Navigation menu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article describes a work or element of fiction in a primarily in-universe style. Please help rewrite it to explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective. April Learn how and when to remove this template message. Cover art for Ex Machina Vol. Retrieved from " https: Articles that need to differentiate between fact and fiction from April All articles that need to differentiate between fact and fiction Title pop Comics articles needing issue citations Articles with unsourced statements from May Views Read Edit View history.
In other projects Wikiquote. This page was last edited on 4 September , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Superhero , political drama. August to August Whedon served as an executive producer , along with Tim Minear. The series is set in the year , after the arrival of humans in a new star system and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity , a " Firefly -class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity.
Whedon pitched the show as "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things". The show explores the lives of a group of people, some of whom fought on the losing side of a civil war , who make a living on the fringes of society as part of the pioneer culture of their star system. In this future, the only two surviving superpowers, the United States and China, fused to form the central federal government, called the Alliance , resulting in the fusion of the two cultures.
According to Whedon's vision, "nothing will change in the future: Firefly premiered in the U. By mid-December, Firefly had averaged 4. Despite the relatively short life span of the series, it received strong sales when it was released on DVD and has large fan support campaigns. TV Guide ranked the series at No. The post-airing success of the show led Whedon and Universal Pictures to produce Serenity , a film which continues from the story of the series, [4] and the Firefly franchise expanded to other media, including comics and a role-playing game. The series takes place in the year , on a variety of planets and moons.
The TV series does not reveal whether these celestial bodies are within one star system, only saying that Serenity ' s mode of propulsion is a "gravity-drive". The film Serenity makes clear that all the planets and moons are in one large system, and production documents related to the film indicate that there is no faster-than-light travel in this universe. The characters occasionally refer to "Earth-that-was", and the film establishes that, long before the events in the series, a large population had emigrated from Earth to a new star system in generation ships: The emigrants established themselves in this new star system, with "dozens of planets and hundreds of moons".
Many of these were terraformed , a process in which a planet or moon is altered to resemble Earth. The terraforming process was only the first step in making a planet habitable, however, and the outlying settlements often did not receive any further support in the construction of their civilizations. This resulted in many of the border planets and moons having forbidding, dry environments, well-suited to the Western genre. The show takes its name from the " Firefly -class" spaceship Serenity that the central characters call home.
It resembles a firefly in general arrangement, and the tail section, analogous to a bioluminescent insectoid abdomen , lights up during acceleration. The ship was named after the Battle of Serenity Valley, where then-Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds and then-Corporal Zoe Alleyne were among the few survivors on the losing side. It is revealed in "Bushwhacked" that the Battle of Serenity Valley is widely considered to have sealed the fate of the Independents.
Read Book Online Rails Up And Running 0596522002 Pdf
Throughout the series, the Alliance is shown to govern the star system through an organization of "core" planets, following its success in forcibly unifying all the colonies under a single government. DVD commentary suggests that the Alliance is composed of two primary "core" systems, one predominantly Western in culture, the other pan-Asian, justifying the mixed linguistic and visual themes of the series.
The central planets are firmly under Alliance control, but the outlying planets and moons resemble the 19th-century American West, under little governmental authority. Settlers and refugees on the outlying worlds have relative freedom from the central government, but lack the amenities of the high-tech civilization that exists on the inner worlds. In addition, the outlying areas of space "the black" are inhabited by the Reavers , a cannibalistic group of nomadic humans that have become savage and animalistic.
A later episode, " Out of Gas ", reveals that Mal bought the spaceship Serenity to continue living beyond Alliance control. Much of the crew's work consists of cargo runs or smuggling. River is a child prodigy, whose brain was subjected to experiments at the hands of Alliance scientists at a secret government institution. As a result, she displays symptoms of schizophrenia and often hears voices.
It is later revealed that she is a "reader", one who possesses telepathic abilities. Simon gave up a career as a highly successful trauma surgeon in an Alliance hospital to rescue her, and they are both wanted fugitives. In the original pilot, "Serenity", Simon joins the crew as a paying passenger with River smuggled on board as cargo. As Whedon states in an episodic DVD commentary, every show he does is about creating family. The show blends elements from the space opera and Western genres, depicting humanity's future in a manner different from most contemporary science fiction programs in that there are no large space battles.
