Okay, it's 1956. Maybe 1957. Everyone else in the family is watching TV in the back room, but little Billy Crider is in his own room with the latest issue of Imaginative Tales. (Motto: Action-Packed Science Fiction!") There's a great cover, and there are stories by, say, Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, Ivar Jorgenson, Milton Lesser, Robert Moore Williams, Alexander Blade. And best of all, there's a "full-length novel" by Edmond Hamilton. To heck with TV. Little Billy Crider is going to be blissfully happy for a couple of hours with blasting ray guns, ships hopping into hyperdrive, hideous aliens, square-jawed heroes, and tough space babes.Fast-forward to 2005. Old Bill Crider goes to a theater to see Serenity. He never saw Firefly, the TV series it's an extension of, so he doesn't know what to expect. But what he gets is that issue of Imaginative Tales, a little updated, maybe, but still pretty much the same characters, same story, same sense of fun, and for two hours Old Bill is is blissfully happy, transported back to a time he never thought he'd visit again. George Lucas might have made this movie once upon a time, but now he's completely unable to (if we're to judge by the last three Star Wars episodes). I'm glad that someone knows how, and now I'll have to find Firefly on DVD.
6 comments:
I got the FIREFLY box set last year and we ripped through it, loving each episode more than the last. It's a great entertainment value and I can't wait to see SERENITY.
The Firefly DVDs are a must. I saw the show when it aired and watched the whole DVD set a month ago to prepare for the movie. I am psyched for it, but won't get to go til Monday or Tuesday.
I agree with everything that has been written. Firefly was a series killed prematurely by a network that mishandled the project from the word go - delayed it for baseball, then aired the episodes out of order, then cancelled it after showing the first episodes (a two hour pilot split in two) last. Two episodes weren't even shown on Fox. The DVD set corrects everything but the delay and the cancellation. I'm waiting with bated breath to get my copy (the store I go to had it advertised at a great price but their shipment was delayed).
Oh yeah, and a great theme song which apparently is barely heard in the movie.
Your title made me laugh, because everytime I see that movie advertised on television I want to add "now" after the title. Too much Seinfeld, I guess.
Joss Whedon is a genius.
Actually, FOUR episodes are included on the DVD set that never aired on TV.
Bill, I suspect you'll like the series even more than you did the movie, because the space opera/horse opera motifs are far more blatant in the ongoing, with tongue planted firmly in cheek in more scenes than not.
I still like Farscape and Babylon 5 more than Firefly, but the final four Firefly episodes are better than the first four, and I could see this show was rapidly improving on itself each outing and definitely had tremendous potential had FOX not butchered it mercilessly.
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