Firefly

[siefertma2]

Originally posted by phydaux:
But dude, look once again at Red Dwarf. It's the all-time king of low budget, el cheapo sci-fi. But it was great because the "sci-fi" aspect took a HUGE backseat to Rimmer & Lister and their squables, tiffs and quips. It was the Odd Couple in space and it was great. There were never more that 4-5 characters at a time, and the character interaction drove the show. It just HAPPENED to be set on a spaceship.

So if I understand you correctly, sci-fi would only be watchable as long as it only LOOKED like science fiction? Don't get me wrong, I like Red Dwarf too. However, what I think we are craving is a "serious" hard science fiction program that could appeal to the average TV viewer without dumbing it down. Science Fiction that doesn't have to pretend to be something else. I think we are all hoping for in a SF TV program is the same level of writing and acting that is attributted to programs like "The Sopranos" and "The West Wing." (At least I hear that those shows are well acted/written. I don't get HBO and I can't stand the premise of the latter.) Sadly, as long as Hollywood continues to treat Science Fiction as the red-headed-step-child of media genres, we will never see that happen.

Later,
Mark A. Siefert

 

[phydaux]

Originally posted by Mark A. Siefert:
So if I understand you correctly, sci-fi would only be watchable as long as it only LOOKED like science fiction? Don't get me wrong, I like Red Dwarf too. However, what I think we are craving is a "serious" hard science fiction program that could appeal to the average TV viewer without dumbing it down. Science Fiction that doesn't have to pretend to be something else. I think we are all hoping for in a SF TV program is the same level of writing and acting that is attributted to programs like "The Sopranos" and "The West Wing."

Hmmm... Hard Sci-fi? Well, yup, that is great stuff. Mote In God's Eye & 2010 and all... But I have to come down on the side of the Hollywood types and say it wouldn't work on TV.

There's a reason there is soo much more space opera than hard sci-fi. Hard sci-fi is just that - Hard. As in "Hard to write." That's why when something like "Mote" comes along, it's an instant hit.

Space opera is a little easier. Fudge a few things for the sake of the plot. Just don't fall into the ST:TOS third season trap of giving Spock a new power every week. Just like in good horror/fantasy, you have to work out all your mythology BEFORE HAND or you'll drag yourself down with foolish special cases, exceptions and endless explaining.

"Oh, it's OK for Buffy and Angel to date. He's a vampire WITH a soul, so he doesn't count...."

But above all, you need to have sympathetic characters and a plot with reasonable conflicts and plausible resolutions.

Characters you give a poop about and an interesting story.... That's what Firefly DIDN'T have.

 

[Tom Schoene]

Originally posted by phydaux:
But above all, you need to have sympathetic characters and a plot with reasonable conflicts and plausible resolutions.

Characters you give a poop about and an interesting story.... That's what Firefly DIDN'T have.

That's where I'd have to disagree. I think the characters in Firefly are quite interesting and I'every interested to see more about them. (I found the forst episoe of Firefly a lot more interesting than the first episode of Buffy, for example.) I'm curious how these folks came to be together, and what their goals and aspirations may be.

The setting itself sounds interesting; it's like the American West during Reconstruction, but not exactly the same. The differences will be interesting to explore, IMO. It's also nuanced in a way that many current shows are not. The alliance are set up as bad guys in mnay ways, but they aren't always. They are also the ones sending medicine to frontier colonies and checking up on lost ships after all.

But it's all ultimately a matter of taste. It didn't work for you, but it does for me. That's why there's more than one channel on TV.

 

[Tom Schoene]

Originally posted by phydaux:
What the hell is that? And it crime THAT easy where they are, that people who have never stolen anything can pull off a major hist under the nose of a bunch or armed guards?

Who says they've never stolen anything before? The fact that they were hired for the job makes it look like they've done lots of decidedly criminal stuff like this in the past. No exact dialog at hand, but the entire discussion with the crime booss who hired them makes it quite clear they are experienced thieves. Why else woudl they get the job? It just appears that they just don't make a big deal out of it, particularly in front of guests (and the doctor is basically a guest, not yet part of the crew.)

