Musings on "Firefly"

Someone should call up Joss Whedon and tell him that his obesession with the word "serenity" is unhealthy. The upcoming Firefly movie is called Serenity. This means that there are now two Firefly movies with that title, since the pilot episode, which was of course movie-length, was also titled Serenity. The ship is called Serenity. And the battle at the beginning of the pilot episode was called something like "The Battle of Serenity Valley". And "serenity" is the last word of the last verse of the series' theme song.

I find it strange that the upcoming movie doesn't have the word "Firefly" in the title. The obvious title of "Firefly: The Movie" would probably have been a bit boring, but I see nothing wrong with preceding "Serenity", or whatever else they might have come up with, with "Firefly:". I saw a commercial for the movie on TV the other day, and I probably wouldn't have known it had anything to do with the series Firefly if I had never seen the show. And the only reason I've seen the show is because my girlfriend recently lent me the DVDs. I had heard of the show back when it first aired in 2002, but I never watched it until now.

In case you're not familiar with Firefly, allow me to describe it. If you've ever watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, you may recall episodes in which they visited other planets that were members of the Federation, and the people on these planets lived in clay huts and wore tunics. Now, I'm not talking about primitive civilizations; I'm talking about actual members of the Federation, who had spaceships and other advanced technology, but the technology was not prominently visible in their culture. So they lived in clay huts and wore tunics. And flew spaceships.

Firefly is sort of like this. It takes place in a future in which humans have spread out to dozens of other planets, but all of these planets are the Wild West. Complete with floppy hats, gunfights on dusty plains, cattle rustlers, and train robberies. And twangy music. Lots of twangy music.

It's not a bad show, just very different from most sci-fi space shows. Which is probably why it's so popular: because of its originality. But it's also a little weird, so I can see why a big network would cancel a show like this, because they didn't "get it" or whatever. Personally, I could take or leave it, but I will go see the movie when it comes out.

And I'll probably see the inevitable sequels as well: Serenity 2; Serenity 3: Serenity; and Serenity to the Power of Serenity.