Fireflied

Ever heard of the sci-fi series Firefly?

I guess not because it was never shown here in the P.I. And it only aired for 11 episodes (though 14 episodes were made) on the Fox Network in the US in 2003 and cancelled due to the ratings game (similar to how short the lifespan of programs are on our own local channels).

However, the series experienced a resurgence of sorts after its cancellation when DVDs of the series were released prompting producer Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel) to produce a movie adaptation – Serenity – in 2005. Again, this movie did not appear in our local cinemas.

But I did manage to get hold of the DVD copy of the series in one of my numerous DVD-hunting sessions and after watching several episodes, I was hooked. Though I wasn’t able to complete the series in one week, I’ve been drawn to the unique sci-fi scenario the series propagated. I’m currently on the last episode and fervently hoping I wasn’t and that there’ll be another season coming up.

Firefly is a sci-fi series that does away with alien life form. All you see are humans in the entirety of the series. The series’ premise is that humanity has spread all across the entire known universe – terraforming planets (that is making them Earth-like) and creating pockets of civilization in the cosmos. In this future, America and China have merged cultures and have become the Alliance and set on a course of bringing all human-populated planets and moons under their control.

The series opens at the end of the “civil war” when the Alliance finally defeats the Independents (those planets who didn’t want anything to do with the Alliance). The series takes us on a journey of Serenity, a Firefly-class spaceship and her crew -- Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, a former Independent Army Officer and now captain of the Serenity; Zoe, Reynold’s former army buddy and second-in-command of the ship; Wash, Zoe’s husband and the ship’s pilot; Jayne, a mercenary for hire; Inara, a Companion (the future version of the Courtesan or Geisha); Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic; Shepherd Book, a preacher-priest with a rather intriguing connection with the Alliance; Dr. Simon Tam, a fugitive doctor and his sister, River, a very dysfunctional young girl.

The series follows the adventures of this ragtag crew as they travel the known cosmos in search of jobs, legal and illegal, living on the frontiers of space as far away as possible from Alliance. Think, space cowboys and you’ve got a very good idea of what Firefly is all about.

It’s certainly a far cry from the usual staple of sci-fi where there are aliens. It’s not even within the “primitive” scope of Star Trek Enterprise and definitely lacks the mythos of Star Wars. Firefly instead is cruder and somehow takes place in the near future when space travel was just in its adolescence probably and humanity has taken the American West and the Chinese culture as the prevailing cultures wherever you are in the cosmos. And oh, the language, English, is peppered with Chinese.

What I like about this series is its freshness.

Anytime you think of space sci-fi, images of Star Trek and the accompanying sci-fi jargon come flooding. With Firefly, yes, there are spaceships, but that’s about it. There’s nothing in the show – the conversations, the dialogues, the settings – that would make you press the pause button on the remote and rewind the scenes just to take a second look at the dialogue you missed because you failed to understand what sci-fi jargon was spoken and what technology was introduced.

Firefly lends the viewer a new look at what the future can be – cowboys in space, literally. The concept of the American West was taken out of Earth and flung onto outer space. While the space flight technology is present, you can’t see warp engines or transport rooms. It’s space at the crudest of human exploration, well, probably beyond our current space technology.

The series also allows you to grow with the characters. You empathize and you identify with the 9 major characters who are not Jean-Luc Picards, or William Rikers, or Obi Wan Ben Kenobis, or Yodas. The characters in Firefly are real-life people just trying to survive in the new West that is Outer Space. The wise-crack dialogues lend a realistic appeal to the series as it leaves the viewer smiling or laughing rather than leaving them puzzled and baffled.

And lest you get the idea that the series’ special effects is crude, it’s not. The series even won for its special effects … it’s just that the artists who worked on the CGIs made the ships and the tech look crude as that further strengthens the idea that the series happens on the fringes of civilization.

The story is also well-written, a testimony to Whedon’s creativity. It’s just too bad that the series ended so abruptly as the series leaves a lot of room for exploration in terms of story-telling. Sadly, with the cancellation, a lot of the teasers embedded in the episodes can no longer be revealed unless another network picks up the series.

Definitely a great addition to a sci-fi buff’s collection, I’m now in the hunt for the movie Serenity and the comics of the same title.