Of Firefly and StarTrek
POSTED BY: ScottishBrownCoat
UPDATED: Saturday, June 12, 2004 19:52
VIEWED: 7240
PAGE 2 of 3
Some friends of mine and I have actually had this discussion before, so I'm excited to see it come up here.
I like Star Trek. I always have. I grew up watching the Original Series because my Mom is a fan (she has a thing for Spock 
). Aside from Enterprise, which I lost interest in, I've enjoyed all of its incarnations. But if I had to say which appealed to me more, I'd go with Firefly.
I think it all comes down to the characters. Almost every character in Star Trek is presented as a little too perfect. This makes sense: Starfleet only puts its elite in charge of ships like the Enterprise. They are top Academy graduates, excellent leaders, diplomats--for Heaven's sake, Kirk was the youngest Captain in history. How many of us can personally relate to that? I have a much easier time relating to the characters of Firefly, who, as smart and resourceful as they are, are still ordinary people.
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I grew up with Star Trek, I remember not wanting to trick or treat because a rerun was on the tube. I loved Spock.
When Next Generation came out I watched it, mainly because there was very little Sci Fi out, and I wanted to support it, but I kind of lost interest, didn't even watch the last two seasons. They were too perfect.
I loved Deep Space Nine, people argued, and there was an actual story arc that had a begining and an end. These were good people, with specific flaws. Heavens, flaws in the Trek universe.
I tried Voyager, and Enterprise just haven't caught my interest.
I want my people to fight against their own baser instincts, and win out. I want them to be underdogs in a less than perfect world. After seeing things like Farscape and Firefly, where there is actual character development and reasons for plot issues, I am spoiled rotten. I want substance. I am not stupid, despite the fact that I watch television. It's kind of funny, two of my favorite shows period, both cancelled before their time are making a come-back. Farscape this fall, and Firefly next Spring. Good science fiction isn't dead yet.
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Quote:
Originally posted by DeannaMay:
I want my people to fight against their own baser instincts, and win out. I want them to be underdogs in a less than perfect world. After seeing things like Farscape and Firefly, where there is actual character development and reasons for plot issues, I am spoiled rotten. I want substance. I am not stupid, despite the fact that I watch television. It's kind of funny, two of my favorite shows period, both cancelled before their time are making a come-back. Farscape this fall, and Firefly next Spring. Good science fiction isn't dead yet.
...which is most definitely a good thing.
Babylon 5 was gorram shiny too. It's been nice to see all the eps on DVD again.
Mal: "We're not gonna die. We can't die, Bendis. You know why? Because we are so... very... pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die."
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>>SNIPPED DOUBLE-POST<<
Gorram gos-se 'puter...
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I dunno; I think the Enterprise characters are plenty real.
Mayweather and Reed breaking the transporter and wandering off, whistling innocently and glad they they don't have to clean this up. (C'mon, let's be honest, we've all done that.)
Trip and Archer doing the equivalent of parking a car on an incline and forgetting to set the parking brake.
Trip showing up for duty in a loud Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts (& T'Pol and Archer's simultaneous "WTF" reactions).
Reed & Trip attempting a "Night at the Roxbury" reference and then getting rolled on Risa.
T'Pol's drug addiction.
Trip talking during movie night (Special Hell), and T'Pol's snarky reaction (that would've made Book proud).
Ambassador Soval being an interplanetary pr*ck --and T'Pol acknowledging it.
Shran wrestling with his orders and his personal friendship with Archer.
Hoshi's S1 freakouts --and Reed's beaming pride in S3, when Hoshi is showing the MACOs "how it's done."
Reed versus Hayes, and Archer's dressing them both down.
Trip's racism, and unexpected guilt/mourning at Degra's death.
T'Pol being left in command, and fumbling it completely.
-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.
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Quote:
Originally posted by ScottishBrownCoat:
Hello,
I grew up a Trekker, I met my wife at a Star Trek Convention, so you can say that I owe that show.
The Original series and Movies, then Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, all wonderful programming, and during the middle of the Next Generation series Trek seemed to be at it's height.
However after the end of The Next Generation, and with the average quality next gen movies and the next two Average generic spinoffs (Voyager and Enterprise) I have seen that the Trek world has gone into a downward spiral, and it does not seem to be getting any better. Trek Conventions once EVERYWHERE are truly on a slow but steady decline.
Now I was introduced to Firefly, I see in it, a show with the same magical qualities of the original series of Trek, except with better writing, special effects, and a iron tight Cast of Characters played by the absolute best Actors they could have found.Not that Trek did not have good actors, but you don't see Nathan Fillion ever going.....Over.....the.....top!!!
When Original Star Trek was cancelled they took 10 years to put a movie out, which reinvented the franchise, but by that time it already had a very strong fan base.
We see Firefly today with a strong fan base, and a movie coming out less than 3 years after the show was cancelled, we are on the brink of a real opprotunity here. The same attention the Trekkers have been given in the world of fandom and out of Fandom is the same attention that I see Browncoats getting if we keep our good work going.
I have also noticed some very different attitudes concerning how the Firefly Creator and Crew view US as opposed to how Berman and the stars of Trek view TREKKERS(with the exception of a few great stars from the original series and TNG.)
