New Space Western on Fox.

[Nephtys]

http://io9.com/5356150/fox-brings-back- ... nt-firefly

I think the link pretty much says it all. But let's see.

Fox Brings Back Space Western... That Isn't Firefly
By Meredith Woerner, 8:00 AM on Thu Sep 10 2009, 13,737 views (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

Fox is making a science-fiction Western. The bad news is, it's not Firefly. But hey, at least it's original scifi programming. Chuck's executive producer Scott Rosenbaum is working on a "gunslinger stuck in another world" series.

According to the traders...

The show will revolve around "a gunslinger caught between worlds" and will feature a nod to "Planet of the Apes," said Rosenbaum, who is executive producing with Wonderland's McG and Peter Johnson.

Comics Editor Graeme points out that this plot sounds a lot like the Jonah Hex reboot in the 80s where our mangled gunslinger got rocketed to the future. Then again the trades call is Planet of the Apes-esque, so perhaps the new series is pulling from a number of influences. Still, I'm a bit bitter that Fox is working on a new science fiction Western that isn't a Firefly revival.

[Stark]

Oh dear.

It sounds pretty bad from the article. By-the-numbers all the way.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

While there's way too little information on the show beyond the fact that it exists to properly pass judgment (though it definitely sounds pretty generic), Rosenbaum's remark in the HR article about "revamping the Western genre" and "introduce the Western to a whole new generation" makes him sound pretty naive to the fact that sci-fi Westerns aren't exactly new.

The only part that really burns me is the mention of it being "Planet of the Apes-esque", only because PotA is probably one of Fox's most underexploited properties, and a new Apes TV series would be pretty cool.

[Havok]

OK, I'll bite. Was Firefly really that good, or is it just rose colored glasses?

[Thanas]

Firefly was good and had Summer Glau's great performance. And Mark Sheppard. That is about it.

There were genuinely very few episodes that were truly outstanding due to lack of budget. That said, the character work was great and I'd say about 60% of the episodes are of above-than normal quality and should be watched more than once.


On Topic: This is Fox. No chance of me ever trying anything of their Sci-Fi again.

[Patrick Degan]

The only part that really burns me is the mention of it being "Planet of the Apes-esque", only because PotA is probably one of Fox's most underexploited properties, and a new Apes TV series would be pretty cool.

Not if it's produced by Fox Network.

[Stark]

OK, I'll bite. Was Firefly really that good, or is it just rose colored glasses?

I refused to watch it for years (due to fatty nerd OMG COWBOYS IN SPACE and OMG TEH HOTNEZZZ) and it was a good show. It's not hard to be the best 'people in space' show for years these days.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

OK, I'll bite. Was Firefly really that good, or is it just rose colored glasses?

Yeah. I didn't bother with it until very recently, because Western-flavored stuff doesn't really appeal to me much. Firefly manages to transcend its nominal genre, though, and is just a good fun show to watch.

The only thing that really sucks about it is that half of the plot threads (such as Shepherd's background) just drop off into nothingness on account of Fox canceling the show out of nowhere. Thankfully Serenity cleans up the worst of it.

[Simon_Jester]

I wonder how much money it would take to convince Fox to give up the intellectual rights to Firefly and just let someone who's actually willing to do something with it go ahead.

Too much, I'm sure... but some finite amount would have to be enough to convince them to quit their stupid "dog in the manger" tactics.

Note: I'm not saying it's a supremely awesome show or anything, but it's pretty good, good enough to deserve better than spending a decade in limbo because the guys who own the TV rights weren't willing to give it a fair shot when it came out and aren't willing to do anything with the rights now.

[Ted C]

OK, I'll bite. Was Firefly really that good, or is it just rose colored glasses?

Since I greatly liked it at the time it was aired (despite all the frustrations of the episodes being aired out of order and frequently pre-empted), I am willing to say that it was, in fact, "that good" -- at least if Whedon-esque writing runs to your taste.

It goes without saying that not everyone is going to like it.

