Firefly, space westerns, and the new diplomacy.

So what finally swayed me to add Firefly to my list of sci-fi preferences? Five reasons.

First, a scene. Towards the beginning of the Serenity pilot, there is a brief scene in which Wash plays with two plastic dinosaurs, imitating their conversation:

WASH (as stegosaurus) We will rule over this land, and we will call it....This Land.
(as t-rex) I think we should call it....your grave!
(steg) Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
(t-rex) Ha ha! Mine is an evil laugh! Now you die! 

The "sudden but inevitable betrayal" won my heart. Second, the network cancellation. The sci-fi-show-cancelled-midseason-by-networks factor always picques my interest.

Third, the countless libertarian themes, from the theme song to the dialogue. Whedon calls it "Stagecoach in space"-- the combination of Western and galaxy frontier works perfectly, though the southern accents are a little forced at times. Consider lines like, "That's what governments are for-- to get in man's way".

Fourth, the clever exchanges-- When Wash is comforting his woman who worries that things are not going well, he reminds her, "Sweetie, we're crooks. If everything were all right, we'd be in jail".

And finally, the character of Inara, as played by the exquisite Morena Baccarin, is tempting, to say the least. As a "companion", Inara straddles prostutition and the arts of the courtesan in just the sort of way that makes you want to quit your day-job. She is Serenity's "ambassador". Given my view that courtesans might be the most skilled diplomats and intelligence collectors, I am pleased to see an acknowledgement of sexual diplomacy in Whelan's imagined future.

What happened to Firefly? Babylon 5 fans will recognize the story. Apparently, the show was more "adventure of the mind" than formulaic adventure. And why bother with fantasy when we can get our daily dose of reality via the cornucopia of reality tv shows?

Whedon and Fox never saw eye-to-eye on Firefly. Problems were evident from the beginning. In fact, Fox didn't want to show Whelan's choice-- the Serenity episodes-- as the pilot because it has too much plot and not enough action for the dolts at network headquarters. Instead, the "Train Job" episode was shown as the pilot. In this Science Fiction Weekly interview with some of the actors and executive producer Tim Minear, it seems the cast was fairly sure the show would popular enough to move beyond the usual sci-fi audiences. Actor Adam Baldwin comments on what makes Firefly different from other sci-fi series:

This sci-fi in the future show has no aliens, and I wasn't sure how that was going to play. Going in, I was saying, "Well, maybe the audience will want that. I don't know." The vision is it's only 500 years in the future. That's not that long. And we really wouldn't spread out that far, just when you consider the distances you have to cover in a galaxy or the universe. So chances are we probably wouldn't run into tentacly goopy-faced aliens with lasers and things, which are expensive to use. So I just love the nuts-and-bolts aspects of the show, because these guys are trying to fly under the radar as working-class grunts.

I'm with Roderick on the previously-mentioned libertarian aspects of Firefly, and liminaliz has a neat photo essay on the plot, which anarcho-capitalists will view fondly. Independence Day never sounded so scary.