Firefly takes place in a multi-cultural future, primarily a fusion of Western and East Asian cultures , where there is a significant division between the rich and poor. As a result of the Sino-American Alliance , Mandarin Chinese is a common second language; it is used in advertisements, and characters in the show frequently curse in Chinese. According to the DVD commentary on the episode "Serenity", this was explained as being the result of China and the United States being the two superpowers that expanded into space.
The show also features slang not used in contemporary culture, such as adaptations of modern words, or new words altogether. For example, "shiny" is frequently used in a similar manner as the real world slang "cool", and "gorram" is used as a mild swear word. Written and spoken Chinese as well as Old West dialect are also employed. As one reviewer noted: Tim Minear and Joss Whedon pointed out two scenes that, they believed, articulated the mood of the show exceptionally clearly. One of the struggles that Whedon had with Fox was the tone of the show, especially with the main character Malcolm Reynolds.
Fox pressured Whedon to make Mal more "jolly", as they feared he was too dark in the original pilot, epitomized by the moment he suggests he might "space" Simon and River, throwing them out of the airlock to die. In addition, Fox was not happy that the show involved the "nobodies" who "get squished by policy" instead of the actual policy makers. Firefly maintained an ensemble cast that portrayed nine crew members and passengers of the ship, Serenity. These characters fight criminals and schemers, Alliance security forces, the utterly psychotic and brutal Reavers, and the mysterious men with "hands of blue"—who are apparently operatives of a secret agency which is part of the megacorporation referred to in the DVD commentary only as The Blue Sun Corporation.
The crew is driven by the need to secure enough income to keep their ship operational, set against their need to keep a low profile to avoid their adversaries. Their situation is greatly complicated by the divergent motivations of the individuals on board Serenity , but complex characterization was hampered by the show's brief run.
All nine of the main characters appeared in every episode, with the exception of " Ariel ", from which Book is absent—he was meditating at an abbey. Despite the series' short run, several recurring characters emerged from the inhabitants of the Firefly universe:. He wanted to follow people who had fought on the losing side of a war and their experiences afterwards as pioneers and immigrants on the outskirts of civilization, much like the post-American Civil War era of Reconstruction and the American Old West culture. Television science fiction, he felt, had become too pristine and rarefied.
Whedon wanted to give the show a name that indicated movement and power, and felt that "Firefly" had both. This powerful word's relatively insignificant meaning, Whedon felt, added to its allure. He eventually wound up creating the ship in the image of a firefly. During filming of the pilot episode, Whedon was still arguing with Fox that the show should be displayed in widescreen format. Consequently, he purposely filmed scenes with actors on the extreme edge of both sides so that they could only be shown in widescreen. However, the pilot was rejected by the Fox executives, who felt that it lacked action and that the captain was too "dour".
For the new pilot, Fox made it clear that they would not air the episodes in the widescreen format. Whedon and company felt they had to "serve two masters" by filming widescreen for eventual DVD release, but keeping objects in frame so it could still work when aired in pan and scan full frame. This style was not used, however, when shooting scenes that involved the central government, the Alliance. Tracking and steady cameras were used to show the sterility of this aspect of the Firefly universe.
This style was so desired that the director of photography, David Boyd , sent back the cutting-edge lenses which reduced lens flare in exchange for cheaper ones. Unlike most other science fiction shows, which add sound to space scenes for dramatic effect, Firefly portrays space as silent, because sounds cannot be transmitted in the vacuum of space. Production designer Carey Meyer built the ship Serenity in two parts one for each level as a complete set with ceilings and practical lighting installed as part of the set that the cameras could use along with moveable parts.
That meant the environment worked for us and there weren't a lot of adjustments that needed to be made. One was that it allowed the viewers to feel they were really in a ship. Besides evoking a mood associated with the character who spends most time in each area, the color scheme also alludes to the heat generated in the tail of the ship.
Whedon was also keen on utilizing vertical space; thus, having the crew's quarters accessible by ladder was important. The set had several influences, including the sliding doors and tiny cubicles reminiscent of Japanese hotels. Their small budget was another reason to use the ship for much of the storytelling.
