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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Well, for me, strictly on the Pilot Episode, there is the planets that were living on the rim and those core planets. Now that may have tipped me off. Why was the war being fought? Because some didn't want to live under the rule of the core planets. Imagine the fate of all planets being controlled by a few modern-looking planets.
So, planets is a hint that it's sci-fi. People, like ourselves living on other planets. Much like we have today (NOT!).
That 500 years in the future thing would be another hint. I immediately think of Star Wars and Blade Runner (in regards to future world as opposed to today world, usually that means sci-fi to me). Perhaps what threw your friend for a loop was the horses riding up to Serenity. I could see, for the uninitiated, where that would confuse a person. The floating spacestation with the military personnel in it, may have been another clue.
The whole "fuel the ship" thing when they landed on Persphone - sci-fi. "Change course, go for hard-burn. We're running," sounds sci-fyee to me. As others have mentioned, the newsflash that was on a "piece" of paper with video on it that came over the cortex. That's something you don't see everyday. The "crybaby" although a subtle suggestion by Joss & Co. (which I liked very much BTW, too many times the audience is not allowed to think for themselves in American television. He never tells us that the "crybaby" is a decoy. We're allowed to figure it out on our own through visuals and some dialogue); definitely suggests sci-fi.
People definitely became comfortable with light-speed, Warp drive and transporter rooms and they identify those things with the neat and tidy world of sci-fi. Firefly/Serenity is a revisionists view of that world and all the pretty-pretty lights and diodes are out on the backburner. It fits our world more readily, this reimagining, than that carries us to a galaxy far, far away. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Star Wars geek (first 3 episodes thank you very much), but sci-fi is about new visions and possibilities, however strange and unusual.
I could see another reason why Firefly was ahead of it's time back in 2002. Folk were just not ready to accept this new concept of what life could possibly look like in 500 years. They much prefer what's comfortable and familiar than allow themselves to think that we may well regress to a time where life was much more simpler- the old west - than what we have now.
Sci-fi, for many folk, is gleaming cities in the sky with shiny spaceships and futuristic looking gadgets. But even in Star Wars you could find some familiar territory linking us to the past.
The light saber, a jedi's weapon of choice, is a samurai or knight's sword. Queen Amidala, Lord Vader, Old Republic, Jedi Knights these all suggest a kind of honoring of the past with a nod toward the future. It is as much a part of sci-fi as robots and dilithium crystals. Now, we include horses and six-shooters.
SGG
Tawabawho?
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Quote:
Originally posted by two:Quote:
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.
But the Firefly the pilot starts with a big battle scene complete with derring do, futuristic aeroplanes crashing... then cuts to a spacewalk.
Even the Train Job has Serenity's Grand Entrance ("We will blow a new crater in your little moon") a few minutes in.
Perhaps they should have done a Gerry Anderson style "in this episode" fast-cut preview - as Batlestar Galactica showed, this is great for making a slow-paced episode look action packed.
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Don't need the Gerry Anderson style "in this episode" fast-cut preview, if the story is rearranged. The Train Job could start with big bad Niska torturing an employee who didn't follow orders. Exciting! Can't change TV channel! Then Mal & Zoe arrive at Niska's spacestation office to get orders. It is evident that Niska is not a criminal gang lord that should be double crossed. Show goes to a commercial then a flashback from the Unification War with Zoe & Mal as prisoners being beat-down by Alliance soldiers. On Niska's Train Job, Jayne does his high-wire act to steal drugs, thoughtfully bringing Mal hand-grenades enough to kill all the Alliance soldiers unexpectedly on the train and make a leisurely escape up the wire to Serenity. Mean old Mal really, really wants to payback the Alliance. That wasn't the original plan so Zoe overrules Mal -- no mass killing -- instead, they take a seat and pretend to be husband and wife. At the train station, fast talking Inara frees Zoe & Mal from the suspicious Sheriff. They go to the bar with the belly-dancer, where Inara has a pink colored drink and reminds Mal that people will die without the drugs that Mal stole. Mal & Zoe have their annual Unification-Day brawl. Serenity's Grand Entrance saves them from being shoved over a cliff by an angry, drunken mob -- the Sheriff, who watched the fight, now knows he has been mislead and follows Serenity to rendezvous with Niska's henchmen. And you know how the story ends -- Mal decides at the last moment to double cross Niska, returns drugs to Sheriff, and boots Niska's henchman into turbine blades that grind to hamburger meat -- we laugh. Mal has been itching to kill all day. END
The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two
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Um...last I checked we don't have ships with artificial gravity in space. Done and done.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
Um...last I checked we don't have ships with artificial gravity in space. Done and done.
Ships in SF shows have artificial gravity because the 234th law of quantum accoutancy permits suspension of the laws of physics in cases where the alternative is just too darned expensive to shoot.
However, more to the point, we don't have ships which only take a few days to fly across even our puny little solar system - let alone a big darned multiple-star system like the Verse.
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Hardly a riveting device to lure in viewers though:
*In 40's style voice over:*
"Firefly it has Spaceships with artificial gravity! People of tomorrow dressed as people of yesterday! and a hot crazy girl with a special relationship with her brother!"
All this and more on Firefly...!
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Lwaves wrote:
Quote:
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.