[Sarevok]

Firefly has many dumb parts. Like the impossibly giant solar system with dozens of earth like planets where the show takes place to begin with. The attempts to seem realistic with no sound or ftl falls flat when you see gravity generators on ships and repulsor craft vehicle on planets. Then there is the weird 19th century anacronisms like women wearing gowns and people being part of noblity. Yet the beauty of the show is that such things dont irritate you. You can just turn off your brain and enjoy a good fun space adventure.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

OK, I'll bite. Was Firefly really that good, or is it just rose colored glasses?

In my opinion it's the best Whedon show, which may not be saying a lot depending on your tastes. Compared to other current TV shows, it's fucking amazing. Standing on it's own merits, it's quite tolerable and occasionally enjoyable.

[Samuel]

Then there is the weird 19th century anacronisms like women wearing gowns and people being part of noblity.

How are those anacronisms? We have them today.

Like the impossibly giant solar system with dozens of earth like planets where the show takes place to begin with.

That is the most bizarre part- what was it "the ship moves at the speed of plot?" It is a little annoying. Of course if we want to justify it we could simply have space habitats or different locations on the same planet (worlds are big).

I didn't see it during the run- I watched it on netflicks. Saw most of the episodes and liked it.

[Themightytom]

Firefly was that good, but tremendously rewatchable, but for some reason particularly so late at night.
it definitely retains terrific potential, I for one would have loved to have seen a civil war reignite in season 3 or 4 maybe a couple of arcs where Survivors from the solar system showed up (Come on, the Earth was "used up"? if they ahd the tech to launch a fleet of terraforming spaceships, they probably had frigging colonies.) or maybe declared war or...

Damn I think I just wanted to see more space battles.

The cast worked well together, the tongue in cheek approach was entertaining and the music was in my opinion pretty decent. It reminded me of a sort of lvie action cowboy bebop without the rediculous Anime nods.

[Sarevok]

Samuel :

The anacronism is totally off the mark. Entire towns look like they were lifted from 19th century American wild west. There is no way you can justify people 500 years later in another star system living like that.

[Nephtys]

Damn straight. How can people live like that? It's not like if you go to some fields in the middle of developing countries, where people live like they did 500 years ago with stick huts, oxen plowing fields but with a little electricity.

oh, wait a sec...

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Samuel :

The anacronism is totally off the mark. Entire towns look like they were lifted from 19th century American wild west. There is no way you can justify people 500 years later in another star system living like that.

You . . . sortof . . . can. If you assume that the worlds aren't getting any support beyond what was needed to drop them off onto the planet in the first place, then it's only logical that the tech they started out with would gradually wear down. If you don't have the self-sustaining industrial base needed to replace the worn-out technological items, and the most high-tech imports you're getting are fitting into the space-going equivalent of a beat up old Toyota pickup, you simply learn to make do with less.

Though, given the apparent ubiquitousness of civil spacecraft, you'd expect that these worlds would be able to afford to import enough equipment to not backslide all the way back to the 19th century. We could, however, assume that, for whatever reason, the Evil Empire Alliance has some sort of technological embargo against the outlying worlds where Serenity is operating.

[Stark]

It's probably market; the populations are too small to support decent shipping in some areas. Larger places are shown being a) more advanced and b) having piles of larger ships there, whislt still being shitholes. The 'cowboy' places are the very small places, and if I went to central Queensland I might not see any office buildings.

[Ghost Rider]

OK, I'll bite. Was Firefly really that good, or is it just rose colored glasses?

It was better then most of Wheedon's material because he didn't have time to sink into it. Odd as that sounds, Joss has over the years made me truly dislike many of his own stereotypes. As for the series a few episodes were laughable in how bad, and some were just shoving down some inane things, but they had enough humor or action to get to the end.

So if you enjoy his particular style, you'll enjoy the series immensely. If you don't, you'll probably find a character of the main cast you do enjoy enough to watch the few episodes.

[Oskuro]

I wonder how much money it would take to convince Fox to give up the intellectual rights to Firefly and just let someone who's actually willing to do something with it go ahead.

I guess that had there been a reasonable price to get Firefly off FOX's hands, it would have been payed already. Is it fear of the franchise being successful somewhere else and thus looking like the idiots they are that prevents FOX from letting the IP go? Because I very much doubt they'll revisit it on the future.

