on his big-screen capabilities since the original Buffy and Alien 4. Ick.

Well, it's hard to tell what the original scripts were like. A good script can become awful between the day it's bought and the day it's released in a theater.

You have a half-dozen suits, directors, and editors to screw it up. (We're assuming here that the original script was good.)

seeing how he much time he's taken in perfecting the series runs he's had, I have little doubt that Serenity will be spectacular.

Yes. His TV shows are probably the better indicator of the quality of his writing, since that is where he has the most control. Everything he has done for film has had multiple hands, for good or ill. (And he's repeatedly stated his disappointment at both the Buffy movie and Alien Resurrection. He was once mis-identified as having written an episode of "Boy Meets World" and he expressed more pride in that incorrect credit than his writing of Resurrection.)

It's possible that the Firefly film will suck, maybe because he fails to produce a good script, maybe because Universal selects someone else to direct, maybe because the producers demand bad changes.

That's why he's better in TV. Head writers (who are almost always the producers) are nearly Gods with regard to how their scripts read and show up on screen. The network has some input, but much of it is Standards and Practices stuff (i.e., the censors).

In film, the producers own the script and can do as they please. And then the director is in control the moment shooting starts (with input from the producers).

Film writing is good money, but it's very little control. (Unless you make it yourself.)

Re:firefly

[Anonymous Coward]

Why spend money making quality television programming when you can throw more shit at us like American Idol, my fat obnoxious wedding, or whatever the hell else they come up with next week?

Fox is so frustrating this year! I don't know how they can make some of the worst programming on TV (bullshit reality program of the week), and some of the best (Simpsons, Malcolm, Bernie Mac, That 70's Show, 24).

Bah humbug.

Re:firefly

[eatenn]

Hopefully he's improved on his big-screen capabilities since the original Buffy and Alien 4. Ick.

Yeck. Being president of the Joss Whedon Stalker Club, I may be a little biased, but I've read Whedon's draft of the Buffy movie (which he didn't direct), and the version that actually made it to the theatres... Whedon's draft is much better. Apparently Donald Sutherland insisted on writing his own dialog, the studio wanted it to be more of a teen comedy, and the director didn't understand the material. It's the nature of the business that scripts get fucked with by a series of producers, directors, and studio heads who are constantly looking for ways to fit a monkey into the story somehow.

Whedon has also stated that no one hates Alien 4 more than he does. He had other people dictating what he was supposed to write.

I've also had the experience in film school having one of my scripts approved for production and then butchered beyond all recognition. It ain't fun.

Re:firefly

[PowerPill]

Fox had never zipped up the deal for a complete season of Firefly so right from the start it was a nail biter for Joss. Fox didn't even allow the premiere (Serenity) to be the premiere because they thought it lacked a certain pace. If you take notice, Fox generally takes the approach of more action right at the get go = better ratings over elegantly gripping television. So yes, it was that Whedon's vision didn't quite fit Fox's business model or formula rather. All of this is actually touched on in the box set.

Re:firefly

[TheCyko1]

I enjoyed Firefly except for those random bits of bad chinese. I suspect that they were talking in mandarin, maybe even cantonese, but the actors always butchered the language so badly that it always sounded more like nails on the chalkboard.

Re:firefly

[TheLoneDanger]

It was Mandarin, except for one part when the engine breaks down and the ship broadcasts a warning that oxygen's low, check life support etc. That was Cantonese spoken fluently. I assume they just asked someone Chinese to say what they wanted "in Chinese" and that person just assumed Cantonese (which is fairly prevalent in North America).

The inconsistency bugged me a bit, but I was happy to actually understand what was being said for once (I only know a little Mandarin, and it was butchered so badly that the only one I could make out was mei-mei).

Interestingly enough, Jayne's actor seemed to speak Mandarin a bit better than everyone else. In the DVD extras he talks about it a bit, and I assume he practiced it more.

Re:firefly

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Whedon has also stated that no one hates Alien 4 more than he does. He had other people dictating what he was supposed to write.

The IMDb has an interesting trivia point about this, on the entry for Angel :

In the episode "Fredless", when talking about the Aliens series, a character says, "He's always had a thing for those 'Aliens' movies. Except for that last one they made - I think he dozed off." Series creator Joss Whedon wrote the script for Alien: Resurrection (1997), although it was heavily rewritten.

Re:firefly

[B3ryllium]

Not just that, Fox sucks ass.

Re:firefly

[Udo Schmitz]

Whedon's shows are excellent... and also extremely expensive.

I always hear that, but noone ever gives any numbers? Did you pull that "fact" out of your ass, or can you give me any prove for that claim? I'm pretty sure any StarTrek show is far more expensive. Still the FX look worse. The planet sceneries sometimes look like in the classic series.

Re:firefly

[Udo Schmitz]

Whedon has also stated that no one hates Alien 4 more than he does.

Get his original script here.

Re:firefly

[Snaller]

Hopefully he's improved on his big-screen capabilities since the original Buffy and Alien 4. Ick

If you knew the background you would know that they are not him. He was just a little guy who should shut up then. In interviews he has pretty much indicated that Donald Sutherland was an arrogant prick who though he was gods gift to the universe and who readily changed the script ("Improved" it Sorbo style) (which is probably why he never accepted improvisation on the TV series), and the director didn't see it Joss's way either and wanted to improve it etc. Same thing with resurection:
"("I asked the director, "Can you just explain to me why he's doing this? Why is he going for this gun?" And the editor, who was French, turned to me and said, with a little leer on his face, [adopts gravelly, smarmy, French-accented voice] "Because eets een the screept." And I actually went and dented the bathroom stall with my puddly little fist. I have never been angrier. But it's the classic, "When something goes wrong, you assume the writers a dork. And that's painful."

But now, not only does he write, he also directs, and his buddy Chris Buchanan is one of the executive producers - I'd say its a safe bet that this time he has much more control. Of course not ultimate, because universal is paying and could demand scenes with half nake showgirls twirling their tassles - one can only hope they stay away and let Whedon win them that Oscar we know he is capable of :)

Re:firefly

[mbourgon]

All of this is actually touched on in the box set.

Touched on isn't the word I'd use. It's heavily talked about during both Serenity (the Pilot) & The Train Job. Joss certainly doesn't hold back during the commentary. Never has the "commentary may not reflect the studio's views" warning been more apt.

Re:firefly

[kalidasa]

It was worth trying, and worth doing, though I hope they'll get the actors more coaching for the film. The vision behind it (that everyone would be bilingual in English and Chinese) was good.

Re:firefly

[brave_baker]

I've read one of the original script's for Alien 4. It was really quite good. The ending had Ripley chasing the alien hybrid on the surface of a planet and running it over with a sort hovercraft/combine piece of future farm equipment. _Not_ the let's just blow it out the window of a spaceship... again.

I didn't know that Whedon had written that until I read your post. It makes me worry that Serenity will have a great story that gets killed by suits worried about the budget.

Re:firefly

[brave_baker]

Totally off topic, but it turns out I was remembering the script wrong.

Re:firefly

[jafac]

There's also the circulating conspiracy-theory that "sci-fi shows in general, are under the gun, because, demographically, their viewers are more likely to watch on a commercial-skipping PVR."

They're being repaced with cheaper sitcoms, or reality shows.

Good riddance, I say. The McDonaldization of science fiction entertainment has been a mixed bag. I'd rather be honest and pay for DVD sets, and fill my bookcase with them, and my spare time watching them. Fewer episodes of greater quality, perhaps not constrained by the limitations imposed by the 1-hour TV show format (commercial breaks - Monster Of The Week - 22 episodes per year - milktoast politically correct inoffensive content, etc).

Then I could cancel my cable entirely.

It was said that Tivo was going to eventually destroy television as we know it. Maybe to be replaced by something better.

Re:firefly

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember reading just the opposite: that Firefly was being produced on a relative shoestring. And to me, the sets generally looked like someone was doing a good job with very little money - making good use of the plain grey industrial texture of the ship interiors, for instance.

The CGI was pretty good, but not expensive-looking (which is as it should be - when I notice the cool nifty CGI, it's not doing its job). Mostly it made good use of the pseudo-handheld cam idea (also seen more recently in BG2003 - I've heard it first appeared in Space: Above and Beyond). That allows you to skimp on expensive (and often pointless) detail and make up for it in convincing motion. Some people hate that effect, of course, but it worked for me.

And of course they saved money on sound effects in the space scenes (thus gaining dramatic tension for free). ;) All in all, it had the character of a film school project done exceedingly well on a medium-low budget. Which is probably why I liked it. So the question might be whether the film, with an undoubtedly bigger budget, will be able to maintain that feeling.

(Stargate is another series that looks a lot more expensive than it really is, and one which I like in a manner similar to Firefly).

Strange.

[nefele]

So they actually decided to make a movie about a web browser?
Oh, wait...

Re:Strange.

[Anonymous Coward]

So... have you 'merkins actually seen the last few episodes of Firefly yet? (other than DVD I mean)

Obligatory.

[Trejkaz]

Serenity Now!!

Re:Obligatory.

[anagama]

I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'll be driving around and the theme song comes into my mind - "burn the land, boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me ..." It's going to be great to hear this in a theater rather than from my TV or computer speakers. Still, I agree w/ posters below, a series would be much more satisfying.

Re:Obligatory.

[Trejkaz]

Personally I have NFI because the series never aired here. I was just taking the easy route to a +5 Funny.

Re:Obligatory.

[TheLoneDanger]

Full opening theme lyrics:

Take my love, take my land,
Take me where I can not stand.
I don't care, I'm still free;
You can't take the sky from me.

Take me out to the black,
Tell them I ain't coming back.
Burn the land and boil the sea;
You can't take the sky from me.

There's no place I can be,
Since I've found Serenity.
But you can't take the sky from me.

Re:Obligatory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes dude. SERENITY NOW! I hope this movie makes it to the theaters, so I can yell "serenity now" at the top of my lungs whenever the preview comes on TV.

Re:Obligatory.

[NeuroKoan]

Google the lyrics or recall from memory?

Re:Obligatory.

[TheLoneDanger]

Memory. It isn't that hard to remember because it's short and it fits the show perfectly. Great little song.

Re:Obligatory.

[NeuroKoan]

Good man :D

In fact, I had to sing along as I read the lyrics. The song is amazing, and I absolutely love it.

It gets under your skin.

Re:Obligatory.

[B3ryllium]

It gets under your skin.

Damn reavers.

"They'll kill us, rape us, and skin us. If we're lucky, it'll be in that order." (slightly misquoted, I know :)

Re:Obligatory.

[B3ryllium]

I sure hope they consider it as an IMAX candidate. It's one movie I'd be pumped to see on a six story high screen. :)

Re:Obligatory.

[Anonymous Coward]

this whole time, I thought the line was "you can't take this guy from me."

Re:Obligatory.

[Keebler71]

Just out of curiosity.... why is it ok for this sci-fi show to have lyrics in its theme but thats one of the points that ires slashdotters about Enterprise?

Re:Obligatory.

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skin into their clothes. And if we're very lucky, they'll do it in that order.

Re:Obligatory.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Because the Firefly theme is a good song, perhaps?

Re:Obligatory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because for 30-some years, the Star Trek franchise has had an orchestral theme w/o lyrics, and we all know how much geeks hate change.

Re:Obligatory.

[LoveMuscle]

I think the problem here is that the Enterprise song (IMO) sux rocks. Cheesy, commercial, 80's hair band, love ballad crap.

The Firefly song OTOH has a western, screw authority, edge to it that fits in nicely with the whole theme of the show.

Re:Obligatory.

[snilloc]

It sucks even more now that they've "jazzed it up" a bit. I always flip (or FastForward) during the intro credits now.

Can't Wait

[darth_MALL]

Does anyone else see the similarity to that lame-ass 80's cartoon BraveStarr? Alright I loved it.

Re:Can't Wait

[Ralph Wiggam]

IIRC, BraveStarr involved space-age stuff but was set in a western, Earth-based setting. Didn't the action figures have some cool electronic abilities? Was that the cartoon with "Eyes of the hawk, ears of the wolf, stregth of the bear...speed of the puma"?

-B

Curse of the F's

[KoopaTroopa]

They're really naming it Serenity to avoid being prematurely cut off during production. This would surely have happened had the name started with 'F'.

