Firefly Likely to be Cancelled 644
rscrawford writes "Zap2It is reporting that Firefly, one of the best science fiction shows to make it on to network television in recent years, is going on hiatus: read, getting canceled. Well, it was an interesting, well-written, provocative and intelligent show on Fox; is anyone therefore surprised that they're doing away with it? It lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. At least they're going to show the original 2-hour pilot in December. (And yet, somehow, Just Shoot Me continues...)"
Of course it's being cancelled (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't like the show. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Of course it's being cancelled (Score:5, Insightful)
Mmm-uh? Just about the only thing that everybody universally agrees on is that the dialogue-- and the scene-level writing in general-- is some of the best on TV. How is that that this is the first thing you latch on to with which to find fault?
the plots, despite the fact that the show made a painfully obvious effort to not be Star Trek, were so obviously lifted from Star Trek
Which would that be? "The Train Job?" No. "Bushwhacked?" Also no. "Our Mrs. Reynolds?" Hell no. "Jaynestown?" No, most definitely no. "Out of Gas?" Maybe... ship blows gasket, crew abandons ship, heroic captain acquires new gasket and saves the day, but that episode wasn't driven by plot. It was driven by flashbacks, and was more inspired by Pulp Fiction than anything else (there was even an explicit homage). "Shindig?" Heh. No, definitely not. "Safe?" Nuh-uh. "Ariel?" Bite your lying tongue. I don't recall any episode of Star Trek in which Kirk threatened to blow Spock out the airlock... and really meant to do it, too, up to the very last second.
There are a lot of legitimate gripes out there about Firefly. Calling it derivative of Star Trek is definitely not one of 'em.
Re:Of course it's being cancelled (Score:5, Funny)
Stuff it, Lester. If you really don't watch TV, then keep your opinions to yourself and get your snobbish Thurston-Howell attitude the fuck out of this discussion. And if, as is far more likely, you're lying, quit puttin' on airs. Nobody will think any less of you if you admit that you get up early on Saturday mornings to watch reruns of "Chico and the Man" on your local Telemundo affiliate. We're all friends here.
The only thing worse than a snob is a guy who pretends to be a snob.
Re:Of course it's being cancelled (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no desire to watch ER, WWF anything, any soap opera, or the fresh prince. Sure I watched the fresh prince when I was much younger, and the wonder years and things like that. That was ten years ago. Today I find there isn't shit on tv worth watching other than Histories Mysteries or the various Discovery specials.
I recently got in touch with a friend from high school that had joined the army and had just moved back home after being discharged at the end of his service agreement. While we were catching up tv came up because he wanted to get cable internet access, but the cheapest way to get it was to get cable tv and intenet access in a package and he didn't want the cable tv package. His reason was that the only thing he could see himself watching was Discovery. Of course his wife wanted it for other things so I'm sure they'll get it anyway. The point is that we are completly differant and have the same opinion of tv. I'm a tech geek working as a system admin and developer for a very small company. He's going to school for achitecture. We don't share any of the same interests any more, and are as differant as can be, but both feel that tv is crap. Just because you don't feel that tv is crap and become insecure when other people let you know they think it is does not give you the right to make outlandish generalizations about them.
I could also give a flying fuck what everyone else thinks of me. If I cared about that I wouldn't be posting on Slashdot. Someone made a blanket statment about everyone loving the dialog on Firefly and I simply responded that I, like the parent poster, thought it was crap. I get up early on Saturday mornings to play Barren Realms Elite and have breakfast with my wife. If the television is turned on its to watch whatever we happen to have in from Netflix, not to watch cartoons, not to watch whatever the hell "Chico and the Man" is (Telemundo is the Spanish broadcast network right?). If they were showing loony toons first thing Saturday morning I might sit down and watch them. Power Rangers? No thanks.
Sure, we are all friends here, that's why you have to resort to calling me a snob, oh, even better, a guy pretending to be a snob. If you want to challenge what I have to say, please do so. However you could at least do it without outlandish generalizations and immature insults. Or better yet, come on over some time and watch tv with us. I think "When Dinosaurs Roamed America" is going to be on again and I didn't catch the whole thing last time. I'll make tea and we can have scones.
Re:Of course it's being cancelled (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevertheless, I respect the way you gave me a taste of my own medicine. The bit about scones really won me over.
If, however, you don't get a kick out of the writing on Firefly, then I have to respectfully stand by my judgment that you are-- and I say this with the utmost love-- a big, fat fuddy-duddy.
Re:Of course it's being cancelled (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a shame. "Our Mrs. Reynolds" is a great one, and the last episode aired, "Ariel," is a better 44 minutes of entertainment than you get out of most movies. Not only are they tightly written, but they're also really well shot and directed bits of filmed entertainment.
Besides, any show that's brave enough to establish a hard-and-fast "no sound in space" rule deserves all the chances they want.
Re:Of course it's being cancelled (Score:3, Informative)
Are you sure you didn't mean "I couldn't care less" here ? If you could care less, then you actually do care about Masterpiece Theatre, C-SPAN, etc. For some reason, that (rather common) slip up really bothers me.
Anyhow...carry on!
Apparently not getting cancelled (Score:5, Informative)
"The only question is whether they're given that time. And now Fox is getting a good response to the episodes we're putting out, and so they're looking to see, well, if they do give us a bit of a push, can we build some and get a base that's big enough for them to justify keeping us around."
Rumour has it that they're trying to find a different (better?) timeslot to air the show in, not cancel it.
Re:Apparently not getting cancelled (Score:2)
I can see though why they put it in that slot...I mean, whats the probability that the average viewer is going to be doing anything on a fri. night =P
Re:Apparently not getting cancelled (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefly, even with fairly poor ratings, has been a pretty profitable show for Fox so far; advertisers love the demographic, so they're going to keep buying ads as long as Fox can keep the viewership at a reasonable level. If they can just get the show off of Friday nights, and out of the Futurama trap (the "let's preempt the show four weeks out of every six and see what the ratings look like" game), this show could become a success.
Also ironic: the least-watched episode of Firefly (I don't remember which it was) was still seen by more eyeballs than an average episode of Buffy. It's not that Firefly sucks, or that it doesn't have an audience; it's that Fox has fairly high expectations for it. Which is pretty uppity, really, coming from the network that brought you "Who Wants to Marry the Pope" and "When Police Chases Attack."
Re:Apparently not getting cancelled (Score:4, Interesting)
I know you're just giving me shit, but I'll tell you the god's-honest truth. When I was in college, about 10 years ago, I took a mass communications class to fulfill some requirement or other. The class lasted 4 months, or whatever, and during that time we had to pick one network TV show-- as opposed to syndicated-- and write a thesis about its performance in the market. I picked a drama with Mariel Hemmingway and Peter Onorati about divorce attorneys; it was called "Civil Wars." Never watched an hour of it, but I kept a really close eye on the marketing of the show, and the ratings, and the relationship between those two. The show ran on ABC from 1991 through 1993. During that time, the net moved it from one timeslot to another several times. They changed marketing approaches, dropped showrunners, even changed the color of the lead actress's hair, no shit. The show never rated higher than #50 out of about 110, and it was canceled after 16 months.
I wrote something like 140 pages on that damn TV show. We had to plot schedule changes against ratings and share performance for key demos, analyze show revenues against overall ratings performance... the list just went on and on. At the end of it, we had to reach a conclusion about how and way the show succeeded or failed.
Ever since then-- seriously, ten years later-- I still find myself kinda thinking in those terms: programming, counter-programming, demographics, viewer loyalty, network loyalty, notes... all of that crap. It just... I don't know, stuck somehow.
