Shark Bytes

Doesn't matter if it debuted today or next year. FOX had a grudge against it for whatever reason (conspiracy theorists, unite!). FOX has a long, proud history of this sort of stupidity -- bringing a show to life and then snuffing it out before it has a chance to make it. I guess my ultimate feeling about the situation is that I have something that means a helluva lot more to me now (my Firefly DVD set along with my Serenity DVD) than what the show might have morphed into after a couple of seasons on the air. It's more fun thinking about what this show MIGHT have been than having had to sit through the sometimes frustrating and annoying real-time play-out if the show had continued on. What I mean to say is that I find it doubtful that Joss and team could have maintained the quality of Firefly over a long period. The show would have eventually broken and I would have been upset -- but now I don't have to worry about being upset by any potential downturn in it because I can just watch my treasured few episodes and dream about what might have been instead of being pissed off about what was.

I don't know if that makes any sense whatsoever...

Fox sucks. It was ahead of it's time. If it debuted now, it would be a hit, no doubt.

I can watch it over and over and over and over. DVD, UHD, SCI FI. Great characters: great plots; great actors.

We care about them BECAUSE of their flaws.

Serenity is one of my very favorite movies, and TV episodes.

FOX = Suck_Big_Time

Saying this show had "too many characters" is like saying that Star Trek had too many characters. None of the main characters on Firefly were superfluous... each of them served a distinct purpose and were needed to advance the storyline at various points. It would have been a much weaker show were any of the characters to go missing.

The reason it may have "felt" as though there were too many characters is thanks to FOX refusing to show the pilot before the other eps. Through the convenience of the DVD set, we're able to play the series in the order in which it was originally intended, starting with the pilot first. The pilot neatly introduces each of the main characters and makes it very easy (at least for me) to keep track of who is who in the 'verse. The other eps fall relatively neatly into order after that.

Fox messed this show up from the beginning. Not airing the pilot as the first episode, airing other eps out of order, not giving it half a chance to build an audience...

Was Firefly one of the best shows to hit the airwaves? YES. Did it deserve better treatment than it got? YES. Given the climate at FOX, was there a chance in hell that Firefly would survive? NO.

Liked it better the first time when it was called Outlaw Star

#1) Firefly
#2) Dead Like Me
#3) Wonderfalls
#4) Drive

Sigh... I get the feeling I wasn't made for watching TV...

What an amazing cast, amazing characters, amazing Verse... from the Chinese swearing, to the losing Browncoats, to Mal's (Nathan Fillon) shocked looks of disbelief... and Fox decided to show them out of order, and cancelled it before ever showing the amazing pilot episode that explained the whole thing!

There should be a category for Fox. They canceled Firefly, Arrested Development, Action and Kitchen Confidential long before they hit their primes.

This was on to short to jump, but it came around at time when FOX and other net execs wanted to get rid of him and Buffy and Angel anyway, and I don't think Joss ever really got the respect he deserved, even with "BtVS". This show had so much potential, I hate that we didn't even 1 full season. Joss is a brilliant story teller and writer and I shed a tear for episodes never made because they would have been great.

I admit, I missed a couple of episodes and couldn't get back into the show and by then it was off the air. Bad time slot also contributed to its demise. I only hope Joss comes back to TV.

Certainly the best TV show I’ve ever seen that was cancelled before having a chance to mature, and might have become one of the truly greatest series ever. I won’t say we’ll never know because I still have hopes that someone will come to their senses and pick this franchise back up. I’ve now proselytized to a dozen odd people who don’t like sci-fi, including my wife. When we watched the last episode she was outraged that there was no more and made me go out and buy the movie right then and there. I think it’s because the show was so character-driven. The plots were fine, but I was immediately swept up in wanting to know more about the characters’ backgrounds and see where their relationships with one another went. Think about M*A*S*H – in the end that show ran as long as it did because we cared about Hawkeye et al – the plots certainly became repetitive. In short, great plots may make great books and movies, but not great TV series because they are very difficult to maintain without becoming redundant. As novel and creative as Firefly was in the plot department – and there appeared to be plenty of fertile ground there – Joss Whedon got me hooked on the characters early and that’s what leaves me longing for more.

There was one incidence that could almost be jumping the shark: Inara servicing a female.

However, to actually claim that would means getting involved in a debate over homo/bisexuality...

I don't think it does, but it is worth thinking about...

It didn't last long enough to jump. Whedon deserves credit for some things:the scruffy,quirky characters weren't the blandly noble types we usually see in space opera; the class conflict theme was another fresh angle. But I don't know if the formula of one interplanetary caper after another could have been sustained. And for me, the presence of chattel slavery in the Firefly universe strained credulity. I don't think humanity is going to regress that much in the future(although I'll have to check back in 500 years to be sure).

Great show. It sucks that Whedon can't attract mainstream audiences (without sacrificing his style.) Think half the problem was the time-slot it was in...I wonder if the DVD sales could give it a "futurama" or "family guy" revival...

i would love to see john hein make howard aware of this show and get him in the fight to bring it back

A better question would be how could anyone possibly think the new Dr. Who was better than Firefly.

Firefly was the freshest sci-fi I've seen in a decade. Great characters, good acting, intelligent writing, and the entire series breaking new ground. It wasn't just the same old crap again, which defines most science fiction on TV and most particularly the atrocious Dr. Who. Only took two episodes of that dreck to turn me off it forever. Watch the entire season of Firefly in the correct order and you'll feel stunned outrage that the series was cancelled.