If Fox cancels Firefly I will not be surprised. The most recent "Jaynestown" episode was not exactly science fiction. The cast flies to some planet and then they play out some lousy Western story about Jayne Cobb as bad choice to be treated as folk hero. There's a lot of mud and what looks like bamboo sticks. Whedon made a huge mistake on this show. He could have drawn in a large number of science fiction fans if it had been made to be science fiction. Surely that's what the original trailers made it out to be. If he had done convincing science fiction then he still could have explored the whole Western frontier life angle.
As for the higher "John Doe" ratings: "John Doe" really is the more interesting story:
"Firefly": This Friday Fox series was eagerly anticipated, as it came from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon. More mystifying and unintentionally comic than cosmic, it has turned into a sci-fi dud. It ranks in the Nielsen 90s and, worse, often trails the show that follows it, "John Doe," by a couple million viewers. That means Fox viewers are skipping the 8 p. m. hour and then watching at 9 p.m. -- the biggest vote of no confidence there is.
Firefly was moderately well cast. I don't think the casting was the real problem. Morena Baccarin as Inara is beautiful. Mal is probably a sufficiently good-looking man (or so a woman tells me). Jewel Staite could probably have been made into an interesting female engineer whose technical exploits could have pulled them out of classical tight science fiction binds. Many things could still be done with these characters if Whedon and company could just decide to write stories that are real science fiction stories (I'm ready to help!). Why place characters 500 hundred years in the future except to present science fiction? Does Whedon really believe that the future can be that mundane and primitive if humans are travelling routinely between dozens or hundreds of planets? What new thing did he think he was offering us? If he was offering a Western then what was supposed to be interesting about Firefly as compared to past Westerns? This show did not have enough of a purpose behind it to justify it being made. But if it isn't cancelled first it could still be fixed.
To read my own reactions to Firefly click here for a review of the first episode, here for how to fix Firefly as Science Fiction, (which it really ought to be) here for a review of the second "Bushwhacked" episode, and here for the "Our Mrs Reynolds" episode.
Posted by Randall Parker at October 23, 2002 03:03 PMScience Fiction is not better technology you twit. Firefly is a refreshing aspect of True Science Fiction that hasn't been explored in way to long. If you want lasers go watch Star Trek or Star Wars. This is true to how Science Fiction started.
Well said Chris. I've had about enough of these so called "facts" about the future. Does he really believe that simply because there may be interstellar travel that everything should be A-OK? Seriously, people will COLONIZE planets and will be left to fend for themselves. As far as 'how can there be problems on other planets with the technology we will have in 500 years?' Have you looked around the earth lately? With all the technological advances we have made in just the last century and we can't even begin to solve world hunger, totalitarianism, slavery, or even common cold for that matter. The show was billed as a "SciFi/Western hybrid" from the beginning. This is probably closer to how a distant future will be than any other show has dared to try.
Science fiction has that pesky word "science" in it. Its about the future. Its about how life will be the same or different or a mixture of both as science and technology are used to change us and to change all the technology and societies that we live in. Technology changes culture. Just the birth control pill caused a huge change in sexual mores and behavior to take just one example. The invention of the printing press helped bring on the Protestant Reformation of Europe with all that followed. Countless other examples can be cited.
As for some of your objections (such as they are): You are constructing strawmen that I did not say and then knocking them down. The ability to travel between planets will not make everything A-OK. Human conflict will continue unless humans become either genetically engineered to be meek or we all join a Borg mind. Derek, you are quoting me except you are not quoting me since I didn't say what you quoted.
Firefly is very unlike what the future will be like. Look at what is going to change in the next 50 years: A) Human aging will become fully reversible. B) Human intelligence will be dramatically enhanced. In industrialized countries IQs of 150+ will become the norm and that will even spread to the Third World because the cost of the tech for enhancing intelligence will be so incredibly cheap. C) Nanotech assemblers will make it possible to take fairly small items to some distant planet and build all sorts of accoutrements of modern civilization. D) Advances in materials will make it possible to build better devices that last much longer.
Go ahead 500 years and it is unlikely that one will even be able to find wild type humans. Every human still living will be genetically engineered and will have cyborg implants - assuming that humans haven't been entirely replaced by artificial life forms.
Firefly is true to how science fiction started? Have you read early science fiction? Apparently not.
Firefly is a space opera that is more opera than space. Its mostly an exploration of the characters in the show. Though Fox is putting enough pressure on Joss Whedon to change the show that more action seems likely in future episodes. Still, even with the action it is not clear that the makers of the show will make a serious effort to give it a real future feel.