I suppose I experienced what you would call "learning."
If I'd been a communications major, I'm sure this all would have come in very handy at some point. As it is, though, I just get to armchair-quarterback the network schedules.
Re:Apparently not getting cancelled (Score:3)
Oh well, like I always say:
TV is the enemy
Just Maybe ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, maybe to a small minority (uber-geeks) it was great but you won't even get the whole
Yes, you are a minority and as such big business is not going to care too much about you when they axe the show you love and keep another show you detest but is loved by the masses.
Re:Just Maybe ... (Score:2)
watched together. She thought the guys were cute and enjoyed the drama,
and I liked the way it made me talk in a western accent for days
afterwards.
I really thought this show could become as big as any other. Too bad Fox
routinely makes bad choices on good shows.
Re:Just Maybe ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just Maybe ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you have it backwards. You're equating good with popular. Sometimes the two go hand-in-hand; "The West Wing" is usually both good and popular. But often they're opposed to one another.
Consider Buffy. By any reasonable measurement, Buffy is not a popular show. But it's widely lauded, and generally considered to be very good. (This season, especially, has had more than its fair share of tight writing and "goddamn!" moments.) Or Sorkin's last show, "Sports Night." These are not examples of wildly popular shows. But they're generally-- not universally, but generally-- considered to be very good shows.
The difference is venue. Buffy has lasted umpty-bump seasons (six or seven, I think) because it lives on a third-tier network that can afford to take what it can get. Sports Night lasted two seasons on ABC out of pure charity; the ratings weren't good enough to justify it, but ABC gave it a shot anyway. Ultimately the show tanked because the numbers just weren't good enough for a top-tier national net.
Firefly is on Fox: a shit network that thinks it's a big network. If Firefly were on any other second- or third-tier net, it would be a small-scale hit with a loyal niche audience in a valuable advertiser demo, and would probably last for five years or longer.
In a perfect world, Mutant Enemy should take the whole thing in-house, produce episodes in DVD-resolution MPEG-4 format, and offer 'em for sale over the net for two bucks apiece. Never happen, though, because there's so fucking much piracy in the world, particularly so among Firefly's target audience, that the company would make about six dollars per episode and would go down faster than a two-bit whore.
I'll take that ideal DRM system any time, fellas.
Re:Just Maybe ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ack, you must have seen an episode from Season 4. No wonder you were disappointed
Seriously, though, "Buffy" has a very closed mythology, especially these days (it's in it's 7th season right now). (Most) Every episode is made better by the episodes that precede it, and those that follow it. This is part of what makes the fans fanatic. On the other hand, it makes it difficult for new viewers to get into the show.
The writer's abilities to portray "evil," in all its dizzying forms, is also one of the show's strengths. Sure, individual episodes may hit or miss in this regard, but when they hit, they're right on the money.
The dialogue is tight, much tighter than Firefly (imo...and I do like Firefly). The characters are deep. There is a strong feeling of continuity throughout each season (well, maybe not S6 so much).
On occasion, viewers are provided with that rare gem of an episode that defies some conventional TV wisdom, to great effect. Sure, "Buffy, The Musical" got a lot of press...but don't forget the episode with (almost) no dialogue, the episode with no music, the episode where Buffy isn't _The_ superhero of Sunnydale (complete with modified opening credits), the episode where conflict with the ultimate beastie takes a back seat to conflict with a lone zombie.....
I'm a fan
Re:Too Outland-ish (Score:2)
Another thing was too many characters, all with some complex secret past that wouldn't be fully revealed until a 4th season. No one was on screen long enough to make enough points to be 3-d.
I still have the episodes on my PVR, and may scan through them yet. Some of the later episodes seemed to begin to explain things.
Many people seem to want to watch anything labled "sci-fi" that isn't really good, or has no science. And part of the problem is too much is PC so I doubt any real issue will be tackled which was the redeeming feature. Simply writing a plot that occurs in the future, or in a fantasy or spirtual meta-world doesn't redeem the plot, or the characters.
And especially if there is bad science. Farscape at least had one character admit it (we can't have been shrunk since the oxygen molecules wouldn't shrink so we wouldn't be able to breathe). It is one thing to ask me to suspend disbelief. It is another thing to push absurdity or contradiction.
SciFi is interesting because of the wonder of exploring new worlds.
But I find many cartoons (and I don't mean Animé which almost always achieves a high level) better than something like FireFly, at least as it started.
Firefly was followed by "John Doe" which was more interesting and had the scifi elements including a main character that knew everything about everything except himself and this created tension from the first episode. It replaced Dark Angel which also had a similar tension (though the last episode of the first season and the transition pegged my absurdity meter).
Maybe it will pick up, or maybe it will be cancelled. But I don't think it will be the death of SciFi. They will need to wait for something more innovative and something that does take chances.
Re:Too Outland-ish (Score:5, Insightful)
Too much PC?!
You mean politically correct like kicking a bound bad-guy through your engines because you didn't like his attitude?
Or do you mean politically correct like having a prostitute lauded as the most socially acceptable member of the crew?
Or perhaps you meant politically correct like having the captain toss his first mate out the airlock for mutiny? (yeah-yeah I know he changed his mind before he died...)
Or you must mean politically correct like having the "naive" female engineer's first meeting with the captain with her dress around her ankles as she screws the previous engineer?
Yeah, you're right. This show is too timid to do anything that wouldn't be deemed "PC".
You must be watching a different Firefly than I am. I am watching a show with the most 'real-life' characters I've seen on any TV show.
Re:Just Maybe ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why the hell did they buy it in the first place?
Seriously, this is the thing that bothers people: They [insert evil MPAA member corporation's name] don't like the show, they don't give the show a good time slot, they don't promote it much, and they cancel it before its first season ends...why? Why bother? Why go through all this? Why not say "we're not interested" and let another network produce it?
Are they teasing geeks for fun? Are they frustrating people outta some weird deal with satan?
You're gonna say ratings huh? Then the question becomes: Are they really stupid enough to expect every single time slot to get excellent ratings?
Lessee...when has Firefly been on? It played on a friday night at 8...but the first they showed wasn't the first in the story, so it was confusing because they didn't explain anything (the bit at the end when the big bad guy dies was neat though...and the bit where someone said "did he just go crazy and fall asleep?" had me laughing my ass off). The second time it played was a saturday morning at around 12:20 am. Yeah, so late a friday night that it was the following morning. The third week it was on at 8 again (lots of people expected it later and missed it). Then the week after it was on at 12:05 am. Then back at 8 for a couple of weeks, and then it didn't play at all (I had Happy Gilmour on Fox and on another channel that plays it it was replaced by cheap old Andromeda). And this week it isn't on either...
Oh yeah, the bad ratings are really caused by the fact that its weird and to geeky, not because its nearly impossible to watch the damn thing huh?
Good riddance (Score:2, Insightful)
If this is an "excellent" sc-fi show nowadays, then I fear the entire genre has gone to hell and back. This show was pure crap. It was probably the most boring show on TV, next to Dr. Phil or some other BS. I had the displeasure of watching it twice, decide dot put it on my blacklist after that. Who likes this stuff? It didn't even seem like sci-fi at all, more like a soap-opera in a giant tin can. Oh sorry, its in "a boat". My mistake. (Somehow, calling the ship a "boat" is supposed to make it hip and cool or soemthing)
Re:Good riddance (Score:2)
Boring is it.
I like other series like Andromeda mind you, they have some plot I like to it. Dare I say Babylon 5 (best one of all!)