Firefly - cancelled
Family Guy - cancelled
Futurama - cancelled

Someone ought to cancel Fox.

Re:Curse of the F's

[Anonymous Coward]

Fastlane - Cancelled.

HEY, Waitaminnit!!!

Re:Curse of the F's

[anagama]

Farscape

I don't what network it was on (DVD watcher myself), but it is also an unfair F cut.

Re:Curse of the F's

[KoopaTroopa]

Just started watching some Farscape in the last couple of days. No kidding - it's a great show, and shouldn't have been cancelled.

Incidentally, I believe it aired on the SciFi channel. I, too, am viewing on DVDs.

Re:Curse of the F's

[Boing]

Never saw it myself, but a lot of people would be mad that you forgot "Freaks and Geeks".

Re:Curse of the F's

[st0rmshad0w]

And when you finish with 'F's lets move on to 'G'.

I'll start: G Vs E (aka Good Vs Evil)

oh screw it all, and bring back Brimstone. Why John Glover wasn't tapped to play the first of the fallen in the atrocity know as "Constantine" I'll never understand.

So i'm veering off topic, sue me. I'm just thankful they didn't call CSI something like "Forensic Investigators"

Re:Curse of the F's

[ClubStew]

It was a Sci-Fi original. And Sci-Fi canceled it after the season finale' was in post-production so that they left loyal watchers with a cliff hanger and then had the audacity to say "thank you for watching, from sci-fi". So, while the thread's original poster mentioned that Fox starts with F and should be cancel (especially since they've canceled a lot of good Fs, Sci-Fi should by the same token; only the F stands for f...oh wait - can't say that.

Re:Curse of the F's

[britneys 9th husband]

FreeBSD - dead

Re:Curse of the F's

[ajs]

Well, to be fair, Firefly got half a season where the other two you mentioned went quite a lot longer. Family Guy got 3 seasons and Futurama a full 5! Getting pulled off the air after 5 seasons may be dissapointing to fans, but it's a good run by any realistic measure, and most shows don't go 3 seasons for that matter.

Re:Curse of the F's

[seann]

Airs on the space channel here..

I wish I started watching it years ago.

Such a great series.

I'm just about to watch the last episode of season 2 and can't wait for season 3 to come out on the box set!

Re:Curse of the F's

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't mean to dash your dreams, but it gets so bad in the fourth season that I you will probably agree that it deserved to be cancelled (it's Buffy season 7 bad).

Re:Curse of the F's

[xagon7]

DAMN STRAIGHT.

Farscape has to be the most original television I ever watched. I was heartstruck by the cancellation, but am eagerly awaiting the miniseries wrapup in December!!!!

Re:Curse of the F's

[Anonymous Coward]

But Family Guy went into hiatus for what seemed like a few years, and Futurama kept getting preempted by football that it took a year or two for the final episodes to be shown, long after it was officially cancelled.

Fans can't watch it if Fox won't show it, or keeps changing the time and day it is shown. Three or Five messed up seasons is small comfort.

Re:Curse of the F's

[Frogbert]

Should of started the show with an L, lets face it LEXX is the shittiest sci-fi should to slither onto our TV screens in many a year, and its still going strong.

Re:Curse of the F's

[Tokerat]

Family Guy is rumored to be working on a new season...any truth to that?

Re:Curse of the F's

[Justabit]

I dont know if it is that bad. When Kriton is alive and walking around when he died last season, and the gut with bad teeth and a nuke inside his head is actually inside kritons head, and the gut with a sun for an eye dies etc etc.. shall i give more spoilers? By the way, it was made in Australia using local crew & cast (except main) then moved to Canada for last season.

Re:Curse of the F's

[Rasta Prefect]

Futurama a full 5

The and the last few episodes were amongst the best they had. Futurama didn't die a natural death - Fox killed it by putting it after football. As a die hard fan, I quit even trying to watch it on fox. The final straw for me was the month where I made a point to get home by 6:00 - Only to have it canceled by football for 4 straight weeks. After that, I just started Kazaaing for it.

Re:Curse of the F's

[mashx]

Quick Googling, in case that was true, and it turned up this:

http://www.tvtome.com/FamilyGuy/

and this:

http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,13622,00.htm l?tnews

Could it be...?

Re:Curse of the F's

[GumboN]

Fmillenium
Flone Gunmen
Fjohn Doe
Fdark Angel
The Ftick...
----

Re:Curse of the F's

[murdocj]

Farscape was a great show, and I think it was actually better in some of the later seasons than the first season or two, but by the time it was cancelled it was running out of gas.

Re:Curse of the F's

[Ralph Wiggam]

That got canceled because the show cost a fortune and the director was leaving to make movies. They made a dozen relationship-based reality shows the price of one Fastlane episode. I do miss Tiffany Amber. Mmmmm....Kelly Kepowski....

-B

Re:Curse of the F's

[Orne]

Good Vs Evil had a great "campy" feel to it that I liked. If you liked that, I recommend "Keen Eddy" that is now appearing on Bravo...

I don't lament the death of Brimstone... But I wish they'd take Tremors and bury that one in the backyard.

Re:Curse of the F's

[Anonymous Coward]

Keen Fucking Eddie

New Series

[bsharitt]

While a movie would be nice, I would rather have the series returen. Firefly was one of the few shows I've watched that I really like and made it a point to watch, instead of just watching it if it was on like most other shows.

Re:New Series

[blincoln]

While a movie would be nice, I would rather have the series returen.

Allegedly Whedon's plan is to use a successful film as a springboard for a follow-up series.

I would be happy with him either keeping it in theatres or switching back to TV, as long as he gets to finish the story one way or another.

Also, is it me, or is this "press release" more of a series of writer's notes?

To that end, he said he went out of his way while penning the "Serenity" script to make sure that it is accessible to auds who never tuned into "Firefly."

"Auds"? Obviously this is short for "audience," but still. Let's move on.

Series was a space oater set 500 years in the future, tracking the journeys of the crew aboard the Serenity.

Ah yes, a "space oater." I'm fond of those.

Chris Buchanan of Mutant Enemy, Whedon's shingle, and Mendel exec Alissa Tager are exec producing.

"Whedon's shingle," uh huh...

Re:New Series

[prockcore]

I would rather have the series returen

Joss Whedon should call up USA. With Monk and Dead Zone it's obvious that USA isn't afraid to back a strange-yet-brilliant show.

Or maybe FX (Nip Tuck, The Shield) or Bravo (Keen Eddie, Touching Evil).

Cable is really the only place you can find good shows that don't dumb down to the common denominator.

Fox is just stupid. How much money are they making from the Firefly dvds and Family Guy dvds? Compare that with how much money you would expect an any reality TV DVD to make.

In a couple of years, fox is going to have to reach all the way back to In Living Colour in order to make DVD sales... because no one wants to buy anything that they currently air.

Re:New Series

[bsharitt]

Yeah, that was probably the inital problem, puting it on broadcast TV. Cable is about the only place for shows that have actors and don't give away prizes.

Re:New Series

[steeef]

"Auds"? Obviously this is short for "audience," but still. Let's move on.

Variety seems to love these abbreviations. Nick Nunziata of CHUD sums it up:

For those not invested in Variety's ass injuring dialect, re-skedding and distribs are slightly quicker ways to say rescheduling and distributors. I can only imagine these folks in the bedroom saying "Honey, thank God I circummed my 'nis or you'd not know the face of Baldhammer(TM)". Annoying.

Re:New Series

[patternjuggler]

Firefly was one of the few shows I've watched that I really like

Can someone point out what was especially good about it? I'll grant without having seen more than half an episode that it was better than Enterprise or any other show in the genre on tv currently, but that's not saying much.

Re:New Series

[TheLoneDanger]

The first season of In Living Color is already out on DVD: See here.

Re:New Series

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't think firefly fits in the same demographics as any of the shows you mentioned.. or even the target demographics of the channels u mentioned. i'd expect sci-fi to pick it up but i don't think they have the money to finance a show like firefly.

Re:New Series

[Platinum Dragon]

Can someone point out what was especially good about it? I'll grant without having seen more than half an episode that it was better than Enterprise or any other show in the genre on tv currently, but that's not saying much.

I'll take a shot at this one. I've been catching the episodes on Canada's SPACE channel, and to me the series definitely had a fairly solid setting and mood in its first season, which is rare for a sci-fi series.

The show fuses sci-fi space conventions with Wild West-era characters and environments. The whole "space Western" thing is not subtle, but that might actually be a good thing. I've found that when sci-fi producers try to be "subtle", their works ends up coming across as obvious and pretentious, like the ST:TNG episodes that tried to disguise the contemporary parallels, then beat you over the head with The Contemporary Moral Message. The Western aspects aren't taken so far as to be implausibly anachronistic; the six-shooters and shotguns seem to fire some kind of directed energy instead of projectiles, and there is still advanced technology. It just so happens the super-cool machines have some rust and loose screws, which only adds to the plausibility. I still have some trouble conceiving of just what volume of space the series takes place within, but then again, technobabble is kept at a minimum, which is a plus.

What little CGI I really took notice of looked pretty darn good, which isn't difficult to do nowadays--but then, compare Firefly to Babylon 5's first season and a half, and Starhunter. Also, there is no sound in space scenes. This threw me at first, but it's also accurate. For all the lack of adherence to anything resembling physics and scientific accuracy, I found this to be a nice touch.

Firefly worked really well in a contained-episode format, instead of the plot arcs that damn near everyone tries to shoehorn into shows now. Thing is, Whedon has shown a tendency to start with just such a pure episode format, then eventually move the series into multi-episode or even full-season arcs. This makes the short life of the series even rougher, because the creative team didn't even have a chance to really go places with the show.

Incidentally, J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade series died under similar conflicts with its network (demands for more sex and violence, episode juggling harming continuity), and it appeared to be developing in a similar fashion. JMS had the pressure of following up Babylon 5 with an expected second strong effort right from the start. When TNT demanded new episodes be shot and aired before the originally-shot episodes could see airtime, there was little chance the series' potential would be realized early on, or allowed to develop.

I wonder how amazing Firefly could have been in further seasons, given time to settle in. I say it again, the series felt quite well-realized for a first-season sci-fi program, and it got cut off at the knees by a network known more for trashy "reality" TV and amusing cartoons than fantasy and science fiction.

Re:New Series

[Chris Carollo]

Universal Stuidos are owned by GE, who in turn owns The Sci-Fi Channel. So that's probably the most likely place if Firefly is to make a return to TV.

Re:New Series

[NOLAChief]

Consider the target audience. Variety is essentially the movie industry's journal. Their target audience is Hollywood types, hence the jargon. Pick up a Mechanical Engineering journal at some point. I guarantee you that you'll see terminology specific to engineering. (Of course, on the off chance any mainstream outlets pick up an article appearing in an ME journal, I guarantee you they'd make more of an effort than was made here to dejargonize (is that a word?) it for general consumption.)

Re:New Series

[Ray Radlein]

Yeah, but Monk and Dead Zone and Nip/Tuck and The Shield and the like absolutely have to have significantly lower per-episode costs than Firefly had.

Cable markets have even more trouble supporting effects-heavy science fiction than networks do. The only reason Farscape and Lexx ever worked financially for the Sci-Fi Channel were because they were filmed abroad (Australia and Canada, respectively) and also sold into numerous foreign markets, both of which helped lower the network's outlay.

If Firefly were to wind up on USA Network, you could look forward to a lot of episodes set planetside on dusty frontier worlds (like "Jaynestown"), or set entirely inside Serenity, with few guest stars and few exterior FX shots (like "Objects in Space").


Which isn't to say that Joss couldn't make it work despite all that, of course. He is, after all, Joss.

Re:New Series

[B3ryllium]

GE also owns NBC ... I think Firefly would make an excellent lead-in to ER, because of the story arcs involved in each show. Thursday nights ... the writer's plaything.

We will rule over all this land, and we will call it ... this land!

Re:New Series

[mshiltonj]

Firefly was one of the few shows I've watched that I really like and made it a point to watch.

Agreed. If Firefly returned as a series, I just might turn my tv back on.

Re:New Series

[Snaller]

How is one to understand "Whedon's shingle," in this context?

