Firefly - The Complete Series [DVD] [2003]

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).

The DVD set contains all 14 episodes, in the right order (I understand that the TV networks messed that up). There are 7 commentaries from actors/writers/directors which are, for the most part, both amusing and informative. There are 3 documentaries (including a making of), a blooper reel and some deleted scenes.

Although this is clearly written by the same team that gave us Buffy it is aimed at a slightly older audience - perhaps going for the Angel demographic. It is a brilliant idea, well executed. I hope you give it a try - if nothing else it'll show you how to swear outrageously in Mandarin!

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.

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. The music is equally instrumental in this, blending Chinese, American, eastern European, and many other completely different styles into a believable blend that feels very improvised and very much like the music these people would be playing, nothing orchestral or operatic, just some guys with an old guitar or two sitting round playing the blues.
From a visual standpoint the series is equally impressive. The CGI is stunning, on par with the best Hollywood can throw at us, and utilizing unusual CGI techniques like zooms and rapid unfocused turns of the camera to give it a style similar to documentary, news or reality programming where the cameraman doesn't quite catch everything perfectly. The same technique of calculated roughness is applied to the live-action camera-work so that the characters aren't always perfectly in shot and walk in from odd angles. It feels like this is all happening, you just happen to be watching it.
The writing is absolutely brilliant. The plots are vary between really good, great, and jaw-dropingly awesome. The dialog is cool, quick, funny and reminds me of Elmore Leonard in it's easy but always-snappy flow.
Basically this is genius. It's a strangely believable story of ordinary people on the frontiers of civilization just trying to make a living and get by, and in the end that's the the most involving story of all - one that makes us feel.
Here's to serenity, hoping she'll fly again.