It just seems that the Firefly family is based more on the love of the Show, AND people, also Firefly brings back the important message of Multi-culturalism, which Trek lost on it's path to commercialism.
What Firefly also brought to the Browncoats was the concept of Religious tolerance and diversity, Shepherd of Buddhist Monk, it is ALL relevant if one wants it to be.
Religon being a topic they did not want to really touch in Trek, well, Whedon smartly adds religion into the Firefly 'verse because he understands Human Nature, and how it truly changes very little.
I think we as Browncoats are just getting started, I see great things for the 'verse of Firefly, but we must work very hard to ensure that a second and third movie can come back, and to convert the masses to this great Family.
So that oneday the Oxford dictionary will have a definition for Browncoat.
Maybe it is just that I was feelin' a might truthsome, but I just can't help but notice this.
Are their any Other Trekkers or former Trekkers who feel the same?
Proudly,
Scottish BrownCoat
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Bwahh!!!!!
my thoughts exactly. great words.
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Okay, Bona Fides first: I'm a first generation Trekker, by which I mean I remember watching TOS first run on NBC.
I don't think Star Trek has gone downhill so much as it's just gotten tired. The assumptions of five series and so-many-everybody's-lost-count movies have straightjacketed the writers, to the point that Enterprise has to virtually ignore prior continuity just to entertain.
There's a philosophical hardening of the arteries to the series at this point too. Take the recent episode dealing with a tri-gendered species, one of which was considered property. I knew long before it was established in the script that the third gender would prove to be just as intelligent as the other two, because otherwise the predetermined politically-correct moral of the show would hang-fire, and we'd have to deal with the idea that an alien species might be, I don't know, alien or something.
The best thing about the Fireflyverse is that it's fresh, and not burdened by 35+ years of backstory. The next best thing is that most of its assumptions are diametrically opposed to those of Star Trek/Star Wars, so that the stories that will develop from those assumptions will be new and exciting.
As the Inuit say, "A change is as good as a rest."
"You can't enslave a free man. The most you can do is kill him." -- Robert A. Heinlein
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I used to love Trek, but after DS9 (which I still think was wonderful), it's been on a serious downslide.
What it comes down to is that Trek has lost The Love. There's no sense from any current episode that any love went into it. In DS9, I could see it in spades, even in the bad ones. TNG went back and forth, some individual episodes had it, some didn't. Voyager and Enterprise don't seem to have it at all. I watch it and I get the sense that they're writing it because its their jobs to produce this product called Trek, week after week, that at the top they don't see the fans as anything other than ratings numbers they have to make go up or down, and a certainty that they can depend on die hards watching it.
Firefly has The Love. I can feel that Joss loved this show, that the cast are putting their best work into it, that _they_ believe it's something special. Just by watching it. And them believing it's something special goes a long way. (Shows don't have to necessarily be good when they show The Love, but it certainly helps. The Love is infectious.).
Star Pilot Grainger
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Yeah StarPilot!
I understand completely.
That should be our slogan,
"Browncoats, come feel the love."
Shiny.....
~SBC
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Bwahh!!!!!
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For those talking about Trek's decline I know what you mean. I was huge fan of the original and although I was never wild about TNG I watched it and could see that there was a real love put into the show. I was wild about Deep Space Nine and you could see the love put into that. The decline began with Voyager in my opinion I thought it started out well but after Brendon Braga took over it became more and more about ratings.
I mean if you watch the Borg episodes of the show you can all but hear the network suits saying put the Borg in they get ratings.What do you mean you don't have any good stories with Borg who cares just put them in they get ratings.Voyager managed to single handedly ruin the borg as interesting villians. In fact the more they went for ratings the lower the ratings got. Because people into Star Trek are exactly the kind of people smart enough to see whats going on.
The other thing mentioned on this thread that other than the love being missing in recent years is the shows age. It's all been done and done to death. I believe the following theory everything is born and starts out young and frisky. Then comes middle age maturity.Then comes senility and death. This applies to television shows as well.Original Trek young and frisky TNG and DS9 maturity and Voyager and Enterprise well I'll let you figure it out.
Also relating to it's age is the fact that all of us sci-fi fans most of our lives have had only Trek to turn to as far as television goes. Every time a new Sci-Fi space opera tried to rear it's head it got killed right quick. So we never even got the chance to see a competing vision. Then along come nineties and Babylon 5 it not only doesn't get killed it thrives. Then comes Farscape and that goes for four years then comes Firefly all of wich qualify as young and frisky by the way.
You see appart of this decline is simply people want a new and different vision of the universe then Star Trek had to offer. It's like eating the same thing for years on end no matter how great it may be you are going to get tired of it. The Sci-Fi community was ready for a change.In fact sad to say because I still love Trek but Star Trek in many ways is a great example of the dangers of a monopoly.
One finial thought I have a theory as to why so many in the Trek community wanted so badly to see Babylon 5 fail. I think consciously or not many knew if B5 was aloud to live it would spawn other successful space series and if that happend it would be the begining of the end for Star Trek and of course it was.
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