Re:New Series

[primordial ooze]

Series was a space oater set 500 years in the future,
tracking the journeys of the crew aboard the Serenity.

Ah yes, a "space oater." I'm fond of those.

Actually, it's a real term, sort of. An oater is what they used to call Western soap operas (usually episodic) which were popular back in the middle third of the 20th century (think the weekly Will Rogers featurettes at the movies, or TV's Bonanza). A space oater is just a space opera that borrows western themes or has a western flair. Star Trek (the original) arguably falls into this category, as does Battlestar Galactica.

Re:New Series

[Chris Mattern]

> "Auds"? Obviously this is short for "audience," but still. Let's move on.
...
> Ah yes, a "space oater." I'm fond of those.
...
> "Whedon's shingle," uh huh...

o/~Normal talk makes producers walk/You might as well speak Greek/Unless you learn to talk that Variety Speak (Baba-doo-ba, baba-doo-ba...)o/~

Chris Mattern

Re:New Series

[Chris Mattern]

"shingle"--sign outside a store with the store's name on it. In this case "shingle" is used to mean that it's the name of Whedon's studio.

Chris Mattern

Re:New Series

[macMaestro]

Oater is Variety talk for a western. (Horses eat oats, horses are in westerns.)

Re:New Series

[macMaestro]

Fox still owns the TV rights to Firefly. They've sold the movie rights (and only the movie rights) to Universal.

Re:New Series

[ShinyBrowncoat]

Can someone point out what was especially good about it?

Although fans have all sorts of reasons for loving this show, I think it boils down to excellent, convention-defying writing, a great cast with amazing chemistry from the first scene, and seamless transitions between entertaining action, riveting drama, and ROTFLMAO humor/comedy all within one 45 minute episode. Check out episodes like 'Our Mrs. Reynolds' our 'Out of Gas' for the best examples of this. Oh, and downloads of the TV eps are available here, but only for a short while longer, so get them while you can!

Re:New Series

[fenix down]

But at the same time, ME journals don't usually hire retarded 1920s Jazz band promoters that have somehow gotten themselves addicted to crack to come up with their jargon. Hey, the auds like the space oater from Whedon's shingle? That's just ducky, daddy-o, now where's the giggle water, I wanna get blotto before we blow this joint!

Re:New Series

[llefler]

Also, is it me, or is this "press release" more of a series of writer's notes?

You missed a couple....

Pic, budgeted in the mid-eight figures, is skedded for a June start and should be ready for a 2005 release.

Apparently grammer is a lost art. 'skedded'?

speaking with other nets and cablers about the skein

Ok, I have no idea what the thought is here. Are you sure this wasn't written in chinese and run through a google translator?

U acquired the feature rights from Fox last fall.

Good news, apparently I have acquired the feature rights, so there should definately be a movie.

It's a sad, sad day for journalism.

Re:New Series

[Tetsujin28]

A space oater is just a space opera that borrows western themes or has a western flair. Star Trek (the original) arguably falls into this category, as does Battlestar Galactica.

I don't think I ever heard Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica called "oaters." I think the reference here is much more specific: Firefly is a science fiction series that very directly uses Western-style settings, stories and style, right down to the horses, six-guns and cattle rustling.

Re:New Series

[primordial ooze]

I don't think I ever heard Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica called "oaters."

Hang out among sci-fi geeks of a certain age (ie those of us who remember Bonanza and classic Trek) and you'll hear them called [space]oaters all the time. Google: 'oater "Star Trek"' and hit "I feel Lucky". Bam - there you go!

But I agree with you that Firefly holds closer to the classic recipe.

Re:New Series

[pretentiousPPC]

Even though FOX has killed too many great shows in the past, they currently have one of the best dramas out there, 24 Which oddly enough I think the only way you can enjoy the series is by watching the DVDs, where the episodes are back-to-back to one another.

Re:New Series

[Tetsujin28]

Google: 'oater "Star Trek"' and hit "I feel Lucky". Bam - there you go!

I did, and got the videoflicks.ca entry for the 1994 film Maverick.

Clearly, this subject is more byzantine than I had realized...

Re:New Series

[kalidasa]

Maybe not, but Roddenberry did sell Star Trek to Paramount as a kind of "wagon train to the stars," and BG was sold as the same basic idea - space Okies led by Lorne Grene.

Re:New Series

[primordial ooze]

Ah well, I got this:
http://www.cm.nu/~shane/lists/rec.arts.star trek.te ch/2003-07/0355.html

Just trying to give an example. Do a regular google search and you'll get a reasonable number of hits which are reffering to ST as an oater (plus plenty of other garbage of course).

Re:New Series

[Tetsujin28]

Absolutely -- no argument there. Trek and Galactica were Westerns, but in the same way that The Magnificent Seven was a samurai film. Firefly is more like a Western with spaceships added, rather than Science Fiction inspired by Westerns.

Re:New Series

[stonecypher]

The show fuses sci-fi space conventions with Wild West-era characters and environments.

See also less well known things.

The space western is an old genre; most of our early variety television adaptations of science fiction were fond of it (the outer limits, the twilight zone, star trek and so on.) It was appropriate: westerns were still common, and it was a new frontier, exactly the topic of the westerns: exploring dangerous land, bumping into things you don't understand, trading and having sex with them if you could and shooting them if you couldn't.

And whereas it's sick in reality, god, it's fun on TV, especially if some of the bastards are green.

Re:New Series

[james_orr]

Keen Eddie is another cancelled FOX show. Bravo is just airing the episodes, including the ones FOX did not show.

Re:New Series

[Snaller]

Ah! Thanks alot :)

Re:New Series

[lrucker]

Joss Whedon should call up USA. With Monk and Dead Zone it's obvious that USA isn't afraid to back a strange-yet-brilliant show.

When they cancelled Nikita the rumor was that they only like the ones they come up with (Nikita started under the previous managment). Can't imagine anyone like that getting along with Whedon, who likes to run things his way.

Re:New Series

[Richard Jones]

With respect to the CGI - what was amazing about Firefly was the amount of CGI that you just accepted as being there without realising it. Especially amazing given that most of the camera work was hand-held (a stylistic decision of Whedon's)

Stuff like CG'ing in Niska's desktop. The animated paper that Crow (IIRC) holds up to Mal.

Or the train as a background in The Train Job (only the front carriage is real, the rest is CG!)

All seamlessly introduced into footage that was shot with hand-held cameras.

Re:New Series

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't bad...wasn't really great either.

But I get annoyed easily when TV shows contain stupid things in order to appeal to stupid geeks.

Like I don't understand why they'd have the characters carrying around stupid revolvers...yeah, the revolver is a traditional western thingy, but come on; they're low-capacity and senseless in a firefight when everyone else is wandering about with more modern high-capacity weapons.

And in the one episode where the big guy is prowling around the spaceship, carrying his favorite gun (a fancy shiny rifle), looking for and intruder and shooting things...only he never fires the big fancy rifle, opting instead to play with a tiny pistol. What was the point of that? Was that a, "carry the rifle, it looks better...shit, it doesn't fire blanks. Here, use this too."

Would have been much better if they concentrated on what was good as opposed to what they thought geeks wanted to see.

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Cancel a television series to make a movie based on it? Are they going to blow all the budget they had for the series on the movie or what?

Re:WTF

[eatenn]

Cancel a television series to make a movie based on it?

I know, isn't that crazy? Next thing you know they'll be making a television series out of a box office flop.

Oh wait...

Re:WTF

[mbourgon]

Heck, it's been hinted that they're going to do a movie. A movie, based off a TV show, based off a box office flop. Oh, the irony...

Why do I get the feeling....

[ImTwoSlick]

... that they like to cancel great TV shows, just to make a few extra bucks on a movie they know people have been dying to see.

Re:Why do I get the feeling....

[Ondo]

... that they like to cancel great TV shows, just to make a few extra bucks on a movie they know people have been dying to see.

That is clearly not the case. Fox cancelled the TV show. Universal will be making the bucks on the movie. Possibly Fox got some money from Universal for the rights, but that's all Fox will ever get.

Thanks to Firefly...

[devphil]

...I am terrified of people in business suits wearing bright blue gloves.

On the up side, I know now how to say "Fuck everyone in the universe to death!", "Shut up," and my favorite, "Holy mother of God and all her wacky nephews!" in Mandarin Chinese.

Re:Thanks to Firefly...

[techno-vampire]

Give it a frelling break, already.:p" Oops! Wrong cancled show.

Re:Thanks to Firefly...

[tmhsiao]

I know now how to say "Fuck everyone in the universe to death!", "Shut up," and my favorite, "Holy mother of God and all her wacky nephews!" in Mandarin Chinese.

You misspelled 'mispronounce'... ;)

Re:Thanks to Firefly...

[droleary]

You misspelled 'mispronounce'... ;)

Nah, the real typo was in "Mandarin Chinese". It should have been either "Space Mandarin" or "Future Chinese". To pretend we know how a language will be pronounced in 500 years is silly. Every heard Old English? Woof!

Re:Thanks to Firefly...

[Frogbert]

Ic giet gecwedan eald Englisc ge insensitive clod!

Dictionary

Re:Thanks to Firefly...

[Ray Radlein]

By the same token, there's a pretty good chance that the ubiquity of modern communications will result in a significant reduction in the rate of linguistic drift, as well as a reduction in the variety of different accents and regional dialects.

On the other hand, a vast galactic diaspora followed by the destruction (or total abandonment) of the Earth and a gigantic interstellar civil war would tend to set the Wheels O' Linguistic Drift a-rollin' once more.

Re:Thanks to Firefly...

[br0ck]

the ubiquity of modern communications will result in a significant reduction in the rate of linguistic drift, as well as a reduction in the variety of different accents and regional dialects

Fo' shizzle! You be trippin fo' sho' if you be thinkin da lingo changin' in ma hizzouse! Know what I'm sayin', dog?

Re:Thanks to Firefly...

[Requiem]

Hwaet?

Re:Thanks to Firefly...

[kalidasa]

Oft Scyld Scefing ...

Re:Thanks to Firefly...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I am terrified of people in business suits wearing bright blue gloves.

Seems like a definite asset to me.

Serenity?

[Daetrin]

I hope they're referencing the ship and not the battle the ship was named for. If it's the battle we'll miss out on most of our favorite characters :(

Re:Serenity?

[eatenn]

All the characters from the TV series are signed on for the movie, though the article neglects to mention the characters of Book and Wash.

No worries though, the actors have hinted at being committed to the movie long before this was made official.

Re:Serenity?

[Anonymous Coward]

"FireflyMovie.com is a fan site dedicated to assuring that Joss Whedon's television masterpiece Firefly will someday grace the silver screen, and perhaps eventually make it's way back to the small screen either via the airwaves or DVD."

...something about that site tells me it isnt quite official...

Re:Serenity?

[Chris Carollo]

Alan Tudyk, who plays Wash, reportedly stole the Big Red Button that was used during the episode "Out of Gas", and left it with Joss, telling him to "hit it when his miracle arrived" and they would all return.

Re:Serenity?

[ruprechtjones]

Wow, I'd give you mod points but instead I'm giving you a +1 Cool Actor, god damn I love the loyalty of these actors...

Re:Serenity?

[Udo Schmitz]

I hope they're referencing the ship and not the battle the ship was named

If you had RTFA (God forbid!) you would know that the movie will take place 6 months after the series finished.

At lest they tried

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox is one of the few networks that at least gives shows like these a shot. Think about it.

Re:At lest they tried

[KoopaTroopa]

Y'know, that same thought has occurred to me before. I don't watch much TV, and I find myself buying/borrowing/renting DVD sets of the few shows that I actually watch. Turns out a great number of them either air(ed) on Fox or are Fox properties. They greenlight stuff that I like! It just burns me up that they preempt these shows to death and subsequently cancel them after they give them a chance.

Perhaps the right hand doesn't agree with the left.

Go Browncoats!

[torgosan]

Shiny!

Re:Go Browncoats!

[sTalking_Goat]

I'm so happey about this. no power in the verse...

Re:Go Browncoats!

[BigAl_nz]

Bring it on.

Reavers, Blue Sun, and blue hand guys.

