C and I just finished watching Firefly this weekend in preparation for opening night of Serenity on Friday. I know a number of people (heh — that’s an understatement) have christened it Best Sci-Fi Show Ever. I’ve been reserving judgement. But now that I’ve watched the whole thing, in the “correct” Joss-approved order, I have to say that I don’t get the big deal. The characters are great, yes. The premise is pretty good. But those things are about potential. The show is all potential. If Buffy had been cancelled the same way (in Season One before the closure of “Prophecy Girl”) it would have felt the same: great characters, the beginnings of some arc, but mostly one-shot episodes that were entertaining but didn’t add up to anything substantial.
So I’m sorry that Firefly never got to grow into its potential. It clearly was working up to some real long-term storylines, and I’m sorry we won’t get to see how those would have developed. I’m sorry it never had the chance to get past the gimmick of its “saloons and cowboy hats in space” premise and move into more solid world-building. (The swearing in Chinese thing was a great start — outlaws swear, but this is TV, so they have to swear in another language. So what if Chinese had become a major trade language and everyone’s bilingual? It gets the atmosphere across without being as painfully literal as the Wild West stuff is.)
I’ve seen Serenity, and I have to say it transcends the series a million times over. I hope there are more movies. But the TV show — as it stands, without looking ahead to what it might have been — rarely got beyond “simple fun” for me.
Q:Is Firefly the Best Sci-Fi Show Ever? If not, what is?
8 responses so far ↓
1 redbeard // Sep 26, 2005 at 6:19 pm
I’d have to say that, imho, the best sci-fi show ever is the new Battlestar Galactica. Perhaps if Firefly had gone forward it would have turmped BSG - it certainly had the potential to be on par - but even in its first season, BSG gripped me in a way few shows of any sort have, and absolutely refuses to let go. And it’s not just because of the tension of “will they survive” but it’s because of both its complete world and the fact that it sucks, nay, drags me into the psyche and lives of deeply flawed and human characters (and not just the humans, mind you).
That said, I’m totally psyched to see Serenity, and as a part of the whole Firefly world, it may put it a cut above. But for now, BSG has my solid vote. So. Damn. Good.
2 Doug Orleans // Sep 26, 2005 at 8:31 pm
Honestly, Firefly is the only sci-fi show I’ve ever really liked (unless you count Max Headroom, which was really more postmodern than sf). Therefore, yes, it’s the best sci-fi show ever. Maybe that’s damning it with faint praise–or maybe it’s only really likable by people who don’t like sci-fi shows?–but I do really like it and I hope the movie does well enough for there to be sequels.
3 Jaas // Sep 27, 2005 at 12:05 am
I’m working on getting current with BSG, but I’ll take a show about the everyday difficulties over some trumped up space opera everyday. I much prefer people making the hard decisions in an everyday way to hard decisions made because. the race. depends on it. BSG, but I’ll still take the sum of Firefly’s eps over what I’ve seen of BSG. Sure, there are better BSGs than “Safe” for instance, but not better than “Objects in Space.” Not better than “Out of Gas.”
4 Lopolis // Sep 27, 2005 at 2:13 pm
Never having been much of a Buffy fan, I can’t use that as a point of reference (although friends tell me the characterization is very similar, so I now understand the hook). It’s tough to compare Firefly and BSG because they’re such different shows and such different Sci-Fi (how can you compare two equally amazing episodes like “33″ and “Out of Gas”?). I’ve only been through the miniseries and a few episodes of BSG now, and it’s absolutely great, but unlike redbeard, it hasn’t sucked me in quite as much as Firefly did. The two worlds and styles are very different, and the characters even more so. Personal preference, I’ll take Firefly over BSG, thus far. I can only take so much of the flat, militaristic, emotion vs. reason characters and arguments in BSG before I think to myself, “Jeez, Mal would have just decked the guy by now!!”
Best Sci-Fi show ever? Neither. I’m still waiting.
A more important question might be: Who would win in a fist fight, Starbuck or Zoe?
5 Sam // Sep 27, 2005 at 2:23 pm
> A more important question might be: Who would win in a fist fight, Starbuck or Zoe?
If it came to a fistfight, Starbuck would win ’cause she’d fight dirtier. But it would never get that far because Zoe would be up in the catwalk with a gun, and it would be over in a second.
Now if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to go clean the inevitable drool out of my comment page.
6 Lopolis // Sep 27, 2005 at 6:30 pm
Heh, sorry. I had to. And you’re probably right about Zoe and the gun.
7 Sam // Oct 3, 2005 at 10:29 am
> I’ll still take the sum of Firefly’s eps over what I’ve seen of
> BSG. Sure, there are better BSGs than “Safe” for instance, but not
> better than “Objects in Space.” Not better than “Out of Gas.”
That’s interesting, because it actually sets up two different ways to evaluate a show. (I know this isn’t necessarily what you meant, but let me go on a tangent here, k? :) ) You can look at the whole show as though it were a movie, one solid arc. In that sense, I think BSG is better than Firefly, as both shows stand right now, because Firefly never got to the point where it was focusing on arc. It was just cancelled too soon. Or you can look at repeat watchability/quality of individual episodes - if given the choice of an evening spent watching a couple of the best eps of BSG or the best eps of Firefly, which would I pick? By that metric, Firefly wins. (Not that I meant to set this up as BSG vs. Firefly, because I totally didn’t.)
And that is why Buffy is the best ever, because it wins by both metrics.
8 Jeff // Oct 3, 2005 at 11:36 pm
Boston.com made an exceptionally bad list ot the “top 50 Sci-Fi shows of all time.” Buffy was #27, Firefly was #17, Babylon 5 was #5 (cute), the new Battlestar Galactica was #2, and the original Star Trek was #1. By comparison, Sliders was #10, Xena was #12, Dark Angel was #19, and Farscape and Deep Space 9 were nowhere on the list.
On to the real choices…
I haven’t actually seen Battlestar Galactica. I suspect I’d react to it like I do to most of the high-end shows on SciFi (SG-1 and Atlantis) - I’d get into it for a little while, then lose track of it and realize I don’t actually care about the plot arc enough to catch up. I may check it out at some point, but it’s not much of a priority now.
On the other hand, one of the redeeming things about living in Buffalo is that I get Canadian television. Which means I get to watch the new Doctor Who this summer.
If you have an opportunity to (which I guess means BitTorrent), check this out. It’s a bit campier than Firefly (there’s an episode in which all the characters get transported into far-future game shows), but it’s… fantastic. The writing is simply amazing; Russell Davies is brilliant, as is Eccleston. (I’m not sure how David Tennant will be as the Tenth Doctor, but I’m hopeful.)
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