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My take on Firefly
01/11/2005 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
A man sits on a sand dune. There appears to be nobody around for many miles of desert in any direction. That may be a good thing because the man is stark naked. There is no sign of his clothing anywhere. The man is apparently reflecting on the events that brought him here. "That went well." You immediately find yourself wondering what has happened and where he would have been and in what state if things had not gone so well. This is the beginning of an episode of the TV series Firefly. Buy Firefly in the USA - or Buy Firefly in the UK  I didn't watch Firefly when it was originally broadcast. When it was first on I did watch the first broadcast episode, and it just did not appeal to me. It was sort of a western set in space. These western-in-space things used to be called space operas from the term horse opera. Since then the term space opera has become more respectable while westerns set in space have not.
I knew by this time that it was another series created by Joss Whedon. Whedon had created and was the moving force behind Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. That show had a big cult following that did not include me. I had watched the rebroadcast first three seasons of Buffy and felt that was all of my time that Buffy had deserved. I had warmed to the series, but only a little. Hearing that the current episodes involved Buffy-bots did not encourage me.
So I let the series Firefly go without my watching it. Occasionally on the next few weeks - and it was only a few weeks - people would say that they actually liked the series. But these were some of the same people who waxed enthusiastic on Buffy. Also by then I had missed a lot of Firefly. I really do not have too much time for weekly television shows in my schedule. It could not have been too many weeks after that that I heard that the series had been cancelled and was to be taken off television. At the time it did not bother me at all.
Almost immediately there sprang up write-in campaigns to save the series. Again I saw this as a disinterested third party. But it was curious that there were so many people who really liked the bland space western that I thought I saw in the first episode. A little while later I heard that the entire series was on DVD. Okay, if I could borrow it from someone I might go back and watch the series. And indeed a good friend had the entire series and would lend it to me. (These days you do not risk a lot by missing a TV series. The good ones seem to all show up on DVD. (I am waiting avidly for the "Meet the Press, Season 57, Collector's Edition" with the WMD Easter Egg.))
I cannot say I ever was a strong fan of Firefly even when I had seen the whole series, but I have to admit I was wrong and it would have been worth watching. I saw an episode I liked and then another one. The characters were a mixed bag, but that worked well. That was much of the point. Certainly it was a reaction to the early days of Star Trek when everybody worked so well as a team on the Enterprise.
There was a little needling, even in Star Trek but on the whole everybody liked and respected everybody else on the Enterprise. The same was true in "Star Trek: The Next Generation", but in addition everybody was the very best at their profession. The doctor was one of the top medical researchers in the Federation. The kid turned out to be a genius comparable to Mozart. It was all a little too wonderful for my taste.
By contrast, the crew and passengers of the Serenity in Firefly really were much more like people I would see at work. There was a lot of distrust and occasionally betrayals. This was not the spic-and-span universe of Star Trek's Federation. In fact the central enemy on Firefly was the Alliance, an axis not a lot different from Star Trek's Federation. This was a future without Star Trek's rubbery-faced aliens.
Everybody was a descendent of old Terra. Also in "Firefly" people got hurt. People may have even gotten killed, if I remember right. They were facing an enemy that could crush them. The Enterprise rarely found an enemy they could not stomp. If they did find such a species, the Enterprise would find a way to stomp them (mercifully) six episodes later. The Enterprise never knew a no-win situation. In Firefly there were at least some compromises that had to be made.
How do I feel about Firefly? I don't love it. I think it is better than Star Trek. (Well, maybe Star Trek got better the last season. Like a light bulb, Star Trek was its brightest just before it blinked out.) The writing of Firefly was often likeable and I admit chuckling at dialog. Now that we find out what it really was all about with the release of Serenity, I feel quite positive toward the series as a whole.
There were some good ideas that just did not come out in the series until the film capped it. The friends who told me I should be watching it were probably right.
Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 2005 Mark R. Leeper
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