Firefly

I've just finished watching season 1 of Firefly. Actually, considering that there was only one season, I guess I should really be saying that I finished watching Firefly.

Firefly is a tv series created by Joss Whedon (of Dr. Horrible fame). The show is set in the future and follows the exploits of the ragtag crew of the starship Serenity, a Firefly class starship. Unfortunately, despite having a very loyal hardcore fanbase, the show didn't really take off (for which many people blamed Fox) and was cancelled after only one season.

Which is a shame because I really enjoyed watching it and would have loved to see the story and characters develop some more.

The backdrop to Firefly is that man has expanded to the stars and colonised numerous new worlds. Unlike other Sci Fi shows such as Star Trek, humanity did not encounter other aliens species (no funky head or nose ridges here!) and the Universe is populated entirely with humans. After a brutal war, the Alliance manages to gain control of the core worlds. However, their control doesn't really extend to the outer colonies which have the feel of frontier worlds. The end result is that you get a very 1970's Western feel to the show.

Another element of the show which hearkens back to older tv shows is that, although the show did have recurring plot points, each episode was very separate and discrete in that the crew of Serenity would undertake different missions in each show. In this particular regard, Firefly bears more similarity with Star Trek, which featured the Enterprise going to a different planet each week, than with other more recent tv shows (such as Lost, 24 etc) which were very much about telling a big story over the course of a season.

Firefly also managed to find a unique way of getting around the problem of swearing on national tv. The approach taken by most tv shows is to either not swear at all or to make up new swear words (go frak yourself!). Firefly allows the actors to swear using real swear words - but in a different language! The backdrop is that the US and China joined forces, and became the Alliance, and as such, culture in the show is a mix of East and West. So anytime the actors need to swear, they yell out "ta ma de" or some other Mandarin phrase (which can be hilarious as its clear none of the actors can speak mandarin properly).

All in all, this is a great tv show. It also appears that I'm turning into a Whedonite as I have just started to watch Dollhouse (Joss Whedon's latest show) as well.