Dollhouse, Firefly, Angel, Buffy : news, photos & videos

Firefly in Ten of the best Science fiction television series

Webmaster — 2009-11-20T13:42:10Z

2. Firefly

Created by : Joss Whedon

Seasons : 1

Debuted : 2003

The darling of modern science fiction remains as eternally popular now as it ever was, if Mal Reynolds' recent cameo as Nathan Fillion on Castle is anything to go by. Imaginative, wild, and special, this was a unique show.

Click on the link for more :

http://www.scifinow.co.uk/top-tens/ten-of-the-best-science-fiction-television-series/5/

Firefly in the The Worst TV Ideas Of The Decade

Webmaster — 2009-11-18T22:38:08Z

(...)

Fox cancels Firefly way too soon : Unlike NBC, which for all its weaknesses will usually give a quality quirky show a decent chance to find its audience, Fox has the reputation of quickly abandoning anything that is not an instant hit. The primary example in recent years was Firefly, the Joss Whedon space opera that might have become a Battlestar Galactica had Fox shown any patience at all. But the program was mishandled by the network in any number of ways and was abandoned halfway through the 2002-03 season. The upshot is that now, even when Fox does give a show a fair shot (such as Whedon's most recent series, the just canceled Dollhouse), the Firefly example still gets cited as evidence of its bad faith.

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"Firefly" Tv Series in Top Cult Shows on Real TV Addict

Webmaster — 2009-11-08T10:42:11Z

The best part about writing for a website like Real TV Addict is having an excuse to watch my favorite shows again. In the past, if I pulled out the Firefly discs for a marathon, my wife would look at me and say “what the heck are you doing ?” ”I'm a Browncoat baby, accept it.” This would result in my doing the laundry for the next month, but now, look out !! ”Sorry honey, it's for work.” I wonder if I can slip in a new Blu-ray copy without her getting angry ?

Firefly is legendary. Born in the fertile playground of a mind that is Joss Whedon's (Buffy, Angel, Dollhouse), this show is a mixture of space cowboys, opera, adventure, and the impending Chinese language take over of the universe. It is fast, action packed, cerebral, and utterly hilarious. Firefly crosses all genres with a nimble grace absent from 95% of today's television landscape.

The pitch : a ragtag crew assembles aboard a Firefly class starship dubbed “Serenity” (named after a famous battle both its captain and first officer were involved with a lifetime ago) and take up odds and ends jobs of the legally questionable variety in order to make a living and avoid detection by the powers that be. They're like pirates. Nice, friendly pirates with a professional call girl inhabiting their shuttle !

The Serenity

What makes a show like Firefly so special is the magical intersection of storytelling and ensemble. Whedon is relentless in sculpting a complete and intricate world for his characters to inhabit, one that is so deep, you, as a viewer, often feel like you'll never find the bottom. Then, he goes ahead and assembles one of the finest casts ever broadcast into you eye sockets.

Malcolm Reynolds is the leader. A handsome, confident man with an intricate past to make the girls swoon. Nathan Fillion (currently seen in ABC's Castle) nails the role with an easy mix of humor and classic serialized hero of yesteryear. The man is just plain charming.

Serenity's crew fills out from there with Wash the goofy pilot, Zoe the first mate and Wash's wife, Kaylee the too cute mechanic, Simon the doctor and his sister the mysterious River, the super mysterious past of preacher Book, and the easy on the eyes concubine Inara (Morena Baccarin of the newly relaunched V on ABC). It is a stunning group of talent and I gotta say that these actors have become some of my favorite working in the industry today. Jayne's Hat

Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb

And let's not forget Jayne. We could sing songs about Jayne, ballads if you will, but I won't spoil that episode for you ! It has become a right of passage for nerds everywhere to knit their own Jayne hat as seen in the episode “The Message.” Played to grizzly perfection by Adam Baldwin (Chuck), Jayne is the macho mercenary who asks the questions no one else wants to. He shoots it straight and plays for himself first. Although you have no doubt he'd take a couple dozen rounds for any one of his ship mates by the time the show ends. Not that Jayne would ever allow himself to be shot.

