Firefly Marathon on SciFi, September 18th

kulakovich writes, "Hot on the heels of Stargate's cancellation, the SciFi Channel is running an entire season of Firefly starting at 8am (Eastern) on September 18th. This news is fresh from yesterday's posting on the Whedonesque blog. Start making space on the PVR!"

Comments

Uh no, that would be....

[myowntrueself]

That would be 'the entire *half* season'.

It never made a full season.

14 episodes. Ok *slightly* more than half a seasons worth.

"My john thomas is gonna pop off and fly around the room theres so much tasty in here!" -- Jayne.

I imagine that the network executives would have choked on their caesar salads hearing that line... they couldn't cancel fast enough.

Re:Theres just one..

[halenger]

This is quite an important comment to note. If you look at the episode list side-by-side with the Wikipedia entry (section with the episode list) ... or if you just know all the episodes and the order etc ... you'll note two things: a) They've decided that, shockingly, order does matter! They have gotten it right there. b) They've decided that the full season shouldn't be aired. While they have gotten the order right they've ditched the last four episodes: 11. "Trash", 12. "The Message", 13. "Heart of Gold", 14. "Objects in Space" (thanks Wikipedia). I really don't see them building this up to a big four episode finale. Unless the 18th is some public holiday in the US, then they're really not giving it a chance. Give it a Saturday. Get new fans. Make more money (DVD sales). Even split it over a Saturday and Sunday. *shrugs* Oh well.

Re:Shiny

[inkswamp]

If you dig the Firefly opening, check the links below out. An indie folk group took the theme and turned it into a full-length song (and they did a pretty damn good job with it) using the theme as their chorus and adding some very well-written verses.

http://www.cyphertext.net/escapekey/Mal_studio.mp3

Other songs by the same group, here:

http://www.cyphertext.net/escapekey/songs.html

Re:Theres just one..

[pjtp]

Not even that... it's 11 out of 14.

They are missing:

Trash
The Message
Heart of Gold
Objects in space

Re:Theres just one..

[70Bang]

FireFly Episode List

Season 1
1. 1- 1 1AGE01 20 Sep 02 The Train Job
2. 1- 2 1AGE02 27 Sep 02 Bushwhacked
3. 1- 3 1AGE05 4 Oct 02 Our Mrs. Reynolds
4. 1- 4 1AGE06 18 Oct 02 Jaynestown
5. 1- 5 1AGE07 25 Oct 02 Out of Gas
6. 1- 6 1AGE03 1 Nov 02 Shindig
7. 1- 7 1AGE04 8 Nov 02 Safe
8. 1- 8 1AGE08 15 Nov 02 Ariel
9. 1- 9 1AGE09 6 Dec 02 War Stories
10. 1-10 1AGE11 13 Dec 02 Objects in Space
11. 1-11 1AGE79 20 Dec 02 Serenity (1)
12. 1-12 1AGE79 20 Dec 02 Serenity (2)
13. 1-13 1AGE10 UNAIRED Heart of Gold
14. 1-14 1AGE12 UNAIRED Trash
15. 1-15 1AGE13 UNAIRED The Message

Feature Movie

F- 1 30 Sep 05 Serenity

IMDB Episode Guide

Season 1, Episode 1: The Train Job - 20 September 2002
Mal and his crew pull a train robbery.

Season 1, Episode 2: Bushwhacked - 27 September 2002
The crew of Serenity stumble upon the ruins of a transport ship and decide to search the vessel for any salvageable goods, only to discover that the ship is not entirely deserted.

Season 1, Episode 3: Our Mrs. Reynolds - 4 October 2002
A woman claiming to be Mal's wife appears aboard Serenity.

Season 1, Episode 4: Jaynestown - 18 October 2002
The crew pulls a heist in a town where Jayne once robbed the local magistrate, making him a local folk hero, and a target for the local police.

Season 1, Episode 5: Out of Gas - 25 October 2002
When Serenity's life support system fails, Mal orders the crew off the ship - but he stays behind.

Season 1, Episode 6: Shindig - 1 November 2002
After scuffling with one of Inara's clients, Mal is challenged to a duel.

Season 1, Episode 7: Safe - 8 November 2002
While visiting an outlying planet, Simon and River are kidnapped by local villagers in need of a doctor. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew are forced to seek medical help from an unlikely source when one of their own is shot.

Season 1, Episode 8: Ariel - 15 November 2002
When the crew of Serenity arrives on the core world 'Ariel', Simon realises it is the perfect opportunity to sneak River in to an Aliiance medical facility and find out what they did to her. In return for the crew's help in getting them in to the facility, Simon helps them organise an operation to steal valuable medical supplies.

Season 1, Episode 9: War Stories - 6 December 2002
Wash feels threatened by the bond between Mal and Zoe. In order to see for himself how the two work together Wash demands that he goes on a mission with Mal to sell the medical supplies instead of Zoe. Unfortunately, Niska has found out where Serenity is and captures Mal and Wash and tortures them as revenge for their failure in the train robbery mission they took from him.

