You Can't Stop The Signal
...But the TV companies can still scramble it
One of my Christmas presents from Kate last year was the boxed set of the TV series Firefly. I'd been interested in seeing the show since we'd watched the spin-off movie Serenity - which hadn't made a hell of a lot of sense at the time, but I was intrigued and I wanted to understand more.
Before I allowed myself to watch it, I wanted to finish watching all the episodes of Babylon 5, which meant buying seasons 3, 4 and 5, and so I did – watching two or three episodes almost every day, and then also the TV movies (including the awful A Call To Arms – what the hell were they thinking?). There were a lot of episodes. It took weeks.
Finally I got to where I felt comfortable starting on Firefly.
What can I say? This show is bloody excellent. It's usually classed as 'Space Western' rather than hard SF, because it's set in a star system where many of the worlds are remote, so these places have a western pioneer trail-like feel; like all good SF it doesn't focus on the special effects, concentrating more on character and story.
Excellent show, as I said – and yet only eleven episodes were shown before it was cancelled (the DVD set includes three other episodes that had been filmed but weren't shown at the time). The fact that the show had a loyal following is illustrated by the fact that Universal made the feature-length Serenity a few years later. So, what went wrong?
The TV company that aired the show the first time round, that's what went wrong; specifically the program scheduler that decided to not show the pilot episode first (may his/her soul roast for eternity in hades). The pilot episode that sets up the entire series and shows how Simon and River Tam join the crew of the ship in the first place, and why they're there. The episode that hooks you in and leaves you gasping for the next episode, because you want some answers to the questions it asked. The TV company didn't show this one first (apparently they showed it at the end of the run) so I imagine viewers were pretty damn confused by the episodes they did see. A great series, brought low by one idiot.
Anyway, I watched all fourteen episodes then watched Serenity again (and this time it made much more sense), and then I put them to one side for a bit and I've now watched the first eleven episodes again with the last three coming soon.
If you haven't seen Firefly, watch the first episode. If you like it (that is, if you then can't live until you've seen the second episode, etc.) then go out and buy the set. And the movie. And write to Fox and tell them to bring Firefly back.
One of my Christmas presents from Kate last year was the boxed set of the TV series Firefly. I'd been interested in seeing the show since we'd watched the spin-off movie Serenity - which hadn't made a hell of a lot of sense at the time, but I was intrigued and I wanted to understand more.
Before I allowed myself to watch it, I wanted to finish watching all the episodes of Babylon 5, which meant buying seasons 3, 4 and 5, and so I did – watching two or three episodes almost every day, and then also the TV movies (including the awful A Call To Arms – what the hell were they thinking?). There were a lot of episodes. It took weeks.
Finally I got to where I felt comfortable starting on Firefly.
What can I say? This show is bloody excellent. It's usually classed as 'Space Western' rather than hard SF, because it's set in a star system where many of the worlds are remote, so these places have a western pioneer trail-like feel; like all good SF it doesn't focus on the special effects, concentrating more on character and story.
Excellent show, as I said – and yet only eleven episodes were shown before it was cancelled (the DVD set includes three other episodes that had been filmed but weren't shown at the time). The fact that the show had a loyal following is illustrated by the fact that Universal made the feature-length Serenity a few years later. So, what went wrong?
The TV company that aired the show the first time round, that's what went wrong; specifically the program scheduler that decided to not show the pilot episode first (may his/her soul roast for eternity in hades). The pilot episode that sets up the entire series and shows how Simon and River Tam join the crew of the ship in the first place, and why they're there. The episode that hooks you in and leaves you gasping for the next episode, because you want some answers to the questions it asked. The TV company didn't show this one first (apparently they showed it at the end of the run) so I imagine viewers were pretty damn confused by the episodes they did see. A great series, brought low by one idiot.
Anyway, I watched all fourteen episodes then watched Serenity again (and this time it made much more sense), and then I put them to one side for a bit and I've now watched the first eleven episodes again with the last three coming soon.
If you haven't seen Firefly, watch the first episode. If you like it (that is, if you then can't live until you've seen the second episode, etc.) then go out and buy the set. And the movie. And write to Fox and tell them to bring Firefly back.
posted by Pete Ford at
3:54 PM
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