Keen eyes will also spot the recurring character Saffron as Mad Men's busty head secretary Christina Hendricks. Her episodes are amongst my favorites, including “Trash” which features a fun heist of the first ever laser pistol, now a valuable collector's item. She has terrific chemistry with Mal and a classic streak of evil beneath her fiery red hair.

One of the most memorable aspects of the show revolves around its use of language. Everyone in the future seamlessly blends English and Chinese and Whedon uses it as a brilliant device to pass off cussing on network TV. We don't exactly know what he's saying, but we do ! This crosses over into all the signs and books and writing amongst the worlds as well, creating a lush landscape of familiar and exotic tones. But it doesn't stop with just Chinese, the dialog turns new phrases out of everyday words faster than a middle schooler texting their BFF. ”Shiny” is synonymous with good or great. Farmers on one planet drink “mudder's milk” and the term “gorram” is a popular curse with fans everywhere. The language of Firefly is a terrific Tower of Babel ; elegant with nods to the old west, steam punk, and cyber punk culture.

Firefly Art

Firefly also blazed new ground thanks to a devoted following. Much like Fox's Family Guy which resurrected itself back onto network TV after cancellation by generating brisk DVD sales, the folks at Universal gave Firefly new life on the big screen courtesy of huge home video response. That following, or Browncoats as they call themselves, continues to be vibrant and healthy, appearing at cons and organizing viewing parties to raise money for charities etc. This show was a cult hit before the end of the first episode.

If you haven't seen Firefly, it is not the kind of show you rent, it is the kind of show you buy. I've shown it to fans of science fiction, westerns, romance, comedy, drama, it doesn't matter, they've all loved it. Unlike a lot of my DVD shelf, Firefly gets played over and over again. It is universal and a must own for anyone who is a fan of good story telling.

We don't even have time to get into Blue Sun ! One of the most nefarious and clandestine organizations ever conceived for television. Beware the hands of blue my friends !

Not just your average single camera hour-long, Firefly grabbed its audience by the throat and burned bright for far too short a time. Buried on Friday nights, Fox hardly gave it a chance, but you can't stop the signal. With its “big damn movie”, comic books, t-shirts etc., Browncoats young and old continue to celebrate Firefly. No power in the ‘verse can stop them !

Reavers make its top 10 of the scariest characters in movies

Webmaster — 2009-11-02T19:14:22Z

(...)

10. The Reavers - Serenity

The Reavers themselves weren't that scary, but they become gain a lot of terror from the way the rest of the world fears them. They are the only creatures I know that can make Captain Mal shake in his boots. And shake he does when he orders the town to lock themselves in a bank vault until they run out of air.

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Click on the link for more :

http://io9.com/5392116/1+10

What couples argue about when they watch Firefly and Serenity

Webmaster — 2009-10-30T17:56:40Z

Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal

Things My Husband and I Have Argued About While Watching Firefly

Before we get started, there's something you need to know about my husband and me : We're geeks.

And I'm not talking the kind of casual geek that's popular nowadays, the person who enjoys the Lord of the Rings trilogy and plays the occasional hand of online spades. My husband and me ?

We're geeks.

My area of geekspertise is television. I did my undergrad in television, radio, and film back when ¾” tapes the size of your typical VW were the height of the new technology, and I started taping shows religiously about a week after the VCR was invented. Somewhere in my mother's basement are piles of VHS tapes containing most of the episodes of Moonlighting, Northern Exposure, and The X-Files. When The X-Files launched a trend by releasing entire seasons on DVD, the skies of my world broke open with a thousand angels singing the hallelujah chorus.

My husband, he's a fantasy game geek. He was on the Internet role-playing a text-based dwarf in 1991. He had first-person experience with Rogue. For Christmas one year, all he wanted was a copy of Deities and Demigods. He's lost countless hours of his life to Ultima Online, and indeed only stopped playing when I told him I would take the baby and go far away if he didn't. To this day, I think he's okay with the choice he made, but we're engaging a don't-ask-don't-tell policy. Just seems safer for all concerned that way.

