Firefly (1 Viewer)

[Robert Ringwald]

It was on Friday night, so that might have something to do with it, but I can't see it doing much better even on another night.
I just finished 1.01 - The Train Job
I found it to be a little lacking, but it was the pilot (sort of) and I can easily let it slide. I found it interesting, it gave all the characters chances to tell their stories, and left enough to continue onto the series further. I enjoyed the story, and the humor was good enough that it was natural (some people do talk like that to relieve stress you know. )
The one thing I would change would be the theme music. It fits the feel of the show, but it's just not very catchy or anything. I don't see myself humming it when I'm not watching the show... (as I do with the Angel/Buffy, nearly every other theme on shows I watch...) I played the opening with the ANGEL theme music, and it seemed to fit better. I think something more along the lines of a violin might help get the feel better, but I can see Joss going for a western feel.
Overall, this was a good way to start the series, which FOX did an absolutely terrible job marketing. I see a show like this, with ratings like this getting better footing on Sci-Fi maybe. Hopefully, if it is canned, Sci-Fi would pick it up... but that's a big 'maybe'
*** (****) (I'm going to let this one grow on me)
The American Embassy (which aired in place of Ally McBeal for about 4 weeks last year) scored about 5.3 million viewers each week on average, and it was canned before all 6 (count 'em!) season one episodes aired. Unless FIREFLY really pick up the steam and score at least 5.5-6 million viewers a week, I predict cancellation.

 

[Joel Mack]

Also from Zap2It:

The 18 to 49 numbers told a different story though. FOX's two new series topped the demo with a 3.6, followed by ABC, 2.5, NBC, 2.3, and CBS, 1.8.

Take what you will from that...

 

[Scott Weinberg]

I was actually looking forward to Firefly, but after what I saw last night - I wouldn't be surprised if they canceled the sloppy thing before next week's episode!
"What's the chain of command?"
"It's the chain I beat you with until you do what I say."
I'm paraphrasing here, but is this the sort of dialogue we can thank the immortal Joss Whedon for? Please.
Fox took an already derivative product and somehow made it more bland than any sci-fi show should ever be.
And don't gimme none of that 'why are you even posting?' argument. If I like the show I can comment, but if I don't - I have to keep my mouth shut? I don't think so.
For the sake of those who like the show (and for Kleist, who'd like a TV show called "Food Shopping" if it had Whedon's name on it), I hope it sticks around.
I also gotta wonder about the logic of uber-genius ( ) Joss claiming there will NEVER be alien creatures on the show. Heck, he can do what he wants with his program, but surely it's not a great idea to paint yourself into a corner by promising a sci-fi series that will NEVER feature aliens. ("Come watch my new horror show! But it will NEVER have any monsters!")
As far as 'hard sci-fi' vs. 'soft sci-fi' - I think both have a place in the movie/TV world, but Firefly is neither. A somewhat futuristic setting and a few spaceships does NOT automatically equal 'science fiction'. This is yet another teen-centric ensemble piece with lots of glib dialogue and 'wishful thinking' chemistry.
I'd say I'll give it a few more shots, but I doubt it will be around that long.
Go ahead: kill me now I guess.

 

[Jason Quillen]

Well, I got pretty much what I expected from this. I'm as big a Buffy / Angel fan as anyone on this forum, and I'll trust Whedon on most stuff, but this show just seems to be missing its spark. I'll agree that the theme music is no good. I understand Joss wrote it, and thats pretty cool, but I dont think its very good at all. Its too slow and theres not enough to it to make it memorable.
As for the show itself, it was kinda slow but picked up in the end. It probably would have been better to see the Pilot first, cause I felt like I was just thrown into the middle of things last night.
Honestly I dont know what to make of the show yet...I'm willing to give it more time to grow on me though (I wont exactly be enthusiastic about it yet though). But I have the distinct feeling that it wont be around long enough to grow on me.
JQ

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

One must remember that this is Fox Friday we're talking about. Nothing does well on Fox Fridays. That must be taken into account when considering the numbers.

EDIT: Damn my browser and it's caching setup!