When the characters did go off the ship, the worlds all had Earth atmosphere and coloring because they could not afford to design alien worlds. Greg Edmonson composed the musical score for the series. He stated that he wrote for the emotion of the moment. However, one reviewer averred that he also wrote for the characters, stating: The slide guitar and fiddle used in this piece are portable instruments which fit the lifestyle of the crew: It was used at the end of the Battle of Serenity Valley, but also helped set up the joke for when Mal tells Simon that Kaylee is dead in the episode " Serenity ".
The most memorable use of "Sad Violin", however, is at the end of " The Message ", when the crew mourned the death of Tracey.
This was also the last scene of the last episode the actors shot, and so this was seen by them, and Edmonson, as Firefly 's farewell. To denote impending danger, "Peril" was used, which is "a low pulse, like a heartbeat, with deep chimes and low strings". The criminal Niska has his own signature: Eastern European or Middle Eastern melodies over a low drone.
Simon and River's signature was a piano played sparsely with a violin in the background. This is in contrast to the portable instruments of "Serenity": The various signatures were mostly established in the first pilot, "Serenity", and helped enhance the narrative. In every episode, the musical score intensified my experience of this intelligent, remarkable show. Using and combining all these signatures, Greg Edmonson brought out aspects of Firefly 's story and characters that were never explicitly revealed in the other elements of the series. Whedon's use of music in his television shows has been regarded as 'filmic', in that he has been argued to use it to remind viewers at 'pivotal moments' of earlier events, resulting in a tighter continuity throughout the season.
The musical score expressed the cultural fusion depicted in the show. Cowboy guitar blended with Asian influence produced the atmospheric background for the series. As one reviewer stated:.
- The Winds that Stir: From the Trials of Starry Eyes in the Magnificent Land of Gelafold.
- .
- Samara: Prisons, Punishment and Profiteers;
Old music from the future—the music of roaring campfires and racous [ sic ] cowboys mixed with the warm, pensive sounds of Asian culture and, occasionally, a cold imperial trumpet, heralding the ominous structural presence of a domineering government. Whedon wrote the song before the series was greenlit and a preliminary recording performed by Whedon can be found on the DVD release.
Behnken and the other crewmembers of STS on February 12, In casting his nine-member crew, Whedon looked first at the actors and considered their chemistry with others. Cast member Sean Maher recalls, "So then he just sort of put us all together, and I think it was very quick, like right out of the gate, we all instantly bonded".
However, while filming the original pilot "Serenity", Whedon decided that Rebecca Gayheart was unsuitable for the role of Inara Serra , and shot her scenes in singles so that it would be easier to replace her. Whedon approached Nathan Fillion to play the lead role of Malcolm Reynolds ; after Whedon explained the premise and showed him the treatment for the pilot, Fillion was eager for the role.
Firefly (TV series) - Wikipedia
He noted that "it was really thrilling. It was my first lead and I was pretty nervous, but I really wanted that part and I wanted to tell those stories. Fillion has called his time on Firefly the best acting job he ever had, [48] and compares every job he has had to it. Alan Tudyk applied through a casting office and several months later was called in for an audition, where he met with Whedon.
He was called back to test with two candidates for the role of Zoe Wash's wife and was told that it was down to him and one other candidate. The Zoes he tested with were not selected Gina Torres eventually received the role and Tudyk was sent home, but received a call informing him he had the part anyway. The Legendary Journeys , was at first uninterested in doing another science fiction show, but "was won over by the quality of the source material". For Adam Baldwin , who grew up watching westerns, the role of Jayne Cobb was particularly resonant.
Canadian actress Jewel Staite videotaped her audition from Vancouver and was asked to come to Los Angeles to meet Whedon, at which point she was cast for the role of Kaylee Frye , the ship's engineer. Sean Maher recalls reading for the part and liking the character of Simon Tam , but that it was Whedon's personality and vision that "sealed the deal" for him. Glau had first worked for Whedon in the Angel episode " Waiting in the Wings ". Two weeks later, Whedon called her to tell her she had the part.
Veteran television actor Ron Glass has said that until Firefly , he had not experienced or sought a science-fiction or western role, but he fell in love with the pilot script and the character of Shepherd Book. Tim Minear was selected by Whedon to be the show runner , who serves as the head writer and production leader.
