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Onion A.V. Club review - January 14th, 2004

Firefly: The Complete Series (Buy It!)
(20th Century Fox)
The science-fiction/Western TV series Firefly was admittedly crowded, pretentious, and too innovative to be a guaranteed success, but Fox bears much of the blame for its failure. By airing the episodes out of order, withholding the pilot until months after the series launched, sticking the show with a difficult time slot, limiting network advertising support, and canceling the show partway through its initial run, Fox publicly declared that Firefly was a risk not worth taking. That seemed bizarre at the time, given that it was the highly anticipated new project of two-time winner Joss Whedon, creator-writer-director-producer of the highly marketable hits Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. The release of a DVD set featuring all 14 episodes of Firefly, including the double-length pilot and three never-aired installments, makes it easy to second-guess Fox's decisions. Above all, it shows the craven commercial logic—and the artistic indefensibility—of shelving the series pilot Whedon wrote and directed. Firefly's two-episode opener takes an admirably relaxed (but TV-lethal) pace in establishing its initially unwieldy cast, beginning with Nathan Fillon, captain and owner of the rickety "Firefly-class" spaceship Serenity. His ragtag crew of criminal independents includes old military buddy Gina Torres and her husband (ship's pilot Alan Tudyk), as well as chipper mechanic Jewel Staite and comically thuggish hired muscle Adam Baldwin. Fillon also rents one of Serenity's shuttles to high-class prostitute Morena Baccarin, and he eventually offers sanctuary to a traveling preacher and two fugitives, an addled torture victim and her protective doctor brother. With such a large core cast, Firefly spends as much time tracking all the personal relationships as it does on its futuristic takes on train-robbing, cattle-rustling, and gunfighting. But that's one of the show's several strengths. Like Buffy and Angel, Firefly derives much of its tension and most of its joy from shifting emotional alliances, hilarious dialogue, and a well-characterized, entirely human cast. Most of the episode plots contain Whedon's characteristic hairpin turns and rug-yanking surprises, but they still often seem like filler between the revelations about the involved and surprising world Whedon created as a backdrop, and the occasional peeks into a sadly unresolved larger story arc. (A planned feature film may fill in the blanks.) Some of Firefly's creative touches don't work; the fact that prostitutes of Baccarin's type are accorded near-godlike social status seems like a too-obvious reversal of social mores, while the characters' universal habit of lapsing into Chinese in order to spout lengthy, colorful, untranslated curses becomes irritating. Whedon's alchemic efforts at creating a wholly fresh genre by fusing Western action-movie clichés and science-fiction TV-series clichés is similarly hit-or-miss: Sometimes, the results are simply twice as clichéd. But at its best, Firefly plants its feet where Whedon's shows have always found solid ground, in creative plotting, experimental storytelling, sharp writing, and a cast that seems to love its work. —Tasha Robinson

Originally posted by vchrusch

Originally posted by Zaphod B: The Joss interview from the Sunday Times: January 11, 2004 The Sunday Times But, suddenly, with Angel’s Anakin Skywalker whiner of a son written out, it is almost as wickedly funny as Buffy at its peak. It gives us hope again.

Off topic I know, but this reminds me of something: Did anyone else notice the official "Angel" magazine that came out at the beginning of the TV season? It's big feature, plastered all over the cover, was an interview with "Angel's son."

I remember thinking that, if I'd wanted to sell copies of my new magazine, that's not the interview I would have lead with...

:p

Originally posted by Michael

You've gotta remember that not everyone hated Connor (well...there's me). Also, the interview is with Vincent Kartheiser, who happens to be a pretty damn talented actor (otherwise Joss wouldn't have cast him). Check out Another Day in Paradise if you're ever in the mood for a gritty, difficult indie flick. James Woods co-stars with VK, they're both excellent.

