Firefly: Re-Watching the First Few Episodes

I did wonder if there was a Chinese wing of the Alliance, or whether Firefly was set in a particularly Americanised bit (Badger is something of a cartoon Londoner, so maybe there's a whole planet of them somewhere). A lot of countries have a myth of frontier or empire that could be adapted for space.

Thinking about it, "Out Of Gas" pulls quite a lot of random rabbits out of hats (Serenity just breaks, some pirates just turn up, Mal just has a gun within reach) that could have been explained a bit better (maybe the editing was slightly off here?). However, any issues with the logic are offset by the nice structure and the entertaining flashbacks.
 
Out of Gas was one of my least favourite episodes, but it was tolerable because it was flashback heavy. The one with their former platoon guy turned organ smuggler was pretty good for that too, plus it introduced some darker aspects of future tech.
 
I think when it comes right down to it, Joss Whedon, as with Buffy, didn't really think past the premise. He isn't a world-builder, more of a story-crafter; he had the idea of space western with a motley crew of confederates and didn't put much thought into the hows.
 
"Ariel": Definitely one of the better ones, and one of the more ambitious episodes in terms of scenery and scope. The majority of the episode involves the planning and execution of a heist, and everyone has a part to play (except Inara, who is away, and Book, who doesn't appear at all). We get a glimpse of life in the core worlds, which looks like a cross between the Star Trek Federation, one of the cleaner cyberpunk futures, and Milton Keynes. There are some good twists and turns and we get a first glimpse of the blue-handed secret service agents of the Alliance and their strange weaponry. While it doesn't have the thoughtfulness of "Janestown", it is well-plotted and very entertaining, and widens the Firefly world.

There's an interesting bookending to the heist, which, you'll be pleased to hear, goes (very) slightly beyond me just saying that I dislike River. At the start, River inexplicably knifes Jayne, says a quip and shuts down. Jayne raises the reasonable point that she's a complete liability, and Mal responds that she's part of the crew and that's that (a reoccuring theme with him). Events unfold from there, but what we eventually get is Jayne on the one hand, and Mal on the other.

For me, Mal's loyalty to his crew and the fact that by the end he's morally right (and that River is dislikable) doesn't trump the fact that Jayne is justifiably aggrieved, but morally wrong (and that Jayne is one of the most entertaining characters). I don't think this is meant to be equivocal, and I don't think viewers are meant to feel much sympathy for Jayne. Perhaps it's just me, but this is one of the moments where the show misjudges the effect it's having. As ever, it would have been interesting to see how the River-v-Jayne relationship turned out in the long run.
 
See, Jayne is the only one who ever seemed to recognise just how utterly mental River was. If it wasn't for him using it to justify selling her out, and Mal's general hatred of all things Alliance, they'd probably have dumped her on the nearest planet even if they did need the doctor.

The hands of blue really bugged me, not because they were in the show, but because they scrapped a good thing to make a generic 'bad guy' for the movie. Their crazy sonic grenadey thing was cool, and the complete commitment to secrecy meaning they'd kill anyone who even spoke to her made them dangerous, and the two by two thing was just the right level of creepy.

The main thing I didn't get though would have been Inara. Okay, so companions are high class prostitutes, but why do people respect that? And why is she so dismissive of non guild trained "whores" in that brothel episode (which had the fun wild west siege)? I could understand that they might treat them a little better, knowing they're clean and well skilled, but she basically gets diplomatic status wherever they go.
 
I think Inana is an area where your comment about Whedon's world-building sounds spot-on. The respect shown for her is a real anomaly, both in a standard space-explorers story and a western. If anything she seems like a geisha, but there's nothing else to support feudal Japan as an influence. I'd say the same thing about the titled nobility in "Shindig", which feels like Dune in the antebellum South.

It occurred to me last night that Inara, River and Simon could all have been rolled up into one character: a fugitive noble or powerful person, who would generate plots by being on the run and would give the crew an opportunity to deal with high society. I'm not sure that would have made it a better show, though.

It's interesting how different characters had the potential to generate stories, because of their backgrounds, and how even in the first season, characters disappear from episodes where they'd be dead weight: River in "Our Mrs Reynolds", Inara in "Ariel" etc. That's pretty standard in a show set on a big spaceship, but it's quite noticeable where the crew and setting are so small.
 
Simon was actually my favourite of the three. River was just Whedon's OP weird girl trope, and Inara made no logical sense. A disgraced (or fugitive) doctor taking up with a small crew would open up the same story generation; he was taken by those hill folk, planned the Ariel heist, would be treated better than any prostitute by colonies lacking even basic medicine of their own, etc. I liked how he was uptight and slowly began to change to fit in.