And I consider Firefly to be great. My first contact with it was Serenity, and I was loathing the whole thing until Mal showed up with pearls like these:

Wash: This landing is gonna get pretty interesting.
Mal: Define "interesting".
Wash: [deadpan] Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die?
<Mal takes the ship's intercom microphone>
Mal: This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then - explode.

[Covenant]

It was the first thing made by Whedon (that I'm aware of) that I watched. I don't know if it was "that good" but it was good enough to be worth a spot on my TiVO. It wasn't anything particularly special, but it had some fun characters. I think it got ugly both when too westerny and when too spacey, since neither of the elements were done well, but it was fine as sort of a 'backwoods of star wars' show that had a focus on the slummy, muddy portions of the functional human colony areas. I really didn't care for any of his brownshirt whining or the entire River plot though, so I liked the episodes where that was very minimal.

[Stofsk]

Samuel :

The anacronism is totally off the mark. Entire towns look like they were lifted from 19th century American wild west. There is no way you can justify people 500 years later in another star system living like that.

Explain to me how you can have a technological modern society when you land on a piece of dirt that has none of that stuff and needs to be built from the bottom up?

There's a reason why those towns look the way they do. Yes, Whedon was deliberately doing the 'wild west' look, but a dirt colony isn't gonna look like a Star Trek city when guys are both poor and haven't been living there that long. (you see the Core worlds with major cities and technological infrastructure, the 'rim' worlds are underdeveloped and we know this, because they LOOK underdeveloped).

BTW, your gripe about the impossibly large solar system is shared by me, but only Serenity gave us that. I don't like Serenity so I don't particularly care what it says.

[Crossroads Inc.]

It was the first thing made by Whedon (that I'm aware of) that I watched. I don't know if it was "that good" but it was good enough to be worth a spot on my TiVO. It wasn't anything particularly special, but it had some fun characters. I think it got ugly both when too westerny and when too spacey, since neither of the elements were done well, but it was fine as sort of a 'backwoods of star wars' show that had a focus on the slummy, muddy portions of the functional human colony areas. I really didn't care for any of his brownshirt whining or the entire River plot though, so I liked the episodes where that was very minimal.

It was the first thing I liked of Whedon, but probably because it didn't last long. Whedon has avery VERY annoying habit of taking "going against what people think will happen" to ludicrous extremes. I enjoyed the first season or so of Buffy, it was cmapy cute and fun.. And then the more it went on, the More Whedon says "lets see JUST how much misery I can inflict on the cast."

I mean, the norm is that Main characters don't die, or not very often. Whedon delights in not only killing off Main Characters but doing so with no real reason other then his own whims. Firefly never got to that pointy, but you can see it wuld of, in the Movie Serenity, Whedon goes and kilsl off three main Members, one of whom was whit the show form the start, and dies in an utterly pointless way. Somepeople say that "whedon is daring! he bucks the trend! hes not afriad of shaking things up!"

I say hes an ass.

[Eleas]

I will say that whatever Firefly was, and whatever Whedon planned on doing with it, it managed to have a decent setting, but make it all about the characters within it. It managed to show us people who genuinely cared for each other in a way that wasn't as much stated as infused into the show itself.

I mean, Jesus, the historical parallels are naked: the Independents are the CSA... in SPAACE; the Reavers are the demonized image of Red Injuns... in SPAACE. Yet we root for Mal, a former solder of the Independents, the man who claims that "Reavers ain't men" and who proudly proclaims "I'm thinkin' we'll rise again."

How the fuck Whedon managed that is a good question, but I bet it had something to do with getting together a group of actors who really honestly enjoyed being in each other's company.

[Sarevok]

Explain to me how you can have a technological modern society when you land on a piece of dirt that has none of that stuff and needs to be built from the bottom up?

Well they had the technology to terraform these worlds. These planets probably looked more like mars than an earth clone with duplicate biosphere. They gave it a breathable atmosphere, changed the climate put down all the plants and animals and made it tick like a living breathing duplicate of earth. And they did it all in a few hundred years at most. That implies a very high technology level. Even if the settlers to the outer planets were penniless rejects and social outcasts from the wealthy core they would not live like cowboys. There was no premade american wild west waiting to get turned into ranches down there. When the first settlers arrived in orbit they must have looked down on an alien world. It was all moonscape the settlers had to apply superscience to change into earth like conditions.