Imagine if you will, a group of confederate civil war veterans, who are making their way through the American Wild West of the 1870’s and 80’s. Visiting frontier towns, getting into gun fights with bad guys, fighting off indians, robbing trains, barroom brawling, searching for lost confederate gold, all the while be hunted by Union cavalry. Now take the western I just described then picture it taking place 500 years in the future and in space, thats Firefly. Sort of an Outlaw Josey Wales meets Star Trek. Or even better Deadwood in space, now that would be a great show.

The concept is really cool and the show in general is very well done. The main characters are your stereo typical western mix: a few confederate veterans/outlaws, a whore, gunslingers, a doc, some innocent kids, and of course a preacher. Since they’re on the wrong side of the law I guess they couldn’t work in a marshall as a main character. The weapons they have hark back to those days as well. The ships first officer for example, carries a sawed off rifle that looks surprisingly like a winchester lever action. I just watched the episode where they actually rob a train heading for a mining town, talk about classic western. There are occasionally even characters who ride horses. And as I mentioned, the show has its own version of marauding indians, the Reavers, who mercilessly prey on the poor frontier world settlers trying to scratch out a living. If you wiki Firefly, the article will give you all the crazy detail could you want and more on the show.

Firefly aired originally in 2002 on FOX. Unfortunately the network totally screwed it up. They showed the episodes out of order, in a horrible time slot, the failed to air 3 of them at all, and I heard that they even prempted some of the ones they did show. Despite this the show developed a small yet loyal fan base. It continues to have a cult following today (mmmm, blue KoolAid, my favorite). So much so that they finished the series off with the movie Serenity which was released in the theaters. I happened to catch a few episodes on TV and the movie. I enjoyed them so much, that I finally broke down and bought the series on DVD and spent several hours watching it on Saturday between basketball games.

The production quality was excellent, as far as SciFi shows go, not quite Farscape quality but still really good. It even won an Emmy for “Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series”. If you liked Farscape (and haven’t seen Firefly) I’d recommend you check this show out too. Even if you didn’t like Farscape or have no idea what Farscape is, I still recommend you try to see this show. Although you’ll have to either buy the DVD’s or get it from Netflix. Either way its worth it. I was hoping it was going to get picked up by the SciFi channel, USA, TNT, or one of the other second tier networks but that’s not likely to ever happen. Especially now that the guy who played the main character is starring in that new show Drive, also on FOX, about the illegal cross coutry race (i.e., Cannonball run for network TV). It looks pretty lame. There is zippy chance I will be watching Drive.

Firefly was produced by Joss Wheddon the same guy who made Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series and one of my other all time favorite TV shows, Forever Knight. (Forever Knight was a show about a vampire who felt major angst over his centuries of depredation on humans and so becomes a homicide detective in Toronto in an effort to make up for all of the pain and suffering he has caused. Great show.) He did a really great job with this show its just too bad that FOX screwed it up. Since I started watching the DVDs, I thought I would post on Firefly because it was just too good to be allowed to disappear quietly into space.