Beginners Briefing to Firefly and Serenity
C.O.Jones
site. It does contain some minor spoilers.
http://onetoein.blogspot.com/2006/03/tv-drama-week-day-5-realism-to.html
If nothing else, an alternative to "the Faq"
--
////////// \\\\\\\\\\\
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
-- Harlan Ellison
Jacey Bedford
<ap...@solidbrass.com> writes
>A pretty good beginners briefing to Firefly and Serenity at this web
>site. It does contain some minor spoilers.
>
>http://onetoein.blogspot.com/2006/03/tv-drama-week-day-5-realism-to.html
>
>If nothing else, an alternative to "the Faq"
>
Duh!
Even the white on black wasn't all that readable.
Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford
jacey at artisan hyphen harmony dot com
Dale Hicks
look...@nospam.invalid says...
> In message <120320061505536788%ap...@solidbrass.com>, C.O.Jones
> <ap...@solidbrass.com> writes
> >A pretty good beginners briefing to Firefly and Serenity at this web
> >site. It does contain some minor spoilers.
> >
> >http://onetoein.blogspot.com/2006/03/tv-drama-week-day-5-realism-to.html
> >
> >If nothing else, an alternative to "the Faq"
> >
> Some folks seem to thing dark grey on black text is cool!
> Duh!
>
> Even the white on black wasn't all that readable.
Disagreed. The old wordperfect screens caused far less eye fatigue that
all of today's WYSIWYG black-on-white text.
I'll set my settings to be light-grey-on-black given the chance.
Of course, that page is a little bit too dark with the grey (for the
default font size -- it looks good with the larger font), and there's
something odd that happens when you scroll the text.
--
Cranial Crusader dgh 1138 at bell south point net
Atlas Bugged
>> >
>> >If nothing else, an alternative to "the Faq"
I almost laughed when I saw it. If you don't like brevity, comprehensive
references, clear language, and in depth understanding, you may definitely
want to go "alt-faq."
--
SERENITY/FIREFLY FAQ
<http://snipurl.com/k8ui> "One page, all you need to know, extensive links."
C.O.Jones
<look...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> In message <120320061505536788%ap...@solidbrass.com>, C.O.Jones
> <ap...@solidbrass.com> writes
> >A pretty good beginners briefing to Firefly and Serenity at this web
> >site. It does contain some minor spoilers.
> >
> >http://onetoein.blogspot.com/2006/03/tv-drama-week-day-5-realism-to.html
> >
> >If nothing else, an alternative to "the Faq"
> >
> Some folks seem to thing dark grey on black text is cool!
> Duh!
>
> Even the white on black wasn't all that readable.
>
For the web impaired:
Friday, March 10, 2006
TV Drama Week, Day 5, Realism to Romanticism -- Joss Whedon Part 2,
Firefly and Serenity
DISCLAIMER: I'm cheating a little bit here since I'll also be talking
about the movie Serenity.
DISCLAIMER: I won't be calling myself a Browncoat. Not my thing.
TEACHER: Earth-That-Was could no longer sustain our numbers, we
were so many. We found a new solar system: dozens of planets and
hundreds of moons. Each one terraformed a process taking decades to
support human life. To be new Earths.
The Central Planets were the first settled and are the most
advanced, embodying civilization at its peak. Life on the outer planets
is much more primitive, and difficult. That's why the Central Planets
formed the Alliance, so everyone can enjoy the comfort and
enlightenment of civilization. That's why we fought the War for
UnificationŠWith all the social and medical advancements we can bring
to the independents, why would they fight so hard against us?
RIVER: We meddleŠPeople don't like to be meddled with. We tell them
what to do, what to think, don't run don't walk we're in their homes
and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome.
TEACHER: River, we're not telling people what to think. We're just
trying to show them how.
--Opening scene of Serenity, written and directed by Joss Whedon
Serenity began as the all-too-short-lived Fox television series
Firefly, which, I think, given a full life, would have become Joss
Whedon's finest work. Buffy might always remain his signature piece --
it has an undeniable universality or Zeitgeist to it that makes is
special -- but Firefly could have taken Whedon and his work to new
levels of quality. Yet it never had a chance. Apparently bewildered by
a show they'd agreed to buy and air, Fox buried it on Friday nights,
scuttled its two-hour pilot in favor of a rush job that had to explain
the universe and the characters in one hour while being exciting, and
canceled it before all the produced episodes had aired, showing the
original pilot as a consolation prize. Oh, and they used Smashmouth
(what works for Shrek doesn't always work) in their summer
advertisements for it while a heavy-handed voiceover tried to explain
the show with something like, "Four outlaws, a doctor, a preacher, a
prostitute, and a naked girl in a box." I'm not sure if they squeezed
"a cute mechanic" in there, too, but the ad was enough to make my not
particularly sarcastic mom snicker, "Ohhhh, boy!"
