the main reason the show is so "western" in it's setting is because it's the fringes of space. the dvd commentary from That Person explained that given their level of technology when it comes to propulsion, you have very limited space/weight when traveling through space. So any colonists would have to minimize supplies to the literal bare essentials to survive and try and establish a community. So that means basic textiles and fabrics and other non-industrial supplies and technology. The core planets (The Alliance) don't have this issue, because they've been fully established for centuries, and thus benefit from an already tamed and established infrastructure. But all of the smaller communities, those who rebelled against the Alliance (Browncoats and just Independents), aren't anywhere near the core worlds. So they've only got Amish level tech for the most part. Which makes sense really.
The reason that's been put forward about why the show was aired out of order, is that around the time the show had been greenlit to air, a new exec at FOX had taken over the position of what shows would/wouldn't go forward. And apparently he didn't like a lot of the shows that had been approved by the previous exec, so he actively sabotaged them in the ratings, so he would have justification to not renew any contracts for later seasons. So FOX proceeded to air the show at the same time as major audience draws, like football games and other high profile specials/events/shows, constantly changing the night/time it would air so people would miss it "I thought it was tuesday nights?! No they moved it to thursday at 9" etc etc. Basically just executive meddling to the point of terminal illness for the show. The only reason we got the movie, was because of the rabid fanbase, who bitched and moaned for YEARS to try and get enough social media/online momentum, to get them to fund it. Took several years to pull off though.
One of the biggest crimes in television history. Imagine this world fleshed out more with like 5 seasons. Even the movie is a banger. Also yes continue this series please!
While it's not quite the same, there is an ongoing book series that continues the story. There's currently eight of them, with another coming out in December
Okay the comics are pretty good. They are by joss's brother and do things you can see joss doing. For example a Chinese character joins the crew. She's the daughter of a general mal knew and respected. He says the latter to her verbally. She was also just a fun addition and I could see having been introduced in a season two. Other highlights include Zoe pregnant with washs baby, more focus on rivers past and the introduction of other girls like her and that villain from the movie returning.
Simon: Are you always this sentimental? Mal: I had a good day Simon: You had the alliance on you, criminals and savages. Half the people on this ship have been shot or wounded, including yourself, and you're harbouring known fugitives! Mal: Well, we're still flying Simon: That's not much Mal: It's enough.... The final scene of the pilot is just so wonderful. Perfectly shows us Mal's character and truly establishes what the heart of this show is all about; a found family just trying to make it through another day. It's a shame something so special was lost
Not lost. Browncoats keep her flying when she ought have fell out the sky. Still talking, still watchin = Still Flying. Its not everything we wanted, but its enough.
28:15 Mal tells Simon: "If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed." Guess who ticks all three boxes as Mal steps back onto the ship?
Jim Butcher once sat on a panel that was asked about tropes. His answer was an analogy to building an engine. Sometimes you just need an elbow socket. Any crazy inventive solution you come up with to fit that function within your story, will just be a more fiddly elbow socket. And if you spend all your time overengineering, that's less time you get to spend on other parts of the story (character and character relationships in this case). Changed the way I thought about tropes. There's some odd category error, descriptivist vs proscriptivist kind of thing going on there, with how people talk about tropes
Yeah, "It has tropes" is bad criticism because you can hardly have a good story without any tropes, especially genre fiction. A good story full of well-employed tropes is much better than a non-tropey bad story, for obvious reasons. Claiming otherwise makes you sound like one of those people who got a bit too heavily into cooking or craft beer or something, and can no longer just enjoy what they're having because they can't help but analyze it to the extent that you act like not reinventing the wheel is somehow a bad thing despite how good a wheel they actually made and how well it does its job as a wheel.
Tropes are tropes because they work. Can they be overdone, hackneyed or become negative stereotypes? Sure. But these are core plots, characters or themes that speak to the shared experiences of being human. "Thief with a heart of gold" is about the fact that people can do bad or even unethical things without being a bad person. That what is criminal isn't always wrong. That ethics and principles are most important when you are at the ragged edge and you can justify almost anything. Among others. Trying to write fiction without tropes would be like writing without using the words, "the," "and," and "to." Just because they are common doesn't mean they don't serve a valuable purpose.
@@CorwinFound Overused tropes become clichés, and only at that point do you have to be careful with using them. In general, "trope" just means "literary tool" and you can't criticize a writer for using one.
Please please pleeeease do a full series deep dive on Firefly!! It’s one of my top favourite shows of all time, the writing and acting and world building are all just spectacular. And they stay consistently spectacular throughout the show.
“Outlaw Star” is another definite inspiration for Firefly. There’s a magic girl who they find in a box, a crew on a space adventure, and enemy ships that use low tech combat methods like the Reevers.
I've seen some parts of the story mentioned in other comments, so I'll try to sum up what happened with the network: There was a big turnover in the management at Fox in between the time they bought Firefly and when it started airing. The new folks in charge did their best to get rid of everything that had been greenlit by the previous leadership as quickly as possible, in favor of their own projects. That included deciding that the original 2-hour Firefly pilot episode (Serenity) was too long and not fun enough, and demanding that the showrunners write a new 1-hour pilot (The Train Job) over a weekend. The show was put into the Friday night "death slot", which was notorious for generating low ratings. Then the network aired the episodes out of order, messing with the plot continuity and character development arcs. They were also pre-empted in favor of the baseball play-offs about half the time, so a lot of episodes were aired at random times, some as late as 2am on the east coast. That made it difficult for even enthusiastic viewers to catch everything in the era before DVRs, on-demand services, and streaming. (My VCR got quite a workout that fall.) While the Firefly gang were filming a later episode, they were expecting to hear from the network about being picked up for the rest of the season. Instead, they were cancelled, based on those intentionally terrible ratings. The last three episodes filmed weren't broadcast, and fans didn't get to see them until the DVD release. Fox finally aired the original 2-hour pilot in December, mostly just to fill the timeslot after the baseball season ended, and because they'd already paid for it. Firefly wasn't the only series to receive shoddy treatment by Fox during the early 2000s. There's a long list of shows that only aired a handful of episodes before being axed. The tiny bright side is that they were taking chances on the weird stuff rather than churning out yet more procedurals. But they didn't give anything enough time to draw in an audience through word of mouth, so they just got a reputation for constantly cancelling shows that had the potential to be really interesting. The reason Firefly has been the subject of such devotion is because Whedon had built up a loyal fanbase through Buffy and Angel. The previous administration at Fox knew that, which is a big part of why they snapped up his next project in the first place. So when the network mishandled it so badly, those same fans were pissed. The online backlash was a huge factor in the follow-up movie being greenlit. That got longer than I intended, but even all that isn't the full story.
"They were also pre-empted in favor of the baseball play-offs about half the time". That reason right there is exactly why I stopped watching it when it was airing. Every time I actually wanted to watch it, boom, it wasn't available because of the freaking playoffs. And I was a teen and got distracted by other shiny things.
This entire comment is mine, copy-pasted from another channel where I put it, lol. And I tried to track it through TV Guide, too, but the problem is that TV Guide would be printed 2 weeks in advance, and due to baseball (and basketball) games, it would get bumped off the schedule.
"But they didn't give anything enough time to draw in an audience through word of mouth, so they just got a reputation for constantly cancelling shows that had the potential to be really interesting." Sounds like Netflix today.
This is almost the entire reason I stopped watching Fox shows. I had enough of getting into a show and then it getting cancelled after one season. There were a few gems around this time, but they were over so quickly and usually with a cliffhanger ending, so I stopped watching anything that didn't at least get 3 seasons from them.
So much of Firefly's dialogue just feels effortless. The amount of quotable/memorable lines is astounding and that really is a testament to both the writing and performances.
My absolute favourite little goof in the pilot is specifically right at the end. After Wash escapes the Reavers they cut back to the cockpit Wash is just hover-handing the non existant controls. There's no steering controls at all so Alan Tudyk is just sitting and holding his hands up and motioning in the air. Once you see it you can't un-see it but I find it a heartwarming little detail about just how barebones and difficult TV production can be. And most people never even notice. Just a thing I always see now on a rewatch. I only noticed when it was mentioned on the DVD commentary.
