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From Amazon.co.uk
Much praised and much missed after its premature cancellation, Firefly is the first SF TV series to be conceived by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and cocreator of Angel. Set five centuries in the future, it is a show where the mysterious personal pasts of the crew of the tramp spaceship Serenity continually surface. In fact, it's a Western in space where the losers in a Civil War are heading out to a barren frontier. Mal Reynolds is a man embittered by the war, yet whose love of his comrades perpetually dents his cynicism--even in the 14 episodes that exist we see him warm to the bubbly young mechanic Kaylee, the preacher Book, the idealistic doctor Simon, even to the often demented River, Simon's sister, the psychic result of malign experiments.
Firefly is also about adult emotional relationships, for example Kaylee's crush on Simon, the happy marriage of Mal's second officer Zoe and the pilot Wash, the disastrous erotic stalemate between Mal and the courtesan Inara. Individual episodes deal with capers going vaguely wrong, or threats narrowly circumvented; character and plot arcs were starting to emerge when the show was cancelled. Fortunately, the spin-off movie Serenity ties up some of the ends; and in the meantime, what there is of Firefly is a show to marvel at, both for its tight writing and ensemble acting, and the idiocy of the executives who cancelled it.
Product Description
DVD box set.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
309 of 316 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:DVD
Why on earth did they cancel this? It's terrific!
The basic story is familiar to all those who enjoy sci-fi. A group of people on a ship trying to avoid/escape a totalitarian authority and not always getting along with each other - we've seen it in, amongst others, Star Wars, Blake's 7 and, perhaps most gloriously, on Farscape. This is not a bad thing. The reason it is a sci-fi staple is because it works.
As with Farscape, the 9 main characters on the ship are completely 3 dimensional. They have complicated and evolving relationships with each other and changing loyalties. The cast are excellent, moving from light comedy to drama seamlessly. Anyone used to Joss Whedon and co's approach to storytelling on Buffy and Angel will be pleased to find the same clever dialogue and humour here, as well as the focus on human drama albeit in an unfamiliar world.
And what a world!
It sounds as though it should be awful and/or cheesy, but the cowboys in space thing really works. We're 500 years into the future and the last two superpowers, US and China, formed a totalitarian govt called the Alliance and we have a world where there is a strange blending of East and West. We don't see any bumpy headed aliens just humans on different planets trying to make a living. Our crew move from place to place taking jobs ranging from smuggling to petty theft to survive and come across some funny/strange/nasty types in the process, however, it is when they pick up a doctor and his mysterious, barking mad sister that they really fall foul of the authorities and their lives get more complicated than they'd like. The Firefly 'verse is fascinating and you will be left with a profound sadness that the series finished without exploring it fully (a film will not be enought to do it justice).
... Read more ›60 of 62 people found the following review helpful
By Laura
Format:DVD
I've been reading excellent reviews for Firefly since it first aired, so I was desperate to get the DVD and check it out for myself. The reviews did it justice; this is an excellent series and I'm really quite annoyed that it was cancelled so quickly!
There is so much to enjoy about this show: it is like the wild west in space with lots of cowboy-like stuff such as six shooters, there are interesting planets visited, (but you wont see an alien anywhere if your worried about it), there are spectacular visual effects of spaceships etc, and very good shoot-outs and brawls. There are several groups of baddies who are all interesting, oh, and you can learn chinese swear words, should you feel the need.
By far and away the most interesting thing about this show though is the characters, nine well rounded and interesting people, as you would expect from Joss Whedon. We have the captain of Serenity, Mal Reynolds, and his second officer Zoe, who survived a war together; her husband Wash pilots the ship, and is the resident joker. Kaylee is the brilliant engineer who says that machines talk to her, and that's how she can fix stuff. The final member of the crew is Jayne, a very large and intimidating mercenary with a habit of naming all his weapons. There are three passengers who come aboard in the pilot episode and gradually become part of the crew; Book, a preacher, and Dr Simon Tam and his sister River, who are now both fugitives after he rescued her from a government project. The last character is Inara, a Companion (high class prostitute) with good connections in high places. A very odd mixture of people, but it works brilliantly!
I strongly recommend this excellent series to everyone, and am itching to see Serenity, the movie follow on which is out in early 2005.
103 of 107 people found the following review helpful
By Sam Anders
Format:DVD
I've been a somewhat cautious fan of science fiction for a while, and passed this over at first assuming it's early cancellation to have signaled poor quality. The fact that it was made by Joss Whedon didn't help it since I'd not seen the appeal in Buffy or Angel. But a friend lent me the first disk of this box set, and I realized my mistake. This is genius, every single episode. I bought it right away.
Early cancellation turns out to have been a symptom of ruthless and blind money making on the part of fox, the more I found out how fox screwed this series over the more I'm amazed.
So; self-indulgence over, review beginning. This is a blend of two seemingly incompatible genres - sci-fi and western. It does this stunningly well, basically the whole thing's set in a future where everyone flies round in spaceships but all the most remote planets on the edge of civilization are basically the old American west, they don't have enough food or medicine or much else for that matter. Just like the old west there are all kinds of lawless activities out here and the show follows the crew of one ship who's main way to survive is to smuggle, steal, kill and do whatever else they need to in order to just keep flying. They aren't bad guys, but they're not quite good guys either. By the end of the series you really feel like you know all the characters in the crew, and what's so brilliant is they feel like characters not stereotypes, and the complex relationships between them are completely believable.
The whole series really sucks you into its world, it's a world that makes sense (everyone's English/Mandarin bilingual) and's a million miles from the squeaky-clean world of shows like star trek.... Read more ›
Early cancellation turns out to have been a symptom of ruthless and blind money making on the part of fox, the more I found out how fox screwed this series over the more I'm amazed.
So; self-indulgence over, review beginning. This is a blend of two seemingly incompatible genres - sci-fi and western. It does this stunningly well, basically the whole thing's set in a future where everyone flies round in spaceships but all the most remote planets on the edge of civilization are basically the old American west, they don't have enough food or medicine or much else for that matter. Just like the old west there are all kinds of lawless activities out here and the show follows the crew of one ship who's main way to survive is to smuggle, steal, kill and do whatever else they need to in order to just keep flying. They aren't bad guys, but they're not quite good guys either. By the end of the series you really feel like you know all the characters in the crew, and what's so brilliant is they feel like characters not stereotypes, and the complex relationships between them are completely believable.
The whole series really sucks you into its world, it's a world that makes sense (everyone's English/Mandarin bilingual) and's a million miles from the squeaky-clean world of shows like star trek.... Read more ›
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Published 6 days ago by Mr. S. Dempster
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent!
Firefly is an awesome sci-fi series, probably the best since STNG. Shame it was cancelled so soon. The movie "serenity" does not do this series justice at all.
Published 6 days ago by G. A. Wilkinson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Firefly - what eejit cancelled this series?
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good
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