If you want to read what I think is wrong with the show in greater detail then read my collection of posts of episode reviews.
OMG Randall, don't watch the show. I read your full review and what you missed was the fact that the episode was a comic one and the comedy was done very well.
I know kids like lots of flashy lights and stuff but some of us like the human interaction side of stories as well.
If you want flashy SciFi go watch season 3 of Andromeda. They've turned it into a kids show. Lots of nonsense SciFi tech, poor acting, and next to zero storyline.
As for the possible advancements in human science you talk about, this is on of the key aspects of the show, the haves and the have nots.
Its been part of human nature from year dot. Its great to have a show that incorporates the imbalance of wealth into a future setting. If you think the future is going to be some sort of Star Trek utopia where everything is distributed evenly you have alot to learn about life and human nature.
The key problem with FireFly is Fox. The series is screening out of order and without the pilot screening first most people would not understand the greater storyline. Something is very wrong with Fox when studio execs can decide on the order of episode screenings and not the writer of the show.
Firefly is one of the VERY FEW shows that grabbed my attention and held it. The episode mentioned is a great one where we learnt (in a humorous fashion) about the warrior of the crew. If it was a star trek episode harry kim would have been talking about what he did one time at band camp with his clarinet....
I watch few other shows, but CSI is the other outstanding show I watch. To me firefly was as entertaining as CSI was. Sci-fi without the warm and fuzzy feeling and with clever humour (You're going to a very special place in hell) is a great change from the days of our startrek episodes.
You have stated that in the next 50 years, we shall have great advances. Further, you are postilating that if the show takes place 500 years in the future, we should see greater advances.
But let us examine your four leaps in technology:
1.) Reversible aging. While I admit that people are living longer, one cannot simply reverse the breakdown of cells. In order to learn how to reverse this, we would have have some sort of experimentaion on humans, and that is far from being likely. Society, as a rule, has always had a fear of human experiments.
2.) Gaining higher intelligence. As a whole, I fear that the greater populus of this planet are getting less and less intelligent. We, in the United States, have taken a wrong turn in the educational funtion by allowing lower test scores, focusing on the importance of politcal correctness by not hurting anyone's feelings, and bringing up a largely unread generation. In a time of a great power at our fingertips, ie the internet, we have a generation that is more involved with online gaming than learning the fundamentals of reading, writing and mathmatics. Ask any teenager out of the US what Pi is and you will get an Eric Cartman impression of "No, kitty, its mah pot pie!"
Nos. 3 and 4 I shall expand upon together. The First Rule of Engineering is that everything breaks down. And while I agree that nanotechnology can make things smaller and lighter, things will still break. No amount of newly manufactured materials can change this fact. And when things break down, we fall back upon what we know to be reliable. This is why we have a telescope in space that was first designed with 1970's technology. We have had newer telescopes placed in orbit, as the lastest National Geographic explains. However, we seem to fall back upon the Hubble because it is something we know.
Now, do not misunderstand me. I, too, look forward to having great technological wonders, but I must look to the furture with pragmatic eyes. For example: Landing a mining craft upon an asteroid and gathering the raw materials is feasible and the mathmatics work out, however, when the world is in turmoil it seems less and less probable.
With all this being said, we must realize that this is a television show. One that is guessing at a future of mixed technology, which, if you have travelled in eastern Europe at all, you would know is not that far off the mark. Also, we have already seen a future of a perfect world with wonderous technologies and higher intelligence where the primal fears and long forgotten prejudices are a thing of a distant past: They called it Star Trek. And for all the popularity it had, it was a condescending view of the future.
I do agree, however, that the show will be cancelled. Any show that I enjoy gets cancelled.
DeckRoid,
1) Human aging is highly reversible. On my FuturePundit.com blog please read my category archive Aging Reversal for a collection of posts with links to relevant articles. In particular, be sure to click thru on any posts where I mention U Cambridge biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey. Click thru to read an excellent paper he co-authored with Bruce Ames and several other prominent biologists about Engineered Negligible Senescence. From that post you can also read some of what Robert Freitas proposes to use nanotech for to rejuvenate and enhance our bodies. I will also be making a post shortly on FuturePundit on rejuvenation medicine and stem cell reseeding.
2) Raising intelligence: Its not going to be thgat hard to do. Read my post Rat Learning Ability Enhanced With Protein Injection. Microarrays are making it easy to identify the genes that are upregulated during learning. As was shown in that rat experiment it will not turn out to be hard to stimulate the learning process. Once DNA sequencing becomes really cheap (and you can read about the accelerating rates of advance in biotech in my category archive Biotech Advance Rates) then it will be very easy to identify the genetic variations that make some people geniuses. People will not only be able to genetically engineer their children to be smarter. By using hippocampal stem cell reseeding it will be possible to make newly generated neurons (and the brain is constantly forming new neurons) that will have the qualities that the neurons have in smarter people.