This wasn’t actually a mistake at the time, as it was broadcast and framed for a 4:3 aspect ratio, so his chair had to be moved backwards so he was in shot, and he had to mime holding controls offscreen. The error comes from DVDs using the full wide screen shot, which means that you can often see lights and crew members at the sides of the shot, as they would have originally been cropped out. For me the big goof in this episode is when Firefly does the Crazy Ivan, they edited the CGI shots of the engine flipping around in the wrong order, so the engine going from backwards to the normal position happens first, then the Crazy Ivan, then the engine goes from normal to backwards
It was aired in this order because the bs managers of Fox played the “we are the smarter” card. As simple as that. So it has 2 pilot episodes. They thought they know it better. No, they didn’t.
It's even worse than that - during early stages of production, the original higher-up who greenlit the show was replaced by a new guy, and it's unfortunately a standard reaction among TV executives to sabotage productions greenlit by predecessors to make sure their own productions get ahead, to "prove" the bigshots were right to promote them. Fox and WB are among the worst sinners there, with WB bigshots even encouraging this behavior.
You should do an episode by episode reaction of this show and following movie. Firefly makes me cry soooo much. Not bc the action is great, or bc the storyline is perfect, or the effects are amazing(all of which is true), but bc the CHARACTERS. OMG THE CHARACTERS!!!! So well written and acted. Love them all
If not all of the shows then at least Jaynestown. Whenever I introduce somebody to firefly, I will show them Jaynestown first to get them hooked in the show and then watch it all the way through.
I would love to see that. I miss the days of the Berserk readthrough, and a Firefly watchthrough (hopefully also including Serenity) would definitely fill that void, and have me clicking as soon as I could.
Being a pilot, the tropes drive home we are about to watch a true space western telling space and western stories. It also takes some of the mental load away so we can focus on the dialog and character interaction.
I still love the little connection that Firefly and Alien supposedly take place in the same universe. When Mal is firing the gun in the beginning the HUD has the Weyland-Yutani logo at the top.
It's just so crazy that the studio saw this episode and said, 'Nah, that's rubbish, make another pilot.' And so then we got The Train Job, which is still a good episode, but had to reintroduce all the characters and their relationships again, but it still feels like a continuation, rather than another pilot. And all the characters need to be introduced yet again in the movie for audiences who hadn't seen the show. I feel it's done even better in that film. Literally any negatives I have towards the show are nitpicks. I rewatch it every few years, and every time I do, it still feels fresh.
I can kind of understand the logic. Serenity presses all the right buttons for folk who were probably going to be fans no matter what, but execs were trying to get a pilot that would draw in cross market appeal, and the knock that the overall plot drags and lacks coherent tension isn't unearned.
Fantastic series, really hope you'll do content covering the rest of it. Despite doing a rewatch about once a year, I would totally watch your review of each and every episode. Thanks for the vid, 👍
I do kinda wish he had come around a corner, or the fed had been facing the other way, or some such. As is, he's just marching up the ramp and the fed is doing nothing but yelling. The fed could have shot any number of people, including Mal, as he was striding in from the distance. Ah well, still a great scene.
Also the one where he gives back the money to the muscle guy that was working for the guy that hired them to do the train job. He begins to threaten and Mal throws him in the turbine engine then he proceeds to the next muscle guy and starts the exact same speech, and this one is like : "oh yah, totally, whatever you want" after seeing the first guy blended. 🤣
@@ZlothZloth To be fair, the Fed more than likely was NOT expecting Mal to react in the way that he did and simply eliminate the problem(ie the Fed) rather than talking, negotiating, pleading, whatever.
@@grigturcescu6190 Crow's flight into the engine was accidental. Note how Mal flinched like "crap, that wasn't supposed to happen." Mal just wanted to knock him back down on his butt. But he continued with the next guy who was happy to carry the message back to Niska.
It's probably already been mentioned, but the waves of enemies coming in at the end of the initial battle are Alliance troops. This was the last battle of the war between the Alliance, who ruled the inner planets and assumed that their authority extended to the poor outer planets as well, and the Independents, who disagreed on that point. The battle was the battle of Serenity Valley, and it's the end of the Independents (also called Browncoats) and the end of Mal's faith and the crushing of his spirit.
One of my favorite phrases for fiction is "A simple meal, well made.". It's awesome when someone comes along and does something entirely out of the box and ground breaking or ambitiously complex and pulls it off, but those are not requirements. Tropes become tropes because they work, and if you build a story out of things seen before but execute it well you can still end up with a beloved classic. A more recent example of this is Arcane which also uses well trod tropes or narrative shorthand that audiences have seen before to quickly setup a world and characters so it can tell a wonderfully rich character focused drama in a relatively short amount of air time. Part of why this was aired out of order is that Fox didn't like Serenity as a pilot as they felt it did not have enough action, so episode 2 The Train Job was written as a "new" pilot with little time to do so. It consequently opens a lot more clunkily trying to reestablish all the character stuff Serenity did. Still a fun episode though. Firefly and Legend of Korra are like the poster children of series with great potential that got screwed top to bottom by their networks.
@@lanceareadbhar Didn't realise the scale of how badly fox fucked up. I recall hearing they aired out of order but I just assumed it was 2 episodes in the middle getting swapped around which would have been bad but not putting the pilot episode LAST like wtf? The show literally got cancelled before people saw the first episode?!?! Kinda glad I watched this series super late now...
Not only 'start with the train episode' - the train heist hadn't been written yet. They said: that 2 hours of well written TV that sets up the world and all the characters is too slow. Write a single hour that does all the same world building but spends more time on action.
I started the series after it had been canceled and released on DVD. I accidentally had the 3rd or 4th disc when I got it from the library and Out of Gas was my introduction to Firefly. Honestly, it serves as well of a pilot as Serenity did, being the sister episode for character introductions.
Please for the love of writing do an episode by episode breakdown of firefly. As you go we brown coats will fill you in on some of the darker beats this show would have gotten to.
There is something deeply quaint about a guy who knows so much more than I do about so much media being an enthusiastic newbie at something I know volumes about. XD You make me want to rewatch it!
@@nikoburazer437 we can all agree Joss did terrible stuff, it's so weird how part of our culture wants to erase people/ideas as thought that makes the world suddenly better.
Tropes are Joss Whedon's arsenal. He wields them deliberately like a weapon. It's his entire gimmick. He sets up scenarios you've seen a thousand times, plays out the trope exactly as you expect it to go (lulling you into a false sense of security), then abruptly pulls a complete 180 at the very end to either throw you off or get a big laugh. It's very effective and very deliberate technique he employs over and over, from entire scenes down to even single sentences ("Well my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle").
There is a reason tropes get used: they work. Then again, sometimes things just become "tropes" because it's hard not to do something similar to what's been done before.
On the contrary, it improved quite a bit as it aired...every episode from "Our Mrs. Reynolds" to "The Message" are peak television. That's not to denigrate the first 5 episodes or anything (and it's understandable that the last couple dipped in quality, seeing as how they all learned of the cancelation while filming "The Message") - every single episode is exceptional. But you could tell that the writers and cast really started to 'get' the world after a few episodes of experimentation, and the storytelling that resulted was second-to-none.
@@VoIcanomanAgreed; and we had done the work of exploring the basic confines of our universe and coming to love our characters. Let them explore some bigger stuff in a way
The Reavers really feel tacked on early, but they're pretty much THE Mystery of the series. Basically the overarching plot of the series. Throughout the 1st season of Firefly (you don't know how it pains me to say "only"), you see a lot of foundational elements being laid out that could make this series really great. Despite Whedon's shitty behavior, you could see that the lessons he learned from Buffy (and Angel), were being applied to Firefly. Unlike Buffy and Angel, though, Firefly hits the ground running and it's without a doubt that they couldn't squeeze at least 3 or 4 seasons in total of great storytelling, that could rival great series of today.
Love this Daniel!! Please do a part 2. It’s so fun to hear you excited about a tv show, while drawing attention to its flaws. Just your joy is wonderful. More please!
I watched Serenity first, I didn't even know there were other episodes, I thought it was just a movie. It was so good 😂 Then! I found out about the show, and how few episodes there were, and was devastated.