Re:Good riddance (Score:3, Informative)
If this is an "excellent" sc-fi show nowadays, then I fear the entire genre has gone to hell and back. This show was pure crap.
Frankly... what the hell is your problem? You've posted N messages here saying that you think the show is crap. Fine, we heard you the first time. Now go away. You don't like it fine, but a lot of other people love it and want to see it continue.
It didn't even seem like sci-fi at all, more like a soap-opera in a giant tin can.
Ah, I see. You're one of those people who equate "sci-fi" with technobabble, special effects and machines that go "beep". Fine, go watch Star Trek. Personally I like shows that put a bit more emphasis on character development and, you know, the story.
Re:Good riddance (Score:4, Interesting)
Firefly really impressed me, and this is coming from someone who totally despises Buffy and other works of the producer. Every episode has been original, and the silent-pychological drama episodes are some of the best I've seen on television.
Re:Good riddance (Score:2)
That's the whole problem. There isn't one.
Re:Good riddance (Score:2)
Re:Good riddance (Score:2)
Enterprise is the worst crap that I have ever seen and I curse B&B for squeezing it out of their flaming assholes and subjecting us to it. Voyager was high art compared to Enterprise, and while they accentuated 7of9's body they didn't have to resort to Decon-goo rubdowns with hard-nippled Vulcans to gain viewership.
But then why resort to well written characters and plots when a little T&A brings in the crowds. Throw enough boobies at the audience and maybe they won't notice glaring contradictions like cowardly Klingons, emotional Vulcans, Romulans with cloaking devices prior to established canon, Ferengi, retread plots, etc. etc. ad nauseum.
Best show ever? IT SUCKED (Score:2, Flamebait)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=40356&cid=4301 310 [slashdot.org]
My prediction came true too. :)
It just sucked on so many levels I don't know where to start. Oh, wait. The audience was supposed to immediatly get all the tounge and cheek humor etc etc right off the back. I mean after years of watching Buffy it shouldn't be a problem.
Though that was exactly it! It was Buffy in space! Same style of humor, different setting. Why the hell should I waste my time watching this??? I'd rather watch re-runs of the 5th Wheel.
I could write more about this piece of trash but instead I'll write another letter to SCIFI begging them to keep farscape. I'll be sure to mention to them that what's was firefly posing as their competition has decided to take a uh... vacation.
www.savefarscape.com [savefarscape.com]
Peter
Re:Best show ever? IT SUCKED (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody else catch the irony of this? At its best, Farscape was known to crack pretty wise, Peter.
Look at the view from orbit. Farscape had strong characters, conflict, a little sexual tension, humor, and muppets. Firefly has (had, whatever) strong characters, conflict, a little sexual tension, and humor; it lacked muppets, but it more than made up for them with its strict "no sound in space" policy and absolutely kick-ass production values.
Arguing that Firefly sucked while Farscape rocked just doesn't hold water. You're entitled to your opinion, natch, but don't try to dress it up as anything other than "I liked the Aussie show better."
Killing anything that isn't an instant hit (Score:5, Interesting)
Too bad each network has a few dozen shows to run each week.
This really gets back into the short term success syndrome that trashed Wall Street, among other things.
Re:Killing anything that isn't an instant hit (Score:3, Insightful)
Not according to Fox... (Score:5, Informative)
It's possible show has been cancelled but, AFAIK, the "official" word from Fox is that they are going to "heavily" promote the show in December (next new ep is Dec. 6), and see if the ratings pick up. If not, it's gone.
Currently the show has 13 episodes filmed (I think, don't quote me) and a few more (up to 4) scripts ordered. If they were going to cancel it I think they would just come out and say it, rather then beat about the bush like they seem to be doing.
It would be a shame, IMO, if they cancelled it. Some of the eps were not very good (including the pilot...) but others ("Out of Gas", "Our Mrs. Renyolds") were fantastic.
Did fox even try? (Score:5, Informative)
But I see that I'm in the minority.
Fox never even tried:
- They never showed the pilot, which probably explained some of the 'why' behind the creepy universe
- Never seen an ad or promotion for the show outside of
- It's on Friday night. Most Friday night shows seem to fail. Firefly is the best show that I never watch. Why? I'm usually doing something that night, and I'm the idiot who always forgets to program his VCR, comes home at midnight and slaps his hand against his forehead.
It never had a chance to get off the ground. But then, this is Fox: Beater of dead horses.
Re:Did fox even try? (Score:5, Funny)
"Lise, when you get a little older, you'll realise that Friday is just another day between NBC's Must-See Thursday and CBS's Saturday night Crap-o-Rama."
Once again, everything I really needed to know about life, I learned from "The Simpsons."
Re:Did fox even try? (Score:3, Interesting)
First, they did not air the pilot episode, which right out of the gates, was a mistake. I have seen the pilot, entitled "Serenity" (thank you, Kazaa!) and let me tell you, it rocked. Who needs aliens when you have Reavers!!
Second, the episodes that *have* been aired have all been out of order. I think the order they have showed them in is three, four, seven, eight, nine or something like that.
The reason? Fox didn't "get" some of the episodes so they aired them in the order they liked.
The terribly ironic part of this is that most people unanimously agree that the show got MUCH better as it went along. Lets face it, the first few episodes were mildly amusing at best, but the last 4 or so have kicked all sorts of ass.
Finally, as for why the show has been placed on hiatus. Fox really liked the last episode aired ("Ariel") and the decision was made to get it out of friday night hell. It was going to be moved to the wednesday 9pm/ET timeslot. The problem? WB announced earlier this week that Angel (another Joss Whedon show) was getting that timeslot.
Fox had no place to put it (Note: please please please make it monday at 9pm) for now so they have decided to place it on hiatus for now.
I don't think its necessarily cancelled. It certainly would be a small tradgedy. First family guy now this.
Related Story on 'Ain't It Cool' (Score:2)
They leave hope that 'Firefly' may be moved to the Monday 9/8c timeslot at a later date. Hiatus doesn't always mean a show is canceled. 'Andy Richter Controls the Universe' is coming back soon after an extended break, for which I am thankful.
-R
Crazy like the FOX NETWORK! (Score:5, Funny)
FOX is not SCI-FI friendly.
Remember FUTURAMA, it's been on the edge of cancellation almost every season.
Doesn't matter iof FIREFLY is a good show, it is no TEMPTATION ISLAND!
FOX is the greatest, FOR ME TO POOP ON!
Only THE SIMPSONS remains.
I liked it...... (Score:2)
But really, compared to Enterprise, it was different and interesting. Some episodes are better than others, but the last few were getting good.
It is too bad we really are locked into this Star Trek type of Sci-Fi on the main channels. You have to get SciFi to get Farscape, and most people don't get SciFi.
Is there some petition somewhere to save the show?
Firefly is way cool (Score:2, Redundant)
Unexpected answer to earlier story (Score:3, Interesting)
This would have been a perfectly good answer to the story earlier about likelyhood of OpenSource going mainstream. Why would anyone want OpenSource to do just that.
Joe Doe (Score:2)
Re:Joe Doe (Score:2)
It's a rip of Pretender. We've been there, done that. It's predictable. Very predictable.
Firefly really should have started with the first 2 hour pilot. I think the writing could have been better on some episodes, but there is a lot of potential in the show......
Maybe UPN will pick it up.........?!?
Bucking the trend gets you hammered... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, it's a throwback to TV of maybe 40 years ago, with a deliberately slower pacing. As a result, it's pissing off executives, all of whom grew up on MTV and who are twiching for more dialogue, more scenes, more explosions. They don't feel that they're getting their money's worth, thus, lots of pressure on Josh to either change the show, or get quashed.