Yea, some characters disappearing for the sake of the plot was a bit dumb, but they could use inara being with a john, and River being half comatose to explain it. Just devil's advocate - I don't think I really believe that.
 
I'm not sure that I mind Inara's role not quite making sense at this stage, so long as there's some sort of convincing explanation given at some point in the future. And I wouldn't want to get rid of her, as she's reasonably likeable (and could be a romantic interest for Mal perhaps, if the show had continued). To be honest, I don't think I'd get rid of any of the crew, even if I would portray River very differently. They tend to work very well, even if some have to disappear for the odd episode.

By the way, does OP stand for over-powered?
 
Toby Frost said:
By the way, does OP stand for over-powered?
Click to expand...

Ha, yea. I forgot I was posting on a forum where OP means something different.

Yea, I liked Inara as a 'person' although the love interest with Mal always felt a little forced to me. He's the dashing brave Captain who wants to protect her, while she's the independent companion who takes pride in standing on her own, but secretly is happy that a big strong man wants to keep her safe. I get it, but it never seemed like it would work to me.

I actually liked River most of the time, but then I also liked Faith in Buffy (maybe that says something about my taste in the crazy). It'd all depend on wherever the story was taken had it continued, the first season of anything rarely features character development.

My favourites were always Jayne, Simon, and Kaylee. Mal was okay, Wash had his funny moments. Shepard Book was meh, and Zoe generally annoyed me.
 
I think Inara's problem is that she was under-developed in the series and the film didn't really leave a huge amount of room for her. So she basically existed in a character state. Shepherd Book and Jane were much the same, however their character states, once on the crew, were both a bit more stable or, in Jane's case, very overt and on the surface. Inara was more of a mystery because we couldn't easily see where she was going or such because we'd no idea of her past nor her real motivations.

We saw some of her development in the film, but because of the huge time and event jump we missed out on a huge amount of character stuff.

I think she'd have more come into her own and we'd have learned more of the upperclass life and life divide going on as the series developed. It's easy to be critical of her character, forgetting that we didn't even get a full seasons' worth of episodes before it was cancelled.
 
"War Stories": Another solid episode, perhaps slightly better than "Out Of Gas". We get some links to earlier episodes: while trying to sell the medicine they stole in "Ariel", the crew run foul of Niska, the crime lord from "The Train Job". Niska, who bears a strong resemblance to the crazed Nazi dentist from Marathon Man, has the makings of a decent reoccurring villain. It also deals with Wash's (probably inevitable) sense of insecurity compared to Zoe and Mal, and for one of the more violent episodes has some good comedy lines. We get a first glimpse that River is not just a genius, but an expert marksman, and that Book has a surprising amount of expertise around firearms.

One thing I really like about Firefly is that Serenity isn't armed, which forces the crew to come up with more interesting tactics than just zapping things from a distance. Another thing that strikes me is that, for all my carping, I've yet to run into an episode that wasn't any good. A few have been middling, but the majority are really pretty decent.
 
Toby, are you finding them as good as you remembered, or has your memory been deceiving you? I'm finding that they tend to sag just a bit more in the middle of episodes than I recall, and I also don't remember them as being quite as 'talky'...
 
Generally, as good, and in some places slightly better. The things I liked and disliked are still pretty much the same as I recall. The main change in that area is that I now find Kaylee slightly twee whereas I used to think she was pretty - dare I say it - shiny, and the more normal person-with-a-gun characters feel more interesting. It's all very slightly hokier than I recall and the elements don't blend as smoothly as I remember, but I think that just reflects that TV has moved on, everything is slicker, and my main run-in with the setting has been the film, which of course has a bigger budget.

I'm interested by how much Whedon's writing reminds me of Aaron Sorkin's. The style of speech, the ensemble cast and the mixture of drama and comedy in Firefly reminds me of The West Wing. I was also interested to see that some of the episodes were written by Ben Edlund, who wrote the original cartoon of The Tick.
 
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The Train Job was a really good episode. At least in terms of worldbuilding. You got to see how much the colonies suffer and how little the Alliance cares about them. It was also one of the more believable towns and how they might really behave.

Toby Frost said:
The main change in that area is that I now find Kaylee slightly twee whereas I used to think she was pretty - dare I say it - shiny
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Damn you, now I'm worried about a rewatch...
 
pyan said:
I still say "Shiny!" occasionally today as a mark of approval - sadly, it just gets puzzled looks from most gorram people...
Click to expand...

Huh, so that's where I say it from then... I never quite pieced that together before now...
 
You could start an interesting thread there: "What's your favourite smeggin' shiny SFF swearword?"...
 
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