Now when two people such as us get married, the geekitude increases exponentially. You combine my love of television with his love of fantasy, and it's completely unfathomable that we didn't discover Joss Whedon until 2004—and then only because so many of my romance writer friends were talking about the incredible love stories. We started with Buffy, which had us completely sucked in by the time Xander's buddies ate Principle Flutie. Then, after Netflixing Buffy all the way to the end, we started on Angel. When that was over, there was only one thing left :

Firefly.

The thing about Firefly is that, at the time, I was only beginning to realize that engaging storytelling is not genre-dependent. I am a fan of neither Westerns nor science fiction, so for me, believing that I would be remotely interested in a combination of the two was way beyond my limited vision. I had loved all things Whedon up to this point, and was fairly certain I'd be only meh about Firefly, so I was understandably resistant. Fast-forward twelve months, and you and Irony would find me fastidiously knitting my husband a cunning hat in anticipation of the opening of the feature film extension of the story, but at the time, I was less than enthusiastic.

But my husband—we'll call him Fish because that's what I call him—was insistent.

It was time for Firefly.

I dug my heels in. Even if I did like it, which was doubtful, I knew the history. There were only thirteen episodes before the short-sighted bastards at FOX canceled it. If it was bad, I'd be disappointed, and if it was wonderful, I'd be heartbroken. There was no possible good to come from getting involved with this show.

But Fish merely shook his head like a Buddhist Zen master and said, “Firefly. It's time.”

It was our first argument about Firefly. As it turned out, it would not be our last.

Winters are long and brutal in central New York, and in the tiny apartment we lived in at the time, the TV was right next to the fireplace. One night, Fish got me drunk on cheap wine and took advantage, slipping the first Firefly DVD into the player. The rest, as they say, is history.

I fell in love with Wash immediately. The second I saw the loud print shirt and the dinosaurs on the ship console, I was all about Wash. He was the ultimate beta hero, the funny, smart guy who could fly a ship like a master and was secure with himself even in the face of his wife's ability to kill a man at thirty paces without so much as a shaky trigger finger. Add to that the fact that Wash and Fish are so similar in personal style and temperament as to be brothers, it was the perfect fictional crush, one that reflected amiably upon my real-life chosen loved one and set the tone for marital harmony.

Fish, on the other hand, fell instantly for Kaylee. For the record, while it's admirable and romantic that I would lust after the character most like my husband, he fell for the girl least like me. Kaylee is tiny and delicate, a whiz with mechanical things, and sweet and naïve, always seeing the best in people. Me, I'm of stocky Anglo-German stock ; I haven't had a delicate moment since somewhere in the fetal stage. I laugh heartily, I speak crudely, all things mechanical mystify and frequently zap me, and I'm always surprised when I meet someone who is genuinely sweet to the core, not just pretending in order to put other people off their game. Fish readily admits that I remind him more of Zoe than Kaylee, and yet, Kaylee is the one he loves.

I try not to take it personally. Sometimes, I fail. What can I say ? I'm human. And, as you can tell by the description I gave you, kind of a tough one to live with at that. Still, every now and again, Fish winds up the courage to ask me if I'd dress up like Kaylee, to which I respond by suggesting he bite one particularly unsavory part of my anatomy. He finds this amusing.

Between you and me, sometimes, so do I.

In the pilot, “Serenity,” there is a moment when Inara was entertaining a client, and he made a crack about her speeding up the clock to cheat him out of some of his time with her. A look of surprise and offense flashed across her face, and Fish said to me, “She doesn't like her job.”

This was on a recent viewing, at least our third joint viewing of the total series, so I was understandably shocked that he could even say this. I grabbed the remote, hit pause, and stared at him like he was crazy. Which, he was, but I'd known that going in.

“What the hell are you talking about ?” I countered, with my typical verbal dexterity.

He motioned toward the TV. “Look at her face there. She's obviously ashamed.”