I only hope someone on one of the cable channels (SciFi, or Showtime) picks up Firefly, so I'll be able to catch the rest of the series when they syndicate it...
Mark my words, eventually all you'll see on network TV is Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, and America's Most Dangerous Police Chases, and the crap that they like to pass off as the nightly news. I only hope that we can limit the brain-damaged execs just to network tv, and keep stuff like PBS and cable relatively uncontaminated.
Re:Bucking the trend gets you hammered... (Score:2)
I mean your points may very well be valid, but honestly, I don't know a single person that likes the show.
Counter trend? Look to daytime TV (Score:2)
There is no formulaic bad guy vs. good guy, with predictable special effects climax every episode. It is serial - every episode builds on previous episodes to develop the characters, instead of waiting a few seasons to give each character a defining moment.
Sound familliar to another genre perhaps? You don't have to go back 40 years to see this style. As I said above, Firefly is nothing more than a crappy space soap opera. That is why it is being canned. Sci-Fi fans like me don't want to watch Days of Our Lives on a "space boat". We want interesting, believable stories with a scientificlly plausable background at least (not some faster than light boat that uses a gear powered engine). The show was horrible. It is over with. Move on.
Re:Counter trend? Look to daytime TV (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you can clue us in as to what a real FTL drive looks like?
Why is it so implausible that technology from 500 years in the future still has some mechanical components? Just because Rick Berman and Michael Pillar explode in a jizz-supernova every time their design department comes up with a new neon-tube-covered warp core with no moving parts doesn't make that the authoritative statement on what it would look like in real life, assuming it were possible.
The Trouble With Sci-Fi TV (Score:4, Insightful)
A Sci-Fi televison show is one of the trickiest of products to sell because the consumer base is much too fragmented. You have your "hard sci-fi" fans, your sci-fantasy/space opera buffs, your military SF fans, your fans who always want a "Politically Correct" message, etc.
With such multipolar market psychographics, the tendency is to try to be safe and give the show "something for everyone". Of course, the result is invariably a fragmented mess of a show, and the viewers stay away in droves: thus Firefly. Occasionally, a television show will be able to pull off the trick of satisfying most if not all of the sci-fi consumer market, Star Trek: TNG being the classic example, but such instances are far and few between.
A simpler strategy is to go for a single segment of the target market, and hope that a cult following develops, one which may even blossom into a mass following. These types of show are usually seen in syndication or on smaller networks. Successful examples of this type of show include Buffy The Vampire Slayer (target market: Goths) and Xena, Warrior Princess (target market: Lesbians).
In retrospect, it is obvious that Firefly was much too ambitious a show. The producers of the show took a big chance, and they failed big-time. It didn't help matters that the show was badly written - they couldn't even get the title right: how many sci-fi fans are going to get excited about watching a show called "Firefly"? - and shown in an unfriendly time slot. Television programmers developing future sci-fi shows would do well to pay better attention to the people who watch them.
It has to be said (Score:5, Interesting)
I watched Firefly for a few episodes and found it very boring. The only part that was slightly interesting (the hidden crush thing) was overcome with the hokey idea of the gunslinger in space theme that, while interesting, was never taken advantage of, and therefore it lost viewers.
I'm sure showing the pilot would've helped the show, but the first three episodes that aired (the only ones I watched), just got more and more drab. It would've been nice to actually seen the origins of these characters but, gathering what I did on those that aired, the whole thing was a misfire. Regardless of its cult-like status (whenever a show is beginning it falter and the three people who like it complain, suddenly there's a "cult"), maybe Josh Wheadon doesn't have the golden goose.
You want to see a high-concept new show that's actually worth your hour? Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing. While it can't be this good for long, it sure beats Firefly.
Good riddance.
Re:It has to be said (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you watch the same John Doe I did? All it does is find horribly contrived situations in which to demonstrate his super intellect which half the time doesn't even make sense, what does leg length and shoe size have to do with a theoretical maximum sprint speed?!? Is it a popular show? Maybe I don't know the numbers, but I have never heard it refered to as a good show. Firefly is a good show, it may not be popular among a wide audience but I'vwe seen very few bad reviews. The advantage of John Doe over Firefly is John Doe has one essentially 1-1/2 dimensional main character and a couple of subcharacters with relatively plot lines so you don't have to get into it. Firefly on the other hand has a pile of major multi-dimensional characters with complex plot lines. When it comes down to it Firefly can never be wildly popular, it's just too complex, too many characters and a too involved plot. Was Babylon 5 widly popular or is Buffy? No, both have a very dedicated audience but never had huge numbers, they were just too involved for the average viewer. Name a single widly popular show with more than a few complex main characters. X-files had 2, the origional Star Trek had about 4, Seinfeld had 4. Firefly is just too complicated not to mention the episodes were out of order on top of it making even harder to get into to ever be popular but this doesn't mean it won't be good.
Re:It has to be said (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what made it good. Real shame it was canceled for the flop known as the XFL.
for the better (Score:2, Insightful)
Sucked at first, got a LOT better (Score:5, Interesting)
The first few episodes weren't great at all. I was about to stop watching, but somebody lent me a couple more taped episodes and they were really good. Good old Josh has struck a great combination of interesting characters, unusual situations, and funny dialog. There's just something appealing about a honorable thief and his crew of misfits.
If it really gets cancelled I will definitely miss it, best SciFi since ST:TNG.
Re:Sucked at first, got a LOT better (Score:2)
Recurring Theme... lesson learned (Score:2)
I got hooked on "Space Above and Beyond"... canceled
I then got hooked on "Earth 2"... canceled
I knew as soon as I got into Firefly that it would probably have the same ending. It seems the general population can't appreciate simple, innocent humor and are too impatient to let the characters develop. If the orginal Star Trek didn't have such a cult following I wouldn't have been surprised if TNG got canceled after the first season as well (which obviously turned out to be a great show !
Yet another sign of societies seemingly downward spiral... hopefully not I hope.
I'd rather watch Red Dwarf (Score:2)
The one episode I saw wasn't terrible but it wasn't great either.
Re:I'd rather watch Red Dwarf (Score:2)
HEY (Score:2)
Somebody mentioned nielsen earlier... (Score:2)
system needs scrapped. It's outdated, and
not representative anymore. How hard would it
be to come up with a better system? How inexpensive
would it be to poll directv customers to see if
they'd be cool with having their viewing habits
monitored? Or cable customer for that matter? In
this age of computers, how hard would it be to
compile data if every single viewer ELECTED to participate
in this type of monitoring? Not very hard me thinks.
Those nielsen ratings are why morons like Barry Diller
decides he doesn't like "space shows" and why
they do dumb shit like show freaking Braveheart
on SciFi now.
They cancelled a good show (Score:2)
At least they didn't have sound in a vacuum (Score:2, Interesting)
Why the show failed (in my own case) (Score:2, Troll)
The show failed because it never had an audience. Science aspects of the show (as much as I could suffer through) are abysmal; one can find more science in "The He-Man" :-) Fiction aspects (human relationships) are hardly appealing to technologically inclined. Style of a western best caters to my grand-grand-parents. So who is left there to watch?
For me, the show was not interesting. I watched only 1/2 of an episode; could not tolerate more. If there are good scenes elsewhere, I will never see them, because I am not willing to dig through a huge heap of junk for that. Yes, episodes are available on the Net. But they are not worth a blank CD.
However, Lexx is interesting, and Farscape, because these are shows which build their own Universe and play by the rules of that Universe. These show's writers have imagination. I like that.