I agree that it probably wasn't the best thing to hype up with the premiere issue of the mag. I guess they were banking on the hardcore Angel fans picking it up no matter what, simply because there finally is an Angel magazine. I skipped issue #1 'cause I'd read most of the content (a lot of it ended up online, spread out over various websites) and 'cause I didn't like the poster...but I bought issue #2 and it turns out it's a really well put together magazine. They're a little super-upbeat about everything for my liking (where's the criticism? I need it!), making Season 5 of Angel sound as big as the Second Coming, but that's to be expected from an officially licensed fanmag.

Originally posted by Kris

Some little tidbits from various sources -

Looks like the sales of the DVD set were at least 12% above the best projections. Took Fox by surprise on that

A Firefly Score soundtrack will be released sometime during 2004. And it apparently might be released through alternate distribution channels

Mutant Enemy is looking at setting up it's own website. At the moment it's still in the planning and design stages


A new Firefly website that I came across is worth checking out -
http://firefly.deadly-nightshade.net
Great screencap page among other things.

And finally - Uber Firefly fan Kelly Pearson (Lux Lucre) passed away suddenly on January 10th, 2004. He will be dearly missed.
Home of Lux Lucre

Originally posted by vchrusch

Somebody managed to get audio of the Firefly panel discussion at last month's L.A. Comic con. It runs for just over a hour, and it's hilarious in parts. Joss and the gang (Tim Minear, Ben Enlund, Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin, Ron Wood, and Adam Baldwin) talk about the series and drop some hints about the film project. It's available for streaming or download from here: http://www.fireflymovie.com/news.html

Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the link. Great stuff!

Originally posted by vchrusch

A Midbulk Transport Class Code 03-k64 "Firefly" makes a cameo appearance in the new Battlestar Galactica miniseries airing tomorrow night. Here's a link to a screencap of it -
http://www.fireflyfans.net/news.asp?newsid=441

Zoic, the SFX company that worked on Firefly, also did the SFX work on BG.

Originally posted by vchrusch

Firefly sighting:

Mrs. Reynolds (Christina Hendricks) appeared on Tru Calling last night. "Murder in the Morgue"

Anyone else starting to like redheads alot more. Not that I didn't like reheads before.

Originally posted by robdot1

Nathan Fillion was also on last night's Outer Limits episode on Space.

Originally posted by vchrusch

And Adam Baldwin is in tonight's episode of J.A.G on CBS.

Originally posted by vchrusch

... and Gina Torres has been on the last 2 episodes of 24.

Originally posted by Dondo

Time to do a little more shameless self-pimping. Made a few little Firefly lobby posters. Sorta like the ones the old movie threatres used to have before all the multiplexes sprung up. Four of the posters can be found at my site Industrial Looniee & Madness. Scroll down and click on "More Movie Posters". The other two can be found at Fireflyfans.net -
http://www.fireflyfans.net/sunroomitem.asp?i=606
http://www.fireflyfans.net/sunroomitem.asp?i=608

Enjoy!

Originally posted by vchrusch

There's an article in the Star Week Tv guide on Firefly and Spaces airing of the episodes. It's a rehash of what we already know, but it helps the continued marketing needed to bring back the show.

The article is written by Rob Salem who I never liked as a reviewer. He mentions that Space is re-running the original episodes including four that had never previously aired, and the 2 hour pilot.

I'm now looking at my DVD set, but I just can't find that fourth show anywhere. Anyone else find it? So much for journalistic accuracy.

Originally posted by robdot1

Some journalists are dumbasses. This guy sound like one. There's only the three episodes that were never aired. However, there was a script that was written Cheryl Cain called "Dead or Alive" that was never filmed due to various reasons. Parts of it were incorporated into "The Message". Maybe he heard of it and got things turned around, or perhaps he didn't do any research.

The script for "Dead or Alive" can be found here - http://buffyscripts.net

along with all the other shooting scripts.

Originally posted by vchrusch

Someone has come up with a great little Flash Firefly game -
The Battle of Serenity Game

Lot's 'o fun!

Originally posted by vchrusch

Spaceguy, is there an online version of the article available? I took a look at the Toronto Star site, but couldn't find it. Thanks.

Originally posted by vchrusch