“She doesn't like being insulted,” I said, still stunned that we were even having this conversation. “No one likes being insulted. But that doesn't mean she doesn't like her job.”

“She's a whore.”

“She's a companion,” I said through gritted teeth. “What she does is about the soul as well as the body, and she lives a completely respectable life. There might be elements of her job that she doesn't like, and yeah, being in love with Mal complicates things, but she's not ashamed.”

Fish turned his head toward me with a facial expression that said, “Lani, you ignorant slut,” but he didn't actually say this because he'd lose an eye and he likes his eyes. Instead, he repeated, “She's a whore,” as though that made his entire argument, which it did not. It did, however, buy him a full hour of stony silence from me, which he probably saw at the time as a win-win. Later that night, however, as the wonky spring in the couch gouged permanent marks into his backside, he came around to my side of it.

I am nothing if not persuasive.

FF03. “Shindig.” This episode was written by Jane Espenson, a writer who won over both me and Fish with her hilarious and insightful work on Buffy. It had gotten to the point where Fish and I would play The Jane Game : without looking at the credits on our second run through the full series of Buffy (I always have to watch the full series, in order, because I am mentally unbalanced) we'd guess whether it was written by Jane or not. More often than not, we were right ; there was something about Jane's quirky voice that put a stamp of individuality on her episodes. So when we saw Jane Espenson's name on this episode, our little geek hearts leapt for joy.

As an example of Jane's stamp, there's a scene in “Shindig” in which Kaylee was admiring the poofy dress in the store window, and Mal made a comment along the lines of, “What are you gonna do in that rig ? Flounce around the engine room ? Be like a sheep walking on its hind legs.”

“Oh, man,” I said, cringing as Kaylee and Zoe got their frost on. Then Jayne leaned in with, “Is she mad or something ?” and both Fish and I cracked up. Then Fish turned to me thoughtfully and asked, “Who do you think writes the opposite sex better ? Jane writing men or Joss writing women ?”

Wow. I had to pause the DVD for that one so I could take a moment and think about it. I decided that I couldn't really judge Jane, because I wasn't a man, although I felt like she got them down pretty damn well—especially their total cluelessness when it comes to the complexity of female psychology. Joss, for his part, is brilliant at writing women, never cheapening their strength by sacrificing their femininity. Zoe, Inara, Kaylee, even Saffron/Bridget/Whatever—they are all allowed to be both strong and girls, which is a simple but amazing thing to have done.

I stammered for a while, expressing some of these thoughts while others hung amorphous in the air around me, and eventually came up with, “I dunno.”

Fish shrugged, hit the play button on the remote, and said, “So, what are you making me for dinner, woman ?”

I stared at him, my red-lasered gaze boring smoking holes into his skull. Eventually, he turned to me, his eyes widening to match the depth of his cluelessness, and said, “What ?”

“Jane's better,” I said flatly.

“Our Mrs. Reynolds” is easily our favorite episode of the entire season, and the most quoted. On any given day in our household, you will hear odes to this episode flying around the house. It is not unusual for one of our daughters (who have earned the ironic nicknames Sweetness and Light) to say something to each other like, “If you don't give me that doll, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you !”

They may be too young to watch Firefly, but they're not too young to quote us quoting it.

However, despite our abiding love for this episode, there is always a point when the friction hits between me and Fish. It's usually when Wash says, “Good myth.”

For those of you playing along at home, this episode revolved around a conwoman who pretended to be a wide-eyed virgin but was really out to deliver Serenity into the hands of scavengers ; the fact that this would require the deaths of the crew was not a big concern for her. So, like any clever girl with a prodigious rack, she drugged her lip gloss and planned to get various crew members to kiss her, thus knocking them out long enough to take over the ship and deliver it to the scavengers. Mal, of course, fell for this after Saffron quoted a lengthy, and very sexy, Bible passage, to which Mal responded with a husky, “Good Bible.” For Wash, Saffron chose a myth about Earth-That-Was, and while Wash was affected, he would not succumb, citing his love for a woman who could “kill me with her pinky.” At which point Saffron failed in her attempt at seduction and was forced to knock him out with a well-placed kick to the back of his head.