Indeed but it's semantics. We are in space and float about on space type ships so her point still stands, and lets face it the worlds we explore on Firefly still feel pretty familiar. So that aspect of Firefly hardly pushes the boundaries... (not that it needs to)
But ultimtaley to us it doesn't really matter because it's a fresh interpretation of the future and a deliberate one from Joss and Co. And maybe it was more me at fault with how I pitched to her. Because in my mind I regard Firefly as a Sci- fi show... But maybe I was wrong to do that.
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Originally posted by Shinygoodguy:
Quote:
Well, for me, strictly on the Pilot Episode, there is the planets that were living on the rim and those core planets. Now that may have tipped me off. Why was the war being fought? Because some didn't want to live under the rule of the core planets. Imagine the fate of all planets being controlled by a few modern-looking planets.
So, planets is a hint that it's sci-fi. People, like ourselves living on other planets. Much like we have today (NOT!).
But the small amount of exploration we have done in space has softened the effect to a certian extent of how sci-fi is presented to us. These things are little more common place now. Shouldn't sci-fi be going that little bit further everytime? Isn't that what sci fi is? At some point our present catches up with sci-fi concepts of yesteryear.
Quote:
That 500 years in the future thing would be another hint. I immediately think of Star Wars and Blade Runner (in regards to future world as opposed to today world, usually that means sci-fi to me). Perhaps what threw your friend for a loop was the horses riding up to Serenity. I could see, for the uninitiated, where that would confuse a person. The floating spacestation with the military personnel in it, may have been another clue.
I'll have to see if I can get her to elaborate a little, next time I see her. I don't think she was thrown by things that were familiar within a sci- fi setting, I think she was undewhelmed by the idea that sci-fi hadn't moved on much from that of which we already regard as 'familiar' sci fi.
Quote:
The whole "fuel the ship" thing when they landed on Persphone - sci-fi. "Change course, go for hard-burn. We're running," sounds sci-fyee to me. As others have mentioned, the newsflash that was on a "piece" of paper with video on it that came over the cortex. That's something you don't see everyday. The "crybaby" although a subtle suggestion by Joss & Co. (which I liked very much BTW, too many times the audience is not allowed to think for themselves in American television. He never tells us that the "crybaby" is a decoy. We're allowed to figure it out on our own through visuals and some dialogue); definitely suggests sci-fi.
Yeah I liked the whole crybaby concept. Thought that really clever. Much like the whole nav sat thing in the movie. "Sir we found seven of them!" Awesome.
Quote:Yes that's it I reckon too. I think she'd have liked something we're not used to in terms of sci-fi.
People definitely became comfortable with light-speed, Warp drive and transporter rooms and they identify those things with the neat and tidy world of sci-fi.
Quote:
I could see another reason why Firefly was ahead of it's time back in 2002. Folk were just not ready to accept this new concept of what life could possibly look like in 500 years. They much prefer what's comfortable and familiar than allow themselves to think that we may well regress to a time where life was much more simpler- the old west - than what we have now.
Sci-fi, for many folk, is gleaming cities in the sky with shiny spaceships and futuristic looking gadgets. But even in Star Wars you could find some familiar territory linking us to the past.
The light saber, a jedi's weapon of choice, is a samurai or knight's sword. Queen Amidala, Lord Vader, Old Republic, Jedi Knights these all suggest a kind of honoring of the past with a nod toward the future. It is as much a part of sci-fi as robots and dilithium crystals. Now, we include horses and six-shooters.
Yes. Valid points there Shiny. Maybe sci-fi is hinged upon an accepted construct of what sci-fi has been made to look like by TV, rather than legitimate notions by writers, dreamers, and scienctific conceptualisation...
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Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
Hardly a riveting device to lure in viewers though:
*In 40's style voice over:*
"Firefly it has Spaceships with artificial gravity! People of tomorrow dressed as people of yesterday! and a hot crazy girl with a special relationship with her brother!"
All this and more on Firefly...!
I never said it was marketable. It's most definitely scifi though.
Part of the reason we got canceled I'm pretty sure.
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Hey there Sleepy,
Good point.
Quote:
But the small amount of exploration we have done in space has softened the effect to a certian extent of how sci-fi is presented to us. These things are little more common place now. Shouldn't sci-fi be going that little bit further everytime? Isn't that what sci fi is? At some point our present catches up with sci-fi concepts of yesteryear.
I think that sci-fi asks the "what if" question in regards to our relationship to the universe, and ultimately our world. I often think of Star Trek whenever that concept arises in conversation. But I also think of movies like 2001, Blade Runner, etc. Even a movie like Galaxy Quest gives us a different perspective as to what sci-fi is(of course, you have to wait until you stop laughing to consider the possibilities).
Our relationships, responsibilities and our sentiments about who we are and where do we fit in the grand scheme of things is a part of sci-fi. Looking at Firefly on it's surface it appears to be a Western, and the viewer would be right. No question. But upon closer examination we find that here are 9 people floating in a tin can asking "what if?"
Are they not exploring, to some degree, the vast nothingness of space searching for that answer? Where do we fit, etc? Have your friend watch Bushwhacked and see if she still feels the same way. I agree that Firefly is NOT your typical sci-fi program. That's what makes it special.
SGG
Tawabawho?
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