*happy sigh*

Script on Kazaa

[grub]

The script is already leaked:

Overlord Busche: You vile Freedonian varmints, give us all rights to yer planetary oil then destroy yer WMD and we won't be shootin' ya with our Laser Cannons..
Sahdamm: but.. Freedonia ain't got no WMD, your people confirmed it!
Busche: Prepare to liberate Freedonia! Jebus commands it!

Re:Script on Kazaa

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's "All your rights are belong to us! You have no chance to survive make your time."

won't be that great as movie

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie won't be able to depend on knowledge of the TV series because there isn't a large enough fanbase. That means they will have to condense a lot into 90 minutes. Firefly is so good because of the time allowed to develop the characters in a TV series. So while non-fans may have some visual effect treats and see SOME of the flavor of the show, it won't be able to touch the series; and fans will be disappointed because the movie will have to be introductory and won't pick up where the show left off.

TV show movies that do well are those that ran a long time and therefor have a large fanbase.

This will just be another scifi movie.

Re:won't be that great as movie

[eatenn]

Joss Whedon has turned the town of Sunnydale into a giant musical (Once More, With Feeling), he has taken away the ability for his characters to talk (Hush), and recently he has turned a centuries old vampire-with-a-soul into a felt puppet (Smile Time)... all of it pure comedy.

I think the guy deserves the benefit of the doubt ;)

Re:won't be that great as movie

[OzRoy]

Did you read the article? Just so you don't strain yourself here is the appropriate part.

'Whedon said the pic will be released under the title "Serenity" to give it some distance from the TV version. "It was important that people understand that the movie isn't the series," he said. "The movie is bigger, more epic than anything you can do in a series."

To that end, he said he went out of his way while penning the "Serenity" script to make sure that it is accessible to audiences who never tuned into "Firefly."

"You're not going to bring people into a movie if you're explaining all the time what happened before," Whedon said.'

Re:won't be that great as movie

[great throwdini]

The results of the transition to the big screen for Firefly, without wanting to alienate the uninitiated, might resemble those of the X-Files movie ("Fight the Future" or whatever it was), which had to generate similar appeal to fans and non-fans for the box office.

Then again, considerably more people watched -- more often, over several more seasons -- the X-Files, so you may be right: the fanbase just isn't there to generate a decent draw without courting the clueless.

On the other hand, Firefly was aired in the US (I believe) out-of-order and absent a few episodes that were shot, so perhaps deep backstory isn't all that important to crafting an appealing movie set in its universe.

Re:won't be that great as movie

[tmhsiao]

Actually, "Smile Time" was the brainchild of Ben Edlund, creator of The Tick.

Re:won't be that great as movie

[eatenn]

Actually, "Smile Time" was the brainchild of Ben Edlund, creator of The Tick.

Ack, yes. I totally meant to mention that. Edlund wrote and directed it (and he rocks).

Joss is still executive producer tho, so he definitely had some involvement.

Re:won't be that great as movie

[NoodleSlayer]

I would say that it wouldn't be too hard for them to recap some of the story from the series in a movie if need be (think flashbacks). Because as you correctly assumed, the back story didn't get that deep.

And as for there not being a big enough fanbase, I'm not sure how to argue that one way or another, but evidently there was a big enough fanbase to warrant a DVD release. Which as a fan myself I quickly snapped up.

I honestly do hope they follow up on the River thread that they were running in the series, it would be a shame if they abandoned all the gruntwork they had just started to bloom before the series was tragically cut short.

Re:won't be that great as movie

[B3ryllium]

Gah! Dammit! Another awesome show that got cancelled!

Re:won't be that great as movie

[Dwarfgoat]

got cancelled....by FOX!

Damn them, damn them, damn damn daaaammmnnn them!!!

AWESOME

[Cirrius]

I recently picked up the box set to check out the series, and this is great news...I was surprised how good the series was and perplexed as to why such a show was canceled.

Adult Protection the Motion Picture

[Dark Bard]

Actually it's about adult diapers. The aging execs at Universal thought it'd be hip and now.

Don't Wander Around Best Buy

[Ralph Wiggam]

Seeing the article made me want to buy the DVD set. I liked the concept of the show a lot, but didn't catch many of them. In Star Trek, everyone has neatly groomed hair and they're always nice to each other. Firefly seemed to be about normal, flawed people who happen to fly around in space.

Anyway, I go to BestBuy.com to see how much it costs. Only 40 bucks is a good deal. Here's the messed up part. On the web site, and presumably on the store shelves, the Firefly DVD set is listed under "Horror". Their subgroups under horror are "Comedies, Occult, Vampires, Zombies, and General Horror". At least it's not under Zombies.

-B

Re:Don't Wander Around Best Buy

[PhoenixFlare]

In Star Trek, everyone has neatly groomed hair and they're always nice to each other. Firefly seemed to be about normal, flawed people who happen to fly around in space.

Try watching Deep Space 9. I love ST:NG, to be sure, but DS9 is even better. And more of a dark and gritty feel to it, with characters that don't always get along.

Re:Don't Wander Around Best Buy

[Ralph Wiggam]

I wouldn't say that DS9 was a lot darker than TNG. What I liked about DS9 was the fact that there was always conflict. Between the Cardassians and the Delta Quadrant folks, someone was always blowing up someone. That's probably what you were getting at with "gritty". In TNG, most of the episodes where humanitarian or exploration missions. That would fit with the flagship of the Federation. But DS9 was an outpost in an area of conflict. With a little better writing and acting, I think DS9 could have been great.

-B

Re:Don't Wander Around Best Buy

[PowerPill]

Just in case you haven't heard of it, the reason I got hooked on Firefly were for the same reason's I had gotten hooked on Farscape. The acting skills, the script writing and the comedic episodes and not to mention that both are aesthetically pleasing to the mind and eye. http://www.watchfarscape.com http://www.scifi.com/farscape/ I would highly recommend both.

Re:Don't Wander Around Best Buy

[Justabit]

I know its offtopic but what about Voyager? Would you call that 'Desperation Escapism' or forced exploration for survival? How did that get back anyway?

Re:Don't Wander Around Best Buy

[iNetRunner]

Well, it must have been horrible (BB's thinking) because it ended up canceled. *Horrorific..? Horrorible.. ?* Maybe it gets resurrected like a zombie in a comedic occult seremony when the blood-sucking studio/production execs find out to their horror how well the movie sinks *like a stake* to the general public.. *Bah.. I'll go scare someone else.. like some grammar naz... IIIK*

Re:Don't Wander Around Best Buy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure the people that pick those categories just work off of the product picture as all the Star Trek movies got classified as General Horror as well - at least initially on the release of the new Special Editions. Most of them eventually got moved over to Sci Fi, but seriously, I think if the box looks vaguely dark or sinister the movie is dumped into Horror by BB.

Re:Don't Wander Around Best Buy

[{8_8}]

It might have been mis-stocked. In Omaha they put it with the rest of the TV box sets like Buffy, Angel and Alias.

Converts after cancellation

[loftydog]

Fox did everything it could to kill this show.

First, they aired the episodes in a random order so there was no continuity

Second, they changed the time it was aired, then changed the day, all within a span of three weeks

Third, and most insulting, is that they assumed the demographic watching Firefly would switch to watching Fastlane, as some of the numbers from Nielson were similar

Sadly, I've had more people become "fans" of the show after the cancellattion by loaning them the DVDs, with most of them not being scifi fans.

Re:Converts after cancellation

[thegrommit]

Fox did everything it could to kill this show.

I think the problem was that Fox didn't know what to do with it.

Anyhow, Universal is backing the film - not Fox.

Re:Converts after cancellation

[eatenn]

I think the problem was that Fox didn't know what to do with it.

I think the problem is that they just wanted it to be another regular space show. They didn't want it to defy genre conventions, and therefore didn't understand where their potential audience was.

Just one look at the DVDs sort of confirms this. It's all futuristic, and the characters are in their Big-Damn-Hero Poses(tm).

Hopefully Firefly, er, Serenity will find it's audience on the big screen as opposed to the terrible Friday night timeslot it used to live in.

Re:Converts after cancellation

[gmhowell]

If Fox didn't know what to do with it, they shouldn't have screwed around with it. They should have shown the pilot as the pilot. They should have shown the episodes in order, etc.

No, Fox *thought* they knew what to do, but obviously didn't.

Re:Converts after cancellation

[AndyBarrow]

After spending a weekend watching the DVD set, it became pretty clear to me that Fox would be determined to kill it.

In the interviews on the DVD set there were several somewhat veiled comments about Fox wanting to change the show. The right-wing conservatives at Fox couldn't get Josh to stop writing in scenes of Mal with no clothes on or the resident Companion taking a female client.

Cast announced

[__aaaehb3101]

I don't see Ron Glass("the shepard") listed in the returning cast list. I wonder what is going on there? While not my favourite character, the shepard seems to have a more shady past than any.
from the press release:

...The Serenity cast will include such returning "Firefly" cast members as Nathan Fillion as Captain Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds, Gina Torres as Zoe Warren, Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra, Jewel Staite as Kaylee Frye, Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, Sean Maher as Dr. Simon Tam and Summer Glau as River Tam.

Re:Cast announced

[torgosan]

Nor has Alan Tudyk been confirmed as returning...did see something about an on-going commitment for him. Hopefully both Wash and The Shepard are reprised by the original actors.

Re:Cast announced

[teraph]

I imagine the press release only included the names of actors who had signed contracts at the time it was written.

Re:Cast announced

[a_peckover]

I would be stunned if Alan Tudyk didn't come back. From his comments on the DVD commentaries he seems to be the most dedicated member of a cast that already really cared about the show, rather than just seeing it as any other job.

YES! YES! YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

The finest sci-fi TV series ever made returns! Let's hope there's interest on the part of the studio for a return to TV.

Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[runlvl0]

I recently picked up the box set to check out the series, and this is great news...I was surprised how good the series was and perplexed as to why such a show was canceled.

Because you didn't watch it on TV?

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you didn't watch it on TV?

Unless he was a nielson viewer it makes absolutely no difference wether he watched the show or not in terms of the show getting cancelled.

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[Txiasaeia]

Not the original poster, but I don't have cable, so I *couldn't* have seen it on TV. I'm definitely glad I picked up the DVD set tho!

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[TheLoneDanger]

Hopefully some mods will see the parent post. Fox didn't make it easy to watch Firefly on TV even for diehard Whedon or sci-fi fans because they showed the episodes out of order and kept switching its timeslot.

In addition to this, I believe that the Nielsen system is broken. I believe that there are 5000 Nielsen households, and that these are supposed to roughly correlate to population distribution. But over and over we see shows that get cancelled even with large numbers of fans complaining, along with some shows that no one cares enough to complain about. Firefly fans did crazy stuff like take out full page ads thanking the studios and each advertiser for the show by name, and mailing stuff to sponsors and studio heads.

Maybe we need more geeks to try to be Nielsen viewers? How does a family become a Nielsen household? (I'm Canadian so I can't do it anyway, but I hate watching shows I like get cancelled.)

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[sn0wcrash]

You cannot ask to be a Neilson family. According to thier info they feel that would skew the results. So basically the only way to become a Nielson family is to be asked to be a Nielson family. Now how they come up with who they ask is another question. They sure seem to pick some losers. I'm so sick of American Idol and Survivor and such I could vomit.

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[gmhowell]

It aired on broadcast television. About 75% of the citizens of the US can get broadcast television without the use of anything more technological than a piece of speaker cord hooked to an antenna balun. I did it for two years in college, and was far from the only person to do this.

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[Hungus]

It was on broadcast TV not cable.

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[drxenos]

They contact you to be a Nielsen household. They contacted me. I told them no. Then they kept hounding me (calls, postcards), until I finally had to get rude. Even after I told them no, I kept getting these cards reminding me to write down my TV viewing.

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[Sir0x0]

I believe that the Nielsen system is broken.

You're not alone: Here's an interesting rant on the topic
Has some hard facts, and some informed opinions on the flaws of the system.

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[jx100]

It wasn't on cable. It was on Fox

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[Txiasaeia]

Let me rephrase: I'm in Canada. I get three channels without cable. It's highly unlikely that Firefly aired on any of our three channels.

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a Season Pass on my TiVo. Some individuals' TiVo records are sampled and collated for trends since TiVo owners are in the luxury (or heavyspending) demographic. I opted in for this reason, to show my viewing habits on programs which I want to support.