At this point, for some reason, Fish said, “Yeah, right.”

“Excuse me ?”

“Look, Zoe's hot and everything, and yes, she probably can kill Wash with her pinky, but this gorgeous woman who gives good myth just offered him sex on a platter.” He met my eyes. I could tell by his expression that he knew he was in dangerous territory, but there was really no going back, so he continued with false bravado. “To which I say, ‘Yeah. Right.'”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “So you're saying that if Saffon offered you sex, you'd take it.”

Right about this point in the conversation, smart got a lead on bravado. “I don't fly a spaceship. That would never happen to me.”

“But if it did—”

“But it wouldn't—”

“But if it did, you would have sex with her.”

He swallowed, and as the smile curved over his mouth, I could see he was going to try to hop on the back of a joke, hoping it would lead him out of very scary waters. “Of course. You can't kill me with your pinky.”

“But I can make you miserable for the rest of your life.”

He patted me lovingly on the knee. “You're gonna do that, anyway. Might as well get good myth.” Then he laughed the weak, scared laugh of a man who knows he's not getting out of this alive.

Twenty minutes later, I was enjoying a nice bubble bath with a glass of wine while he made dinner for Sweetness and Light.

That one had been almost too easy.

“The Message” started out with the crew of the Serenity on a planet collecting their mail, and Jayne received a cunning knit hat—complete with goofy earflaps—from Ma Cobb. As we were watching this, the Big Day—September 30, 2005, the day the movie Serenity would finally be released and give us another much-craved Firefly fix—was just a few months away.

With no attempt at subtlety, Fish echoed Wash's comment : “Man walks down the street in that hat, people know he's not afraid of anything.”

Fish waggled his eyebrows at me, as though I've been waiting my whole life for the opportunity to knit him a cunning hat, and who'd have guessed I'd ever have such luck ?

The fact was, the idea of knitting him the cunning hat made me all warm and gooey inside. We'd already lined up a sitter. Serenity would be our first date night in months. As I planned out the trip to the yarn store in my head, I smiled at him and said, “Yeah, right.”

He took my hand as we watched the rest of the episode, and I knew he knew he was getting the hat.

But I didn't argue about it.

September 30 finally arrived, and I had never been so excited for a date in my life. We left Sweetness and Light learning how to draw horses with the sitter and headed off for dinner and a movie. Over dinner, Fish wore his cunning hat in the restaurant, and we got the occasional odd look, but we were in upstate New York ; most everyone here had seen odder. When we got to the theater, we were giddy. The cunning hat was recognized by others waiting to hit the movie on opening night, and we all stood around chatting about episodes, and each of the boys (in our little group, including Fish, there were three) jumped on any opportunity to quote Jayne's famous, “I'll be in my bunk,” line.

I exchanged a friendly eye-roll with the only other woman there, but we were both smiling.

Fish and I took our seats in the theater, holding hands as the lights faded, ready for the movie experience we'd been waiting for all this time. It was both exciting and overwhelming. Everything moved at lightning speed and I could hardly catch my breath, but it was so wonderful because it was Joss, and someone else was minding the children.

Then we got to the climax.

Wash was killed.

I felt as though I'd been speared through the heart myself. The rest of the movie happened, the survivors of Serenity fought the good fight, and the Big Story ended Big, just as it should have.

But I was still in Serenity's cockpit, with Wash, a mantra repeating in my head. He is not dead. I do not accept that. Something will happen. Something will bring him back.

He. Is. Not. Dead. The movie ended and the lights came up and Wash was still dead and I felt horribly betrayed. I looked at Fish and, despite Jayne's cunning hat, I knew why I was so attached to Wash, and why Wash meant so much to me, and even as Fish joked me through the lobby and out to the car, I couldn't shake the feeling like part of him was dead in the cockpit of Serenity.

On the way home, we discussed the film, and I got angry.

