Firefly Revisited: It's the Characters that Matter
Joss
Whedon, creator of the short-lived FOX drama Firefly, often
used the “Stagecoach in space” analogy when describing
the series back in 2002. The 1939 film, directed by John Ford and featuring
John Wayne, follows a group of strangers as they make their way through
lawless and dangerous Apache territory. Five hundred years into the
future on Firefly, meanwhile, a similar rag-tag group of strangers
struggle to make a living on the outreaches of occupied space. While
Stagecoach consisted of seedy and damaged characters, including
a prostitute, an alcoholic doctor and a bank embezzler, Firefly
is likewise populated by the underbelly of society searching for a way
to escape their past in an uncertain present.
“I
wanted to do a show about the future that’s very personal, that’s
about people,” Whedon explained at the time. “That deals
with the idea that five hundred years from now we’re going to
have the same problems and we’re still just going to be a small
part of history. I want to take a look at what people are going through.
To look at life for people where it’s always complicated, and
morally, ethically and just physically, you have to figure out, ‘How
do I make life work? How do I get through the day?’ At the end
of it, in the face of the black space, ‘How do I stay myself?’”
Unfortunately,
Joss Whedon was only able to tell a limited number of stories before
FOX pulled the plug on Firefly after only eleven episodes in
December 2002. Amazingly enough, the subsequent DVD release—which
includes four unaired episodes in addition to the originally aired installments—was
ranked on Amazon.com as the twelfth biggest selling DVD of 2005, despite
being released in late 2003. The large and loyal contingent of fans
the cult drama has attracted through the years is a testament to the
meticulously crafted characters that Whedon created for Firefly.
Although limited, their subsequent struggles on the outskirts of civilization
likewise resonate with a Twenty First Century audience despite taking
place centuries into the future.
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Serenity
Revisited: The Triumph of the Human Spirit
When
FOX cancelled the sci-fi drama Firefly after only eleven episodes
in late 2002, creator Joss Whedon refused to simply accept the news
and move on. After shopping the series to other networks with no success,
he turned to the film industry as a means of continuing the saga of
Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his band of space scavengers struggling
to make a living on the outskirts of civilization five-hundred years
in the future. Despite the odds—how many failed television shows,
after all, get resurrected as major motion pictures—Whedon secured
a deal with Universal Studios to write and direct Serenity,
a two-hour feature that not only expands the Firefly narrative
but serves as an enjoyable stand-alone action-adventure film in its
own right.
Whedon
originally envisioned Firefly as a television series that would
last for multiple seasons. While the small handful of produced episodes
effectively introduced the main characters of the show as well as the
world in which they inhabit, many potential storylines were merely hinted
at during the course of Firefly’s truncated first and
only season and thus left unresolved when FOX regrettably pulled the
plug. One such plot device were the Reavers, described in the original
pilot episode as “men gone savage at the edge of space.”
“They’re
not stories,” first mate Zoe explains to Simon Tam in regards
to Reavers. “If they take the ship, they’ll rape us to death,
eat our flesh and sew our skins into their clothing. And if we’re
very, very lucky, they’ll do it in that order.”
While the
Reavers were only featured in a small handful of episodes on Firefly,
the mystery of Simon’s younger sister River was an ongoing saga
until the very end. A brilliant teenager with a love for dancing, River
was part of a secret government experiment that left her mentally unstable
even after her brother Simon rescued her from captivity. The sibling
fugitives-on-the-run inevitably found themselves on Malcolm Reynolds’
Firefly-class spaceship Serenity, the perfect hiding place given the
criminal nature of the crew and Reynolds’ distaste for the Alliance
government. It turned out, however, that River Tam was more than psychologically
damaged after her ordeal as she demonstrated both a mind-reading psychic
talent as well as an adept ability with firearms.
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Browncoats
Find Redemption in Charity Fan Film
“I’m
not sure it’s a movement, but it’s definitely a very rabid,
friendly, and large group of people who love Firefly/Serenity,”
Michael Dougherty, the writer and director of the fan film Browncoats:
Redemption, told SciFi
Mafia in January 2010. “This
group of fans is more than just that, they are a family. The best thing
about them is that no matter where you are in the world, you can quote
a line, mention an episode, or simply say ‘I’m a Browncoat’
and you’ll get an instant positive reaction and a conversation.”
It was
in that spirit of camaraderie that Dougherty and a handful of fellow
Browncoats—as fans of the short-lived Joss Whedon television series
Firefly and subsequent motion picture Serenity are
known—created Browncoats:
Redemption, which takes place
in the same future universe as the original but features a different
cast of characters. Despite the limited number of narratives that Whedon
was able to complete, both the show and film have attracted a Star
Trek-like cult following that continues to form a strong online
(and off) community in the years that have followed the television show’s
initial broadcast in 2002. While Dark Horse has released a handful of
official comic book adventures following Captain Malcolm Reynolds and
his crew, fans still both long for and hope that additional stories
from the ’Verse will someday be told.
Although
not officially associated with Joss Whedon or his creations, Browncoats:
Redemption offers to fill that void by continuing the larger Firefly
narrative within the framework of something different yet familiar.
Serenity, for instance, ended with the revelation that the
controlling government coalition known as the Alliance had conducted
experiments designed to suppress aggression within its citizens. Browncoats:
Redemption, meanwhile, picks up three months later with the Alliance
doing its best at spin-control while a growing unrest amongst those
who favor independence instead of one unifying government threatens
the ruling coalition’s grasp on power.
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