According to Whedon "[Minear] understood the show as well as any human being, and just brought so much to it that I think of it as though he were always a part of it". The writers were selected after interviews and script samplings. Greenberg and Jane Espenson. Next, the writers except the one working on the previous week's episode meet in the anteroom to Whedon's office to begin 'breaking' the story into acts and scenes.
For the team, one of the key components to devising acts is deciding where to break for commercial and ensuring the viewer returns. For instance, in " Shindig ", the break for commercial occurs when Malcolm Reynolds is gravely injured and losing the duel. They're both big moments, but one of them leaves you curious and the other doesn't. Next, the writers develop the scenes onto a marker-filled whiteboard, featuring "a brief ordered description of each scene". A writer is selected to create an outline of the episode's concept—occasionally with some dialogue and jokes—in one day.
The outline is given to showrunner Tim Minear, who revises it within a day. The writer uses the revised outline to write the first draft of the script while the other writers work on developing the next.
This first draft is usually submitted for revision within three to fourteen days; afterward, a second and sometimes third draft is written. After all revisions are made, the final draft would be produced as the 'shooting draft'. Jill Ohanneson, Firefly ' s original costume designer, brought on Shawna Trpcic as her assistant for the pilot.
When the show was picked up, Ohanneson was involved in another job and declined Firefly , suggesting Trpcic for the job. Trpcic used deep reds and oranges for the main cast, to express a feeling of "home", and contrasted that with grays and cool blues for the Alliance. Since the cancellation of the series, various cast and crew members have revealed details they had planned for the show's future: Firefly consists of a two-hour pilot and thirteen one-hour episodes with commercials.
The series originally premiered in the United States on Fox in September The episodes were aired out of the intended order. Although Whedon had designed the show to run for seven years, [69] low ratings resulted in cancellation by Fox in December after only 11 of the 14 completed episodes had aired in the United States.
After it was canceled, the campaign worked on getting another network such as UPN to pick up the series. Club cited several actions by the Fox network that contributed to the show's failure, most notably airing the episodes out of sequence, making the plot more difficult to follow. However, Fox decided that "Serenity" was unsuitable to open the series, and "The Train Job" was specifically created to act as a new pilot. Fox remastered the complete series in i high-definition for broadcast on Universal HD , which began in April The Science Channel began airing the series on March 6, Along with each episode, Dr.
Michio Kaku provided commentary about the real-life science behind the science fiction of the show. A box set containing the fourteen completed episodes including those which had not yet aired in the United States was released on region 1 DVD on December 9, , [79] region 2 on April 19, , and region 4 on August 2, The box features the episodes in the original order in which the show's producers had intended them to be broadcast, as well as seven episode commentaries, outtakes and other features.
The DVDs feature the episodes as they were shot in By September , its DVD release had sold approximately , copies. Reynolds", as well as an additional featurette, "Firefly" Reunion: Lunch with Joss, Nathan, Alan and Ron. Many reviews focused on the show's fusion of Wild West and outer space motifs. TV Guide ' s Matt Roush, for instance, called the show "oddball" and "offbeat", and noted how literally the series took the metaphor of space operas as Westerns.
Roush opined that the shift from space travel to horseback was "jarring", but that once he got used to this, he found the characters cleverly conceived, and the writing a crisp balance of action, tension and humor. The Boston Globe described Firefly as a "wonderful, imaginative mess brimming with possibility". The review further notes the difference between the new series and other programs was that those shows "burst onto the scene with slick pilots and quickly deteriorate into mediocrity Firefly is on the opposite creative journey. Chocano noted that the series lacks the psychological tension of Buffy , and suggests that this might be attributable to the episodes being aired out of order.
Firefly generated a loyal base of fans during its three-month original broadcast run on Fox in late These fans, self-styled Browncoats, used online forums to organize and try to save the series from being canceled by Fox only three months after its debut. Their efforts included raising money for an ad in Variety magazine and a postcard writing campaign to UPN. Navy ships by April for recreational viewing by their crews. These and other continuing fan activities eventually persuaded Universal Studios to produce a feature film, Serenity.
Numerous early screenings of rough film cuts were held for existing fans starting in May as an attempt to create a buzz to increase ticket sales when the final film cut was released widely on September 30, On June 23, , fans organized the first worldwide charity screenings of Serenity in 47 cities, dubbed as Can't Stop the Serenity or CSTS, an homage to the movie's tagline, "Can't stop the signal".