To be fair, Firefly wasn't as easily definable as Buffy the Vampire
Slayer (the title almost says it all) or Angel (vampire detective spun
off from successful show with cult following). Let's see: spaceships
that don't fire weapons at each other, guns that still fire bullets
(but make a cool whirring sound when they're cocked), horses sometimes,
nine main characters, people speaking in a weirdly antiquated way and
also sometimes using Mandarin, an angry, bitter but handsome lead who
was the loser in a civil war and whose crew as often as not engages in
illegal or semi-legal activities, and it's filmed with handheld cameras
like a 1970s movie. I believe Variety referred to it as a "space
oater." So I guess they thought, "Smashmouth. That'll do the trick."
That list merely represents details just as Buffy being a vampire
slayer is really just an important detail. Like all of Whedon's work,
Firefly lives and dies with its characters and their situations. OK,
Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) was one of the independents, or
browncoats, mentioned above. They lost big. Now he captains a cargo
ship, named after the battle of Serenity Valley, the battle that ended
the war. He mostly sticks to the more independent-minded and
"primitive" outer rim planets and moons by choice. That's important.
The man could probably follow Alliance regulations, find plenty of
work, live comfortably, but he doesn't want that. He fought for an
independence he didn't get, but, gorram it, he's going to have it
anyway, even if it means breaking laws, doing distasteful jobs, going
without, asking the same of his crew. It means that much to him.
Everything in the show starts with his character, his desire for
independence: the jobs he takes (i.e. the situations of most episodes),
the people he chooses as crew and passengers (i.e. the cast), and the
emotions and themes of the show. And here's where Firefly differs from
Buffy and even Angel. As petulant as Mal might seem, his and the show's
concerns are adult concerns and, spaceships aside, grounded concerns,
as simple as, "How do I buy food for my family (the crew)?" and as big
and complex as, "How do I maintain my sense of self, my integrity, my
dignity when the world around me doesn't want me to?" As Bruce
Springsteen (how'd he get in here?) has made clear time and again in
his songs, it only takes a short bridge to connect those two questions.
Frankly, as much as I love those other shows, there's something
refreshing in characters not dealing with a potential apocalypse.
But Whedon being Whedon, even this simpler definition only shows the
core of the show. Like all his work, Firefly blends and bends genres,
often whenever he and his writers see fit. First, he takes the standard
science fiction focus on government and navy and big goings on and
shoves it way in the background. Firefly, as he's said, tells the
stories you wouldn't find on Star Trek, what's going on in the daily
lives of regular folk out there. Of course, they're not completely
regular folk, and they run into plenty of bigger-than-life trouble
sadistic businessmen, the Alliance, Reavers (cannibalistic men gone mad
at the edge of space), bounty hunters, sexy con artists, even a
sword-wielding dandy but Mal's general strategy is to avoid that kind
of trouble, stick to doing the job, and move on. It rarely works out
that way.
Now the problem with a show about unintentional heroes wandering around
space is that it could easily become B.J. and the Bear In Space,
falling into the trap of that well-worn television staple -- the
wandering hero saving the guest star of the week. Luckily, and not
surprisingly, that doesn't happen with Firefly. Each episode has its
own structure, its own tone, its own focus: the life-and-death drama of
"Out of Gas," the heist story of "Ariel," the broad comedy of
"Jaynestown," or the philosophical character study of "Objects in
Space. Firefly also has an ensemble of complicated characters (and no
chimps.)
At Mal's side since the war has been Zoe (Gina Torres), loyal soldier
-- maybe to a fault -- and probably the only person he trusts, and for
that reason, she also has his ear, the ability to sway his opinion, his
choices, though more often than not she follows his lead and clearly
sees him as a leader for reasons we get some idea of from flashbacks to
the war. Her husband Wash (Alan Tudyk) flies the ship and provides
first and foremost comic relief. Why they're together, hard to say, but
it works because of the actors' peformances and their interaction. Wash
also often serves of the voice of reason, the regular guy saying, "Do
we really have to kill people?" That Zoe and Mal have such a close
bond, well, sometimes a problem.