This was my exact experience. Just thought it was a crazy fun movie until I was walking through a Media Play (RIP) and there was a cardboard cutout of Nathan Fillion advertising "the series that inspired the movie" or something like that. I about lost my mind. There's a series!?!? I was crushed when I finished the DVDs and found out that was all of it.
I think there's been some misconception about JW's behaviors. He's not a pig, he's an asshole. There is a difference. He treats his male talent just as badly as his female talent. And no, it's not all of them. Basically, if you don't do anything to mess up his vision he'll be a very good boss. But if you do anything - and I do mean anything - to mess up his vision he'll make your life a living hell. It's worse for woman because of the different dynamics but really he'll treat everyone as pawns that are there to do as he pleases. For anyone who wants to have a better idea of his behavior I highly recommend the "Inside of You Podcast" episodes with Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters. You take those two together and it paints a pretty good picture of how JW deals with things.
I suggest one also check out Nathan Fillion's episode from the same podcast for the viewpoint from someone he was not an asshole too, its anybody's guess as to why, probably the vision thing you mentioned. Apparently most of the Firefly Cast got along with him it seems, the Writers room on the other hand was apparently a very different story.
@@mcocknoxy Agreed, the show's strengths and weaknesses reflect JW's own strengths and weaknesses as a creator. The same strengths and weaknesses show up time and again in his various creations in different proportions. I don't have a problem calling out JW for being a crappy boss but he's hardly the only one out there. Plenty of creators/bosses IRL are power abusing assholes who still manage to accomplish alot.
He's not a pig for the way he treats people alone. Sure he's equal opportunity on that. However the way he writes about women is very clearly piggy, as is the way he treats intimate relationships.
A couple of years after Serenity came out, my daughter asked if I knew how to make a Firefly fan cry in 4 words. "Leaf on the wind." Followed by, "Mom, you're not supposed to really cry!" 😢✌🖖
Super stoked to see you give this IP more than a cursory glance! There’s a ton of interesting things about this series, including the way things are filmed, lit, and how transitions are handled!
When Firefly was first advertised I honestly hated the idea, mainly due to the amazingly bad promotion it was given and in part to me still being pissed of Farscape had just been cancelled. Once I actually watched it (in the correct order) it still to this day is my number one sci fi tv show.
Farscape had way more time to breathe and develop, for me it's the GOAT, with 2003 Battlestar right behind. Firefly is cozy love and laughs though, who knows what it'd could have been with a similar episode count.
@@MagusMarquillinagreed. The first season of Farscape is very uneven. But it was unique in showing a frontier mentality to space with food shortages and evil empires and gritty labourers eking out a life. It paved the way for gritty shows like Firefly and dare I say BSG? I can’t think of another show that went that dark in representing the future before Farscape.
@@susanrobertson984 And not just representing "future" (the Peacekeepers can make a pretty good future humanity allegory), but also the present since John Crichton is from our time - or 1999 at least. He tries at every opportunity to relate his experiences with humanity, both for the audience's sake and to keep from going insane, which got amazingly more likely with every season. I love how they ultimately kept Earth in the picture for someone lost in space without a "Robinson family" or crew, who instead had to make a family with some very alien aliens, as only Jim Henson's co. could make.
Just rewatched Firefly... yes you should 100% do a full series review. I love this show for so many reasons, just the perfect cast, great sets, great story. I am sure you will love it too!
I think it's important to realize that while a lot of the tropes present here were a thing in 2002, it was a lot more common for your casual fan to not be aware of these tropes back then. We all of us had a much more unique and personal experience with genre fiction and depending on the depth and breadth of that experience a lot of people simple had not experienced many of the tropes used here. Which is to say, this was their first exposure to them. I think that plays a big part in why so many casual sci-fi fans love this, because it was kinda perfect for them. It seems to someone uninitiated, which again, many of us were back then, that this was just brimming with great ideas rather than brimming with tropes. It's hard to truly understand what it was like, especially knowing that you and many of your viewers were either not alive when this came out or you were so young that it did not even cross your radar. To someone who was in smack dab in the middle of the flowering of their nerd life at this point, (16 years old when it came out), this show seemed beyond brilliant. I have since come to see that it does indeed rely heavily on tropes, but back then, I had no idea. These days, with the internet and just the way we communicate and discuss ideas and fiction, it's a lot harder for a person who is a fan of a genre to not be aware of the tropes, so it might seem odd but again, things were a lot more individualized back then, we all had our blindspots. If something wasn't covered in star-trek then there was a good chance people had never seen the idea before.
Yes! I was thinking the exact same thing. I was about 13 when I first watched Firefly and it rewrote my brain. While I was already a big ol’ nerd, I didn’t have the language to describe why I loved it so much, I just knew I loved it and it has undoubtedly informed my opinions about genre fiction going forward. Firefly was the introduction to tropes and campy SF for me, that has become mainstream today in our very “nerdy is cool” pop culture landscape. You cannot discount the impact Firefly had on the genre and the culture over the past 22 years.
I'll add that one other reason to revel in the tropes is that Firefly is doing something novel. They are doing cowboy stuff in space. Many other works had been "westerns in space" but not to the extent or quality that Firefly had. Many of the viewers of Firefly were well versed in the tropes of the western genre.
Thank you for starting this journey and allowing us to follow you on it. I wish I could go back and watch it all for the first time again. The next episode was written in a weekend to replace the pilot so keep that in mind for giur review. It really elevates it.
I am very much looking forward to you watching the rest and reporting back. When you go from the show to the movie, remember us oldies had a long wait with baited breath before we knew the movie was happening. I went to a packed theater on opening night with many Jayne hats and people in costume. People cheered, laughed, hooted, screamed (you know when) and cried. It was an awesome experience. I think the moral debate of the series also opened a lot of minds and it pushed boundaries for the time. I really hope you enjoy watching the rest of the show and thank you for this channel, it is always awesome. I would like to watch another episode where you talk about watching the rest of the show and maybe one about the movie separately? Maybe write down your expectations before because that is definitely entertaining in this one! Oh and more Dungeon Crawler Carl Reviews! Have you listened to the audiobooks? so Amazing. Princess Donut is on point. Thanks for your time, Tina
After years of reflection the conclusion I’ve come to is that this show was created as an insidious mild torture device meant to follow me through life like a sneeze or a yawn that can never be completed. I’ll go years without it coming up and without it troubling me, but then a little spark triggers the same “wtf!? That should have been completed!” sensation, and I must carry out the required watch thru and grumble. But, yes, it was just straight up upsetting how good the chemistry was between the crew. The world was upsettingly well built and developed.
I think you missed an important point that to me REALLY showed me how much Mal changed from the opening scene to now when Shepard Book asked if he could say grace at the meal, and Mal responded "Only if you do it out loud." For someone who was clearly religious in the opening scene, to swap to that, you know he's been through some shit that changed him.
If you watch the extras on the dvd set they said Fox wanted to air “The Train Heist” first because they wanted to “throw the viewers into the middle of the action.” Honestly it sounds like Fox didn’t want to do a science fiction show but JW brought them so much success with Buffy and Angel they felt they couldn’t say no so they sabotaged it. The trailers for the show before it first aired were for the original pilot so when viewers tuned in for the first episode a lot of them were confused and thought they may have missed an episode. It brought on a lot of confusion and people had issues following the plot and caring about the characters since they never got a proper introduction.
The characters have a chemistry that most shows take 2 or 3, 20 episode long, seasons to establish and every single episode drips with heart that is hard to find in shows today
I'm such a lover of this show, it was my comfort watch during finals in college. My hot take is that I love it as it is and am not super eager to fill in all of the gaps. I feel like I've been given enough time to meet some wonderful people and see a glimpse into their lives, even if I have to leave with many things left unanswered.
From my understanding, the exec(s) thought that the pilot Serenity, was too long and without enough action to grab and hold the attention of the audience. So after it was shot they demanded that the next episode was going to be the first shown. The writers then had to come up with a way to introduce all the characters (with their backstories) in a 50 min episode that had more action. The second episode (that was the first aired) had to be written in just a few days. The Train Job did a pretty good job, but it wasn't comparable to the original pilot. I was lucky enough to be introduced to the series when I bought the DVD's so I got to experience it the way it was meant to be.