Re:Why the show failed (in my own case) (Score:2)
For me, one of the wonderful things about Firefly was the fact that they treated technology naturally, just something that you used and no big deal about it. Nobody goes about their daily lives discussing how to rework a dilithium matrix to increase efficiency that extra .001%.
The fun was seeing how this Universe worked, how there could be a vastly technological core of planets vs. outer colonies reduced to using wagons and horses. Sometimes the interesting bits are the most overlooked.
Okay, you bitch about the representation of technology in Firefly and then say that Lexx was interesting? WTF?!? Have you no values?Re:Why the show failed (in my own case) (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to know all of the details? Do you care about the details of a street light? How about the details of your car's air conditioner? How about the portable space heater? How about the fabric blend of your sweater? These are all things that four hundred years ago would have been absolutely shocking and exciting. Light without fire!?! Wow! But in reality, most people (even geeks) just take the light on the streets for granted, think air-conditioner == freon + compressor that keeps you cool, a heater is just an electrical resistor that keeps you warm, and the sweater is 30% cotton and also helps keep you warm. Would you watch a show where they examined the tech behind a streetlight for the whole episode, would you find that terribly stimulating? I wouldn't.
Now remember that Serenity is a simple, not very flashy, old, stand-by workhorse freighter. Are there some details? Sure. The mechanic is always elbow-deep in the details. She's constantly talking about tweaking this and that and the other. But there's a minimum of blinking lights and what widget X or Y gets them faster than light doesn't matter. Let's say they tell you the blow by blow schematics for the faster-than-light drive. Then what? It can't drive a show. It's pointless. FTL doesn't exist and any "explanation" of how it works is useless technobabble that appeals to folks who can't grasp personal interaction.
You speak of Picard's ability to reason his way out of a situation. I challenge you to demonstrate a moment on the show where the captain of Serenity was given a simple problem or solved a problem in an unreasonable fashion.
Tractors require fuel. Constantly replenished sources of fuel. Fuel on any non-trivial scale is dependant upon refineries. You don't just hook up a gas tank to a natural oil reserve. So, assuming that there is a ready supply of fossil fuels, they must also build and maintain a refinery. Otherwise they must get their fuel supplies from off-world. They constantly talk about trips from planet to planet taking from days to weeks. If the people on the planet are poor and basically just surviving, how can the costs of transport for that fuel on a recurring basis be handled?
The fact of the matter is that horses are cheaper to raise and maintain than a tractor is. And a horse generates fertilizer. A tractor just spits out fumes.
Right now, you can go just anywhere on the planet within one day. But imagine it took three weeks to get to Japan from Brazil. Supply lines would be much more expensive, communication would be much more limited, casual trips would be rare, and the one without as many natural resources would be reduced to poverty and meager subsistence.
This is why I like Firefly. No rubber ears. No green people. No transporter accidents. Just people trying to make a life for themselves -- and they happen to be in a very plausible future.
Human interaction is and always will be more important than psuedo-tech minutia just as family, friends, my girlfriend, and my community are all more important to me than my computer. If your tech is more important to you than these things, I pity you. I really do.
Re: Why the show failed (in my own case) (Score:4, Informative)
> Sci-fi is an abbreviation of "science" and "fiction".
Sit down, I have some news that may shock you.
Science fiction isn't about science. It's just a setting; all the usual requirements for good storytelling still apply.
If you want science, go to grad school in a science field. If science fiction shows peddled real science they would be somewhat less popular than Alan Alda's Scientific American Frontiers. (I say "somewhat less" because even PBS's science shows tend to be watered down with a lot of human interest fluff. Take that out and the viewership would be even lower.)
Did we see the same show? (Score:2)
Re:Did we see the same show? (Score:2)
It's one thing to be indifferent to a show and watch it because nothing else is on, it's another to purposely avoid it. The only show I hate more is M.A.S.H., the very theme songs makes me hurl.
I'm very dissapointed (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, the writing for this show is great. I like the dialogue, and I think the acting is passable even at it's weakest moments. I happen to LIKE the Buffy sense of humor- it's dark, sarcastic, and funny as all hell. The only problem with it that I notice is that they're a little inconsistant with when they use their southern drawl, but if they actually get a fair run in a decent time slot I'm sure they'll clean that up.
They've got some pretty ingenius stuff in there that no one else has the guts to do: for example, every so often the characters will break into a little rant of Chinese. And they're the only scifi show I can remember that's actually done the no sound in space thing. It's not formulaic at all- it doesn't steal from Star Trek or Star Wars, though it's closer to Star Wars out of those two. It's the best example of genre-blending I've seen in a long time.
Some individual responses:
Blacklist Blacklist: Sounds like you just need to learn how to use your Tivo- Firefly's on Fox, Everybody Loves Raymond is on CBS, and Just Shoot Me's on NBC. Oh, and King of the Hill is lame.
Leonbev, Anoynymous Coward #1, It's the first bloody season. Let them work out the kinks before you condem them based on the first episode. As for the sword fight, fencing has been a sport for hundreds of years, and I don't see it going out of style anytime soon.
Zaren:
What you saw wasn't the real pilot, Fox is just retarded. That big bad guy hasn't been in any of the other 9 episodes, or even mentioned. And I for one thought it was hysterical when the big buff guy got kicked into the engine. Dark humor rules.
Snoopy77: I think a more likely explaination is that it is every bit as good as I think it is, but people watch too much Friends and trash like that to be able to appreciate it.
Bowie J. Poag: Um... there's one black chick. Other than that, there's eight white people. You dazzel me with your intellect.
Brunes69, you like Enterprise... I just don't know how to classify you other as than someone with no taste whatsoever. Lemme guess, you liked Voyager too? What're you, 12? These last two shows have nearly killed one of the greatest franchises of all time with lame ass writing. Enterprise couldn't even come up with an original ship design that fit into the era it's supposed to take place in- they just stole the design from the Akira Class. They have way too much technology too. I could go on for pages about why Enterprise sucks.
Jpt.d, Andromeda was something they fished out of Gene Roddenberry's trash pile.
Ko5mo, I don't know what show you've been watching, but there's been virtually nothing BUT character development.
Ppetrakis: You're just bitter 'cause they canceled Farscape. The ONLY thing this show shares in common with Buffy is the humor, which, as I said before, I find very funny.
Xagon7: John Doe is a ripoff of The Pretender. It was ok... but it didn't really grab me after the first couple of episodes like Firefly did.
Ok, I've given my 2 cents. It's a good show, dammit!
WTF is wrong with FOX? (Score:2)
Someone needs to start up a cable network just for all these promising and/or loved-by-a-small-but-loyal-army shows that were killed prematurely-- maybe make it a pay channel like HBO, and let the subscribers vote on the schedule. Then we discriminating viewers will have something to watch while the majority (read: morons) are enjoying "American Idol 8," "Celebrity Bukkake" and "World's Wildest Snuff Videos."
~Philly
Let's Try Another Alternative, Folks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being the kind of guy I am, when a likely potential presents itself, which does not depend on me thinking the worse of other human beings, I will tend to latch on to it in the hopes that such common sense thinking will prevail.
Let's look at another likely occurance here before throwing up the age old (but experience-proven, I will grant you that) addage of the average intelligence of your network executive and *gasp* give them the benefit of the doubt here for a second.
Firefly episodes will run thru December.
Farscape, which also airs in that exact same "Timeslot of Doom" will begin its run of final (Yes. I know. That argument is neither here nor there. Save it for 2003. I'll be there in the trenches with you.) 11 episodes starting in January.
Can we see a pattern here?
So a hiatus with the provision that the show will return in a different timeslot than it's main competition in the genre this year makes a bit of...well..sense, doesn't it?