I know I did my part, but the 12 TiVo viewers with Firefly season passes probably didn't get much notice. Actually, when Firefly was cancelled, this was a thread on tivocommunity.com [goatse.cx]. :-p

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[Anonymous Coward]

Until people are required by law to accept the request, it's about equally skewed anyway. There's not a lot of statistical difference between being well-publicised and taking everyone who asks, and randomly asking from a pool of everyone and taking all those who agree. The point is that those people who agree are approximately the same ones who might have eventually asked. The main difference is that you get people with less gumption, ie. more sheeplike. Hmm, maybe there is a sought-after difference. ;)

Of course one assumes the legal (or more likely contractual) requirement to be monitored will eventually happen in the US - but since everyone's viewing will be equally monitored, random sampling will no longer be necessary. Even today I imagine Tivo's monitoring exceeds that of Neilsen in both sample size and accuracy - and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Tivo owners don't even know it's there. It's an appliance - I plugged it in, it worked, and I can look at that there nipple any time I want!

Re:Maybe we'll get to see Jewel Saite naked...

[JonMartin]

Let me rephrase: I'm in Canada. I get three channels without cable. It's highly unlikely that Firefly aired on any of our three channels.

It was on Global (at least it was in Edmonton). But Global was tied to Fox's schedule, so it was pre-empted practically every other week. It took some effort not to miss them.

Cool! I hope Jewel Staite is in it...

[Anonymous Coward]

She's so pretty, the worst the makeup artists could do was make her *only* cute. One of the few who look nicer off the screen than on it. :)

Josh Whedon the genius..

[GonzoTech]

Josh Whedon is a genius. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly were all wonderful shows. Firefly and Angel were both cancelled way to early.. but especially Firefly. Only one season? I guess Americans are too hung up on shows like Fear Factor, Survivor, American Idol, and any other show that uses very childish antics to develop a fan base. I for one hope that Josh Whedon will continue with wonderful writing, concepts, and work - maybe people will catch on and see what we have seen for years (A brilliant mind in an industry full of flakes.)

Re:Josh Whedon the genius..

[tmhsiao]

Psst. His name is spelled "Joss."

Re:Josh Whedon the genius..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we pithy americans could never appreciate a decent tv show.

Because "Mr. Bean" is pure comedy genius.

Re:Josh Whedon the genius..

[TheLoneDanger]

Firefly got less than a season. Just 11 episodes aired, even though they finished filming 14. Besides that they showed the episodes out of order and bounced it around the schedule. That shows a lot of dedication to running a show into the ground.

Re:Josh Whedon the genius..

[Kaboom13]

Survivor and the other realisty shows have suceeded mainly because they are dirt cheap to make. Survivor deserves some credit for being a halfway original idea (I've never watched an entire episode) so when it got big they made money hand over fist, thus the spawn of reality shows. I've never met a person who actually claimed to be a big fan, the pople who do watch them seem to just because there's a lack of anything better. Tv is all about money, not viewer satisfaction.

Re:Josh Whedon the genius..

[Anonymous Coward]

Survivor and the other realisty shows have suceeded mainly because they are dirt cheap to make.

Ditto for sketch comedies by the way (e.g. almost everything that Comedy Central airs).

Re:Josh Whedon the genius..

[/dev/trash]

he is A LOT more than Buffy and Angel. He wrote Alien Resurrentcion, Toy Story,

Re:Josh Whedon the genius..

[/dev/trash]

Actually the first Reality Show was The Real World.

Unfair mods

[anagama]

I'd cure this if I hadn't already posted. For those who don't know, in Firefly, "Shiny" was sometimes used as slang for "good". So whoever modded this offtopic, is some kind of knucklehead who never saw the show.

Kaylee...

[MachDelta]

Ah yes... Kaylee Frye. Every geek and tinkerers dream girl.

C'mon guys, admit it. That's the only reason anyone really watched the show. ;)

Re:Kaylee...

[brandonY]

Yeah, she was amazingly hot. On the DVD, they point out that Whedon, in his infinite wisdom, told her that she could be on the show, but she would have to gain 20 pounds so she would look like a real human. Bless the man.

Re:Kaylee...

[goodEvans]

Yeah. Morena Baccarin is classicly beautiful, so much so that even my wife can't take her eyes off her, but Kaylee just has that certain something...

Maybe it was the smudge of dirt on her nose, I just don't know.

Another subscriber to my theory...

[Cyno01]

See my previous post (stuporous rant) on the subject of the 'F' curse here...

Probably offtopic, but...

[JayBlalock]

Why is it there's going to be a Firefly film, but still no Babylon 5 movie?

Re:Probably offtopic, but...

[jrwillis]

Because Firefly is a great series.

Re:Probably offtopic, but...

[GonzoTech]

In the words of Rick James, "What did five fingers say to the face?" **SLAP**

JMS is a great writer. He did wonders with Bab 5 and Jerimiah.. but Firefly only had one season. Let the underdog have it's chance first.

Re:Probably offtopic, but...

[NOLAChief]

There are many TV shows that don't translate well to the big screen because there's nothing left to tell. The core story of B5 ran it's course through the TV series. JMS got to tell the story he wanted to tell and we enjoyed it. Everyone's happy.

As far as Firefly goes, it was killed in it's infancy, making nobody but the Fox suit lobbying for yet another inane reality show happy. Like JMS, there is a story Joss Whedon desperately wants to tell (though I seriously doubt he had 5 seasons more or less planned in advance). This movie is an attempt at breathing life back into the project so that he might get a chance to finish telling his story.

Re:Probably offtopic, but...

[Kohath]

Um, there were several Babylon 5 movies.

Re:Probably offtopic, but...

[dwj]

The poster probably knows this, but to elaborate B5 did spawn several feature-length TV movies. Not all of them were good however. The one about Sheridan nuking an ancient Vorlon jump gate crawling with Cthulu-lookalikes was, bluntly put, a trite unoriginal story and while Hollywood puts out far worse films than this the fact that it's too niche is probably the deciding factor. But word has it that JMS is working on something new this year...

Re:Probably offtopic, but...

[Ondo]

Why is it there's going to be a Firefly film, but still no Babylon 5 movie?

Before the release of The Phantom Menace JMS said he wouldn't do a Babylon 5 movie until after the third Star Wars movie - for some reason he didn't want to compete.

And JMS is currently sitting on some good news about a B5 project. It "isn't a novel, or a short story, a comic, an animated series, a radio drama or a stage play." My guess is it's a movie.

Re:Probably offtopic, but...

[JayBlalock]

Agreed. The only good B5 TV-movie was 'In the Beginning.' The rest just didn't work.

I'm certainly hoping his mystery project is the movie.

Re:Probably offtopic, but...

[Den_onda_kotten]

I thought both "The river of souls" and "Thirdspace" worked very well. They were more like very long episodes than stand alone films, but they were dang good episodes.

Sahdamm?

[Cyno01]

To close to dune... anyone else re-reading dune (by coincidence) at the time of the start of the iraq war? Freaky. Especially since Frank Herbert said in many interviews that much of Dune is allegory...

Re:Sahdamm?

[RexxFiend]

what, bad ass desert types sitting on the one major resource that everybody needs and can only get in the desert. Control of which is passed around all the major players in turn to make profits for the one big conglomerate that all the major players have shares in.

Allegory, ya think...?

osama bin laden as kwisatch haderach, hmm...

I just watched the series this weekend.

[An Onerous Coward]

All I can say is... ...ahem...

WHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! WHOOOOOOOO!!!

Seriously, if you have no idea what the fuss is about, buy/borrow/steal the DVDs and watch them. The only downside was watching half way through an excellent season, and realizing you would never get to see everything resolved.

If nothing else, the movie will be a chance to give the series the ending it deserved. If it leads to a resurrection of the series, even better.

Length?

[Cyno01]

Who said the movies gonna be 90 minutes. Thankfully hollywoods lengthening movies a bit on average latley. Cant remember last movie i saw in theaters that was shorter than two hours. Not that i expect much of the average american attention span, but the most sucessfull (imho) movies of the past 3 years have all been well over 3 hours. :p

Hallelujah!

[bbsguru]

The long months in the wilderness are at an end, brethren! And on the day I finished re-viewing the last of the DVD extras for the umpteenth time!

This is great news. Note that it is Universal now, not Fox, so there really could be another series at the end of the trail here.

Since the DVD set came out, I have introduced the series to a dozen 'Fly newbies, all of whom are as swept away as I was. It's just too fanastic a program to let it go, and no maybe (just maybe?) we won't have to.

Shiny!

Re:Hallelujah!

[DragonTHC]

universal only acquired the feature rights, not the television series rights.

Serenity?

[ShinyBrowncoat]

They are calling the movie 'Serenity'? Now what am I supposed to do with all these Firefly Movie posters?

Family Guy is back on!

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys call yourselves geeks?

Family Guy DVD sales are phenomenal,
theyre getting another crack at it.

Hey, how about a Seth MacFarlane story?

zeke

"Blue Sun" rises?

[teneighty]

When you watch the movie, keep an eye out for a bigger role for the Blue Sun corporation. The series merely hinted at their role, but I think we can expect to see Blue Sun emerging as the bad guys, rather than the Alliance.

The hints? In the original episodes, watch at how River reacts to anything with the Blue Sun logo on it - Jayne's shirt, labels on cans, and so on.

Re:"Blue Sun" rises?

[ibm5_25]

Holy shit! I so did not catch that, and yet it makes so much sense. I know... OT, won't be modded up but I wanted to say thank you for pointing that out. I suppose I should read fireflyfans.net sometime.

Re:"Blue Sun" rises?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get cher "Blue Sun" tee shirts now, at Cafe Press.

Re:"Blue Sun" rises?

[kalidasa]

It's in the DVD extras. The two by two, hands of blue guys are from the government behind the government. . . .

Re:are people happy?

[ShinyBrowncoat]

this is the worst news every. this pretty much is the last nail in the coffin for the series. they're gonna wrap everything up for us fans and send us on our way!

Actually, no. Joss Whedon's original movie script did this, but after seeing the amazing DVD sales, the powers that be asked Joss to re-write the script to be 'more of a springboard to an eventual series return'...

They should really attempt the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Allude heavily to the series in the movie - and get all the moviegoers to buy the DVD to find out what the story was really about...

You Forgot To Share!

[WombatControl]

I am not a native Chinese speaker (or even a remotely good Chinese speaker), but here's some tasty bits of Firefly Mandarin dialog:

Tai-kong suo-yo de shing-chiou doh sai-jin wu di pigu: Stuff all the planets in the universe up my ass!

Huh choo-shung huh tza-jiao duh!: Filthy fornicators of livestock!

Nee ta ma duh. Tyen-shia suo-yo duh run doh gai si! - F--- everyone in the universe to death!

Re:You Forgot To Share!

[Piquan]

Where did you get this information? We want more!

Re:You Forgot To Share!

[torgosan]

Firefly Chinese-English Translations

Try HBO or SHO

[bani]

Seriously. They've both bankrolled risky and expensive series in the past. They've both bankrolled scifi series too.

Re:Try HBO or SHO

[james_orr]

Showtime is distancing itself from SciFi. Started with SciFi picking up StarGate and then cancelling Odyssey 5.

They have one SciFi show (Jeremiah), and from what i've heard they don't want to do any more than one at a time.

Re:The time is nigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Witty banter which is cumbersome and far from witty

Sometimes. Buffy season 7 (esp. the finale) are great examples of really forced banter, it stinks.

Get over it, Firefly was dismal, and ass (and not even clown free ass at that).

Nah, Firefly was pretty good to decent as television, for 1st season sci-fi television it was excellent.

Soon everyone will have lithographs of soup can lables hanging on their walls, and it won't be any kind of statement for or against anything.

Uhm, the last kitsch craze was just a couple years ago - it'll be a while before Warhol and his ilk are trendy again.

Re:Obligatory Simpson's Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Was that a Mr Burns quote? I don't get it. Is there a Tourette Syndrome Guy TM character on the Simpsons nowadays?

OT: Speaking of interesting movies-in-development:

[torpor]

Anyone know when "Gateway" is supposed to be finished, or even if its still in production?

That's one movie I can honestly say I'm looking forward to seeing, no matter how it comes out ...