I'm an old -- I watched Firefly when it was on the air... and I can tell you, they didn't just screw it up by airing it out of order, they moved it around on the schedule all the time. I remember setting up my DVR to record and coming home and finding I'd recorded the wrong show because they'd moved Firefly to a different day and time. It really was like they were trying to deliberately tank the show. As to why they aired it out of order, there is an answer. I'm sure someone has already told you but just in case -- the network felt this was too complicated and so the next episode is (The Train Job) was written to function as a pilot as well. It is a good episode, but not as good a pilot as, well, the actual pilot. My opinion was this was too high concept for whoever was running the network at the time. In contrast, there was another show that they were airing called "Meet John Doe" or something like that, that they pushed super hard and had on a regular schedule, and no one talks about that show anymore. But the concept (the 'mystery') was easy to explain (dude wakes up, doesn't know who he is, but somehow knows everything else -- like, he's a walking encyclopedia or something -- so the 'question' was easy "who is John Doe?"). I think they couldn't figure out what people would talk about with Firefly, what the question was, what the mystery was, and so they sort of gave up on it and it floundered.
Shawna Trpcic ("trip-chick" is how she pronounced it) was an EXCELLENT costume designer. She took over The Mandalorian after season 1 as well as The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka. (She won the Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Television and was nominated for all three for the Primetime Emmy Awards).
I'd been on the fence about starting the show, but seeing this video convinced me to watch the pilot for myself and receive my writing masterclass. Thanks!
Please do more on this wonderful series, I and many people I know never knew about it until years after it had been cancelled. It's such an amazing series to watch but also a bit masochistic as it doesn't even get a full season and there are so many amazing overarching plotlines that never get resolved in the show that while some are shown in the movie probably would have been much better in the show. Browncoats for life.
Great video. I started watching Firefly when it came out on DVD in the UK and instantly fell in love with the series. It also coincided with my Dark Tower obsession. Alternate westerns were doing well back in the early 2000s and both were hugely influential in my life. You should go on and finish the show and the movie.
I really like that Firefly leaned into tropes. Because I think it was going somewhere with it and it just never got a chance to go there. One of the things that has always been really important in that particular pig's work is taking those tropes and then subverting them. I just don't think that Firefly got a chance to subvert them because it wasn't on the air long enough
you definitely did make me feel old right there. felt a new grey hair grow in. Yes, I always enjoy hearing people's reactions to / thoughts about Firefly, so please do the rest of the series if you're willing.
Ignoring the intentionally cowboy/western elements, horses as transportation actually makes a lot of sense for newly settled planets in a sci-fi setting and is certainly not the first time it's been used. Vehicles take up space, need fuel, need spare parts and maintenance, and if you ship 100 tractors then you will only ever have 100 tractors minus any that breakdown. Horses can be transported as frozen embryos, can reproduce, and can live in any environment that humans can live in.
Great video, Daniel! You absolutely should do more videos on the rest of the season (as well as the movie). (Or at a minimum watch it!) There are so many of those "reaction" type videos around this series, it would be nice to see more content like yours that critiques the narrative elements and provides more depth. And now I'm off to a rewatch!
There is a reason this is my all-time favorite show. I always want to see more Firefly content. Apparently Fox wanted an action show and the pilot didn't have enough so they made them create a new pilot on short notice and that is The Train Job. And not only did they air the episodes out of order but they kept preempting them so there was no regular time the episodes aired.
When it comes to perfect Pilots I think that Stargate SG-1 should be mentioned. The edited version, not the full frontal nudity version that originally aired. Even if you haven't seen the movie it sets up a really interesting world and it introduces all of the characters and their motivations and it gives the whole show in overarching plot and it gives each character a motivation to continue and to grow while also just being interesting and fun. And I genuinely believe it is one of the best science fiction Pilots out there
You know whats really galling. Even after mishandling Firefly and it becoming clear that was a huge mistake, WB one upped them by cancelling Angel one of the most popular shows they had, because Whedon had asked for an early pick up so the crew knew theyd have their jobs for another year. I know that one of the other writers has commented that if only Whedon had waited they would be sure of being picked up again, and itd be easy to blame Whedon given hes a toxic piece of crap, but in this case at least he was doing a good thing and it was a mindbogglingly stupid decision by the head of entertainment that even WB would later admit was a huge mistake.
Yep. And even then it still got about the same neilson rating for viewing figures as the X Files had in its first season, but by then broadcast media was at the start of the downward spiral its been on ever since and the goalposts of what was and wasn't supposed to be viable had moved so much it really didn't matter. It did great on home media, and in overseas territories, but Fox still didn't care. As far as the long list of Terrible Things Fox Has Done goes this is just shy of the top 5, and that's still saying something considering all the promotion of fascism, genocide and climate change denial on Fox News and seasons 10-32 of The Simpsons.
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You should do an episode or three about the show and the movie - with perhaps a bit of focus on how the movie tried to wrap up the plot hooks.
Hope you watch more! First episode is arguably the weakest.
the main reason the show is so "western" in it's setting is because it's the fringes of space. the dvd commentary from That Person explained that given their level of technology when it comes to propulsion, you have very limited space/weight when traveling through space. So any colonists would have to minimize supplies to the literal bare essentials to survive and try and establish a community. So that means basic textiles and fabrics and other non-industrial supplies and technology. The core planets (The Alliance) don't have this issue, because they've been fully established for centuries, and thus benefit from an already tamed and established infrastructure. But all of the smaller communities, those who rebelled against the Alliance (Browncoats and just Independents), aren't anywhere near the core worlds. So they've only got Amish level tech for the most part. Which makes sense really.
The reason that's been put forward about why the show was aired out of order, is that around the time the show had been greenlit to air, a new exec at FOX had taken over the position of what shows would/wouldn't go forward. And apparently he didn't like a lot of the shows that had been approved by the previous exec, so he actively sabotaged them in the ratings, so he would have justification to not renew any contracts for later seasons. So FOX proceeded to air the show at the same time as major audience draws, like football games and other high profile specials/events/shows, constantly changing the night/time it would air so people would miss it "I thought it was tuesday nights?! No they moved it to thursday at 9" etc etc. Basically just executive meddling to the point of terminal illness for the show. The only reason we got the movie, was because of the rabid fanbase, who bitched and moaned for YEARS to try and get enough social media/online momentum, to get them to fund it. Took several years to pull off though.
Like many people have said. First episode is the weakest.
One of the biggest crimes in television history. Imagine this world fleshed out more with like 5 seasons. Even the movie is a banger. Also yes continue this series please!
While it's not quite the same, there is an ongoing book series that continues the story. There's currently eight of them, with another coming out in December
@@Talenel are those tied in with the comics?
movie serenity is firefly at its peak imo
@@sharebear421 I don't know, I've not read any of the comics. I don't think so though
Okay the comics are pretty good. They are by joss's brother and do things you can see joss doing. For example a Chinese character joins the crew. She's the daughter of a general mal knew and respected. He says the latter to her verbally. She was also just a fun addition and I could see having been introduced in a season two.
Other highlights include Zoe pregnant with washs baby, more focus on rivers past and the introduction of other girls like her and that villain from the movie returning.
Simon: Are you always this sentimental?
Mal: I had a good day
Simon: You had the alliance on you, criminals and savages. Half the people on this ship have been shot or wounded, including yourself, and you're harbouring known fugitives!
Mal: Well, we're still flying
Simon: That's not much
Mal: It's enough....
The final scene of the pilot is just so wonderful. Perfectly shows us Mal's character and truly establishes what the heart of this show is all about; a found family just trying to make it through another day. It's a shame something so special was lost
Seriously, one of the best theme songs ever. 20 some years later, I still know all the words and I will belt this out occasionally.
Not lost. Browncoats keep her flying when she ought have fell out the sky. Still talking, still watchin = Still Flying. Its not everything we wanted, but its enough.
28:15 Mal tells Simon: "If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed." Guess who ticks all three boxes as Mal steps back onto the ship?
@MasterHigure that's an amazing set up, and I didn't realize it until now.
They lost the battle against Alliance in the opening scene, not reavers.
Yeah, if they had lost to reavers there would have been no show.
@@BKPrice as Zoey said of losing to Reavers, "If we're lucky, in that order."
The battle of Serenity Valley...