By the second episode, it's really obvious they are comnfortable and practiced in theft. They start stripping that ship without a minute's hesitation and seem to have it pretty well down to a science.

 

[phydaux]

Originally posted by Tom Schoene:
Who says they've never stolen anything before?

Redhead chick. When asked "So you've done this before?" she specificly replied "Oh, HELL no..."

the entire discussion with the crime booss who hired them makes it quite clear they are experienced thieves.

No, it shows Mal is an experienced thief. It doesn't say a thing for the dozen or so people he has hovering around him at any time. That's my BIGEST grip with the show: Too many extranious characters hanging around for no good reason.

By the second episode, it's really obvious they are comnfortable and practiced in theft.

sigh... Last Friday in Boston the show was pre-empted for a baseball game, so...

 

[Tom Schoene]

Originally posted by phydaux:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Tom Schoene:
Who says they've never stolen anything before?

Redhead chick. When asked "So you've done this before?" she specificly replied "Oh, HELL no..."
</font>[/QUOTE]I took that to mean "No, we've never stolen stuff from a moving train by lowering someone on a cable hanging out the cargo bay." She seemed pretty comfortable with the general idea of stealing stuff.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> the entire discussion with the crime boss who hired them makes it quite clear they are experienced thieves.

No, it shows Mal is an experienced thief. It doesn't say a thing for the dozen or so people he has hovering around him at any time. That's my BIGEST grip with the show: Too many extranious characters hanging around for no good reason.
</font>[/QUOTE]I like the ensemble cast. figuring out why they're all there is part of the interest in the show. But it seems that at least some of them have been together for quite a while. The captain (Mal) and and his exec (Zoe) certainly go back to the war. The pilot may as well. Jayne is a mystery, but an amusing one (he's the real criminal mind of the bunch). The origin of the docton and his sister was in the series pilot, but the execs nixed it as too talky for the premier, so we won't get it until later. (Here's hoping they can repackage it as a flashback better than Star Trek did.)

The others, we don't know as much about, but I hope there's lots of time to find out. The second episode helps quite a bit in this regard, BTW.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />By the second episode, it's really obvious they are comnfortable and practiced in theft.

sigh... Last Friday in Boston the show was pre-empted for a baseball game, so...</font>[/QUOTE]Well, you missed a good one, I think. It's set up to make you think it's a ghost story, but it isn't, really. And it gives a nice nuanced presentation of the Alliance -- they aren't all faceless Imperial Storm Trooper bad guys.

 

[N.I.C.E. Labs]

Originally posted by Tom Schoene:
Well, you missed a good one, I think. It's set up to make you think it's a ghost story, but it isn't, really. And it gives a nice nuanced presentation of the Alliance -- they aren't all faceless Imperial Storm Trooper bad guys.[/QB]

Yah...I think the guy played the Alliance commander just fine. He was smarmy, 2-dimensional, and condecendingly sure of himself....exactly like a brash new lt. out in the frontier from West Point or something who's sure those injuns' are going to fall right in line because they're savages and he's...well, a graduate from West Point. Mal even guessed "You're new to the frontier aren't you" or an equivalent line. So the guy was a jerk because he had something to prove. Keeping in line with the western motif, pick any cavalry-fort movie and you'll find the same thing

Also...mentioning the western aspect. Western=backwards/frontier compared to the big city way of doing things. Clothes are shabbier, guns are more rugged (btw that winchester with the large hoop on it that someone went ick to half a dozen posts back is a design that's been around for about the last 150 years). Did anyone else notice that the Serentiy, besides being a very cool ship as a side profile reminiscent of a running horse?

Finally, while I'm rambling...if memory serves, the original Star Trek was sold the producers as 'gunsmoke in space' or something like that. It seems to have done just fine.

 

[phydaux]

I belive it was "Wagon Train to the stars."

