Are there enough 'Science Fiction' style motifs within FIREFLY?
POSTED BY: TheSomnambulist
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 1, 2010 05:22
VIEWED: 9854
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Just curious. Do you think there are a significant amount of 'Science Fiction' style motifs within FIREFLY, and if so what in particular stands out as such. Do you even think it important to have them?
I was watching it with a friend yesterday and she was saying how it really doesn't feel science 'fictiony' enough (not that it was a problem for her, she laughed when she should and even hurled abuse at Mal when he shot the lawman, so she was suitably wrapped up within the story.) However afterwards when we were discussing it she said that I would have served the concept better had I described it as a western instead of a science fiction as there were not enough elements of science fiction to establish it as a sci-fi show.
What do you think?
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They live on a spaceship. Spaceships and travel between planets is a common thing. There are sheets of paper that display video, laser guns (though you only see one) holographic windows... I think it would be wrong not to mention that it was a science fiction. If you describe it as a western, and they go in and find all that stuff I'm sure the person would have been equally confused. It's maybe not quite as Sci-Fi as other shows, but enough to justify the inclusion in the genre.
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Hey Navyseils. Hi.
Yeah I pretty much pointed out the spaceships and y'know suggested that is maybe enough, but my friend interjected with the fact that we have spaceships now! So what's the big deal! I kinda didn't have a comeback after that. Merely mentioned that in the trainjob there is... well... a hovering train, and one or two other sci-fi-ish elements... Electronic paper, pool table with holographic balls and so forth. But I did feel my footing was weak somewhat.. It was interesting because this had never occured to me before...
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Don't the really great ones make their own path ?
Maybe Joss could have started with showing more Alliance space vessels, like the Dortmunder.
Before Star Wars, pretty much everything we saw w/ regards to space traveling cultures is that the future was clean, shiny, new and well organized. As we saw in the opening scene of A New Hope, big, powerful ships, hurtling through space, lasers blasting.....
Quickly to be contrasted by the dirty, dusty and relatively low tech of Tatooine. Luke's speeder ? A beat up, dust covered and dented junkard.
Plus, no aliens or 'light saber' equivalent gizmos in Firefly, not anything that jumped right out and WOWED the audience.
Bones: "Don't 'rawr' her!"
Booth: "What? she'rawred' me first."
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Quote:Most TV audiences want to be wowed out of their bored little minds. (That doesn't apply to you because you are elite and your brain is huge.) That's why crime shows have gunfire, explosions, or ghastly corpses rotting on the coroner's examining table, all in the first five minutes. A scifi show needs spaceships upfront or the audience switches channels to CSI.
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Maybe Joss could have started with showing more Alliance space vessels, like the Dortmunder. ...in Firefly, not anything that jumped right out and WOWED the audience.
The Reavers' ship screams SCIENCE FICTION with its big claw and lightening bolts. The engines are from a star cruiser! Hot Plasma jetting out! But that ship don't show until the pilot episode is more than half over. Even if the entire episode had to be rewritten, the Reavers should have been early and upfront in the pilot so that people like me would be saying, "I have never seen such a exciting show." And when the Reavers return and attack at the end of the pilot episode.... WOW!! My brain exploded.
The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two
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I introduced someone the FF Episode 1 last night.
Best description is A Comedic Frenemies Space Western Drama Set 500 Years In The Future After The 2nd Chinese-American Civil War Battle Of Serenity Valley With Naked Chicks And Flesh Eating Zombies But No Aliens.
Remember to first adjust your home theatre for TV, or you'll be forced to watch subtitles, or lose all comprehension of dialog.
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The show actually pokes fun at itself with this issue.
Wash: Psychic? Sounds like something out of science fiction.
Zoë: We live on a spaceship, dear.
Wash: So?
________________________________
People who don't care about anything will never understand the people who do
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Quote:
Originally posted by Dewrastler:
The show actually pokes fun at itself with this issue.
Wash: Psychic? Sounds like something out of science fiction.
Zoë: We live on a spaceship, dear.
Wash: So?
One of the best damn lines of the show, to be sure.
Bones: "Don't 'rawr' her!"
Booth: "What? she'rawred' me first."
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There is definitely as many scifi motifs as western motifs. I always thought that it struck a nice balance between the two.
If some folks don't think there's enough then maybe PN actually sorta hit on the right description - in that it's a space western more than a scifi western. Depends on your definitions of the words.
I do have to disagree heavily that we currently have spaceships. Oh no, no.
We have rockets and vehicles that travel through space in a basic point in the right direction and fire type way. But we don't really have the ability to go where we want, when we want. Although technically I suppose the description of spaceship does fit, but to me there is a vast difference between our current offering and what I'd class as a true spaceship.
"The greatest invention ever is not the wheel. It's the second wheel." - Rich Hall
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A new paradigm where the newer generations are entrenched in the concept, to think it is commonplace to travel in spaceships, is an interesting development. I hadn't thought it would occur in my lifetime. I suspect there are still many in Arab states, China, African Jungle who do not consider this to be commonplace.
Lazer guns shooting down space skiffs? OK, not shown until after the series is cancelled.
Cortex networking instantaeously across the entire verse (5 Light-hours distance)? OK, poor understanding of the Speed of Light.
Hoping that a derelict carrier still has pressure while hovering in your personal spacesuit? OK, I guess that's not scifi.
500 years in the future? I guess that could be just precog instead of scifi.
Joss said he considered the psychic abilities of River to be too far - but that isn't seen if your girl just started the show.
Terraforming planets? I didn't think this was an everyday occurance just yet.
I think that one big problem you are dealing with is that the show is soooo old, and revolutionary to the point that EVERYBODY else has now copied almost all of the innovative stuff from the show, which was so cutting edge it won the Emmy for Special Effects, but now seems commonplace because everybody copies it ever since. At the time of creation, those were new concepts and visuals not seen in a TV show. Now those who have seen the copycats FIRST, cannot comprehend the freshness of the original source of these highly successful ideas, and so they think "blah, commonplace, everybody does this same stuff, it's nothing new" and that is a huge obstacle of perception to overcome.
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