I cringed when he said that haha
@@BKPrice HBO: "Hold my beer"
Jim Butcher once sat on a panel that was asked about tropes. His answer was an analogy to building an engine. Sometimes you just need an elbow socket. Any crazy inventive solution you come up with to fit that function within your story, will just be a more fiddly elbow socket. And if you spend all your time overengineering, that's less time you get to spend on other parts of the story (character and character relationships in this case). Changed the way I thought about tropes. There's some odd category error, descriptivist vs proscriptivist kind of thing going on there, with how people talk about tropes
This is the perfect RUclips comment. Using an explanation from my favorite author to describe my favorite show. ❤
Yeah, "It has tropes" is bad criticism because you can hardly have a good story without any tropes, especially genre fiction. A good story full of well-employed tropes is much better than a non-tropey bad story, for obvious reasons. Claiming otherwise makes you sound like one of those people who got a bit too heavily into cooking or craft beer or something, and can no longer just enjoy what they're having because they can't help but analyze it to the extent that you act like not reinventing the wheel is somehow a bad thing despite how good a wheel they actually made and how well it does its job as a wheel.
Love how butcher sat down and was like, “Ima prove tropes don’t make bad stories, bad writers do” and fucking nailed it, two different times
Tropes are tropes because they work. Can they be overdone, hackneyed or become negative stereotypes? Sure. But these are core plots, characters or themes that speak to the shared experiences of being human.
"Thief with a heart of gold" is about the fact that people can do bad or even unethical things without being a bad person. That what is criminal isn't always wrong. That ethics and principles are most important when you are at the ragged edge and you can justify almost anything. Among others.
Trying to write fiction without tropes would be like writing without using the words, "the," "and," and "to." Just because they are common doesn't mean they don't serve a valuable purpose.
@@CorwinFound Overused tropes become clichés, and only at that point do you have to be careful with using them. In general, "trope" just means "literary tool" and you can't criticize a writer for using one.
Please please pleeeease do a full series deep dive on Firefly!! It’s one of my top favourite shows of all time, the writing and acting and world building are all just spectacular. And they stay consistently spectacular throughout the show.
Did you know the website TV Tropes was started by a community of Buffy and Firefly fans because of the creators use of tropes?
“Outlaw Star” is another definite inspiration for Firefly.
There’s a magic girl who they find in a box, a crew on a space adventure, and enemy ships that use low tech combat methods like the Reevers.
I've seen some parts of the story mentioned in other comments, so I'll try to sum up what happened with the network:
There was a big turnover in the management at Fox in between the time they bought Firefly and when it started airing. The new folks in charge did their best to get rid of everything that had been greenlit by the previous leadership as quickly as possible, in favor of their own projects. That included deciding that the original 2-hour Firefly pilot episode (Serenity) was too long and not fun enough, and demanding that the showrunners write a new 1-hour pilot (The Train Job) over a weekend.
The show was put into the Friday night "death slot", which was notorious for generating low ratings. Then the network aired the episodes out of order, messing with the plot continuity and character development arcs. They were also pre-empted in favor of the baseball play-offs about half the time, so a lot of episodes were aired at random times, some as late as 2am on the east coast. That made it difficult for even enthusiastic viewers to catch everything in the era before DVRs, on-demand services, and streaming. (My VCR got quite a workout that fall.)
While the Firefly gang were filming a later episode, they were expecting to hear from the network about being picked up for the rest of the season. Instead, they were cancelled, based on those intentionally terrible ratings. The last three episodes filmed weren't broadcast, and fans didn't get to see them until the DVD release. Fox finally aired the original 2-hour pilot in December, mostly just to fill the timeslot after the baseball season ended, and because they'd already paid for it.
Firefly wasn't the only series to receive shoddy treatment by Fox during the early 2000s. There's a long list of shows that only aired a handful of episodes before being axed. The tiny bright side is that they were taking chances on the weird stuff rather than churning out yet more procedurals. But they didn't give anything enough time to draw in an audience through word of mouth, so they just got a reputation for constantly cancelling shows that had the potential to be really interesting.
The reason Firefly has been the subject of such devotion is because Whedon had built up a loyal fanbase through Buffy and Angel. The previous administration at Fox knew that, which is a big part of why they snapped up his next project in the first place. So when the network mishandled it so badly, those same fans were pissed. The online backlash was a huge factor in the follow-up movie being greenlit.
That got longer than I intended, but even all that isn't the full story.
"They were also pre-empted in favor of the baseball play-offs about half the time".
That reason right there is exactly why I stopped watching it when it was airing. Every time I actually wanted to watch it, boom, it wasn't available because of the freaking playoffs. And I was a teen and got distracted by other shiny things.
My dad used the TV Guide to keep track of when it aired so he could record it. I didn't watch it until after it came out on DVD though.
This entire comment is mine, copy-pasted from another channel where I put it, lol.
And I tried to track it through TV Guide, too, but the problem is that TV Guide would be printed 2 weeks in advance, and due to baseball (and basketball) games, it would get bumped off the schedule.
"But they didn't give anything enough time to draw in an audience through word of mouth, so they just got a reputation for constantly cancelling shows that had the potential to be really interesting."
Sounds like Netflix today.
This is almost the entire reason I stopped watching Fox shows. I had enough of getting into a show and then it getting cancelled after one season. There were a few gems around this time, but they were over so quickly and usually with a cliffhanger ending, so I stopped watching anything that didn't at least get 3 seasons from them.
So much of Firefly's dialogue just feels effortless. The amount of quotable/memorable lines is astounding and that really is a testament to both the writing and performances.
Please do a part two of the rest of the series. I’d love that!
My absolute favourite little goof in the pilot is specifically right at the end. After Wash escapes the Reavers they cut back to the cockpit Wash is just hover-handing the non existant controls. There's no steering controls at all so Alan Tudyk is just sitting and holding his hands up and motioning in the air. Once you see it you can't un-see it but I find it a heartwarming little detail about just how barebones and difficult TV production can be. And most people never even notice. Just a thing I always see now on a rewatch. I only noticed when it was mentioned on the DVD commentary.
@@the3Ebroadcast small screens and rushed production timelines.
This wasn’t actually a mistake at the time, as it was broadcast and framed for a 4:3 aspect ratio, so his chair had to be moved backwards so he was in shot, and he had to mime holding controls offscreen. The error comes from DVDs using the full wide screen shot, which means that you can often see lights and crew members at the sides of the shot, as they would have originally been cropped out. For me the big goof in this episode is when Firefly does the Crazy Ivan, they edited the CGI shots of the engine flipping around in the wrong order, so the engine going from backwards to the normal position happens first, then the Crazy Ivan, then the engine goes from normal to backwards
It was aired in this order because the bs managers of Fox played the “we are the smarter” card. As simple as that. So it has 2 pilot episodes. They thought they know it better. No, they didn’t.
It's even worse than that - during early stages of production, the original higher-up who greenlit the show was replaced by a new guy, and it's unfortunately a standard reaction among TV executives to sabotage productions greenlit by predecessors to make sure their own productions get ahead, to "prove" the bigshots were right to promote them. Fox and WB are among the worst sinners there, with WB bigshots even encouraging this behavior.
You should do an episode by episode reaction of this show and following movie. Firefly makes me cry soooo much. Not bc the action is great, or bc the storyline is perfect, or the effects are amazing(all of which is true), but bc the CHARACTERS. OMG THE CHARACTERS!!!! So well written and acted. Love them all
If not all of the shows then at least Jaynestown. Whenever I introduce somebody to firefly, I will show them Jaynestown first to get them hooked in the show and then watch it all the way through.
Yes, do them all!!
Sadly it’s not like there’s that many, sigh 😢
I would love to see that. I miss the days of the Berserk readthrough, and a Firefly watchthrough (hopefully also including Serenity) would definitely fill that void, and have me clicking as soon as I could.
Ain't no show in the Verse like Firefly
The heavy handed use of tropes is part of what made it great. It made it familiar and comforting and easy to digest.
Being a pilot, the tropes drive home we are about to watch a true space western telling space and western stories. It also takes some of the mental load away so we can focus on the dialog and character interaction.
🔫 You started Firefly now you gotta finish it... Clean yo plate boy 😅
"Why was this aired out of order?!"
