All words presented in this blog are purely opinion, not fact - unless specifically stated otherwise in the post.

Monday 21 January 2013

Twenty-Six Of Fifty-Two

Television Shows

Firefly (and Serenity)


Oh Firefly, how I miss you :(
Firefly was one of those Television shows that never made it, never went anywhere and so nobody really saw. It became a cult hit after it came out on DVD and the cult success allowed them to create a movie, Serenity.
There has been much speculation as to why the show didn't do well on tv, but what most people take away is that the episodes were shown out of order and didn't make sense. Also, as with Studio sixty, it was poorly advertised and in an odd time slot.

Firefly is a mix of sci-fi and western. The story of a group of outlaws on a mid-sized cargo vessel trying to keep their ship going and keep from being arrested. The crew of the Serenity (the firefly class space ship they fly around in) all have their own personal stories that play out a little in the show and culminate in the movie.

Malcolm Reynolds is the morally ambiguous, sarcastic and all round hilarious captain of the Serenity. The show starts off showing Mal in the middle of a warzone during a future era version of the American Civil war. The Alliance want control of the whole system, but the Independents don't want to be interfered with. The viewer’s quickly discover that the Independents (or Brown Coats) lost the war and now the Alliance control the system. Mal is a complex character with strong morals in some ways but equally non-existent ones when it comes to Crime.

Simon and River Tam are probably the next most notable characters on the ship, of rich Origins the pair seem out of place, but they are still accepted by most. River is a child prodigy who was kidnapped by the alliance and experimented on. Simon is her gifted surgeon brother who gave up everything to help River escape from the alliance.
River is two parts crazy and 1 part awesome. While most of the time you'd have trouble distinguishing her CAT scans from a toddlers drawing she does have rare moments of awesome (such as when she and one of the other characters got caught in gun fire in one of the episodes and she used math to calculate where to shoot without looking, killing them all).

The stories range from train heists to smuggling. From crashing parties for work from highly respected gentlemen to defending lowly whore houses from supposedly noblemen who think they own the world.

Whether or not you like sci-fi or westerns it's well worth a watch.
Probably more so if you like sci-fi and westerns though.

Is-Video-Bombing-A-Thing? Nathan-Fillion-Being-Funny.
- James

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