Sorry guys but I'm still stuck on the "All those extra characters" stuff. Like the Doctor and his sister. If the reason they're all together was in the pilot, then why the hell didn't they show the pilot FIRST?!?!

Hell, on a ship, there's a REASON to have a Doctor, a Navagator, an Engineer, just about anything EXCEPT a Ship's Councilor (never did understand that piece of touchy-feely hippy crap).

My old gaming group never did go in for that "A Palidin, a Thief and a Wizard walk into a bar..." gameing parties. We would get together, decide what the party needed to have and make our characters together, weaving a plausible backstory of why we were friends and why we were all together. If that ment the whole party had to be Hobbits, so be it. We were Hobbits, but it made sence that we were together.

Geez, I need to end this rant before I have a stroke...

 

[Spacehand Arioch]

Because of this site I decided to watch an episode of Firefly.
It was a change from the moralistic ST/NG as someone mentioned and I found it fun.

The episode I watched was the ghost ship one.
I laughed when one of the crewmen played a prank on the doctor, told him he was wanted in the ghostship and he better suit up. The doctor got into a space suit and went into the ghost ship, everyone is standing around without spacesuits, one of the crewmen (I don't know who) asked the doctor what took him so long and why he was in a space suit.
I could see my workmates pulling a prank like that.
I'll keep my eye open for the next episode.

 

[Tom Schoene]

Originally posted by phydaux:
I belive it was "Wagon Train to the stars."

Sorry guys but I'm still stuck on the "All those extra characters" stuff. Like the Doctor and his sister. If the reason they're all together was in the pilot, then why the hell didn't they show the pilot FIRST?!?!

Because the suits at Fox thought the pilot was too "talky." That's not my decision, nor Whedonn's. It does rather remind me of what they did with Crusade. The good news is that Firefly isn't nearly as dependant on story arcs as Crusde was, so reshuffling an couple of episodes probably isn't a total disaster like it was for Crusade.

Hell, on a ship, there's a REASON to have a Doctor, a Navagator, an Engineer, just about anything EXCEPT a Ship's Councilor (never did understand that piece of touchy-feely hippy crap).

My old gaming group never did go in for that "A Palidin, a Thief and a Wizard walk into a bar..." gameing parties. We would get together, decide what the party needed to have and make our characters together, weaving a plausible backstory of why we were friends and why we were all together. If that ment the whole party had to be Hobbits, so be it. We were Hobbits, but it made sence that we were together.

Geez, I need to end this rant before I have a stroke...

Indeed. Because I have no idea why anything you just said is a criticism of the show. Its got a bunch of characters defined by their past relationships and their roles on the ship. That's pretty much exactly what you described for your group. The only difference is that we as viewers don't know exactly what those backstories are yet. Doing it all as an info dump in the first show would have been very boring. so we get it all in pieces as the show prgresses.

I'd really recommend looking for the second episode -- there's a sequence of scenes that do a lot to define how the characters came to be together.

 

[Uncle Bob]

I have been consistantly snide and/or critical of the show, but this "extra characters" crap has me boggled. I count a core of nine. That is only two more than "Gilligan's Island" or one more than "Lost In Space" (counting Robbie).

 

[phydaux]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
I count a core of nine. That is only two more than "Gilligan's Island" or one more than "Lost In Space" (counting Robbie).

Yeah, but even the actors from Lost in Space called it the "Will, Dr. Smith and the Robot Show." That is a quote from the actress who played Judy. Once the show got into color, it became campy (remember the giant vegitable one?) and focused on those 3 characters.

The last several seasons of ST:TNG you only got 2-3 shows a season that didn't focus on either Data, Riker or Picard. Sure, it was an ensamble cast, but the shows were focused on "The Big Three." That is a quote from Jonathan Frakes.

And don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing Whedonn or Firefly. I'm just saying this is another "red-headed stepchild" sci-fi show that thinks bar fights and spaceships can cover for bad writing and poorly thought-out plots.

