Season 1 - 14 episodes
Rent Firefly on Amazon Video (paid link)
Created by: Joss Whedon
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, Summer Glau, Ron Glass
Rated: TV-14
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Plot
A sci-fi western set five hundred years in the future, the renegade crew aboard a small spacecraft tries to survive as they travel the unknown parts of the galaxy and evade warring factions as well as authority agents out to get them.
Verdict
The heart of this show is the nuanced characters, but the setting certainly sets this apart. It's an absolutely charming show. Like most gripping characters, these are good, bad, and sometimes in between. Some of the crew fought in an intergalactic civil war and the right side and winning side are often discussed. They try to make ends meet on frontier planets that have limited resources. This really takes a lot of inspiration from westerns, just changing the location to be in space. It's a great show, and you can't help but like every character as we explore this new world.
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Review
The show's title is based on Malcolm Reynolds's (Nathan Fillion) firefly class ship, Serenity, aboard which most of this show occurs.
Canceled after only eleven episodes, the last three were aired later on a different network. Originally airing on Fox, the network aired episodes out of order and moved the pilot episode to run second.
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| Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Jewel Staite, Nathan Fillion, Ron Glass, Sean Maher play Zoe, Wash, Kaylee, Malcolm, Book, Simon |
I've convinced a lot of people who had never heard of this to watch it and completely fall for the show. The setting is fun. When the crew is on land, they're often on a frontier planet that feels very much like the west with ramshackle towns, little technology, and horses for conveyance. Even the dialect sounds western. These planets were terraformed to look like Earth, but supplies are few. Nearly everyone we meet is scavenging to make ends meet, even the crew.
Malcolm is quick to call himself a bad guy, and while he has his faults he more often than not makes the moral choice. While he likes to claim he's not good, he can't help but do the right thing. His crew doesn't always agree, but they always respect him enough to follow orders, even Jayne (Adam Baldwin) who's first instinct in every situation is to shoot or stab. Malcolm leads the crew from job to job as they'll take whatever pays the bills. That often lands them into trouble, an adventure, or both. In each episode Malcolm proves to be shrewd. It's always business first even if he's dealing with a woman that shot him years ago. He dismisses it as a misunderstanding.
Malcolm and Zoe (Gina Torres) were independence fighters that lost. Neither care for the alliance, and that comes into play often. It provides them a unique bond and point of view. This show also envisions a world where America and China are ruling powers so Chinese is a very common language.
There's tension between Malcolm and Inara (Morena Baccarin). While they fight often, it seems they have feelings for each other. That's also the case for Kaylee (Jewel Staite) and Simon (Sean Maher).
The crew gets into trouble on almost every job, with people shot, kidnapped or more. They also run into an odd situation where Jayne is regarded as a hero on a planet where he thought he was wanted. The final episode is all but a western where a group of strangers, the Firefly crew, ride into town to help what is basically a saloon in trouble. This show is a lot of fun. It balances space and western perfectly as we root for this scrappy crew that's just trying to survive.
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