Plot intro, and more info

[Namarrgon]

When Mal takes on two new passengers - a young doctor and his unstable, telepathic sister - he gets much more than he bargained for. The pair are fugitives from the coalition dominating the universe, who will stop at nothing to reclaim the girl. The crew that was once used to skimming the outskirts of the galaxy unnoticed find themselves caught between the unstoppable military force of the Universal Alliance and the horrific, cannibalistic fury of the Reavers, savages who roam the very edge of space. Hunted by vastly different enemies, they begin to discover that the greatest danger to them may be on board "Serenity" herself.

More info here.

He is the director this time

[Per Abrahamsen]

The Buffy movie has a very different feel than the series, which Joss claim is because the director had a different vision than Joss did.

Alien 4 feel a lot more like City of Lost Children than an Alien movie. Again, the directors influence. One other write with a Usenet presense (I believe it wa Peter A. David) claimed he got into Buffy by wathing Alien 4, and seeing a good script being burried behind a misunderstood direction, and got currios about the writer.

Titan AE was actually pretty good, but I don't know how much of Joss writting was involved. There was a couple of places that were clearly Joss though. The intelligent guard, and Planet Bob were Joss trademark humor.

This time Joss gets to both write and direct the movie according to the Variety article, so we will be able to judge directly his abilities as a movie maker. From the few Buffy episodes he has written and directed himself (like Hush and Once More With Feeling), I believe we are in for a treat.

Re:He is the director this time

[graikor]

I thought "Planet Bob" was pretty typical Ben Edlund humor myself, but other than last week's Angel episode, Joss's writing is generally much better than average

Re:why does firefly have such a fanbase?

[ian mills]

How is this offtopic? Maybe redundant, but he does have a valid point.
This whole thread is nothing but cheerleading, with every post that says anything good about the series getting an automatic insightful mod. Sure Wheadon is a talented writer, but this show had some serious issues with realism. Wheadon seems to not understand the enormous amounts of energy required for space travel, and moving livestock around is just not going to pay for it. And ancient projectile weapons? I'm sorry, my suspension of disbelief only goes so far. Buffy was at least fantasy, but to have this kind of stuff in sci-fi is just a misuse of the genre. Star Wars is a good space western, this series just takes the term far too literally.

Re:I'm troll and I'm proud.

[Justabit]

Do you remember the movie that had the actor from 'John Boy' as the young inpresionable backwater farm planet take the familys sentient spaceship out to find a group of heros to defend his comunity. It had 5 white clone aliens, an Amazon busty princess, the guy from UNCLE as a black spy type, and a caracter called 'Spacecowboy'. The whole western in space theme really worked for that film. Come to think of it Star Wars is a western space melding as well.

That's good

[Cyberllama]

I enjoyed firefly and was sad to see it go -- but I'd still really like a Farscape movie. I need resolution damnit!

Re:That's good

[Anonymous Coward]

Farscape is supposed to come back as a miniseries.

Re:That's good

[Anonymous Coward]

UGH! Putting Firefly and Farscape in the same sentence is about as insulting to Firefly as you can get. Firefly is an example of GREAT sci-fi, Farscape is Muppets In Space dreck.

Re:why does firefly have such a fanbase?

[harlows_monkeys]

Wheadon seems to not understand the enormous amounts of energy required for space travel, and moving livestock around is just not going to pay for it

You have absolutely no clue whatsoever how much energy would be required for such space travel, because in real life there is neither any theory nor any experiment that covers faster-than-light travel. Once your suspension of disbelief goes so far as to allow FTL, trying to do things like energy calculations is just silly.

You also have no clue at all what the value of livestock might be in an interstellar economy. If that livestock is key to allowing a colony to thrive on a planet, it could be very valuable.

And ancient projectile weapons? I'm sorry, my suspension of disbelief only goes so far

So you have no problem with FTL, which is something that is, as far as we know currently, impossible, but having some people using projectile weapons while others use more sophisticated weapons bothers you? Even though if you just look around on Earth, you can find societies that still use rocks and pointed sticks?

This is one of the things that Firefly got right that most other science fiction gets wrong--technology is too uniform in most science fiction. Based on a couple thousand years of Earth history, it is far more believable to have a wide range of technology.

Re:I'm troll and I'm proud.

[thedude11937]

you dident watch the show did you

The campaign to Save Angel

[The Lynxpro]

I'm placing this in here because most FireFly fans are probably also fans of Whedon's other program, Angel. As you know, the WB Network made the announcement that they will not be renewing Angel for the sixth season, despite its majorly improved ratings over last year and that its the #2 show on their network for the major 18-34 aged advertising demographic.

If you wish to help with the efforts to save the show, there are several websites coordinating fan activities, and I will list them here:

Petition Online:
Here's the petition protesting the cancellation of the program. Please sign it and join the 72,000 + other fans who already have...
http://www.petitiononline.com/ai5d0162/pe tition.ht ml

http://www.savingangel.org/
Saving Angel is placing ads in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. You can find them here:

http://www.supportangel.org/
Support Angel has been coordinating a lot of the fan base postcard campaigns. They are a great source of information.

Some of the other information you'll find on the pages include the fact that Tribune Broadcasting itself (a 20% + shareholder in The WB Network) is encouraging fans to protest the cancellation. The WB wants to replace Angel either with a teen version of "Dark Shadows" or another revamp of "Lost in Space." It is reported that UPN has passed on picking up the show because they'd rather try to run their own version of "Teen Wolf" and borrowing heavily from the Buffy (Whedon) format to make it a success.

If you've been holding off on purchasing any of the Angel Season Sets on DVD, now is the time to purchase them; the networks ARE watching the sales figures. Remember, Fox decided to relaunch "Family Guy" after witnessing their sales success. And while UPN might have passed on picking up Angel for Season Six, we still have TNT, FX Network (fitting since Angel is a Twentieth-Century Fox production), SciFi, or even Tribune Broadcasting syndication to fall back upon!

Re:The campaign to Save Angel

[Zed2K]

Actually a teen version of dark shadows would be pretty cool. As might a new Lost in Space. But I think there is also room on that network to keep Angel. Now whether they have the money to keep Angel is another question.

Re:The campaign to Save Angel

[The Lynxpro]

"Actually a teen version of dark shadows would be pretty cool. As might a new Lost in Space. But I think there is also room on that network to keep Angel. Now whether they have the money to keep Angel is another question."

Yes, but Zed, the point is that the WB would have the money for Angel if they'd cut out funding sure-fire losers such as these two planned remakes. NBC spent a small fortunein the early 90s revamping Dark Shadows and it was good yet it failed. Even without inflation adjusting the budgets, the WB would be pressed to match the figures. As for Lost in Space, the remake film by New Line (a sister company) failed despite a talented cast and a script that lifted heavily from the unproduced Doctor Who film at Amblin. The WB produced Birds of Prey, Black Sash, and Tarzan, all with the intent of replacing Angel with any of them. They all tanked. Angel has improved its ratings this season over last's by an average of 22% and all with a reduced budget and going head-to-head with UPN's sci-fi offerings. What does that tell you?

Re:The campaign to Save Angel

[Zed2K]

"Yes, but Zed, the point is that the WB would have the money for Angel if they'd cut out funding sure-fire losers such as these two planned remakes."

Making assumptions on how well a show would do before it is even on film yet? If that were the case the amount of shows on tv would be so low we'd be watching test bars.

Lost in Space wasn't a complete failure. Yeah many people hated it but it made 70 million domestic 66 international. And I know for a fact when it came out on dvd it was a top seller.

I don't think Angel should have been cancelled but I also don't think anything will be able to bring it back. Shows come and go. They can't stay around forever. I'd prefer Angel to go out after a good season instead of trying to crank out another one that may or may not be any good.

Re:The campaign to Save Angel

[/dev/trash]

Actually I barely liked Buffy ( how many lovers does she need?) And Angel just got really dumb after the first 3 episodes. Firefly though. That rocked.

Firefly

[Chris_Pugrud]

I have loved every show, including all of the DVD. I hope this makes it to reality.

You are all making me so gelous

[Justabit]

It hasnt been shown here in Australia yet on a free to air TV station. But what do you expect from a backwater country that followed Bush to Iraq, twice, and has 2 government sponsered (read controlled) TV stations when there are only 4 other comertial stations in the best reception areas anyway. Our Foxtel has Sci Fi chanell but are too busy showing ST NG and DS9 to bother (at least they show Lexx, that Xev just does me)

Did anyone else respond to the Slashdot story last year posted by Philip B. Gaines. In the CDV he sent me he gives plot synopsis, episode breakdown and generaly gushes about the first series, lamenting the lak of 2nd and 3rd that Firefly diserves. I have been Hastling my local DVD importers for series box ever since.

Re:You are all making me so gelous

[gibodean]

Why have you been hassling your local DVD people ?

Ever heard of ordering over the internet from the US ?

That's what I did, and the series is excellent.

You'll need a multiregion player, but who doesn't have one of those ?

Re:You are all making me so gelous

[Justabit]

Firstly , Hassling DVD people is what makes life worth living and what they are there for. I think they like it deep inside too, like animals at the zoo having grass thrown at them by kids, It lets them know that they are still alive.

Secondly, The exchange rates have taken 6 months to become respectable $A to the $US so I can now afford it.

Third, local search engins show 3 diferent titles available to australia (we are an island you know) 'The grave of the fireflys' (http://web.cs.mun.ca/~anime/afs/primer.html)which i already own which is a great manga from the people who brought you Totoro and Spirited Away(http://www.videos-review.com/Spirited_Away_B0 0005JLET.html)
[sorry i dont know how to make a text button]
and 2 other unrelated titles.

Yes you are right, I could order online but if I hassle my local and not so local DVD sellers maybe they will all order it and the people who look at ordering trends on their computers will say to themselves ' maybe there is something in this, we should order more and do proper marketing'. I know Joss dosn't mind a regional market demand explosion helping his bargaining power with series backers.

One last thing, we have only multiregion players in Australia despite being region in 4. (Who buys 1 when you can have the lot)

Re:why does firefly have such a fanbase?

[ian mills]

You have absolutely no clue whatsoever how much energy would be required for such space travel, because in real life there is neither any theory nor any experiment that covers faster-than-light travel.
Not all their travel is FTL travel so your argument isn't entirely correct. I never mentioned FTL, but just getting into and around space requires tremendous amounts of energy.

Even though if you just look around on Earth, you can find societies that still use rocks and pointed sticks?
Yes, and last time I checked these same people aren't driving cars. I have no problem with projectile weapons, but in the series they use projectile weapons that are considered old by today's standards, while at the same time flying spaceships.

Re:why does firefly have such a fanbase?

[Justabit]

The Same could be said for owning slaves for labor as opposed to having a robot do the work in the series. We dont really have slaves in our society but the we dont have work type robots either. Whatever is the cheapest and easiest in terms of energy is what usually works, Right?

Thank you moderators!

[Anonymous Coward]

Always good to know, that Firefly was so good, no disenting opinion can be tolerated.

I feel like Rowdy Roddy Piper just handed me a pair of sunglasses.

Re:why does firefly have such a fanbase?

[Ray Radlein]

They use projectile weapons because projectile weapons are low maintenance items compared to Electronuclear Kill-O-Zap Rifles, which probably seize up the first time they get near a bit of dust. That's the way things always work.

Re:10,000 digits of pi

[Justabit]

Why is there 1 collumn of blanks in e but 2 collumns of blanks in pi?

So when I submitted this story...

[corebreech]

...like a month ago and saw it rejected I guess that's because I have cooties or something, is this correct?

Re:So when I submitted this story...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's because the movie only received the green light a couple of days ago.

Re:So when I submitted this story...

[corebreech]

No, the link in the story clearly states that this was reported back on Feb. 10.

Re:So when I submitted this story...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the link in the story clearly states that there was a rumor about the movie back on Feb. 10.

Rumor != confirmation.

Re:So when I submitted this story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the word rumor in the following sentence?

"Recall that, back on Feb. 10, Coaxial News reported a May start and a late 2005 release."

Re:So when I submitted this story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, that's what it says now that everything's confirmed, but actually click the link to the story of Feb. 10 and read for yourself:

Buzz inside certain Los Angeles law firms suggests that talent contracts are being hammered out, and they're timed around a May start for an upcoming Universal feature about a starship captain, a space hooker, a mysterious preacher and a pair of fugitives named Tam. The bad news: under the scenario discussed, "Firefly: The Movie" wouldn't hit multiplexes until late 2005.