Fox sabatoged it from day one. There is a whole Lore there, because yes, it was done diliberately.
The battle of Serenity was against the alliance (the inner planets) in the fight for independence, which Malcom’s side (the brow coats) lost.
I still love the little connection that Firefly and Alien supposedly take place in the same universe. When Mal is firing the gun in the beginning the HUD has the Weyland-Yutani logo at the top.
I float like a leaf on the wind *cue xenomorphs chest-bursting*
It's just so crazy that the studio saw this episode and said, 'Nah, that's rubbish, make another pilot.' And so then we got The Train Job, which is still a good episode, but had to reintroduce all the characters and their relationships again, but it still feels like a continuation, rather than another pilot.
And all the characters need to be introduced yet again in the movie for audiences who hadn't seen the show. I feel it's done even better in that film.
Literally any negatives I have towards the show are nitpicks. I rewatch it every few years, and every time I do, it still feels fresh.
I can kind of understand the logic. Serenity presses all the right buttons for folk who were probably going to be fans no matter what, but execs were trying to get a pilot that would draw in cross market appeal, and the knock that the overall plot drags and lacks coherent tension isn't unearned.
Fantastic series, really hope you'll do content covering the rest of it. Despite doing a rewatch about once a year, I would totally watch your review of each and every episode. Thanks for the vid, 👍
mal walking up and popping the dude in the head is one of my favorite scenes out of any tv show ever. man i love this show
I do kinda wish he had come around a corner, or the fed had been facing the other way, or some such. As is, he's just marching up the ramp and the fed is doing nothing but yelling. The fed could have shot any number of people, including Mal, as he was striding in from the distance. Ah well, still a great scene.
Also the one where he gives back the money to the muscle guy that was working for the guy that hired them to do the train job. He begins to threaten and Mal throws him in the turbine engine then he proceeds to the next muscle guy and starts the exact same speech, and this one is like : "oh yah, totally, whatever you want" after seeing the first guy blended. 🤣
@@ZlothZloth To be fair, the Fed more than likely was NOT expecting Mal to react in the way that he did and simply eliminate the problem(ie the Fed) rather than talking, negotiating, pleading, whatever.
@@grigturcescu6190 Crow's flight into the engine was accidental. Note how Mal flinched like "crap, that wasn't supposed to happen." Mal just wanted to knock him back down on his butt. But he continued with the next guy who was happy to carry the message back to Niska.
@@hua_man never noticed that. I will rewatch.
Daniel: Hey Nerds, do you want to hear me talk more about Firefly?
Us: 😂🤣😂🤣😭Yes, please
I'll already die unhappy because Firefly was cancelled, so it's all uphill from here
Do more please. I love how you break things down and I want that analysis applied to a show I love yet so many others hate apparently.
It's probably already been mentioned, but the waves of enemies coming in at the end of the initial battle are Alliance troops. This was the last battle of the war between the Alliance, who ruled the inner planets and assumed that their authority extended to the poor outer planets as well, and the Independents, who disagreed on that point.
The battle was the battle of Serenity Valley, and it's the end of the Independents (also called Browncoats) and the end of Mal's faith and the crushing of his spirit.
One of my favorite phrases for fiction is "A simple meal, well made.". It's awesome when someone comes along and does something entirely out of the box and ground breaking or ambitiously complex and pulls it off, but those are not requirements. Tropes become tropes because they work, and if you build a story out of things seen before but execute it well you can still end up with a beloved classic. A more recent example of this is Arcane which also uses well trod tropes or narrative shorthand that audiences have seen before to quickly setup a world and characters so it can tell a wonderfully rich character focused drama in a relatively short amount of air time.
Part of why this was aired out of order is that Fox didn't like Serenity as a pilot as they felt it did not have enough action, so episode 2 The Train Job was written as a "new" pilot with little time to do so. It consequently opens a lot more clunkily trying to reestablish all the character stuff Serenity did. Still a fun episode though. Firefly and Legend of Korra are like the poster children of series with great potential that got screwed top to bottom by their networks.
10:40 its the Alliance 👀
LOVE THIS SHOW
Forever the greatest loss we've faced as a community
Every time I rewatch, the pilot blows me away. Its fun, intriguing and sets up the whole show perfectly.
And yet Fox was like, nah, start with the Train heist episode, we don't think the pilot is good enough.
@@lanceareadbhar Didn't realise the scale of how badly fox fucked up. I recall hearing they aired out of order but I just assumed it was 2 episodes in the middle getting swapped around which would have been bad but not putting the pilot episode LAST like wtf?
The show literally got cancelled before people saw the first episode?!?! Kinda glad I watched this series super late now...
Not only 'start with the train episode' - the train heist hadn't been written yet. They said: that 2 hours of well written TV that sets up the world and all the characters is too slow. Write a single hour that does all the same world building but spends more time on action.
I started the series after it had been canceled and released on DVD.
I accidentally had the 3rd or 4th disc when I got it from the library and Out of Gas was my introduction to Firefly.
Honestly, it serves as well of a pilot as Serenity did, being the sister episode for character introductions.
Please for the love of writing do an episode by episode breakdown of firefly.
As you go we brown coats will fill you in on some of the darker beats this show would have gotten to.
You mean, like the box Inara opened? That one was rough.
I do love how each episode follows a different style of cinema.
There is something deeply quaint about a guy who knows so much more than I do about so much media being an enthusiastic newbie at something I know volumes about. XD You make me want to rewatch it!
Tropes aren't inherently bad. It all depends on how you use them in your writing
@@nikoburazer437 we can all agree Joss did terrible stuff, it's so weird how part of our culture wants to erase people/ideas as thought that makes the world suddenly better.
Tropes are Joss Whedon's arsenal. He wields them deliberately like a weapon. It's his entire gimmick. He sets up scenarios you've seen a thousand times, plays out the trope exactly as you expect it to go (lulling you into a false sense of security), then abruptly pulls a complete 180 at the very end to either throw you off or get a big laugh. It's very effective and very deliberate technique he employs over and over, from entire scenes down to even single sentences ("Well my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle").
There is a reason tropes get used: they work. Then again, sometimes things just become "tropes" because it's hard not to do something similar to what's been done before.
Please give us a part 2, I've missed Firefly.
More firefly please! Being cancelled was a travesty, but it did leave us with basically a perfect one season show that never dipped in quality.
On the contrary, it improved quite a bit as it aired...every episode from "Our Mrs. Reynolds" to "The Message" are peak television. That's not to denigrate the first 5 episodes or anything (and it's understandable that the last couple dipped in quality, seeing as how they all learned of the cancelation while filming "The Message") - every single episode is exceptional. But you could tell that the writers and cast really started to 'get' the world after a few episodes of experimentation, and the storytelling that resulted was second-to-none.
@@VoIcanomanAgreed; and we had done the work of exploring the basic confines of our universe and coming to love our characters. Let them explore some bigger stuff in a way
The Reavers really feel tacked on early, but they're pretty much THE Mystery of the series. Basically the overarching plot of the series.
Throughout the 1st season of Firefly (you don't know how it pains me to say "only"), you see a lot of foundational elements being laid out that could make this series really great.
Despite Whedon's shitty behavior, you could see that the lessons he learned from Buffy (and Angel), were being applied to Firefly.
Unlike Buffy and Angel, though, Firefly hits the ground running and it's without a doubt that they couldn't squeeze at least 3 or 4 seasons in total of great storytelling, that could rival great series of today.
Whedon is definitely a great writer. They just should have never let him out from behind the computer.
Love this Daniel!! Please do a part 2. It’s so fun to hear you excited about a tv show, while drawing attention to its flaws. Just your joy is wonderful. More please!
I watched Serenity first, I didn't even know there were other episodes, I thought it was just a movie. It was so good 😂 Then! I found out about the show, and how few episodes there were, and was devastated.
Me too but I was just happy to have more.
This was my exact experience. Just thought it was a crazy fun movie until I was walking through a Media Play (RIP) and there was a cardboard cutout of Nathan Fillion advertising "the series that inspired the movie" or something like that. I about lost my mind. There's a series!?!?
I was crushed when I finished the DVDs and found out that was all of it.