Quite possibly Firefly will move to Monday's at 9pm, but I don't know how well that will fit, with Boston Public likely to stay in the preceeding timeslot. But as long as I don't have to compete with Farscape and Firefly on at the same time, my scheduling duties will be that much less of a hassle and if this prooves to be true, I will be grateful to the execs at Fox...
That's assuming we all aren't right back here again within 6 months.
Experience-worn truths are usually that way for a damned good reason.
Fox is not canceling it.. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.fireflyfans.net/news.asp?newsid=32
They are going to trade it. BTW, Zap2it has been ragging on firefly since day one. Take anything they say with a grain of salt.
Let's Not Forget... (Score:3, Interesting)
Fox can't really change their audience quickly, so they just drop the good stuff.
Re:Let's Not Forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure you don't mean Space: Above and Beyond?
That was a good show, IMHO. Reasonably intelligent plots, most of the time, with enough bangs and flashes to keep non-plot driven viewers interested. It also had the best, again IMHO, space combat sequence I've ever seen in the final dogfight in "The Angriest Angel" between McQueen and Chiggy Von Richoven; the fact that it was preceded by the "God doesn't want to speak with me right now" speech just makes it all the better.
I do think they should have dumped the plot with West and his girlfriend (even better just dumped West out of the nearest airlock) cos that just didn't fit.
Campaign to Save Firefly (Score:4, Interesting)
Call me a skeptic, but I've heard this before and it will certainly make a lot of people think twice before jettisoning Firefly out of the airlock if you join the campaign to save the show.
If you want to support what many (including me) consider to be the best show on television, join the campaign to support Firefly by voting to save it [savemyshow.com] at SaveMyShow.com, by sending a postcard asking Fox to save the show to:
FOX BROADCASTING CO
ATTN: SANDY GRUSHOW, CHAIRMAN, FOX ENTERTAINMENT GROUP
10201 WEST PICO BLVD
LOS ANGELES CA 90035
Donate [fireflysupport.com] (via paypal) to Firefly: Immediate Assistance to support the campaign to save the show.
Put a banner [fireflysupport.com], graphic, or link on your web site to support the show.
You can help! (Score:3, Interesting)
Many Firefly fans decided that instead of waiting to see if the show would be canceled they would start a rescue effort right away. Firefly support [fireflysupport.com] has been raising money, and on December 9th they will run a full page add in Variety supporting Firefly, they are sending copies of that issue to advertisers and to the execs at Fox. They have also used some of the money raised on producing T-shirts and bags with the Logo of the support campaign, this too will be send to Fox execs.
One guy in American Mensa paid for an add to telling other members about this new program, another guy in Ohio bought cable adds to get other people to watch. And tons of people have been writing the advertisers thanking them for supporting the program, and generally oozing goodwil towards it.
Its not over yet. There are two episodes and the pilot to be shown in December, and two more episodes already in the can. I you like the show, make a different spread the word, send a postcard, take a chance on something which is not the usual premasticated gruel. If you hate the show... don't do anything, no need to actively annoy other people is there?
http://fireflysupport.com/ [fireflysupport.com]
Think its sick to try to save a TV program? A sign of looserhood? Perhaps, but it makes more sense to fight for something you like, as opposed to spend effort on something you dislike, no?
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why the heck not? We are still having sword fights and rustling cattle today, after all. We live in a world where 747s and Bedouins coexist. We have soft-serve ice cream, HDTV, and artificial limbs, but we also have subsistence farmers, yak herders, and those stone-age people they discovered in New Guinea a few years ago.
If you go to Australia, you can drive a couple of days from a 21st century city of four million people into the middle of the desert where people live pretty much the same way they did 40,000 years ago. But once you get there, you'll probably see somebody wearing an Adidas tee shirt or a pair of Reeboks.
The writers of Firefly just expanded this idea. Instead of having a few population groups living pre-modern lifestyles scattered across the globe, they have a few planets full scattered through a solar system. And just like in the real world, those scattered groups of "primitives" will have a few pieces of modern technology at hand, surrounded by whatever they could make themselves.
It's a much more plausible idea than you may realize.
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, I don't buy that. Bedouins and Quakers live their backwards lifestyles out of religious conviction. You expect me to believe that a zillion people on hundreds of different worlds all suddenly agree to adopt a cult-like belief that "the simple life is best"? And if that's the case, how come it's not ever mentioned in the storyline? Simple - because no thought was ever put to it. It's 100% stylistic.
Style is fine and dandy - but why cant they at least put a little thought to it?
For instance, the clothing. I know it's really important to convey the "western" style that these people on backwater worlds are wearing handmade vintage clothing. Who is making it?
Here's how I see things.
Earth's used up.
Big megacorps launch pre-fab factories to the other planets, and settlers come looking for work. They'll be the exploited third world labor of the future. This is the culture, clothing, and architecture you'll see in the future on these backwater worlds. Not some glorified historical re-enactment society.
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, not under these rules. The premise behind Firefly isn't that the people who felt like it moved to other planets; the mission statement of the show starts with, "After the Earth got used up." Migrating to other planets wasn't optional. This results in a blindingly diverse universe in which to set one's stories.
All colonies and space-faring civilizations would tend to use as much tech as they could get their hands on & I'm sure companies would be perfectly happy to sell them that tech for a fair price just as they do today.
First of all, imagine being a Bedouin and wanting to buy a DVD player. To you and me, a DVD player costs about $90. To a Bedouin, that's more money-- equivalent exchange value, that is-- than he'll see in five years. Not to mention the fact that he's somehow going to have to get his hands on an electrical generator to power the thing.
And that's just in our world, where getting DVD players to Bedouins is only marginally more difficult than getting them to suburban teenagers. Imagine a setting in which you'd have to send an entire cargo ship across millions of miles of empty space to do the same job. Suddenly the barriers to trade become very real.
Furthermore, how long do you think that DVD player would hold up strapped to the ass-end of a camel in the middle of a desert? The sand alone would turn it into a $90 boat anchor in a few months' time, and boat anchors are of even less use to the Bedouins than DVD players are.
So we have three things: (1) the poorer settlements simply lack the resources to trade for even moderately expensive goods; (2) the moderate cost of these goods is multiplied many times over by the extraordinary cost of transporting them to the outer worlds; and (3) the rough-and-ready lifestyle of the frontier colonists puts serious limits on their demand for technological goods, either because they lack the infrastructure to support them, or because the goods just aren't durable enough.
One of the most durable pieces of electronics I've ever seen is an old Walkman that I've had since the late 80's. That thing has been hauled all around the world, dropped, submerged in water, you name it, and it still works. So I probably could give it to a Bedouin with reasonable confidence that it's not going to fall apart in a week of exposure. But where's he going to get the batteries for it?
In general, when cultures merge, the more primitive one adapts to include the technology of the other. This is evident in the lives of american indians, eskimos (enuit ), numerous tribes in africa, and most in south america that have had contact with the outside world.
Um... actually, in most of those examples you just named, the more "primitive" (for lack of a better word) group has been wiped out by the more "advanced" group, either through active genocide, or through disease. The Europeans became the dominant group on the North American continent because smallpox killed off most of the natives.
But if you look at examples where two groups of wildly disparate technologies meet without war or disease in the mix, a different conclusion presents itself. Consider the native peoples of Siberia, or of Mongolia, or the Australian blackfellas that I mentioned earlier. There's some cultural and technological assimilation along the borders, but for the most part both groups continue to exist as they did before they met. In most cases, of course, the more "advanced" group has grown at a dramatically greater rate than the "primitive" group, so from a certain point of view it looks like the "primitive" group is dying out, but that's not really what happens.