Hollywoodspeak

[Udo Schmitz]

...Auds ... space oater ... shingle ...

Welcome to the wonderful world of hollywoodesque pidgin english. Although, maybe it's only Variety and everyone in Hollywood speaks totally normal ...?

No wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder Firebird today is Firefox...

Guess Mr. Glass will be in

[Udo Schmitz]

In a report about the Wolfram and Hart Revue a girl writes how she met Ron Glass: "I asked him about the movie (slated for 2005! Squee!), and he said he could not "officially" say that he was going to be in it. And then he smiled."

Re:Guess Mr. Glass will be in

[NeGz]

Hahah, have you seen him in the commentary and suchnot on the end of the Firefly DVDs? The man laughs/smiles at *anything.* I swear he's the real life version Dr. Hibbert from the simpsons.

I still hope he (and especially Alan Tudyk - he's hilarious) return though.

Firefly appeals to the libertarian in all of us...

[mshiltonj]

Firefly appeals to the libertarian in all of us.

Re:I'm troll and I'm proud.

[mccalli]

Do you remember the movie that had the actor from 'John Boy' as the young inpresionable backwater farm planet...

Battle Beyond The Stars.

The whole western in space theme really worked for that film.

That's because the whole thing was a deliberate re-working of The Magnificent Seven, with Robert Vaughn in the same role he played in the Magnificent Seven (ie. no Man from Uncle reference). And yes, I'm aware that Magnificent Seven was itself a reworking of The Seven Samurai, but in this case Battle Beyond The Stars self-conciously referenced the Magnificent Seven, not the original Japanese film.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:I'm a troll and I'm small and wrinkley.

[Justabit]

Thanks , now if only you could tell me how to make text into link buttons, I'd be really happy.

Now that you reminded me I do remember hearing about that, and self refrence and cross refrence is a favourite theme of hollywood. Its a polite way oy copying other peoples work and calling it 'homage' or 'giving cudos'.

Re:I'm a troll and I'm small and wrinkley.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks , now if only you could tell me how to make text into link buttons,

No problem. To make links, post HTML Formatter and put the text inside normal tags, as in:

<a href="http://somewhere">link text here</a>

Joss Whedon is ...

[jeff13]

... a frellin' genius! He is responsible for the cult TV zeitgeist of this generation. Truly, nothing this intellegent and entertaining has come along since the original Star Trek.

You can tell because they cancelled it.

What do you mean "in a couple of years"?

[Momomoto]

In a couple of years, fox is going to have to reach all the way back to In Living Colour in order to make DVD sales... because no one wants to buy anything that they currently air.

They've already stooped to this low!

Use of my intellectual property in story title

[Green Light]

Taking a lesson from the litigious ones, I'm going to sue somebody today!

Faster than light travel

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

because in real life there is neither any theory nor any experiment that covers faster-than-light travel.

Uhhhm, yes there are theories about faster than light travel. And uh, yes they do have estimates for the amount of enegry required. Ever heard of Warp travel? The idea isn't pure fiction, space time exists and using Einstien's theory of general relitivity we can figure out how much enegry it requires to bend space time. Its a crap load. Some one did come up with a thoery for an actual mentod of using energy to warp the spacetime infront of a ship, the energy estimate for that was greater than the total amount of energy in the universe. If you think of the famouse equation e=mc^2, it makes sence. Our experince tells us that you need a big mass inorder to significantly warp spacetime( earth moon sun ect), now think of the formula there is a lot of energy in a little bit of mass (hence the power from a nuclear reaction where mass is turned into enegry). So going in the other direction, a lot of energy can be converted into a tinsy bit of mass.

I'm not making any kind of point as regards to firefly, as I've never liked a single thing Wheaton has ever done. Just wanted to be a little ... Informative. Basically, I've always belived that genre never matters. A good show is a good show, whenever or whereever it takes place. The genre is more or less a hook to get people interested in it.

Re:Faster than light travel

[skelter]

how much enegry it requires to bend space time. Its a crap load.

Unless you cheat.

Re:Faster than light travel

[Anonymous Coward]

If only the misspelling of Joss Whedon's name weren't the only inacurracy in this posting.

Start your show's name with "S".

[autechre]

Both Stargate SG-1 and South Park are preparing to go into season 8, and the former is also generating a spin-off (Stargate: Atlantis).

(On the other hand, I hope that Scare Tactics dies as quickly as possible so that I can stop hearing about it EVERY COMMERCIAL BREAK.)

Re:Start your show's name with "S".

[AKnightCowboy]

Both Stargate SG-1 and South Park are preparing to go into season 8, and the former is also generating a spin-off (Stargate: Atlantis).

Then there's The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live. God only knows how long those have been on.. well past their time to die I presume. SNL has been absolutely untolerable the last two times I've tried to watch it.

Re:Start your show's name with "S".

[MattT]

Didn't always work... F*x still cancelled "Space - Above and Beyond" after one season!

Re:Start your show's name with "S".

[Ray Radlein]

...Not to mention Strange Luck, which was mondo cool.

Re:Start your show's name with "S".

[Anonymous Coward]

And Star Trek. So far every ST series has run its full course. We'll see how Enterprise fares.

Was Voyager ended prematurely? I thought there was some rumours about it wrapping up quickly and some people weren't happy about the way Voyager got home. I didn't really watch the show, just if it happened to be on Space when channel flipping.

Stargate SG-1

[autechre]

It's filmed in Vancouver, aired in several different markets, and is arguably a "space show" without most of the episodes actually being set in space. In fact, the few that are set in space seem kind of odd.

They've got their trademark special effects (the stargate of course, and the Goa'uld equipment/voices/glowy eyes), and for many episodes that's all they need. This is thanks to the plot device of most stargate-accessible worlds being populated by humans who were originally taken from Earth.

It works though (for me at least), probably because of a cool premise and actors who can run with it. Though I must say that Urgo (the episode with Dom DeLuise as a guest) was pretty damn annoying.

Re:Stargate SG-1

[dotwaffle]

Urgo... Had one of the funniest SG1 moments ever...

Try... the paddles!

They didn't cancel it TO make a movie...

[AzrealAO]

Fox cancelled the show.

Joss Whedon tried to shop the show around to other networks trying to get it picked up, but was unsuccessful.

Decided to try and get a movie made, managed to get that green lighted.

Best hope is that the movie will be successful enough to give him more ammunition trying to get the show picked up for a second season.

Speaking of B5

[Rand Race]

Here's JMS on the NEW B5 project; B5:TMoS.

No details, just tasty, tasty hints.

But,you can't

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

There is no other way to bend spacetime, than with mass/energy. There isn't a way to cheat. The laws of physics do not allow for it, at least on the macroscopic level. A complete theory of quantum gravity might be different, but it would have to agree with enstiens results at bigger masses/energies. I'm not saying that faster than light travel isn't possible, just that with our current understanding it does seem very impracticle using the warp method. I suppose if you were not bending spacetime, it wouldn't be so bad. That is the real obsticle.

Re:But,you can't

[droleary]

There is no other way to bend spacetime, than with mass/energy. There isn't a way to cheat.

To "cheat" could simply mean to do the bending at a very high efficiency. Just because it takes a lot of energy to bend something doesn't mean it's all wasted. Just like a spring being unsprung, the unbending of space might return a lot of what was put into it.

I suppose if you were not bending spacetime, it wouldn't be so bad.

Yeah, that's the tricky "teleportation" method of travel, where people assume there is a way to take a volume from one location and move it to another location with the only energy requirements being what it takes to shift the same volume to an adjacent vacuum (or, looking at it another way, to turn the volume into a vacuum). Tricky to accomplish without a magical (zero space/time) extra dimension.

For FireFly, I don't think they got into the habit of doing the Trek-know-babble the, and they left the details of how the ships get around (FTL or otherwise) as a bit of a mystery. I think that's a good thing, because trying to explain "impossible" tech often gets writers into deep trouble with those who know, or think they know, better.

What a let down...

[RayMarron]

I glanced at the title, and immediately thought it was the movie adaptation of the Piers Anthony book of the same name. Bummer!

Whedon to write X-Men

[Anonymous Coward]

A little addendum to this story for Whedon fans, he's going to be writing Astonishing X-Men for Marvel Comics, starting in May, I believe.

Re:Whedon to write X-Men

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that turned out to be a false rumor. Here's the only link I could find off-hand to back up it's false-hood, clicky clicky.

Freakylinks

[Savatte]

a show brought to us by the folks who made The Blair Witch Project. It didn't catch on because of its Friday night timeslot.

With a few modifications, they could make the show about slashdot trolls.

Re:Jeez, let it go, Whedon

[Zed2K]

This is not trolling, this is truth. If the thing was anything more than a boring mess it would have succeeded. But it was a major snoozer right out of the gate. Usually shows try to get better as the episodes are aired, but this one didn't it was as dry after the last episode aired as it was when the first episode aired. I so wanted to like it but I refuse to like something just because of who does it. It has to be actually, oh I don't know, good?

cast list

[Savatte]

Take a look at the cast here. Not only do I not see any big name stars, I don't even see any indie stars. Hell, the biggest name is Adam Baldwin, and he's nothing but a poor-man's Billy Baldwin. Not that these people aren't fine actors, though I wouldn't know since I never watched the show.

But the point is, where are you going to see this movie? With a cast of no-names, not at the local megaplex. And this isn't the kind of movie that will play at the art house. College campuses? Maybe, but in that case it's usually the director who personally brings the film around from college to college, and Whedon seems like a busy guy. Sundance? not when it's produced by a major studio. It might play in L.A. and N.Y. for a week, but I think most people are going to end up watching this on the medium they least want to: TV (DVD in this case. And that is if it actually gets released on DVD). Don't hold your breath.

Re:cast list

[__aaaehb3101]

I wouldn't know since I never watched the show

That's the point, these are the members of the TV shows cast. The reason that most of us are interested in seeing the movie is that the cast from the TV show were so good together. As to where will we see this movie? With Universal/Vendi pitching it I'm sure it will make it to the "local megaplex".

Re:cast list

[dgagley]

You might be supprised. How many people know about the Red Green Show. I saw it in a large theater. I was not in as many theatres as you might see movies with big stars in but I know it will be out there. I may just have to drive farther to see it on the big screen.

I hope it does well though.

Dont forget to go out and see the Red Dwarf movie when it comes out either!

My Karma has been SciFi GEEK modded

B5: TMoS

[Spolster]

JMS has (semi-)announced a new project with the aformentioned initials, but will/can not say what they stand for at the moment.

Here's hoping its a movie.

This is great, but...

[AskFirefly]

Universal is going to have a hell of a time marketing this movie in wide release. I love this show, it has an A-1 cast and great, complex characters, but there are no "marquee" names in the cast to draw in people who never paid attention to the show in the first place. The fans will see it multiple times, buy the DVD, et all, but just as with the Star Trek films, "Serenity" has to appeal to a wider audience than just the fans to be a success. This will be a real challenge for Mutant Enemy and Universal, and I hope they pull it off. Also, I can't wait to see the Mutant Enemy "Grr! Arrgh!" on the big screen.... :)

Thank god FOX isnt involved.

[Anonymous Coward]

They would split up the movie and show the last half first!

Now we just need ANGEL's cancellation retracted

[affeking]

Its good to hear Firefly is getting another chance. I wonder if its success may bring back the series.

In the meantime, lets not forget Joss' most recent loss with the cancelation of Angel. Anyone think it has a chance of coming back from the grave? Take a look at one of the efforts to bring it back:
www.savingangel.com

Im going to my bunk.

[eadint]

Im so happy that this is going to be a movie. when i realized that they didnt have sound in space i thought wow they really are trying to be realistic. and i think that the future will be more like this not like star trek, star trek was a disgusting abourtion.

Re:Im going to my bunk.

[Synic]

Star Trek was really Roddenbery's (sp?) attempt to create a new positive future social utopia for mankind. With all the dismal futures science fiction has conceived, I for one am glad that there has been at least one gem standing on the side of optimism. Not to say I don't enjoy a good dystopia, but you wouldn't want to *only* have that particular view.