@@jachyra4 Yes! I think I was at Best Buy, and randomly found a complete series collectors edition DVD set. I was shocked and so excited 😆
I think there's been some misconception about JW's behaviors. He's not a pig, he's an asshole. There is a difference. He treats his male talent just as badly as his female talent.
And no, it's not all of them. Basically, if you don't do anything to mess up his vision he'll be a very good boss. But if you do anything - and I do mean anything - to mess up his vision he'll make your life a living hell. It's worse for woman because of the different dynamics but really he'll treat everyone as pawns that are there to do as he pleases.
For anyone who wants to have a better idea of his behavior I highly recommend the "Inside of You Podcast" episodes with Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters. You take those two together and it paints a pretty good picture of how JW deals with things.
I suggest one also check out Nathan Fillion's episode from the same podcast for the viewpoint from someone he was not an asshole too, its anybody's guess as to why, probably the vision thing you mentioned. Apparently most of the Firefly Cast got along with him it seems, the Writers room on the other hand was apparently a very different story.
Great point. Also, acting like JW wasn't the bulk of this show's genius is silly. Throughout history, great artists have often been terrible people.
@@mcocknoxy Agreed, the show's strengths and weaknesses reflect JW's own strengths and weaknesses as a creator. The same strengths and weaknesses show up time and again in his various creations in different proportions. I don't have a problem calling out JW for being a crappy boss but he's hardly the only one out there. Plenty of creators/bosses IRL are power abusing assholes who still manage to accomplish alot.
@@spectreharlequin bingo
He's not a pig for the way he treats people alone. Sure he's equal opportunity on that. However the way he writes about women is very clearly piggy, as is the way he treats intimate relationships.
The Goblin king is a leaf on the wind. Watch how he soars
A couple of years after Serenity came out, my daughter asked if I knew how to make a Firefly fan cry in 4 words. "Leaf on the wind." Followed by, "Mom, you're not supposed to really cry!" 😢✌🖖
This comment is underneath the wrong serenity review. Under the other serenity review, I would have responses I could voice.
@@margaretwordnerd5210 A way to do it in six words is “How do Reavers clean their spears?”
@@fakjbf3129 😱😥 You are evil. Well played!
Don't make me cry
Super stoked to see you give this IP more than a cursory glance! There’s a ton of interesting things about this series, including the way things are filmed, lit, and how transitions are handled!
Yes please do a part 2 😭❤️❤️ i love this show so much and rly enjoyed ur take on it !!
Yes please cover the rest of the series!
When Firefly was first advertised I honestly hated the idea, mainly due to the amazingly bad promotion it was given and in part to me still being pissed of Farscape had just been cancelled. Once I actually watched it (in the correct order) it still to this day is my number one sci fi tv show.
Farscape is another sci fi great from that period that doesn't get the love it deserves.
Farscape is the better of the two shows imo but they're both victims of two of the worst cancellation decisions of all time lol
Farscape had way more time to breathe and develop, for me it's the GOAT, with 2003 Battlestar right behind. Firefly is cozy love and laughs though, who knows what it'd could have been with a similar episode count.
@@MagusMarquillinagreed. The first season of Farscape is very uneven. But it was unique in showing a frontier mentality to space with food shortages and evil empires and gritty labourers eking out a life. It paved the way for gritty shows like Firefly and dare I say BSG? I can’t think of another show that went that dark in representing the future before Farscape.
@@susanrobertson984 And not just representing "future" (the Peacekeepers can make a pretty good future humanity allegory), but also the present since John Crichton is from our time - or 1999 at least. He tries at every opportunity to relate his experiences with humanity, both for the audience's sake and to keep from going insane, which got amazingly more likely with every season. I love how they ultimately kept Earth in the picture for someone lost in space without a "Robinson family" or crew, who instead had to make a family with some very alien aliens, as only Jim Henson's co. could make.
The fact we only have one season of Firefly is proof we are not in the Prime Universe.
And not even a full season at that! :(
Just rewatched Firefly... yes you should 100% do a full series review. I love this show for so many reasons, just the perfect cast, great sets, great story. I am sure you will love it too!
I think it's important to realize that while a lot of the tropes present here were a thing in 2002, it was a lot more common for your casual fan to not be aware of these tropes back then. We all of us had a much more unique and personal experience with genre fiction and depending on the depth and breadth of that experience a lot of people simple had not experienced many of the tropes used here. Which is to say, this was their first exposure to them. I think that plays a big part in why so many casual sci-fi fans love this, because it was kinda perfect for them. It seems to someone uninitiated, which again, many of us were back then, that this was just brimming with great ideas rather than brimming with tropes.
It's hard to truly understand what it was like, especially knowing that you and many of your viewers were either not alive when this came out or you were so young that it did not even cross your radar. To someone who was in smack dab in the middle of the flowering of their nerd life at this point, (16 years old when it came out), this show seemed beyond brilliant. I have since come to see that it does indeed rely heavily on tropes, but back then, I had no idea.
These days, with the internet and just the way we communicate and discuss ideas and fiction, it's a lot harder for a person who is a fan of a genre to not be aware of the tropes, so it might seem odd but again, things were a lot more individualized back then, we all had our blindspots. If something wasn't covered in star-trek then there was a good chance people had never seen the idea before.
Yes! I was thinking the exact same thing. I was about 13 when I first watched Firefly and it rewrote my brain. While I was already a big ol’ nerd, I didn’t have the language to describe why I loved it so much, I just knew I loved it and it has undoubtedly informed my opinions about genre fiction going forward. Firefly was the introduction to tropes and campy SF for me, that has become mainstream today in our very “nerdy is cool” pop culture landscape. You cannot discount the impact Firefly had on the genre and the culture over the past 22 years.
I'll add that one other reason to revel in the tropes is that Firefly is doing something novel. They are doing cowboy stuff in space. Many other works had been "westerns in space" but not to the extent or quality that Firefly had. Many of the viewers of Firefly were well versed in the tropes of the western genre.
Please god i didn’t know i needed a Daniel Green deep dive into Firefly. Pls pls continue
Thank you for starting this journey and allowing us to follow you on it. I wish I could go back and watch it all for the first time again.
The next episode was written in a weekend to replace the pilot so keep that in mind for giur review. It really elevates it.
Would love to see a part 2, Daniel! Loved this video, thanks!
I am so glad you are getting into firefly. Please go through the entire season. I love watching/listening. You'll love it!
Yes, we want a part 2!
I am very much looking forward to you watching the rest and reporting back. When you go from the show to the movie, remember us oldies had a long wait with baited breath before we knew the movie was happening. I went to a packed theater on opening night with many Jayne hats and people in costume. People cheered, laughed, hooted, screamed (you know when) and cried. It was an awesome experience. I think the moral debate of the series also opened a lot of minds and it pushed boundaries for the time. I really hope you enjoy watching the rest of the show and thank you for this channel, it is always awesome.
I would like to watch another episode where you talk about watching the rest of the show and maybe one about the movie separately? Maybe write down your expectations before because that is definitely entertaining in this one!
Oh and more Dungeon Crawler Carl Reviews! Have you listened to the audiobooks? so Amazing. Princess Donut is on point.
Thanks for your time,
Tina
Shiney!! love firefly/serenity used to watch it on repeat for years. thanks for reminding me to watch it again :)
After years of reflection the conclusion I’ve come to is that this show was created as an insidious mild torture device meant to follow me through life like a sneeze or a yawn that can never be completed. I’ll go years without it coming up and without it troubling me, but then a little spark triggers the same “wtf!? That should have been completed!” sensation, and I must carry out the required watch thru and grumble.
But, yes, it was just straight up upsetting how good the chemistry was between the crew. The world was upsettingly well built and developed.
I think you missed an important point that to me REALLY showed me how much Mal changed from the opening scene to now when Shepard Book asked if he could say grace at the meal, and Mal responded "Only if you do it out loud." For someone who was clearly religious in the opening scene, to swap to that, you know he's been through some shit that changed him.
Supposedly every character is supposed to represent a part of Mal that he lost in the war.
I LOVE FIRE FLY! I love that someone is covering it.
Take my love, take my land, take me where i can not stand...
I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me!!!
Take me out to the black, tell them I ain't comin' back.
