Several months back I discovered Firefly… better late than never. Ranks right up there with Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek NG. Very interesting mix of old western culture in which the wealthy planets of the “Alliance” enjoy the best technology while the poor settlers of the outer planets scrape by living in conditions we can expect in a post-peak oil earth. The effects are excellent and very well balanced with an emphasis on the story and character relationships.
More info via the Firefly Wiki.
I got hooked on that last year! As a screenwriter myself, I was just amazed at Joss’ ability to manipulate the audience’s opinion on ‘who is the bad guy’ in the first episode, through use of dialogue, music, camera angles, use of light and dark etc. Brilliant stuff.
I hope you’ve seen Serenity (the movie)>?
The one thing that bothered me about the series was that it had no real conclusion. That’s why I loved the movie so much – it was like the ‘last episode’ for me, where everything makes sense.
< /rant > 🙂
I never catched the series, but got to see serenety and loved it.
The movie is much better if you’ve seen the series first. The movie doesn’t do the best job of creating three dimensional characters. It sorta relied on the fact that most people watching it had seen the series.
I never saw the series either, but really enjoyed the movie. I was shocked to find that “Firefly” was the reason Fox dumped “Dark Angel.” Official reason was they couldn’t support TWO science-fiction series! How stupid! Then they ended up pulling the plug on Firefly anyway! Oh well! NOW I am suddenly interested in Stargate after watching Stargate Atlantis the past six months… interesting series, and I am waiting for my local public library to get the original Stargate movie on DVD.
I agree that the movie is greatly enriched by the background of the series… and yes, the movies is fantastic. i also agree that it was nice to have the movie offer some conclusion though i sure hope that the series is brought back to life. i’ve read here and there that there is an effort to bring it back. we’ll see.
Yeah, I’ve also seen the movie and liked it a lot and should be getting Firefly in a the library pretty soon, it seems great from the little I’ve seen. Joss Whedon is a genius, even if he has written/made some bad stuff. Did you ever watch Buffy or Angel? I am ridiculously attached to both of those shows, I enjoy them unlike anything else. I just finished watching every Buffy on DVD and will soon be done watching every Angel episode on DVD also. The problem with getting into shows like this is it eats up so much of your time. Anyway, most everything Joss Whedon does is pretty good, if not great.
yeah, joss wheldon does some darn good writing, i’ll have to admit…
brian’s making me watch battlestar galactica (think “forcing” and “gunpoint” and you might have a feel for it).
the show didn’t make an ounce of sense but i was strangely compelled to keep watching because i wanted to know, WHO THE HELL IS FREAKY LADY?
then i saw the mini series which helped a whole whole lot. doesn’t mean i don’t think the whole thing is freaky, but at least it’s a freaky i can understand now.
the whole thing comes off as a bit of a military drama more than a sci-fi show, albeit one with a lot of fraternizin’ going on. at this point i’m still wondering where (if anywhere) all of this is going to go…