Adam Baldwin plays the man they call Jayne, the wild card of the crew:
kind of dumb, lots of surly, completely untrustworthy (Jayne looks
after Jayne), not afraid of speaking his mind, wearer of T-shirts and
funny hats, eater of food, gun user, gun collector, gun namer, son of a
bitch, and frequent bunk visitor. Yet he's somehow lovable. Baldwin
gets a lot of credit for that, but thankfully it dind't seem like they
would ever totally redeem his character had the show lived on. His
unpredictability made him an asset to the show because it made him a
danger to the crew and their passengers. Jayne's opposite is Kaylee
(Jewel Saite), the heart of the crew, the ship's naturally gifted
mechanic, cute and sweet but also sexy, the emotional conscience, the
one person besides himself Jayne might give a damn about. When you see
her with a gun, it feels wrong. When you see her romantic urges
stifled, it feels wrong. When you see her feeling like she didn't do
her job, it feels wrong. And she, more than other characters, brings
out the qualities in Mal that allow the audience to believe that he can
be a decent man, even if he's pissed off most of the time.
Serenity also carries passengers, all there for different, mysterious
reasons. Inara (Morena Baccarin) is a registered companion, a sort of
legal prostitute but more like a courtesan. When the ship goes to a
planet or moon, she makes appointments of her choosing, and she
actually brings them respectability. Why she's out in the middle of
nowhere with this crew remains a mystery, but something drove her away
from the inner planets. She and Mal also share unrequited interest in
one another, which often plays a screwball comedy, but also has a lot
of weight to it. They're grown ups, and their emotions seem grown-up,
especially in "Heart of Gold" (an unaired episode on the DVD set). In a
brief scene, Inara, alone in her room, responds to an unintentional
betrayal, and this scene, Baccarin's performance, and the off-handed
way it's filmed actually make a decent but not special episode mean a
great deal more. She reaches her breaking point, and it leads to what
would have no doubt been a crucial turning point in the season.
Ron Glass plays Shepherd Book, a preacher looking to get back with
people after a long stay at an abbey. On the surface, he seems exactly
that, a man of peace among people who aren't always peaceful, a
preacher trying to give advice to a man, Mal, who doesn't seem to
believe in anything, but Book has his own secrets. As the show
progresses, we see that he knows a lot about military matters, and in
one episode we hear rather unpeaceful thoughts from him and a bounty
hunter says, "That ain't no shepherd." We never learn his secrets, but
the movie Serenity offers hints, though all he has to say on the matter
is, "I wasn't born a shepherd." Mal doesn't like talk of God ("That's a
long wait for a train don't come," he says in the movie), but he seems
to respect Book, as do the others. They played this in a more obvious
way in the movie, but it's not hard to believe, given Glass' dignified
performance (plus he went to my alma mater, so I got to give him
credit).
SPOILERS NECESSARY: The last two passengers play a crucial role in
advancing the story, creating conflict, and revealing character. When
Simon Tam (Sean Maher) first appears in the pilot episode of Firefly,
he's all cool and distant mystery, wearing fancy clothes and hiding
behind John Lennon sunglasses. He has a large container he needs
transported and is quite touchy about it. The box turns out to contain
the naked girl from the unfortunate ad, and she turns out to be his
sister River (Summer Glau), who he managed to free from some kind of
Alliance facility. As he tells the crew, she's a genius, and the
government got their claws in her because of that, and they did things
to her, things that made her want to get free, and things that made her
crazy. Simon and River are fugitives, but Mal takes them on, perhaps
seeing something of himself in them. If we could see them through
Jayne's eyes, it would be like a cartoon, and they'd be money bags. It
also becomes clear as the season progresses that River has abilities
beyond those of a normal person, even a genius -- she can read minds.
Between this, her madness, and her fugitive status, as well as apparent
skill with weapons, she poses a threat to the crew, and they're
considering her fate...when the show gets cancelled.
Like the other shows from this week of posts, Firefly's cast is
first-rate, and like most of those shows (Buffy and Angel being
exceptions), they seemed to know their characters immediately. The
performances grow over the few episodes, but the characters in the
pilot don't feel all that diferent than the characters in the film.
When the show originally aired, it felt like it took a few episodes to
find its groove, but watching them again in the proper order, it feels
stronger, sure of itself from the start but still full of potential.