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me... ❤❤❤
If you watch the extras on the dvd set they said Fox wanted to air “The Train Heist” first because they wanted to “throw the viewers into the middle of the action.” Honestly it sounds like Fox didn’t want to do a science fiction show but JW brought them so much success with Buffy and Angel they felt they couldn’t say no so they sabotaged it. The trailers for the show before it first aired were for the original pilot so when viewers tuned in for the first episode a lot of them were confused and thought they may have missed an episode. It brought on a lot of confusion and people had issues following the plot and caring about the characters since they never got a proper introduction.
The Train Job was a good starting point, too. At least we got the original pilot, even though Fox didn't like it.
Please do the rest of the show. I am always fascinated to hear your opinion on these types of things. Great way navigating the issues as well.
The characters have a chemistry that most shows take 2 or 3, 20 episode long, seasons to establish and every single episode drips with heart that is hard to find in shows today
I'm such a lover of this show, it was my comfort watch during finals in college. My hot take is that I love it as it is and am not super eager to fill in all of the gaps. I feel like I've been given enough time to meet some wonderful people and see a glimpse into their lives, even if I have to leave with many things left unanswered.
From my understanding, the exec(s) thought that the pilot Serenity, was too long and without enough action to grab and hold the attention of the audience. So after it was shot they demanded that the next episode was going to be the first shown. The writers then had to come up with a way to introduce all the characters (with their backstories) in a 50 min episode that had more action. The second episode (that was the first aired) had to be written in just a few days. The Train Job did a pretty good job, but it wasn't comparable to the original pilot. I was lucky enough to be introduced to the series when I bought the DVD's so I got to experience it the way it was meant to be.
I'm an old -- I watched Firefly when it was on the air... and I can tell you, they didn't just screw it up by airing it out of order, they moved it around on the schedule all the time. I remember setting up my DVR to record and coming home and finding I'd recorded the wrong show because they'd moved Firefly to a different day and time. It really was like they were trying to deliberately tank the show.
As to why they aired it out of order, there is an answer. I'm sure someone has already told you but just in case -- the network felt this was too complicated and so the next episode is (The Train Job) was written to function as a pilot as well. It is a good episode, but not as good a pilot as, well, the actual pilot.
My opinion was this was too high concept for whoever was running the network at the time. In contrast, there was another show that they were airing called "Meet John Doe" or something like that, that they pushed super hard and had on a regular schedule, and no one talks about that show anymore. But the concept (the 'mystery') was easy to explain (dude wakes up, doesn't know who he is, but somehow knows everything else -- like, he's a walking encyclopedia or something -- so the 'question' was easy "who is John Doe?"). I think they couldn't figure out what people would talk about with Firefly, what the question was, what the mystery was, and so they sort of gave up on it and it floundered.
I think I only ended up seeing like four of the episodes when they originally aired because of the scheduling. It was absolutely dreadful.
You had a DVR in 2002? Fancy, we just had a VCR and a TV Guide.
PLEASE do more Firefly review content. Thank you.
Please continue! I love hearing your take on it, and now I’m going to have to go watch it again.
Shawna Trpcic ("trip-chick" is how she pronounced it) was an EXCELLENT costume designer. She took over The Mandalorian after season 1 as well as The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka. (She won the Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Television and was nominated for all three for the Primetime Emmy Awards).
Funny you started covering this show, I was literally rewatching it the other day as I'm starting a Sci Fi RPG with this as the chief inspiration
How do Reavers clean their blades?
They put them through the Wash.
I'll get my coat...
Why yes, I WOULD like to see a part 2
oh i am so down for this and would love to see more! great stuff Daniel :)
I'd been on the fence about starting the show, but seeing this video convinced me to watch the pilot for myself and receive my writing masterclass. Thanks!
Its not reavers in the war at the start? Its the alliance. The side that Mal spends the rest of the season trying to avoid...
More Firefly videos, we're BEGGING you! Also I'm more toward the trope-hating end of the spectrum but it never bothered me here.
Please make a part 2!!!
I love your channel so it's great seeing you cover other properties I enjoy. Come for the Wheel of Time, stay for the Daniel?
Do continue, it is a nice way to relive the series
Deep dive! Deep dive! Deep dive! DEEP DIVE!!!!!!!!!
Please do more on this wonderful series, I and many people I know never knew about it until years after it had been cancelled. It's such an amazing series to watch but also a bit masochistic as it doesn't even get a full season and there are so many amazing overarching plotlines that never get resolved in the show that while some are shown in the movie probably would have been much better in the show. Browncoats for life.
I love Firefly!! Please do a deep dive of every episode 😁
I'd love to see coverage of the rest of the show+movie!
Great video. I started watching Firefly when it came out on DVD in the UK and instantly fell in love with the series. It also coincided with my Dark Tower obsession. Alternate westerns were doing well back in the early 2000s and both were hugely influential in my life. You should go on and finish the show and the movie.
I really like that Firefly leaned into tropes. Because I think it was going somewhere with it and it just never got a chance to go there.
One of the things that has always been really important in that particular pig's work is taking those tropes and then subverting them. I just don't think that Firefly got a chance to subvert them because it wasn't on the air long enough
Firefly getting canned was the first of the shots to the stomach. Thanks for this, going to rewatch
you definitely did make me feel old right there. felt a new grey hair grow in. Yes, I always enjoy hearing people's reactions to / thoughts about Firefly, so please do the rest of the series if you're willing.
Ignoring the intentionally cowboy/western elements, horses as transportation actually makes a lot of sense for newly settled planets in a sci-fi setting and is certainly not the first time it's been used. Vehicles take up space, need fuel, need spare parts and maintenance, and if you ship 100 tractors then you will only ever have 100 tractors minus any that breakdown. Horses can be transported as frozen embryos, can reproduce, and can live in any environment that humans can live in.
Great video, Daniel! You absolutely should do more videos on the rest of the season (as well as the movie). (Or at a minimum watch it!) There are so many of those "reaction" type videos around this series, it would be nice to see more content like yours that critiques the narrative elements and provides more depth. And now I'm off to a rewatch!
I love Firefly so much. Is such a fun season
def need more of this. Love Firefly
Please do a part 2! I’m a huge fan of the show
One of my favorite shows and watching this reminded me why i liked The Expanse so much.
Great video Daniel, glad you enjoyed Firefly's pilot. Would love to see a follow up on the rest of the season.
There is a reason this is my all-time favorite show. I always want to see more Firefly content.
Apparently Fox wanted an action show and the pilot didn't have enough so they made them create a new pilot on short notice and that is The Train Job. And not only did they air the episodes out of order but they kept preempting them so there was no regular time the episodes aired.
When it comes to perfect Pilots I think that Stargate SG-1 should be mentioned. The edited version, not the full frontal nudity version that originally aired. Even if you haven't seen the movie it sets up a really interesting world and it introduces all of the characters and their motivations and it gives the whole show in overarching plot and it gives each character a motivation to continue and to grow while also just being interesting and fun. And I genuinely believe it is one of the best science fiction Pilots out there
You know whats really galling. Even after mishandling Firefly and it becoming clear that was a huge mistake, WB one upped them by cancelling Angel one of the most popular shows they had, because Whedon had asked for an early pick up so the crew knew theyd have their jobs for another year.
I know that one of the other writers has commented that if only Whedon had waited they would be sure of being picked up again, and itd be easy to blame Whedon given hes a toxic piece of crap, but in this case at least he was doing a good thing and it was a mindbogglingly stupid decision by the head of entertainment that even WB would later admit was a huge mistake.
Not only were the episodes aired out of order, they kept moving WHEN they were on.
Yep. And even then it still got about the same neilson rating for viewing figures as the X Files had in its first season, but by then broadcast media was at the start of the downward spiral its been on ever since and the goalposts of what was and wasn't supposed to be viable had moved so much it really didn't matter. It did great on home media, and in overseas territories, but Fox still didn't care. As far as the long list of Terrible Things Fox Has Done goes this is just shy of the top 5, and that's still saying something considering all the promotion of fascism, genocide and climate change denial on Fox News and seasons 10-32 of The Simpsons.
Yes please. All the firefly content!
This was a great show and story on so many levels!
Joss Whedon created Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, Agents of Shield, and The Nevers.
It's ok Gen Z, you can say his name.
You are going to need to do a video about the rest of it. You’ll love it.