The simple reason that there are areas where people live like they are in the stone age is because they have yet to either meet people more advanced, or have yet to learn how they can trade their goods for more advanced ones.
That's not true. There are stone-age peoples in South America, Australia, Africa, and the Pacific islands, and probably lots of other places that I'm not thinking of right now. They're not living in huts or caves and chipping tools out of flint because they don't know any better; they're doing it because, whatever each member's personal motivation, they want to.
Even tribes in south america that had never previously seen outsiders were more than willing to trade goods for knives made of steel.
Sure, but that doesn't mean that they're clamoring to move into condos and drink inexpensive but charming California chardonnays and rent movies from the Madang Blockbuster.
I imagine if they had seen or heard of a gun, they might have tried to bargain for one so they could use it instead of a spear to hunt with.
Not once they realize that it takes a shitload of infrastructure to supply oneself with bullets. These particular examples we're talking about are called stone-age peoples because they don't typically work with metals at all. They're cool with the idea of a knife made out of carbon steel, because it's useful as long as you rub it against a rock every so often to keep it sharp. But if you try to tell them about gunpowder, and mining minerals to make gunpowder, and melting lead to make bullets, and so forth and so on, their interest will turn rapidly back to the ka-bar on the other table.
If there is a better, faster, cheaper way of doing something (and likely there is)... people will use it over primitive technology anyday.
Yes. But "better, faster, cheaper" means different things in different settings. To an iron- or steam-age group-- say, like a medium-sized town out of the old west-- the idea of manufacturing bullets to use in their expensively bought rifles makes sense. But to a stone-age group, that's about as practical as microwave popcorn.
Joe Shmoe yak herder would be instantly working for acme corporation pushing paperwork after the mojo corporation found a better way to do his job for less $ on his planet.
Except... that's not the way it happens in real life.
Cowboys? please, they'd have electronic collars on all the cattle, robots, and cow kibble instead of real oats and grains for the cows in no time.
Not if electronic collars cost the equivalent of $5,000 each, and cow kibble went for hundreds of bucks per pound. Branding irons are easy enough to make from raw iron, and grass is free.
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Additionally you don't include the price of war on societies. Then there's disease, climate changes on worlds not fully studied (think Wrath of Khan), and then there are governments and/or people who would choose to control what gets used and by whom.
In today's America where we discuss the digital divide and talk about how to get everyone a computer, meanwhile the Native American population struggle with how to get running water, electricity and phones to more than half of their population that "need" it. And this is with the government being minutes to hours away. What happens when communications takes weeks to months and travel likewise months to years?
In the past we have seen the rich sell everything they have to move to strange new lands. It then often took those families generations of squaller to build it back up. What's to say that the same thing doesn't happen again?
The last point I would make is that you assume that because native peoples of today use some conveniences that it was by choice. Often in today's world it is by necessity and survival that they must take on the modern trappings. Other times it's because someone else told them that they must. Just because the south American tribesman is shown wearing a Camel shirt and has an outboard motor on his boat doesn't mean that he's scrambling to buy an HDTV or has a microwave. To say that we scramble to use the latest in technology is not a true assumption. Even today we have technology in continual use that's been outdated by a generation (space shuttle, air traffic control, automobiles, trains, airplanes, naval fleets, etc). Will that gap shorten or lengthen when space travel occurs between planets.
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:5, Funny)
(Hang on a sec while I wave goodbye to the topic as it recedes in the distance. Bye-bye, topic.)
See, that always pissed me off. Wrath of Khan is a movie so close to being flawless as to make no difference, but there's one glaring thing that drives me positively bat-shit every time I see it.
They put Khan on Ceti Alpha 5, right? Fifth planet out from Alpha Ceti, which is the brightest star in the constellation Cetus, the Whale. (Astronomy geek.) Six months later, Ceti Alpha 6 (the next planet out) explodes. The shock shifts the orbit of Ceti Alpha 5, and that planet becomes a barely inhabitable rock.
Got the mental picture? There's Ceti Alpha 1-4, then Ceti Alpha 5 (Khan's planet), the smoking crater in space where Ceti Alpha 6 used to be, and then (just for sake of discussion) Ceti Alpha 7.
Years go by. Chekhov and whahisname come by and take a long, hard look at what they believe to be Ceti Alpha 6. They beam down, find Khan, learn about the whole Ceti Alpha 5/Ceti Alpha 6 mixup, have a good laugh, all hell breaks loose, and so on.
How the hell did they end up landing on Ceti Alpha 5, thinking it was Ceti Alpha 6? The way I figure it, it's impossible.
Let's say Chekhov and his buddies come flying in to the Ceti Alpha system and start counting planets. There's 1-4, there's 5 (better stay away from there, that's Khan's hood and we don't wear his colors), and there's 6. (Remember, 6 blowed up, so what they think is 6 is actually 7.) They beam down to Ceti Alpha 7 (which they think is 6) and find... nobody. Because Khan's gang is one planet sunward.
So they must not have counted planets. Instead, let's say they just started looking where they believe Ceti Alpha 6 should be-- based on the radius of its orbit-- and find a planet. Assuming that it's Ceti Alpha 6 (it's really 5), they beam down and get into all sorts of trouble.
But for that to have happened, Ceti Alpha 5 would have to be in a more distant orbit than it used to be. This is possible, thanks to orbital dynamics; if Ceti Alpha 6 exploded while Ceti Alpha 5 was either ahead of it or behind in orbit, the "shock wave" (yeah, I know, but nitpicking only goes so far, you know?) would give 5 a push, either speeding it up or slowing it down, which would have the net result of increasing the semimajor axis of its orbit. In other words, the orbit would become more elliptical, with its aphelion farther from the sun than it used to be. If you balance everything just right-- making the explosion the right size, and putting Ceti Alpha 5 in the right place relative to it-- Ceti Alpha 5 could be at just the right distance from its sun when Chehkov's ship arrives to pass for Ceti Alpha 6.
But what are the odds? Remember, Ceti Alpha 5's new orbit isn't circular; it's a more eccentric ellipse with a perihelion inside Ceti Alpha 5's original orbit and an aphelion near or outside Ceti Alpha 6's orbit. So the planet is only at the right distance from its sun to pass for Ceti Alpha 6 twice a year. The odds that Chehov and crew could show up at precisely the right time of year, and that they could, out of laziness or criminal misconduct or whatever, skip the part where you start at the sun and go "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, okay that's the one we want," are just too high to accept.
And that doesn't even get into the fact that an orbit sufficiently elliptical to put Ceti Alpha 5's aphelion at or near Ceti Alpha 6's original orbital radius would almost certainly render the planet completely uninhabitable, not just mostly so.
Why does this bother me so much? Simply because it would have been so easy to avoid it in the scriptwriting stages. If their target had been Ceti Alpha 4 instead of Ceti Alpha 6, no problem. Offscreen, Ceti Alpha 4 explodes, so when the white hats show up, they assume Ceti Alpha 5 is Ceti Alpha 4 (because 4 isn't there any more), and all is well with the world. Simple, easy, and with no impact whatsoever on the rest of the story.
The only reason I can think of for the writer's wanting to use Ceti Alpha 6 instead of Ceti Alpha 4 is simple euphony: Ceti Alpha 6 really rolls off the tongue, while Ceti Alpha 4 feels like you're chewing when you say it.
Okay, now that I go back and re-read this, I realize that this was a really long and essentially pointless rant about a matter of trivia so meaningless that other trivia looks at it and goes, "Pfff, whatever." Sorry about that. Can't do anything about it now, though; the backspace key on my keyboard is mysteriously broken all of a sudden.