“Joss made a mistake,” I argued. “Zoe was already a bad-ass. So, Wash dies, and she just becomes more of a bad-ass ? There's no arc in that. It should have been Zoe. Can you imagine how much more powerful it would have been if Zoe was killed, and Wash turned into a badass ? Plus, for the future movies, there's so much story there, so much to do with that. With this, it's just Zoe being more of a badass.”

“I don't know. I think—” Fish started, but I didn't let him finish.

“I love Joss, and he's a genius and everything, but this was wrong. It was a weak choice. A bad call.”

“But, look at it this way—”

“No,” I said, and at that point, Fish got the hint and changed the subject.

In the fifteen months since that day, we've had variations on this argument probably about half a dozen times. Fish thinks I'm being silly, which is a point I'm often forced to concede, and he even offers to sit with me and hold my hand through the whole thing so I can feel him live and ticking by my side. Still, I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. I've watched the opening sequence a few times, but I always end up picking a fight about something stupid, and then I find an excuse to leave the room.

It's nuts. I know it. And someday soon, but probably not today, I will sit down and watch Serenity again, because it is Joss, and it is brilliant, and it's not Fish in that cockpit. Hell, the guy can barely maneuver the mini-van without knocking the sideview mirror off on a tree branch. In a lot of ways, he's not Wash. But he's devoted, and funny in a quirky way that not everyone gets, and he has questionable fashion sense, and if Saffron tried to seduce him with the lip gloss of death, I think that he would say no, and only partially would it be because deep down he believes I can kill him with my pinky. Mostly, it would be because he's faithful and loving and despite my faults, he wants only me.

Don't tell him I said so, though. I can still squeeze at least two more bubble baths out of that argument. Three, if he brings up Nathan Fillion's naked butt in “Trash.”

And if I know my guy, he absolutely will.

Firefly's Zoe in Sci-Fi's Best Second in Commands

Webmaster — 2009-10-21T19:36:53Z

1. Zoe Alleyne – When it comes to the one/two punch of a good leader and great second in command, here, we see the best of them all. Zoe (played by Gina”oh man…she's so hot !”Torres) served with Malcolm Reynolds(Nathan Fillion) in the war for Unification, where, presumably he did something to win her loyalties. It's a lot like Han and Chewbacca (however, Zoe is a much more desirable package than the ol' walking wookiee carpet). We're never really told (canonically) why these two are paired or why Zoe is loyal to Mal and not the other way around, but, it's there nonetheless. It becomes much more confusing when, in the pilot episode of Firefly, we see that Zoe would, most likely, be the better captain. She backs Mal sometimes to a fault. She knows he's wrong, but she's always got his back. In one of the better episodes of the show, War Stories, Mal is captured, and it is Zoe who mounts a successful rescue attempt with Serenity's ragtag crew against a fortified space station. If you've ever seen the episode, was there any doubt about who number one on this list would be, as she calmly strolls through the halls, shooting anything that moves while dodging bullets ? And, think about it. Whenever Mal needs muscle he brings Jayne(Adam Baldwin). When he needs a bodyguard, he brings Zoe. That should tell the whole story right there. Now, that's a second in command I can get behind. Apparently, so can Gina Torres's husband, Laurence Fishburne. Heh.

Now, let's get it out of the way now. The reason Chewbacca is not on this list is that it's hard to be the number two man in a two man team. So, nothing against the proposal, but that's the reason he's not on here. I'm sure there will be others. And, frankly, I like finding out about these things, I do ! So, let me have it. Uh…well, let me have it in as constructively a way as possible, thanks.

Firefly & Serenity in the 5 Awesome Cases of the Internet Owning Mainstream Media

Webmaster — 2009-09-27T10:52:55Z

#5. The Internet Programs TV, Greenlights a Movie

Right at this very moment, you most likely have a device in your pocket that can show you your location from space, give you directions and reviews to your favorite restaurant, play a few rounds of virtual golf against a man in South Korea and stream whatever amateur fetish porn is currently floating your boat... and it can do all that within the next five minutes. And yet, most TV decision-making is based on Nielsen Ratings, which apparently consists of a small random sample of evil, inbred Nazis who rejoice in poisoning the zeitgeist with reality shows about fat people dancing for Brett Michaels' anal virginity (or whatever). But when they canceled Family Guy, the Internet made its presence known and massive online petitions and email campaigns led to the resurrection of the show on two separate occasions. If you're counting, that's one more than Jesus Christ.