In July , a fan-made documentary was released, titled Done the Impossible , and is commercially available. The documentary relates the story of the fans and how the show has affected them, and features interviews with Whedon and various cast members. A fan-made, not-for-profit, unofficial sequel to Serenity , titled Browncoats: According to the film's creator and producer, Whedon gave "his blessing" to the project.
The film was sold on DVD and Blu-ray at the film's website, with all proceeds being distributed among five charities. Firefly came in first place, with its cinematic follow-up Serenity in second. Brad Wright , co-creator of Stargate SG-1 has said that the th episode of SG-1 is "a little kiss to Serenity and Firefly , which was possibly one of the best canceled series in history".
In the episode, "Martin Lloyd has come to the S. Ten thousand people lined up to get into the panel, and the panel ended with the entire crowd giving the cast and crew a standing ovation. A tenth anniversary special, Browncoats Unite , was shown on the Science Channel on November 11, The special featured Whedon, Minear, and several of the cast members, in a discussion on the series' history. According to Reason ' s Julian Sanchez , Firefly ' s cult following "seems to include a disproportionate number of libertarians. The characters each exhibit traits that exemplify core libertarian values, such as the right to bear arms Jayne, Zoe , legal prostitution Inara , freedom of religion Book , logic and reasoning Simon , and anti-conscription River.
He's the opposite of me in many ways. At the time the series was cancelled by Fox, it averaged 4. When he and Leonard Hofstadter are discussing their roommate agreement, they include a passage in which they dedicate Friday nights to watching Firefly , as Sheldon believes it will last for years. Upon its cancellation, he brands Rupert Murdoch , the owner of Fox , a traitor. When Raj tries to hit on her he says that although he is an astrophysicist, she was actually in space during the shooting of Firefly.
Glau chides him for believing this and Raj backtracks, saying, "Those are crazy people! They have an agreement that if one of them dies, the other will stage it to look like a suicide caused by the cancellation of Firefly , in the hopes that it will bring the show back. The television series Castle , where Fillion plays the lead character Richard Castle , has made ongoing homages to Firefly.
- SEO For All Action Heroes.
- Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming (MIT Press).
- Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century America (Healing Society: Disease, Medicine, and History);
- .
- .
- Abdul-Baha in America.
- Jedediah Smith: No Ordinary Mountain Man (The Oklahoma Western Biographies)!
Castle has props from Firefly as decorative items in his home, has dressed up as a "space cowboy" for Halloween "You wore that five years ago," cracked his daughter , speaks Chinese that he learned from "a TV show [he] loved", and has made rapid "two-by-two" finger motions while wearing blue surgical gloves. He has been humorously asked if he has ever heard of a spa known as "Serenity", and Firefly catchphrases such as "shiny", "special hell", and "I was aiming for the head" have been used as punchlines during various dramatic scenes in Castle. He has worked a murder case at a science fiction convention with suspects being the cast of a long-cancelled space opera that only ran for a season, and has had incidental interaction with people portrayed by Firefly cast members.
Con Man , a comedy web series created by Tudyk and co-produced by Fillion, draws on the pair's experiences as cult science fiction actors touring the convention circuit. Staite, Torres and Maher made guest appearances. Maher played himself as a former Firefly actor. The popularity of the short-lived series served as the launching point for a media franchise within the Firefly universe, including the feature film Serenity , which addresses many plot points left unresolved by the series' cancellation.
Additionally, there are two comic-book mini-series , Serenity: Those Left Behind 3 issues, pages, , Serenity: Better Days 3 issues, 80 pages, and a one-shot hardcover Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale 56 pages, , along with the one-shots Serenity: Downtime and The Other Half and Serenity: Float Out in which Whedon explored plot strands he had intended to explore further in the series. The comics are set, in plot terms, between the end of the TV series and the opening of the feature film.
The two mini-series were later published in collected form as hardcover and paperback graphic novels. A six-issue series titled Serenity: Leaves on the Wind began in January and the series takes place after the events of the film. No Power in the 'Verse began in October and the series is set about 1.
Studios announced that they had acquired the comic book and graphic novel publishing license to Firefly with plans to release new monthly comic book series, limited series, original graphic novels and more. In July , the release of video game Firefly Online was announced that planned to have the cast reprise their roles. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.