> --- Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:
Well, personally I think Firefly is excellent. It depends how you
like your SF to be; this is a character-driven series where the
personalities and the dialogue are FAR more important than the
whizz-bang effects. There are no rubber-forehead prosthetics - in
fact there are NO aliens (sentient or otherwise) at all. There are also
virtually no space battles (Serenity gets shot AT a couple of times, but she
doesn't even have any weapons to shoot back with....).
The background is lots of sparsely-settled human frontier colonies,
all grubby and mostly low-tech. The crew are a mix of realistically
flawed characters, each with their own agenda which may or may not match any
of the others. The "Western in Space" (actually, more
"post-ACW-reconstructionism in space") elements are perhaps a little
heavy at times, but I think they work. I'd certainly rate it as the
best-written TV SF I've yet seen.
If Star Trek is your vision of how TV SF should be, Firefly will be a culture
shock... but I'd recommend giving it a try!
Giveth us a comparison of Friefly to B5, John! I didn't watch it here in the
states for the sam reason below. R/Robert
> From: Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>
;-)
> I never heard of Firefly when it was on, only seen ads for the DVD.
> grubby and mostly low-tech. The crew are a mix of realistically flawed
> From grammar in previous msg, can you tell I had a loog night???
Robert
> From: "Robert Bantly" <bantly_robert@hotmail.com>
;-)
> I never heard of Firefly when it was on, only seen ads for the DVD.
> your SF to be; this is a character-driven series where the
There
> are no rubber-forehead prosthetics - in fact there are NO aliens
> characters, each with their own agenda which may or may not match any
WELL SAID THAT MAN!
I think FIREFLY is one of the best TV sci-fi efforts EVER, and could
also be a viable sci-fi movie as well!
JANE IS MY HERO!
DAWGIE, whistling "I AM A JOLLY REBEL", wearing bits and pieces of
ex-military clothing/gear as well as assorted sci fi hawglegs, ammo for
same, and knives thumping his hips, armpits, and riding in the small of his
back...
> Giveth us a comparison of Friefly to B5, John! I didn't watch it
OK. You asked for it.
This is all, of course, IMHO. YMMV. ;-)
First, I'm a big B5 fan, but I've never been over-impressed with JMS'
dialogue. Sure, he's created a marvellous overall story arc (we'll be
charitable and let him off about season 5, that wasn't really his fault!), but
I don't think even the biggest fan would dispute that some of the actual
writing was cheesy in the extreme....
Whedon, on the other hand, is a genius at this sort of thing - the
interplay between characters just feels so RIGHT.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that B5 was about big events - the
future of whole races and a fair chunk of our galaxy. Firefly is
about the little guy. It's nine people on one tatty umpteenth-hand
cargo ship that's held together by duct tape, baling wire and Kaylee's love of
engineering (oh, did I mention she's
CUUUUUUTE....(Kaylee, not the ship)?). No-one else in settled space
gives a stuff whether any of them live or die - OK, except for a few
recurring bad guys who'd prefer them dead. Basic backstory is that there was a
war between the Alliance and the Rebels (in other words, The Union and the
Confederacy....). The Alliance won. Now the people who were on the losing side
have to deal with that. Guess which side Mal Reynolds was on? So, he buys a
cheap ship, installs his old army buddy Zoe as First Mate, hires a pilot
(Wash) and an engineer (Kaylee), and then along the way picks
up a few other odds and ends of humanity - Book, a Shepherd
(preacher); Jayne (male, despite the name, a true mercenary - he'll
fight well if there's profit in it, but sell out his own grandmother
to save his skin); Inara (a Companion - think
Geisha/courtesan/high-class hooker....) who plies her "trade" from
one of Serenity's two shuttles. Finally there's Simon (the doctor)
and River, his apparently-mad sister - these two are on the run from
the Alliance, just to add to the fun. Oh, and Wash and Zoe are married (to
each other).