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

I thought it was okay, though I lean more towards Scott's view of it than the other. As a point of reference, I have absolutely no feelings one way or another towards Buffy and co.
I wouldn't mind a bit more sci-fi thrown in. I agree it could use more than a couple of spaceship shots and the term planets being thrown around. If someone just tuned into the middle of the show, it looked more like a Road Warrior knockoff than anything else.
I'll tune in to see how it develops but it certainly didn't crack my must watch list.

 

[Andy Sheets]

One must remember that this is Fox Friday we're talking about. Nothing does well on Fox Fridays. That must be taken into account when considering the numbers.

I agree but the real question is whether Fox realizes that. For some reason they always seem to expect monster ratings on Friday evenings, which leads them to cancel shows very quickly.

 

[Josh Lowe]

Wow. I thought it looked extremely slick for television.

The costumes were very poor and the main character's pseudomullet has got to go. Some of the sets were also pretty bad.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

Pseudomullet? I thought it was a protomullet!

 

[David Williams]

I as watching late night tv last night and it finally hit me, as to my expectations of the sci-fi/western balance on Firefly: Stargate SG-1.
For those of us who have never seen the show/movie, the Goa'uld civilization uses highly advanced technology under an Egyptian/Greek/Your-Ancient-Civilization-Here style. Pyramid-shaped spaceships, Sarcophagus healing chambers, etc. A very cool melding of the ancient and the very high tech.
Hopefully Firefly will strike a better balance between its two concepts in the coming weeks... otherwise I see myself checking out another show on Friday night.

 

[DaveF]

As far as 'hard sci-fi' vs. 'soft sci-fi' - I think both have a place in the movie/TV world, but Firefly is neither. A somewhat futuristic setting and a few spaceships does NOT automatically equal 'science fiction'. This is yet another teen-centric ensemble piece with lots of glib dialogue and 'wishful thinking' chemistry.

The insert-degree-of-rigidity sci-fi categorization seems overblown and unhelpful. This sort of show, like most other "sci-fi" shows & movies, just take advantage of some fictional, high-tech setting that allows for cool gadgets, techno-babble, and usually aliens. But it's not necessarily based on an extrapolation of real science. Who cares?

This is, in my mind, the counterpart to "fantasy" which is set in the past, with cool wizards, monsters and spells. It also has no basis on reality, and should not be confused with actual "hi-fi" (historical fiction).

How about we ignore the lack of "science" in the show, as we ignore the lack of historical accuracy in Lord of the Rings, and enjoy (or not) based on other more useful characteristics.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

What I like about the Goa'uld in Stargate is that they are able to maintain a futuristic look, even given the ancient civ look (maybe because the civs are so old as too look outlandish) however Firefly has yet to achieve this level of success with their design, perhaps because the wild west is not only not that long ago but also well exposed in everyone's consciousness.
Honestly, the best sci-fi as wild west type milieu was the Han Solo/Cantina scenes of the original Star Wars: it was able to envoke the spirit of that era while never losing its uniqueness.

 

[Phil Florian]

What I really want to see is a variety of looks for these settled planets. The idea that the farther out one gets from the main empire, the more primitive it gets makes sense. Lots of good sci-fi (Heinlein and Card come to mind) have this as a part of storylines. Hopefully they all won't look the same. Some would look "wild west" but others could be tropical or at least forest covered. The lo/hi tech thing should remain but the look could change depending on who terraformed the planets first and inhabited them, etc. Hopefully they have a budget enough to shoot outside of Death Valley once in a while.

Phil

 

[Craig S]

For some reason they (Fox) always seem to expect monster ratings on Friday evenings, which leads them to cancel shows very quickly.

The reason is "The X-Files". Fox has been trying to recapture the cachet that show had on Fridays for years now. But I don't think they've been that quick with the axe. They did stick with "Millennium" for 3 years, and "Dark Angel" for 2.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Did the X-Files ever have very good ratings on Friday? I thought they got much better when the show moved to Sunday.

