This TV series was released back in 2002 and even though everyone I knew said that it’s a must watch, I never got around to it. Until recently, when I sat down for an entire day and watched all fourteen episodes back-to-back. I really liked the series and while I was expecting a lot more sci-fi and aliens, I was pleasantly surprised to find that without all those things Firefly kept my attention by the acting and story quality.

Written by Josh Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, this space opera/western in the year 2517 follows the the adventures of the renegade crew Serentiy, a “Firefly-class” star ship. As it begins with each episode:

Earth-that-was got used up.

We moved out – terraformed and colonized hundreds of new earths; some, rich and flush with new technologies; some, not so much. The central planets – them as formed by the Alliance – decided all the planets had to join under their rule.

There was some disagreement on that point.

After the Unification War, many of the Independents who had fought and lost drifted to the edges of civilization, far from Alliance control. Out here, people struggle to get by with the most basic of technologies. A ship will bring you work; a gun will help you keep it.

That’s the basic plot of the series. Since it follows the Serenity crew, who are those which avoid the Alliance, a lot of time didn’t have to be spent on inventing strange and alien technologies for the show. Much of the lands they traveled to looked straight out of westerns in fact. They also didn’t touch on the subject of aliens at all, stating that even though they’ve traveled to many galaxies they had yet to encounter alien life. Instead, the show focused its attention on plot, acting and character development.

A really liked how in 2517 much of the galaxy uses Chinese, but was really left hanging with an explanation as to why it was. Signs in cities and even on other spaceships were written in Chinese. Even the characters used Chinese often when they get upset. While those of us who don’t speak Chinese are left in the cold, there are sites out there to help. My guess is that Chinese became the dominant language at some point and, as we all do when engrossed in another language, those that mainly spoke English adopted Chinese in only some manor – cursing, in this case.

From some of the first episodes Firefly tried to establish connections between each of the characters. Some of the move obvious dues were captain Malcolm and geisha-like Companion Inara, Dr. Simon and mechanic Keylee, Dr. Simon and younger sister River. What annoyed me was that none of them were taken as far as I would have hoped. I really wanted to learn more about River’s condition and what, if any, special abilities she had. The captain and Inara had a lot of sexual tension but both were too stubborn for different reasons to take a chance.

This didn’t take away from the storyline, as these relationships were only sides to each episode. While the entire series was an ongoing story, each episode was completely independent in itself. The crew had to undertake some mission or escape from some enemy and in the allotted forty-five minutes, following the melodrama approach (don’t get me started on crap melodramas!). This reminded me a lot of Cowboy Bebop.

Next on my watch list, Serenity. Apparently voted the best sci-fi movie of all time, even trouncing Star Wars.