The beauty of Firefly is that mostly, nothing really happens which affects
anyone outside the major characters themselves. This is THEIR story, and the
rest of the universe just goes on its way quite obliviously. Whedon has said
something to the effect that all he does is throw one event in at the
beginning, and then spend the rest of
the episode showing how everyone involved reacts to it - it's not
quite that simple, but it's not far off. You know that at the end of the
episode, they're not going to have saved the Galaxy or defeated a
vile alien menace - if they are lucky, they might just have survived
with their own skins and possibly made enough bucks to buy some food
and fill the tanks at the next stopover. Morality is flexible - Mal
is basically a good guy, but he WILL kill someone if he needs to -
and he won't lose sleep over it either. Jayne is the brave fighter one minute,
the quivering coward the next...... I could ramble on for ages (can you tell I
LIKE this series?) but what I'm trying to get at
is that each of the characters is wonderfully three-dimensional, and
Whedon manages to bring all this out so very, very well. I'm not saying that
B5's characters were exactly shallow, but they were often
predictable - Firefly keeps throwing throwing skewballs at the viewer
all the time. You just think you've really got a handle on how a
character works, then suddenly you're thinking "he did WHAT??" - but
then you realise just how that fits in with who that character is.....
The emotional interplay is very strong, with all the unstated
complications of any mixed-sex group living in a tight community. Mal
and Inara have a love-hate relationship, Wash and Zoe are happily
married but there is a deeply buried resentment of Mal and Zoe's "bond of
comradeship" from the war, Kaylee fancies Simon but he's too scared to
reciprocate, Book is much more than he seems, Jayne loves his guns first and
anything with XX chromosomes and a pulse second....
Some of the Western elements are maybe a bit overdone - but then
Whedon wanted to make a Western, and the studios wouldn't let him, so he did
Firefly! Personally, I can live with that. The humour is
subtle and quickfire - comic lines are thrown in in such a deadpan
manner that they can easily be missed if you're not concentrating -
but they sound like people talking to each other, not "hey everyone, I'm
making a joke here!". This is a series to watch with the TV turned up, the
door firmly shut and a big "do not disturb" sigh on
it.....
Oh, and they swear in Mandarin. According to last month's SFX, choice
epithets include "Frog-humping bastard" and "Son of a drooling
prostitute and a monkey". All delivered in Chinese, with no
translation. Now, if only Picard had done that occasionally.... :-)
Personal favourite episodes? Probably "Our Mrs.Reynolds" and "Heart of Gold".
OK, I admit it. I'm a fan. ;-)
Jon (GZG)
> From: Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>
;-)
> I never heard of Firefly when it was on, only seen ads for the DVD.
I'll have to rent a disc and see then, will look for one. Generally the poor
lines in B5 were the humans, the Centauri were always
great ("I'm being nibbled to death by cats") is a house favorite. I write off
season 5, too, with the exception of 2 or 3 episodes. And when I saw the
pilot, I almost didn't watch the series. The funniest thing in the pilot
besides the original alien makeup is Delenn giving EVERYONE files.
Hmmm....
R/Robert
> From: Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>
Now
> the people who were on the losing side have to deal with that. Guess
> deeply buried resentment of Mal and Zoe's "bond of comradeship" from
> wanted to make a Western, and the studios wouldn't let him, so he did
> Gold".
;-)
> I never heard of Firefly when it was on, only seen ads for the DVD.
> culture shock... but I'd recommend giving it a try!
> Ground Zero Games wrote:
So, are we going to see some 'not Firefly' ships? Granted, you'd have to scale
them to be a little bigger than Serenity, but still...
(8-) (Or how about some 'not Alliance Superdreadnoughts from HELL'
miniatures... God, those things were huge....)
JGH
[quoted original message omitted]
> "Sylvester M. Wrzesinski" wrote:
In the opening sequence, it looks like a floating skyscraper in
space -- you get a closer look in both the episode Serenity and
the one with the colony ship that's attacked by the Reavers (the episode name
escaping me at this moment in time...)
JGH