Yes, I realize this is just a television show. When I tune in to watch a show like Firefly my expectations are already low. But Firefly is worse than the average science fiction show in terms of the level of tech that it assumes for the future. Consider the utter inconsistency of terraformed planets that have primitive 19th century tech humans living on them. Its absurd. If one was going to go to that much trouble then at the very least the plant species that would be introduced would be all genetically engineered for various medical and industrial purposes (after all, the planets and moons do have plant species that had to get there by human introduction). The planet would be like Raisa but with lots of biotech to make living easy. Or how about the moon where people dig up mud to sell it? (see my Jaynestown review) That's retarded. That's stupid.
War does not cause technology to fall that far back even when countries are devastated by it. Capital gets destroyed. But not all of it. Rebuilding is possible unless the technicians and scientists are all killed and the books are destroyed. Given the rate at which storage media are going up in density it just isn't going to be possible to destroy knowledge. Its too easy to copy it and hide it in small places. Any society that spreads into the stars is going to take enormous quantities of scientific and technical information with it to every planet it colonizes. The assumptions that Firefly makes in this regard are hopelessly wrong and naive.
Hubble: A lot of its electronics and optics were upgraded with a moon walk. But its expensive to put something up there and so once something is put up there it gets used for as long as it lasts. Though a next gen space telescope is being designed. BTW, the Astra 1K that is stuck in low orbit is probably going to be boosted into high orbit in 2004 by a robotic space tug that is being designed right now (Space Tug May Rescue Astra 1K Telecom Satellite). The technology for doing that is going to be used to extend the lives of other comm sats that have already been launched.
Read my first two Firefly posts for more reflections on what is wrong with Firefly as science fiction. Its not just wrong because it lacks lasers. My criticism here is of a more profound nature.
I've been an incurable Star Trek fan since 5 and am now 20 but I find Firefly to be extremely original, delicate, intelligent and culturally diverse..........unlike Star Trek which is linear (IN-OH-SO-MANY-WAYS!) In the words of Richard Dean Anderson's Jack O'Neill - 2 L's. Yes, I am also an SG-1 fan! And in that respect, Firefly should be allowed to continue to inspire and be as SG-1 has done. Certainly more so than Trek has been allowed to do for 30 years. Oooh...LUMPY FOREHEADS! Klingons are Russians and Germans, Romulans and Cardassians are Chinese, and Vulcans are Jews by physical attributes and Bajorans are Jews by oppression. Yes, too much modern, topical politics is SHITE. Luckily, Firefly is very relaxed and doesnt have any of this! SAVE FIREFLY AND STOP BEING PRICKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.S. We all like to scrutinise the scientific, logical and historical continuity of science fiction at times to make ourselves feel much greater and more intelligent than in-fact we are but.......SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU IMMENSE NERDS! Firefly is not so pretensious as to imply reality or actuality by employing EX-NASA Physicists to justify storylines like Star Trek. Stop limiting yourselves to superficial genre-titles and connotations (eg sci-fi). Let's get real and acknowledge that Firefly rocks the Casbah........Bitches!!!!!!!
Please post more comments, I will visit this site again soon.
This comment is for Randall Parker, but there are sadly far too many who are in need of this explanation for many other shows.
A show tries to aim for certain goals - star trek aims for a certain degree of scientific realism (although certain unrealistic things may be allowed for the purpose of storyline). It may or may not fit into a broad classification scheme such as a genre, or it may try to fit into several.
Imagine stargate went for slightly more realism. Every planet had different cultures and different languages. In that case, the first 3 or 4 series would have been taken up with translation difficulties. Actual stuff, like making alliances, shooting people and discovering stuff (ok, not entirely, but you get my point) would have had to wait until later. The translation story would have gotten very tired, very quickly - so a little realism is dropped for a huge increase in enjoyability.
I don't think the technology levels are realistic - who spends trillions of dollars terraforming a moon and then sends a few small family with a hundred dollars worth of equipment to establish a colony or perish? But it allows them to invoke a contrast of high and low tech, to use western settings and storylines.
In summary, it is more appropriate to criticise a show for what it is and what it tries to be rather than for what it isn't and what it isn't trying to be. I wouldn't call the terminator movies bad because they weren't thought provoking romances, or criticise the passion of the christ because it lacked comedic value. Those movies aimed for different things and should be praised or criticised for those goals.