Then, in 2003, the Fox Network decided to cancel the most exciting new science fiction show in decades, Firefly.

Nerds suddenly felt like the entire world had turned upside down ; it was like entering Jaynestown (that's 14 Nerd Points ! We're going to level up into Geeks any minute now). Bespectacled women in brown trench-coats sobbed hysterically in the corners of darkened rooms, listening to "You Can't Take the Sky From Me" on endless repeat. And really, nobody else cared. They were just nerds, right ? They're always whining about something. Ignore them, maybe throw them a Star Trek marathon or get a girl to talk to them or something ; they'll go away.

Pictured : Nerd not thinking about how much he misses Firefly.

But thanks to the word of mouth on the web, DVD sales skyrocketed ; organized email campaigns flooded the networks and the show leapfrogged the entire medium of television, and became an actual big budget Hollywood movie. That's like being fired from Burger King and then getting re-hired as official blowjob tester for Ice Cream Island.

Gone Too Soon : Firefly

Webmaster — 2009-09-17T19:26:15Z

When I first started exploring this project, there were a few shows that I knew were going to be important to hit. This is the first of those. Firefly was Joss Whedon's sci-fi western series. The show mustered disappointing ratings in its short eleven-episode run on FOX.

Since then it's gone on to near mythic cult status. There was such an outcry of support from its loyalists, the Browncoats, over its cancellation that the producers made a feature film sequel. That movie, Serenity, answered a lot of questions about the future fate of the cast. Unfortunately, like the television series, it couldn't find quite enough people to show up and tune in to warrant a sequel. Nevertheless, the few morsels of Firefly we did get are enough to prove that this is one of the most innovative and enjoyable series ever to hit the airwaves.

What was it ?

[Spoilers Ahead !] Firefly was an ambitious seven-year saga developed by Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Dollhouse). A hybrid of classic western and modern sci-fi, the stories mainly took place on the fringes of civilized society. The crew of the titular firefly-class ship Serenity tried to avoid both the organized government Alliance, as well as the ne'er-do-wells in the black, like the cannibalistic, savage Reavers.

Firefly CastAs much as the show was about character, so much about each character was a mystery. Mal Reynolds was captain. His second-in-command, Zoe, was on the losing side of the war with him. Now, they run cargo and smuggled goods to make enough to keep flying.

Others on the ship included pilot Wash, mechanic Kaylee, hard-headed Jayne, and Companion (high-class prostitute) Inara. They took aboard Book, a Shephard with secrets of his own, and Simon, a doctor on the run traveling with his sister River. Her condition was the deepest mystery of the series, largely revealed in the follow-up film Serenity.

Why did it have to go ?

The easy answer is to say that it just didn't have the ratings, averaging less than five million viewers. FOX aired eleven of the fourteen episodes in random order. Actually, it was the network making arbitrary decisions as to which episodes they felt would better play to the audience, completely ignoring the narrative Whedon was weaving about his world throughout. The pilot, that best introduced the characters and their environment, was the last episode FOX aired.

It's a tendency they repeated on Whedon's current series, Dollhouse. However, unlike Firefly, FOX has actually given a second season to Dollhouse and promised to butt out and let the series develop as Whedon intends. If only they'd had this kind of patience and foresight when they had Firefly on their network, we might be celebrating the culminaton of Whedon's seven-year plan last season, instead of reminiscing about a show gone too soon.

How do I find out what happens next ?

The most obvious place to look is in the sequel film, Serenity. That jumps us to a future point in the timeline where Inara and Book have left the ship. The film delved into the River storyline, while also featuring the deaths of two of the core characters.

