Firefly and Serenity – Review
I have a confession to make. Despite being a huge science fiction fan, I had never watched Firefly. Until recently. Every other sci fan strongly encouraged me to fix this terrible mistake.
Now, I had seen the movie Serenity when it first came out years ago. I thought it was okay but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me since it was meant to conclude the Firefly series, which I had not seen.
The premise of Firefly is that the people of Earth were forced to leave and colonize another solar system. It had multiple planets and moons which were terraformed to be habitable. The inner planets were run by the Alliance and the outer planets were independent. That is until a war was fought and the Alliance took them over.
Firefly is about a smuggling ship led by a couple of veterans of that war, plus an oddball crew. This is actually why the series is interesting. It is not really a space epic, Firefly is more of a character-based series. What draws the audience in is that we actually care about these characters.
One that I especially enjoyed was Shepherd Book. This was for two reasons. One is that he was portrayed by Ron Glass, who I grew up watching on Barney Miller. The other is that he, like myself, is a Christian pastor. I would say that this is one of the most positive portrayals of a Protestant Christian clergy that I have seen on television.
Two other characters that are important include a doctor and his sister, who he has smuggled onboard. They are both wanted by the Alliance because she was the subject of experiments and was either of use to them or holds onto secret information. I found it interesting that they portrayed her as having some autistic characteristics. This plot runs through the series and is finally concluded in Serenity.
One of the things that makes Firefly unique among sci fi shows is that in some ways, it is more of a Western than anything else. The outer planets were not fully terraformed and have a frontier feel. Many people, including the crew of the Serenity, dress in Western outfits. And while there are futuristic weapons, they also use 19th century revolvers. This blending of sci fi and Western has more recently been perfected in the Mandalorian.
As I said, the enjoyment of this series is in the characters. The special effects are definitely not that great. They were twenty years ago and were for a television series. If you expect them to compare with contemporary movies, you will be disappointed. Serenity had a bigger budget and so the special effects were much better there.
Serenity does bring the series to a satisfying conclusion. Sadly, it also includes the deaths of two of my favourite characters. But it was well done and it has a bit more of a Star Trek/Star Wars feels to it, but without giving up the charm of Firefly.
Despite only having one season of the series and one movie, Firefly is one of the best science fiction series that I have watched. I can understand why its fans are very loyal and rewatch the series over and over.