The tale of Firefly's early demise and improbable resurrection as a
theatrical film has been told many times elsewhere, but basically, a
confluence of events led to a second chance for Whedon, his cast, and
the show's fans. Whedon says he promised the cast he'd bring Firefly
back in some form, and then he had to fulfill that promise. In an odd
way, Fox cancelled Firefly at the right time because it happened as the
TV on DVD boom had started, and Fox Studios (not to be confused with
the Fox Network network bad, studio good) released the series,
including the unaired episodes on DVD. It sold. It sold well. Beyond
that, a loyal and vocal fan base had emerged even before the DVD
release (as well as a loyal but quiet fan base of people like me), and
many of them set about promoting the show with parties, by buying the
DVDs for friends and family, and holding charity events, including
raising money to send DVD sets to soldiers abroad. Whedon, by his
account, had already gone to Universal, and they wanted to make a
movie. DVD sales and fan loyalty certainly must have bolstered their
confidence in the project, and Whedon and the cast openly credit the
fans for keeping them motivated throughout the process.
The film Serenity picks up months after the series ended and opens with
the dialogue quoted above. Some folks have left the ship, some have new
roles, tension between some characters has grown, but it's business as
usual, crime and running. A man called simply The Operative (Chiwetel
Ejiofor) wants to find River. She might have learned deep Alliance
secrets while under their experiments, and "Secrets are not [his]
concern. Keeping them is." The Operative adds something to the story
that Firefly didn't have a true enemy, though not a villain in the
strictest sense of the word. He's a man who believes in the benevolent
if totalitarian goals of the Alliance, a man who does his job without
asking questions, a man not to be trifled with, and always, always very
friendly.
I don't want to say much more about what happens in the movie because
it does have a mystery in it. In broad strokes, The Operative's pursuit
and character changes in River caused by his pursuit lead to the
discovery of a secret, the secret that has perhaps turned River's
government-caused brain damage into something far worse, and a secret
that leads Mal to a place where has no choice but confront the big
questions of his life.
For most fans, this one included, Serenity was an artistic success,
though like its forbearer, it was not a commercial success. Whedon had
many unenviable tasks introducing the characters, situations, and
concept to new fans without boring the old ones or slowing down the
story, giving all the characters (the whole cast returned) something to
do and important moments, making a big-budget sci-fi adventure for a
relatively small budget, and keeping it all entertaining and
intelligent and moving. I think he succeeded on most counts. You don't
have to watch all thirteen episodes of Firefly to get Serenity, but
many people might have stayed away, thinking that, since every review
and every article inevitably mentioned the cancelled show angle. For
the most part, it looks like it had a good-sized budget, and it's
entertaining, intelligent, and moving. Most importantly, it doesn't
feel like a long episode of the show (see many Star Trek movies) but
the major events of a season compressed into two hours. Each section of
the movie has the potential to be expanded into one or more episodes of
television.
Sacrifices had to be made, though, this being a two-hour movie instead
of a television series, and most of those came at the expense of
character development. Mal and River still go through a lot, and they
were focal points on the show, too, so that makes sense. The other
characters do get their moments, but the actors had to accomplish a lot
through subtle means gestures, looks, body language. For instance,
Whedon mentioned in a recent interview that Kaylee and Inara are best
friends but don't say a single word to each other, and so he and the
actors had to show this affection through proximity and gestures. This
is where knowing the show becomes important. You bring all of that with
you and can supply a lot of the subtext, and I have no doubt that in
general, fans felt a lot more of the emotion than newcomers. Nature of
the beast. Nevertheless, if you haven't seen Serenity or Firefly and
don't want to commit to a half a season's worth of television, check
out Serenity. If nothing else, you'll get two hours of entertainment.
The story of Malcolm Reynolds and the crew and passengers of Serenity
probably ends with that movie except in comic books maybe. The film
didn't do well at the box office, though it had that loyal fan base and
received generally positive reviews, surprising critics unfamiliar with
the show like Roger Ebert with its wit, fun, intelligence, and emotion.
Hopes rest in it finding new life on DVD (in spite of hideous cover
art) and convincing Universal to greenlight a sequel or someone to
revive the TV series or, at worst, a direct-to-DVD or Sci Fi Channel
original sequel. Still, I think many fans find solace in this Malcolm
Reynolds speechifying from Serenity:
You know what the first rule of flying isŠLove. You can learn all
the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat in the air you don't love,
she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps
her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurting 'fore
she keens. Makes her a home.
TV Drama Week
Andy
That's excellent, thanks, people.
--
A
"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it."