There have been a few Serenity comics. These take place before the feature film, keeping the cast in intact. The plan is to continue with a mini-series further exploring this reality, but Whedon has indicated he doesn't think a comic series official continuation would work for Firefly as it has for both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. I disagree, though, as we'd barely scratched the surface of this rich world he'd created.

Where did the cast wind up ?

* Nathan Fillion (Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds) led future GTS contender Drive for FOX, before landing a more successful recurring role on Desperate Housewives. He's currently the star of ABC's Castle.

* Gina Torres (Zoe Alleyne Washburne) had recurring roles on Angel and 24, before getting another regular post on the short-lived Standoff.

* Summer Glau (River Tam) went on to The Unit and The 4400 before landing the role of Cameron in GTS Terminator : The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She is set to rejoin Joss Whedon in the upcoming season of Dollhouse.

* Adam Baldwin (Jayne Cobb) had recurring spots on Angel, The Inside and Day Break, before nabbing the longest role of his career as John Casey on NBC's Chuck.

* Alan Tudyk (Hoban "Wash" Washburne) was notably seen as the pivotal character Alpha in Whedon's Dollhouse. There's no way we've seen the last of him.

* Ron Glass (Shepherd Derrial Book) has slowed his career down in recent years, though he still does occasional guest work.

* Morena Baccarin (Inara Serra) has had recurring roles in tons of series over the years. She's now landed a lead role as Anna, leader of the Visitors, on the forthcoming remake of V.

* Jewel Staite (Kaywinnit Lee "Kaylee" Frye) went on to a role on Wonderfalls, before securing a regular gig on Stargate Atlantis. She is set to star in the film spin-off of that.

* Sean Maher (Dr. Simon Tam) is doing the guest role circuit on shows like Ghost Whisperer and Drop Dead Diva, as well as small appearances in several films.

Who cares ?

SerenitySo many people still care about Firefly/Serenity. Officially dubbed "Browncoats," it was the fans' faith and loyalty that lead to the movie in the first place. They keep the faith alive, along with much of the cast and crew, that a future film installment might still see the light of day.

Firefly ranks continuously on lists of best sci-fi shows, cult shows and short-lived shows of all time. It was even retooled for HD so that it could air on Universal HD, as well as get treated to a Blu-Ray release. In March 2009, Firefly was awarded top honors in the "Shows We'd Bring Back" category for the first annual Hulu awards, proving that the faithful are still strong.

When can I see it ?

I'll do you a solid and give you the real first episode right here. Then jump over to AOL's SlashControl to check out the rest.

Who's Television's Biggest Badass ? River Tam vs Caprica Six

Webmaster — 2009-09-07T19:22:59Z

Click on the link :

http://io9.com/5345395/whos-televisions-biggest-badass-of-all-time-day-two-six-vs-river ?skyline=true&s=x

Malcolm Reynolds is #8 on Top Sci-Fi Characters list

Webmaster — 2009-09-01T20:36:32Z

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8. Malcolm Reynolds

Macolm Reynolds, commonly called “Mal” by his crew, is the quick-witted captain of the Firefly-class spaceship Serenity, in the film named after his ship and based off the cult hit television series Firefly, to which the film serves as a final episode. Written and acted to perfection by Joss Whedon and Nathan Fillion respectively, Mal not only has a great one-liner loaded and ready at all times, he also always has a trick up his sleeve as well as the knowhow to get his crew through the toughest situations.

This is also a character with flaws, though, and that makes him even more fun to watch. Every now and then, he'll spout a witticism that doesn't quite work. See the following exchange, for example :

Mal : Do you want to run this ship ?!

Jayne (crew member) : Yes !

Mal : Well … you can't !

There are also moments when Mal's plans don't quite work out, making it fortunate that he has such a (mostly) loyal crew. All of these things make the character human and fully enjoyable to watch. A true space cowboy, in a more literal sense than science fiction has brought us yet.

(...)

Click on the link :

http://scifiblock.com/top10s/2009/top-10-characters-in-sci-fi-cinema.htm