 

[Craig S]

Brad, I think you're right about the ratings, but "The X-Files" became a pop-culture phenomenon during its initial seasons on Fridays. I remember a lot of angst expressed by the fans when the decision to move it to Sundays was announced.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Andy Sheets wrote:

ZERO![/I]]Quote:

I had no prior knowledge of what the show was described as "from the get-go". I'd only seen the ads for it on Fox, from which I couldn't tell what it was supposed to be. I didn't expect the program to be Analog or the like on film, but I did expect it to meet some minimal threshold of plausibility and originality. The episode just aired last Friday night failed utterly.
I've always avoided this Vampire Slayer business, despite the critics' fawning all over it. (They've traditionally looked down their noses at both science fiction and supernatural horror. They're too "sophisticated" to suspend disbelief, you see. That's why they like the dilutive mishmash that is so often today passed off as "sci-fi" or "horror". To them it's just a "hoot".) So, if this Buffy is truly imbued with the same "attitude" as Firefly, it's been a good call on my part to avoid it, after all.
I will give Firefly a couple more weeks to show it's about something more than empty "hip-coolness", but if that's all it is---which is what seems at present to be the case---then it's out for me.
Peace, y'all! (Or "Serenity now!")

 

[Jason Seaver]

I'm sure Jason Seaver will be in here to naysay soon

Well, Joss deserves it.

There's quite a bit about the show I like. I like the frontier-like setting, but don't feel too comfortable with the geography of the setting. From the open, I gather than it's one solar system with dozens to hundreds of terraformed worlds. I'll buy that, I suppose - figure that the head of the Alliance or whatever is the one that closest reflects Earth-normal conditions, and that these stories will mostly take place on the moons of gas giants in the outer system. Of course, this may lead a person to wonder why gravity seems so dang constant, but I'll let it pass until we've visited four consecutive systems with Earth-normal gravity. Anyway, if I can be convinced that getting tech from the central systems to the outskirts is expensive, I'll buy it.

But, dang, this all seems so familiar. The dialogue sounds just like "Buffy" and "Angel". A great deal is hackneyed, but not in a cool, homage-y way. It's got the 1930s style, but delivered just a notch too slowly. It works on "Buffy" and "Angel" because of how self-aware the characters are, but that doesn't fit the Serenity crew - they seem too aware that they're saying clever things. And everyone has the same quick wit; you could move dialog from one character to another without noticing much difference.

And let us not forget the engineer. You know, the young girl who is scientifically and mechanically brilliant but socially awkward. I love this character. I loved her when she was named Willow Rosenberg, I loved her even more when she was named Winifred Burkle, and I bet I'll even love her under the name of... Um, what's her name again? Oh, Kaylee Frye (thank you, IMDB). Yeah, anyway, Jewel Staite is a cutie and she's playing one of my favorite Whedon stock characters. Nothing against her, but does Joss even know he's doing this?

Personal prejudice time... Precognative abilities annoy the living *#(&% out of me. Let's hope they don't go too far down that road. Also, some of the effects have that "look" to them, where it seems like the CGI stuff is using a different color palette than the live-action stuff.

That said, I enjoyed it. I like Westerns, I like space opera, and I like to see genres thrown in the blender. The review which compared it to "Brisco County Junior" has a point in terms of the feel it's going for and how relatively well it mixes genres, but it's nowhere near Brisco's level of quality and charm.

But, it could very well share "Brisco"'s fate - the forgotten lead-in to a series that becomes a hit. "Brisco" and "The X-Files" both premiered in 1993 as Fox's "High Voltage Friday Night"; "Brisco" ended after one brilliant season while "X-Files" became a hit despite not peaking until much later (and that peak never did approach "Brisco"). "John Doe" looks pretty darn good, and might become a breakout hit like "The X-Files" for the same reason - it wraps its fantasy elements in an accessible veneer, rather than flaunting its nerd appeal like "Firefly" and "Brisco".

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

For myself, this seems more like a sci-fi themed western than a western themed sci-fi. I'd prefer the latter but, like I said, I'll have to see where the next episodes go.

 

[Patrick Sun]

After flying back home from L.A., I tried watching Firefly (time-shift via VCR), and I made it through 30 minutes before I doozed off. What I saw, I sort of liked, there's some okay setup for "punch lines", but I'm not too hooked on it yet. I did dig the "companion" (Morena Baccalin) because you can't not take your eyes off her, she's very attractive.