 

[Tom Schoene]

Originally posted by phydaux:
And don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing Whedonn or Firefly. I'm just saying this is another "red-headed stepchild" sci-fi show that thinks bar fights and spaceships can cover for bad writing and poorly thought-out plots.

You've watched all of *one* episode and now you're saying it has bad writing and poorly thought-out plots. Sure sounds like you're bashing it to me.

 

[justacaveman]

I'll reserve judgement on the show for a few more episodes. So far it seems OK to me. Better than Andromeda for sure.

As far as the number of characters on the ship, they could probably do without the priest and the geisha, but everyone else is the absolute minimum to run the ship. I believe they probably could use more crew, but can't afford to pay them.

 

[tim_manley]

I have to give that a resounding yes -- the 1st 2 episodes I've seen are FAR better than Andromeda's 1st 2 episodes.

And, yeah, I forgot about the prank. What really made it funny was that the merc knew the doc had a thing about being in a space-suit. Nice touch I thought. It was really funny when he was told he had it on wrong

Yeah, I do have to say that there are a lot little tid-bits I like about this show.

I really don't know why certain folks are making a big deal out of how many characters there are. Sounds pretty stupid to me. I think the mix of characters is pretty good so far.

The one character issue that I do admit to groaning over were the blue gloved guys and the fact that they have a fugitive from a psi 'institute' and such. If they do this right it can be really good.

Oh, and someone mentioned a counselor? That's because ST:TNG is 110% PC; didn't you read the memo?

I would LOVE to see a Traveller series made. CT, set in the old Imperium, ignore all the MT, TNE, T4, etc crap and just go old nuts and bolts. Make your rules and stick to 'em.

The big thing I haven't noticed is; how does the ship work? FTL hadn't been mentioned at all in the 1st 2 episodes. I read the blurb on the the site and it ignores the sci-fi aspects of the show; I take that as an attempt to appease the feces slinging recess monkeys they have working as TV/Marketing Execs.

anyway...I'm looking forward to next Friday's episode. I have to say haven't been this interested in a show since Farscape.

Oh, and before I forget..Hard Sci Fi? Traveller isn't even Hard Sci Fi. Hard being interpreted as attainable technology; future extrapolation stuff. Even Traveller is space opera or sci-fi fantasy. I just view traveller as more Asimovian sci-fi.....

 

[RabidVargr]

Originally posted by phydaux:

Originally posted by Tom Schoene:
[qb]Who says they've never stolen anything before?

Redhead chick. When asked "So you've done this before?" she specificly replied "Oh, HELL no..."

I think that was in reference to hovering over a speeding monorail and lowering a guy suspended on a rope.

even if it wasn't, how many people would be honest or at least not sarcastic if asked that?

RV

Just accept it, firefly's fun. SUFFER!!!

 

[tim_manley]

I got the impression that she was either
a) referring to the fact that *she* has never stolen anything or
b) the fact that they've never robbed a speeding mag-lev mono-rail before

b) is far funnier

come-on....comedic relief is taken so seriously here :-D

 

[RabidVargr]

My thoughts on hollywood not wanting anything to do with sci-fi:

There's a core of rabid (heh heh) fans for most sci fi shows. The problem is the people who never give it a chance and tell everyone how horrible a show is cause it doesn't meet their expectations of a "Sci-Fi" show. If you want to see more sci-fi shows in the works, give them a chance when they come out. Hollywood does listen, and when they hear all the bitching, why bother work on a show with so many critics, when they can put out another edition of "Survivor" which everyone seems to be glued to? (cept me)

Ya gotta give these shows a chance or hwood will just not put them out for the sake of avoiding the headache. The guys at firefly are trying, and while it's not perfect, just like Star trek, I expect it to only get better. (and hopefully loose the twangy banjo)

RV

 

[ArchTangent]

Firefly is very cool. I even dig the twangy banjo.

 

[Uncle Bob]

I give up. They just put a gun in a space suit "because it needs oxygen."

It just fell to the level of "Lost in Space", 3rd season.