Re:Well, here's my opinion... (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't a new idea in science fiction; for a point of reference, read either The Legacy of Heorot or Destiny's Road by Niven. They're both very easy reads, and they tell the story of extrasolar colonies that are basically designed on the seed-pod principle.
A plant normally needs light and nutrients to grow, but a seed is buried beneath the soil and has no roots with which to feed. So how can a seed sprout? A seed-pod contains both the embryonic plant itself and also a bit of tissue that feeds the plant while it's sprouting. As the plant sprouts, it "digests" that bit of plant-stuff to get the energy it needs to grow.
It's easy to imagine a colony that works the same way. The spacecraft-- a giant slow-boat, in this case-- is packed to the gills with lots of useful stuff: mining tools, farming tools, seeds and bulbs, livestock, pre-fab housing, a certain supply of prepared food, and so on. When the boat lands and the colonists get out, they have a great big party and start making babies willy-nilly, and then the next morning they start tearing their spaceship apart. All the stuff inside, and even the structure of the spaceship itself, gets turned into houses and mines and farms and fields and stuff to eat and build and use. This is like the seed-pod; it gives the colony enough stuff to set up a basic community, with shelter and sources of food and of minerals and all that, but that's all. After that point, the colony has to start squeezing out the pups and getting back to nature. Till the soil, milk the cows, real frontier-type stuff.
So to get the whole world off the planet, we have to postulate some of the spaceships. How many? Well, let's start by guessing that there are about 8 billion people on Earth when the shit starts to hit the fan. Due to disease and famine, say that population drops by 50% over a century: 4 billion people. Of those, half are going to get left behind, either because they're too old or too sick or too young or whatever: 2 billion.
Figure each spaceship can hold about 200 people, and the tools, equipment, and supplies they need to start a colony on a habitable world. That comes to 10 million spaceships. Ten million spaceships, each filled with stuff like goats and guns and clothes and lumber and pigs and wrought iron and seeds and medical supplies and books and ploughs and anvils and chickens, with a little room left over in the corners for the passengers.
Who could build such a vast fleet of spaceships? Oh, let's say in the West it was a joint venture of the National Geographic Society, the Gates Foundation (can't sell Windows if humanity is extinct, can you?), and Fox. (Fox got in by selling the ad rights to a yet-to-be-produced series called "When Space Colonies Go Bad." Check your local listings.)
The government of China, of course, accepted the responsibility for migrating its vast population upon its own shoulders; in 2250, Chairman Ken (China having become surprisingly Westernized in the past couple of centuries) proclaims the Great Leap Upward, and they start building Little Red Spaceships in low Earth orbit.
Improbable? Of course. Impossible? Probably. But remember that the fundamental purpose here is to establish a setting in which stories can be told. Maybe the number of people who got off the Earth is a lot smaller than 2 billion. Maybe it's more like 2 million, which would only require 10,000 spaceships, which is a hell of a lot easier to imagine. But whether you go with the high or the low figure, it's just plausible enough to make the reader, or watcher, or whatever go "Oh, okay, that's all right then, now get on with the stories."
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:5, Funny)
The most recent episode took Serenity and crew into the core system. They were in a city that could have been Trantor or Corsicant, or whatever that city was that Bruce Willis lived in, in The Fifth Element. Totally high tech, and well done fx for tv.
The outer planets, where most of the shows take place, is relatively dirt-poor fringe-folk. They are the beaten enemy of a civil war. Mostly second class citizens of the government. It's like the difference between New York City and some unnamed village in Afghanistan. In that context, it makes good sense.
Weren't Luke's aunt and uncle water farmers on Tatooine? For a space opera, that was pretty low tech.
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
That bitch is about five months out of date. Before the show debuted, lots of know-it-alls were comparing it to Outlaw Star. Since the show's been on, the only people to draw that comparison have been people who've never watched Firefly.
Complain all you want, but at least make a passing effort to stay up-to-date.
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Just my opnion, but... (Score:3, Funny)
New TV shows are actually rehashing old plots?
Oh the travesty!
Re:I dunno... (Score:3, Insightful)
what kind of logic are we using these days to judge shows that are put on in an ass backwards way from how they were intended then we get pissed cause they don't equal our expectations for what entertainment should be?
Re:I dunno... (Score:2)
Re:I dunno... (Score:4, Insightful)
Babylon 5 was mostly ass but for some reason people seem to think its the best sci-fi in years.
so what do you classify as being great sci-fi? what would be the general flow of a good sci-fi show?
Star Trek mostly sucks ass week after week but we've managed to let that go on for decades. So, Mr. Producer what's a great sci-fi story for TV? You've got so many great ideas then pitch your show.
Re:I dunno... (Score:2)
Re:I dunno... (Score:2)
Re:I dunno... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Time slot to blame (Score:2)
I hate Firefly with a passion, it wouldn't have done well in any time slot, but that slot sucks for any show.
Re:and they cancelled Dark Angel for it too... (Score:2)
Re:and they cancelled Dark Angel for it too... (Score:3, Funny)
True, kind of. That young lady definitely had the best ass on television at the time, but that, by itself, somehow wasn't enough to hold my attention. I suspect it's because I knew this was a network-- Fox, yeah, but a network nonetheless-- and the chance for a glimpse of thong or, bless my stars, of butt cleavage was precisely zero.
Wanna know how to make the highest-rated show on tee vee? Put Jessica Alba in tight pants and have her run around a lot. Guarantee-- right there in the ads-- that there will be at least one gratuitous shot of Jessica's peekaboo thong per episode. Watch the ratings share for male viewers between 12 and death climb steadily toward 100%.
These are pearls I'm giving away here. Pearls, I tells ya.
Re:two words to save Firefly (Score:2)
Re:I work at a network. (Score:2)
The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, you know.
Although if you're talking about ABC, NBC, or CBS, they probably are. The last time I saw anything risky or artistic on one of those three networks was the pilot episode of ABC's short-lived and shamelessly political 1997 anthology series, "Gun." The pilot episode starred Daniel Stern as a struggling actor who interrupts a robbery at a convenience store and becomes a hero and a celebrity. It's got a "Sixth Sense" style twist to it, years before that movie was made, and it's brilliant. It also featured a subtly ironic theme song: "Happiness is a Warm Gun" performed by U2. None of the "big three" networks have done anything even remotely like it since.
Want to be entertained? Watch their shows. Want to be entertained and challenged? Change the channel. TV like that is out there to be had, but you won't find it on the low-numbered channels in prime-time.
Re:Low sci-fi appeal (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you nuts?
Take a look at any list of the top grossing movies of all time. Here's one from July 2002:
1: Titanic
2: Star Wars (*)
3: E.T (*)
4: Star Wars I: The Phantom menace (*)
5: Spider-Man
6: Jurassic Park (*)
7: Forrest Gump
8: Harry Potter I
9: Lord of the Rings I
10: The Lion King
Four of the top ten are sci-fi, and three more are fantasy or comics, sharing much of the same demographic. If you'd looked just a year ago, instead of the newer movies you'd see two more Star Wars movies, Terminator 2, and Independence Day.
I've seen survey results that over 2/3 of americans consider themselves fans of "Star Trek". This is a TV franchise that has been going on for what, 36 years now? On it's fifth show, with weekly viewerships still in the tens of millions? And which has spawned 10 movies? Can any other show anywhere make claims like that?
On the whole people LOVE visual Sci-fi. Fewer people read it, but in the film/video worlds it's a genre with a great deal of pull for most Americans.
-Evan