The Most Agonizing Early Cancellation of an SF TV Show

Firefly debuted on September 16, 2002 and it ended on December 20, 2002 after one season and 11 episodes, although three additional episodes were eventually burned off in July and August of the following year. It is well known that the episodes aired out of order and the network had little faith in the series. The series starred Nathan Fillion as Mal Reynolds, Gina Torres as Zoë, Alan Tudyk as Wash, Morena Baccarin as Inara, Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, Jewel Staite as Kaylee Frye, Sean Maher as Simon Tam, Summer Glau as River Tam, and Ron Glass as Shepherd Book. An honest-to-God space western, it followed the less-than-savory crew around the system trying to make ends meet and avoid the powers-that-be. The series originally aired on Fox in the U.S. and led to an eventual movie as well as novels, games, and a continuation in comics. Firefly is available on DVD and BluRay. It can be streamed on Hulu, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu, Microsoft, and Redbox.

OK, I’ll be honest. In 2002 and 2003, when Firefly was airing on Fox, I wasn’t watching. I’m not sure exactly why, except that I’m not really that dedicated a TV watcher. So I can’t say I mourned when it was cancelled. I was watching when the movie, Serenity, appeared in 2005. I knew it was a sequel to a well-regarded TV series, and it looked like fun, so I saw it in the theater. And I liked it—but I didn’t fully get it.

And I don’t recall exactly why my wife and I decided to watch it on DVDs (rented from Netflix— remember when Netflix mailed DVDs to you?) a few years after that. But we did…and, suddenly, I was entranced. Immediately it became my favorite SF TV show of all time. I was a Browncoat, I guess. I have to admit, that’s not an identity I’ve ever been eager to adopt. The resonance with the Nazi “Brownshirts” is a bit too much for me. To be sure, the “Firebrony” alternative has its own problems, given the neo-Nazi aspect of certain corners of My Little Pony fandom. But, gosh, that’s getting a bit serious, eh? Nobody has a monopoly on a color! That said, check out this fairly convincing take on the actual villainy of the Firefly crew, from Jay Kristoff: (Among other things, Kristoff points out that Josh Whedon’s avowed inspiration for Firefly was sometime SF writer Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Killer Angels, which examined the effects of being on the losing side of the Civil War. By analogy, then, Mal and company are the Confederacy! A sobering analogy, but we really should remember that analogies are imprecise, and just because Mal fought for the losing side in a War doesn’t make him an apologist for slavery, nor even an apologist for concentration camps.) So, am I a still a Browncoat? Heck yeah, in the sense that being a “Browncoat” means I still think Firefly a great SF TV show. And I absolutely mourn its cancellation after a single season. That is a story in itself, as most unfairly early cancellations are. A testimony to the inability of TV executives to know what they have, usually because they want surefire hits, and shows that grab viewers from the start, rather than stories that can grow over time, and gather viewers as they develop. There are lots of reasons given for Fox’s decision. Some are vaguely understandable (if still wrong)… Whedon wanted to shoot Firefly in widescreen, which was too expensive, and too different, for Fox. The show was fairly expensive to produce. And, it wasn’t (yet) drawing huge audiences. (Heck, I wasn’t watching on the first run—maybe it’s my fault!) Other reasons are purely Fox’s fault. Most notoriously, they didn’t like the pilot episode, which crucially establishes the show’s characters. So the second episode was aired first, and the pilot was the last to be shown on Fox. Their promotion was off-base, never managing to hit on what really matters about Firefly. (Which is, as ever, character character character.) They complained about really mindless things, such as that Wash and Zoe’s marriage was happy—no drama! Well, I’ve spent a lot of time not discussing the show itself! What about it? What do I love? Is it the science fictiony stuff? Not really. I mean, it is still cool to see spaceships in space, to think of isolated colonies on semi-terraformed asteroids, of dangerous space pirates (the “Reavers”), etc., etc. But little of this is exactly original: the show is overtly a “Western in Space,” after all: and even Star Trek was sort of a “Western in Space,” if you consider that it was pitched by Gene Roddenberry as “Wagon Train to the star.” And, too, some of the SFnal background is a bit scientifically implausible: the star system seems absolutely stuffed with habitable planets, and terraforming is presented as a) pretty easy, and b) pretty fast. To name just two implausibilities. No, what I really love is the characters. There are nine members of Serenity’s crew: Mal (Nathan Fillion), the captain, who is impulsive, sometimes violent, sometimes contradictory, but very loyal; Zoe (Gina Torres), Mal’s second-in-command, the voice of sanity, the calm one; Wash (Alan Tudyk), the pilot, Zoe’s husband, the less-serious, almost frivolous, crew member; Kaylee (Jewel Staite), the mechanic, presented as almost mystically good at her job, and a very sweet, very innocent character; Jayne (Adam Baldwin), a mercenary, very violent and seemingly untrustworthy, indeed rather an asshole, but also willing to challenge Mal sometimes when he needs it; Inara (Morena Boccarin), a “Companion” who has her own shuttle and rents her berth on Serenity, which allows her to travel widely while offering her services (high-class courtesan, sort of Geisha-like) to her clientele; Book (Ron Glass), a Shepherd, a committed Christian but with some seriously surprising criminal knowledge, the overt “conscience” of the crew; Simon (Sean Maher), a doctor, of great value to the ship for those skills, but on Serenity primarily because he’s given up his practice to protect …

River (Summer Glau), Simon’s sister, a brilliant young woman who has been severely harmed at a secret Alliance facility from which she escaped with Simon’s help…she seems to have psychic abilities and is an incredible fighter. Each of these characters is intriguing; and there is a lot of implied back story. One of the most regrettable things about Firefly’s short run is that the series hinted at some truly cool secrets in the past of many of these characters, and I really wanted to learn, for example, a lot more about Book’s past. There was a lot of room for future development too…some predictable perhaps, as with Mal’s evident crush on Inara, and her evidently conflicted attraction to him; some less so, as with the potential for Kaylee’s development (Kaylee was my favorite character), or as with the importance of River’s abilities. There were also interesting characters in individual episodes, perhaps most memorably Saffron (Christina Hendricks), a con woman who tricks Mal into marriage (maybe?) in one episode, and returns with more tricks in another. The other aspect that cried out for development was the system-wide society. Future seasons could have showed more of life in the Alliance, for example; or could have showed the possibilities for real change in both the Alliance and the outer system. And there was room to explore an end game of sorts for Serenity, though I doubt Whedon really wanted to go there: but at least some real grappling with the often dodgy ethical choices Mal and company make was sure to come. There was, of course, the movie Serenity, which is very fine, and won a Hugo. (Alas, some wrenching plot turns were motivated more by the availability of actors than by internal necessity!) And Serenity does develop the story in some of the directions I could have hoped for. Alas, even though it was fairly successful, and sequels were bruited, none eventuated. Rumors of new seasons of the TV show kept popping up—and in fact Disney is apparently working on a Disney+ series. (Naturally, it’s being recast—there was no avoiding that, two decades later—and, unfortunately, rumors suggest that it’s being pitched as more “family friendly” than the original, which doesn’t sound promising to me.)