Firefly Friday (first impressions)

Of the many TV shows that have spawned active fandoms, there’s none quite so ephemeral in its root substance as Joss Whedon’s 2002 sci-fi Western Firefly. While I did see the spin-off movie Serenity, it is a show that I have never watched the series until now. The film didn’t really stick with me and until recently I never had easy access to the series.

What I knew in advance was the popularity with a set of die-hard fans and a broader consensus that the show had aged badly. The reputation of Joss Whedon himself has rapidly eroded over recent years as well. What I do have is a Star Trek: Discovery sized hole in my TV watching and access to a streaming service that has its own flawed but famous space opera show sitting right there.

So buckle up and let’s go straight into the pilot…and Wikipedia tells me the pilot was shown as the final episode? Which…OK, I get that 2002 was not the high point of story-arc based TV shows but that seems particularly absurd. The idea of a first episode that introduces the characters and the set-up was very far from a new idea by 2002.

And…we are more or less straight into one of the biggest criticism I’ve seen of the show. Its attempt to blend a Western with Space Opera involves the main character being a survivor of the Civil War…and on the losing side. Was 2002 really so long ago? Checks calendar…oh, shit, yes 2002 was a long time ago. A Firefly revival now would be similar to the elapsed time between the original Star Trek and Star Trek: TNG. Even so, a de-racialised version of the US Civil War in which the quasi-libertarian mythological version (states rights!) is the reality is a very weird fantasy to attach to a TV show. Still…2002…that was a time when trendy people on the internet unironically liked Ron Paul.

Putting US political pop culture aside for a moment, this show feels really old just generally. Except for the space CGI, which has nice touches and clearly looks post-Babylon 5. It all feels oddly small, which I guess is partly the set design and probably money. I quite like the grungey cobbled-together element of the Serenity’s interior (particularly the wooden chairs and tables) but I don’t really get a feel that this inside is somehow inside the spaceship. The mechanics of having a set big enough for people and cameras to move around also makes the set feel like people are purposefully stuck in corners of a bigger space.

On planet…again, there’s a clever choice for a cheap production to go with a run-down, falling apart sort of universe. However, there’s that same odd feeling of crampedness that is a mismatch with the ambitious scale of the show. While I’m moaning about the sets, once we get to the inside of the Alliance ship…ugh… it’s starting to feel like 80’s Doctor Who.

And lots of things here with the script, the direction and the dialogue feels…not quite right. Lines fall flat, the snappy dialogue doesn’t quite snap. If I didn’t know better then I’d have guessed this was the director’s first show.

OK enough moaning. What’s right about this? The cast. They aren’t getting their best shot here but once we get past the war intro, you get a series of characters with obvious presence. Fillon, Torres, Tudyk, Baccarin, Staite and Ron Glass all command attention and give a sense of a show where multiple actors can carry the plot and where interpersonal dynamics will play an important part. I know Adam Baldwin mainly from his GamerGate reputation and his character appears to be pretty much the same character he played in that as well: a not so bright arsehole. For some reason, the rest of the characters haven’t chucked him off the ship, which again feels like the universe of 2002.

The plot itself is sub-criminal shenanigans as the plucky crew try to make their way the only way they know-how on the good ship General Lee, sorry Serenity. OK, the casual Confederacy-love isn’t quite Dukes of Hazzard bad but surely, surely even in 2002 somebody could look at it and think…maybe this is a bit of a problem. It’s almost like a weird kind of cultural appropriation, except appropriating something toxic. I do feel transported back to the internet of 2002 though.

I said at the start that I don’t recall much about the film Serenity but lots is coming back now and basically, the film is a direct sequel to the pilot? I guess that makes sense if most of the first and only series is going to be the heist of the week and the plot arc that I now see is set up in the pilot needs a resolution by the end.

I do like the causal integration of Chinese and Asian elements into the future culture. Odd there are no Asian characters, which now that I look that up is the other “things that aged really badly with Firefly”. I probably shouldn’t have looked that up because going off the pilot alone, it looks like a minor misstep in one episode but looking at the main cast for the whole series it is just baffling. Whedon imagines a future society in which people routinely use chopsticks and Chinese terms are a common part of everybody’s dialogue but not Chinese people?

Well, sorry. I didn’t get into the plot much. I didn’t talk about the Reavers and to be honest, they are worrying me. This was such a very, very odd bit of TV. Lots of brilliance but really oddly directed and full of strange, strange choices. Mashing up Westerns and space opera? Nice choice, particularly if you want cheap sets. Spaceship CGI? Nice, particularly some of the in-atmosphere shots and the occasional slightly out of focus artifice to make it feel like oh-gosh-this-is-live-footage. Everything else? I feel like I found a time capsule in which the culture clash I felt being online in 2002 has been distilled into an essence.

And yet…the Whedon trick here is to LIKE the people who he’s asking you to spend time with and give an ensemble enough space to make being with them interesting. There are so many big red flags here to toss this show out of the airlock but, hell, I want to see Alan Tudyk play with dinosaurs again.