Classic lines.

[wdavies]

Well, I sat and watched Firefly back to back over a week or so. Brilliant. I found a new favorite science fiction quote to add to my collection... Actually Bladerunner and Aliens are so chock full, its hard to pick the best, but these are my choices.

Blade Runner:
Roy: I've seen things you little people wouldn't believe, attack ships on fire of the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhauser Gate. All those...moments will be lost...in time, like tears...in rain. Time...to die.

Aliens:
Hudson: Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?
Vasquez: No, have you?

Firefly:
Wash: This sounds like something outta science fiction.
Zoe: Honey, you live on a spaceship.

Re:Classic lines.

[JonMartin]

Wash: This sounds like something outta science fiction.
Zoe: Honey, you live on a spaceship.

You forgot the punchline:

Wash: So?

Re:Classic lines.

[br0ck]

You may want to check out the favorite one-liners thread.

Re:Jeez, let it go, Whedon

[Anonymous Coward]

" If the thing was anything more than a boring mess it would have succeeded"

Or maybe it would have succeeded if FOX hadnt hopelessly botched it. TRy this, watch the show in PROPER order, with a open mind(lock up the troll for a few days) then come back and then come back and say how dry it is.

Moron.

AAARGH! Not Universal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aargh!

I really want to see this, but it's Universal - the most evil entertainment company around (yes, even worse than Disney.)

God damn, maybe a company with ethics will finally by them out, stop all the frivilous lawsuits, and then I can watch this.

But things being what they are, I'll probably never see it.

Actually, it's the studio. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

which milked Buffy. Virtually all of the moments of 'lame' in Buffy can be attributed to other people getting their chance at the control stick.

Joss withdrew the bulk of his influence long before Buffy finally wrapped, and he had very little to do with 'Angel' other than its launch and a small handful of episodes. (The really good ones). I found beyond the Joss episodes and a few sparks here and there, that most of 'Angel' was of very middle-to-shit grade, and so -gasp- didn't waste my time with it. But that's TV in a nutshell.

Firefly was different. You should see the DVD set before you judge. It's a real step up in terms of Whedon's growth as a creator; much more complex and refined than Buffy in many aspects. I found the most of it quite compelling and felt as though he was just getting rolling before the series was unfairly axed.

As Joss was quoted as saying, "If the movie is a success, then maybe they'll give me my own series!" I hope this turns out to be the case. Films are far too small to give the kind of space required by a cast of such interesting character puzzles as those in Firefly.

-FL

Re:Actually, it's the studio. . .

[Rogerborg]

Look, fanboy, I watched Firefly. There was nothing there. Dull characters, uninvolving plots, mediocre production values. It looked like SF by committee.

Re:why does firefly have such a fanbase?

[jafac]

A whole bunch of the anachronisms in Firefly did bother me a lot. Especially WRT the interaction between economy and technology.

I bore with it for the enjoyment of the dialog and plot - which is where Whedon exels anyway.

For those of us with a good understanding of how space travel with today's technology works - and those who have studied NASA's Propulsion Physics "what-if" page, there is a certain degree of suspension of disbelief which we almost take for granted now in most science fiction. With FTL travel, artificial gravity, etc.

Ahh. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Look, fanboy, I watched Firefly.

Yes, of course you did.

"Dull characters"? "Uninvolving plots"? "Mediocre production values"?

It'd be curious to know which one or possibly two episodes you saw in order to form such balanced and informed insights.

Funny part is that you'll probably end up seeing Firefly properly through anyway and grudgingly really liking it. Something of such high quality doesn't die easily; it'll be around for a while.

Heh. --Yeah. You'll see it unless you posses true stubbornness, which I somehow doubt since that would take a timbre of character which your brand of 'insight' seems to suggest you completely lack.

Anyway, good luck with the 'cool' attitude you're working on, there. I'm sure your friends have just suitcases full of respect for you.

I know I do!

-FL

n00b

[irokitt]

You mean you actually read the article?
Are you new here?

Different Customer base

[Anonymous Coward]

A Movie or DVD is sold to the viewer and that's where the revenue comes from. So the viewer matters. And the viewer wants good quality viewing.

But the customer base of a TV series is not the viewer but rather the advertisers. The viewer pays nothing for it. The network is not selling to the viewer, but SELLING the viewer to the advertiser. Thus the advertiser matters, because that's the customer paying for the product. And the advertiser wants the Teen and young adult demographic. Conventional wisdom being that purchasing habits and branding occurs during those formative years.

Thus even if the viewers LOVE a tv show, it will be cancelled if the advertisers (the true customers footing the bill) don't like it. And the advertisers want high ratings in the teen and twenty-something demographics, not high ratings with the nonteen demographics.

They could care less if hordes of senior citizens watched a show and sent the ratings sky high because they liked the quality of the show. The advertisers aren't interested. That demographic is not as susceptible to branding and creation of lifelong purchasing habits and thus not as lucrative.

Re:why does firefly have such a fanbase?

[fmoody]

Tossing out for the moment comments about Whedon and whining about the fans of Firefly, your comments on the "issues" with the show are not all that on-target.

One: We do not know the method they use for FTL. This makes it silly to complain about the energy needs that science as we know it would require. We don't have FTL science, it is something posited for the purposes of the show. For all we know, something developed a few years from now will show that a small application of enery under the correct circumstances will allow FTL. (No, I don't think it likely. But then again, look at the energy pay off with fusion and research into the quantum foam or whatever. Plenty we don't know yet...) Not the first time sci-fi has had FTL...

Two: "Ancient" projectile weapons are still in use to this very day in many parts of the world even as engineering labs (and home hobby types) are turning out rail guns and electron beam/laser/Kill-O-Zap weapons. Technology is used when it solves problems, not when it is cool. (Okay, mostly not for the cool part.) You can buy modern blackpowder weapons (constructed with modern materials and methods but based on an old design with updates) to this very day. You seem to be hip to complain about energy demands, happen to recall the issue with packing energy weapons? Oh yeah, all the batteries. Rail gun? Recoil & power...

Three: I could be mistaken, but the reason for moving the cattle was stolen right from history... They were bringing new blood in for a herd. Could they have carried frozen fertilized eggs instead? That would require facilities on the target planet which (again IIRC) was pretty early agrarian.

All is not rosy with the realism aspect... But it is far less horrific a treatment of reality than you suggest.

Hell yes

[extrasolar]

I bought a season of Dark Angel at Walmart, just kind of an expensive impulse buy--the show seemed interesting.

Guess what? I was hooked on the show. I even bought the second season. Turns out, it never had a third season. The writers, directors, everyone were expecting a third season, and Fox just punted it. So the serious finale left a lot of dangling storylines that we'll never see a conclusion to.

Maybe I'm just on a Dark Angel kick right now, but I recommend anyone to buy the series. Its definitely high quality.

Too right! See Gibson's Alien 3 Script...

[jonskerr]

Many a slip twixt the cup and the lip, as they say. I'm sorry I can't provide a link, but William Gibson wrote a GREAT script for Alien 3, which didn't get made as we know. It certainly used to be available online, surely is somewhere.

Garb!

[ChozSun]

The question is not will I be at the opening but what garb will I wear?

All my clothes are like Jayne's and Wash's but I leaning towards Suits with Blue Gloves if I can find gloves that blue.

My only thought about missing Wash and Book in their listing of the characters is that it is a long freaking list. I have to think that those two will be in it.

If for nothing else: Book is the most dangerous. He was a good enough shot to only shoot baddies in the knees.

ZOE
Preacher, don't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?

BOOK
Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.

But will the entire cast return?

[msmoriarty]

As a complete Firefly fanatic, the only way I can see that I won't like this movie (even if it truly sucks) is if the entire cast doesn't return. I just don't see it right now without all of them.

Thankfully, most of my favorite characters (Preacher -- Ron Glass just rocks, Jayne) are played by actors who don't seem to have their schedules *that* booked. (*VERY* happy for them that they'll have this work.) But the article I read this morning said that *most* of the cast will return...Is there someone that they *know* they can't get?

Figure that they wouldn't do it with a different Malcom, but what about Zoe? (The actress signed on to bigger and better things, but the way she played that character is one of my favorite things about the show.)

Is there anyone out there who wouldn't mind if a different actor stepped in to take over one of the roles? If so, which one? Who would you have play it?

Re:But will the entire cast return?

[msmoriarty]

...Actually, just realized that they *may* very well do it with another actor playing Malcom, and that *is* scary. Here's to hoping Joss' relationship with Universal is solid!

Re:why does firefly have such a fanbase?

[JonMartin]

So you have no problem with FTL, which is something that is, as far as we know currently, impossible, but having some people using projectile weapons while others use more sophisticated weapons bothers you? Even though if you just look around on Earth, you can find societies that still use rocks and pointed sticks?

Exactly right. This is actually directly addressed in the episode "Heart of Gold" (and hinted at in several other episodes). Those in power hoard technology to maintain their status. Just one of many metaphors in Firefly.

Also in "Heart of Gold" we are shown that good old fashioned metal meets propulsion is more reliable than energy guzzling ultra high tech lasers.

Let fire

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Point out where I am wrong.

I had no idea..

[Scooter]

..Alien 4 was so badly regarded - I quite like it. Let's put this into perspective - watch Alien 3.

As for a good Firefly movie script - "The Traveller Adventure" By Miller, Wiseman, Keith et al. It's about a bunch of mis-fits on a small freighter taking on cargoes, passengers and getting involved in heists, rescues and general adventures. Oh! wait...

Re:I had no idea..

[Wolfrider]

--I'm with you; IMHO Alien 3 is the worst, and I liked A4 so much, I bought it on DVD.

Re:Nielsen

[MoodyLoner]

I actually got a Nielsen rating book... for the week after they cancelled Firefly.

Words (save for certain badly-mispronounced Mandarin phrases) fail me...

Re:Jeez, let it go, Whedon

[Vancouverite]

I'm going to have to disagree here. Personally, I missed Firefly the first time around (I'm not much of a TV watcher), but I did see it on the DVD set. IMO, the reason that many people see this show as boring is that they're expecting Star Trek (choose your subseries) or something similar. Firefly has about as much in common with Star Trek as Hill Street Blues has with Car 54 Where Are You.

The comparison is, IMO, an apt one. Firefly is not based on SF concepts and conventions. These are just a wrapper around the real show. The show itself is a deep drama with a western theme, and the episodes that have been put out so far just touch the surface. How many continuing subplots and hanging plotlines did you notice in the series? That's *not* what people expect out of an episodic series, but that's what Whelan has given people here. This show is much closer in spirit to Hill Street Blues than it is to ST.

And, like the Blues, it would take some time to gain audience share, as people realized exactly what depth there was to the show. Blues got that time. Firefly did not. And Fox is braindead (I don't think I can forgive Fox for what they did to the Dragonriders of Pern).

I mean really cheat (Re:But,you can't)

[skelter]

#include
#include
#include

You mean I can't possibly accurately study DNA sequences from such a small sample.

You mean, I can't power an electrical device over xxx distance because the dispation is yyy.

You mean I can't have a glow-in-the-dark bunnywabbit because wabbit DNA does not code for luciferase and luciferin.

I couldn't possibly sue someone for creating an entirely independent work that is magically a derivitive of my own because a) it uses a file structure b) puts binary files in /usr/bin c) loads an operating system off a disk ala von Neuman. I can't possibly use the law for intimidation and evil.

I could not possibly sail that far without falling off the edge of the earth.

Oh, You mean I can't access this file because the operating system does not allow for it?

OHHH, ok...I can't do A because I do not have B, or because it is against the known laws of the world.

I see.

Well, good thing we are all content law-abiding reasonable individuals not inclined to skirt or bend the laws of man, or the universe or to change our world or feed an obsessive understanding of it such that enables utilizing parts of the universe for unintended purposes (and consequences).

I only hope we don't crash the system while hacking it.

Regarding the parent: the cheat would not necessarily to be to do it at high efficiency, but possibly a) make it not necessary, somehow skirting the requirement or b) using some other part of the system to help you out.

-s

Firefly cost.

[I am Jack's username]

"With Firefly costing $2 million an episode" - Firefly homeless, 2003-01-16, BBC

"whose pilot cost more than $8 million" - TIME