Firefly and Serenity

It has been a rough week. An incredibly rough week actually involving me taking calls from angry customers, one of whom screamed at me for ten minutes, making me cry, demanding that she talk to the owner of the company without even giving me her name. But regardless, I have survived and come back stronger than ever. Well, come back strong at least. Thankfully things seem to be calming down at work a bit, which is why I have the time to write this blog.

When I have been coming home in the evenings, I have not been feeling up to much. I eat dinner (sometimes even make it), have a nice long bath, do a little reading (Terry Pratchett being my author of choice at the moment) and then go and lie in bed for awhile watching an episode or two of a series. And so, I thought that I would write a post about the series that I finished watching recently. It is one that I have always wanted to watch, that I have always heard good things about, but that I have somehow just never gotten into. As I have currently watched most of the series on my computer and Grant was getting round to watching reruns of The Simpsons, I decided that it was time to try something new. And so, I started to watch Firefly.

For those of you who have never heard of Firefly, it is a Joss Whedon which only ran for one season. It is a sci-fi Western revolving around a group of illegal traders who earn their living by ferrying travellers across space and by doing dodgy deals along the way. It has recently been compared to Cowboys and Aliens, and I can kind of see why as the two genres tend to run together more than you would expect, but as I have not yet seen Cowboys and Aliens, I cannot do a comparison yet. I will let you know if I ever get around to it.

Part of what makes this series so awesome are the characters. The series stars Nathan Fillion (of Buffy, Dr. Horrible and Castle fame) as Captain Mal Reynolds the captain of the ship, Serenity. His sense of humour and his one-liners make the series, and despite his attempts to be hard and badass, despite his threats to kick Simon and River (two of the travellers) off his ship or leave them behind somewhere, you know that he has a soft side underneath and that it is simply not in his nature. His crew consist of married couple Zoe and Wash, badass assassin Jayne and engineer Kaylee, while his travellers consist of the courtesan Innara, the priest Sheperd, the doctor Simon Tam and his sister, River. I recongised a number of names and faces when I started watching the series, including Wash (who is played by Alan Tudyk from 28 Days and A Knight's Tale) and Jayne (who is played by Adam Baldwin from Chuck). Summer Glau, who plays River Tam, also became a bit of an icon because of the series, and is fawned over by Firefly and general sci-fi fans everywhere. She was an extra in an episode of Big Bang Theory, where all four of the friends tried their luck with her and all four of them utterly failed.

Another part of what makes the series awesome was the plot. Every character had a very definite part to play, and it was clear that Joss Whedon had a larger plan in mind than the one season that the show ran for. He carefully developed plot lines, from the love stories that develop between Mal and Innara and Kaylee and Simon, to the mystery of what it is that the government were doing to River, to the mystery behind the Shepherd and the way that he is treated by the people he encounters. The fact that the series only lasted one season was highly disappointing, and a huge number of people were disappointed by it. So many that they decided to make a movie to try and seal off some of the loose ends.

Serenity was released in 2005, two years after the series ended, and became a cult hit in the same way that Firefly had become cultist rather than mainstream. Of course, it meant that the characters had changed a great deal in the two years that the series had been finished for, but the storyline picked up quickly, and the differences were not too harsh aside from the occasional hair-style change or weight loss. Most of the movie revolved around River and trying to cover her story, where she came from and what she had been subjected to, while the other loose ends took a backseat and were only briefly referred to. While it was good to see the cast together again and to have a little bit of finality (the series left off on a bit of a cliffhanger, which made it all the more disappointing), I still found myself a little disappointed in the movie. I wanted to know more! I wanted other things to happen! I wanted the series to start again so that they could pick up where they had left off, but I knew that it was never going to happen.

Despite my disappointment, I loved Firefly and Serenity. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is into action, sci-fi, western or comedy series. In fact, I would highly recommend it to practically anyone. The only reason I found them so disappointing was because of the awesomeness. In reality, I am disappointed with Fox - the bastardly network that decided to drop the series. I am glaring at them right now.