Season 1, Episode 10: Objects in Space - 13 December 2002
The crew of Serenity consider ways to deal with River as her illness makes her a danger to them. That night, a bounty hunter named Jubal Early, who has been tracking Serenity since it left Ariel, invades the ship in order to try and take River and Simon. Early gets the crew in lock-down and it seems that River is the only one who can stop him.

Season 1, Episode 11: Serenity - 20 December 2002
In the first half of the original pilot episode, the crew of Serenity takes on several passengers and make their way to another planet to try and sell goods they salvaged from a wrecked ship. Their efforts are impeded, though, when Wash and Mal realize that there is an undercover alliance fed on board. In the second half of the original pilot, Simon struggles to save Kaylee, and in turn River and himself while Mal, Zoe, and Jayne attempt to unload the cargo from the salvage to a trigger-happy mayor of a border moon.

Season 1, Episode 12: Heart of Gold - 4 August 2003
Serenity responds to a distress call from Nandi, an old friend of Inara's, who is running

Re:Order

[Cesa]

From TFA:
This time around, they're starting with "Serenity parts 1 & 2" and ending with "War Stories." The eleven episode marathon starts at 8am (eastern).

HD

[Anonymous Coward]

This particular marathon doesn't mean all that much, but starting on Sept. 24, Firefly will be broadcast in high definition on UHD, which is going to be awesome.

http://www.tvweek.com/page.cms?pageId=212

Re:HD

[AKAImBatman]

if it was shot with the right equipment for HD then yes it will be awesome. But if it was just shot using ordinary equipment, then I'm hesitant to watch it.

Since HD *is* ordinary equipment these days (has been since the 90's), I don't think you'll have a problem. You see, television is shot with movie equipment because it's cheaper. The cameraman just keeps in mind that they'll be cutting off the edges to convert the film to Pan and Scan. So he's careful not to stick anything in the sides that the viewer might actually want to see.

Unfortuntately, that does have some side effects. While Babylon 5 was shot with 16:9 cameras, the sides of the shots often contained crew or stage equipment that couldn't be shown on film. So when they converted it to HD, they had to make a decision about each scene as to whether they could use the negatives, pinch the Pan and Scan, or black out the lower and upper areas of the Pan and Scan conversion. The result is that B5 in HD is a mixed bag.

Thankfully, studios have become more cognizant of 16:9 for television since then. As a result, shows like Stargate SG-1 are easily transferred to DVD in 16:9 rather than the 4:3 they were broadcast at. Getting back to Firefly, it was also transferred to DVD in 16:9, so any broadcast of the show in HD should look just fine. (Actually, it should look GREAT because of great camera work and the awesome special effects by Zoic Studios - the same studio currently working on Battlestar Galactica.)

So What?

[bigbigbison]

They are playing 8 hours of Amazing Stories today. Friday they are playing 8 hours of Outer Limits and yesterday they played 8 hours of Andromeda.
Marathons of shows is what they do. That they are playing Firefly means nothing. It doesn't mean that they are going to pick it up any more than it means they are going to start making new episodes of the Incredible Hulk starring Bill Bixby. Sadly, they are both dead.

Re:Shiny

[Xentor]

Tsk tsk... The solo is after the SECOND verse.

Firefly (in HD)starts on Universal HD on Sept 24th

[gc3]

Firefly will start airing on Universal HD (in HD obviously) on September 24th @ 9PM ET (SERENITY - PART 1 & 2).

More importantly, Universal HD also airs the new Battlestar Galactica in HD on Sunday's at 8PM ET and 11PM ET.

http://www.universalhd.com/

George C.

I think you are way off about the DVD sales

[silicon not in the v]

I just checked again on the list of bestselling DVDs on Amazon. The Firefly set is ranked at #59. That may not sound impressive, except consider the following:
This is about as low as I've seen its rank, as the interest is gradually fading. They update this list HOURLY, and I've checked on it quite frequently over the past year or so. It sat consistently in the top 20 for most of that year. The other thing is that DVDs come and go from that bestseller list frequently. The ones on there now are not the ones that were there 3 months ago, or 6 months ago, or a year ago. And yet Firefly has been on there all that time, mostly in the top 20. The Serenity movie was hanging in there about 10 spots lower than Firefly through most of that time.

There are some pretty impressive amounts of sales going on for it to sit in the best selling list that long. Also, I don't think the point is lost on the network people that this show has managed to build up a following much bigger after it was gone and off the air than it ever had in its short life. That shows that it's not just the hype and publicity and TV ads for it that are keeping up interest for it. It is actually people being introduced to the show by friends and loving it and telling others about it--THREE YEARS AFTER IT WAS CANCELLED!

I have been listening to a podcast about the Firefly universe called The Signal. One of the things they broadcast was an interview with Jewel Staite, who played Kaylee. She mentioned that the rights deal they signed for the making of Serenity options the cast for a trilogy of movies. Joss and Universal's deal to get those rights from Fox included that they cannot make more of the TV series for 10 years (from the cancellation in 2003). They do, however, have full rights to keep making movies. Also, if it does well, they could offer to buy out the remainder of that 10 years from Fox if they really wanted to.

If anything is going to float this boat, I think it will be the very strong DVD sales, which are already showing. They could even make more episodes to release straight to DVD. That probably wouldn't qualify as a TV show, so they could do that without running afoul of the Fox deal.