eye_of_a_cat (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eye_of_a_cat) wrote2005-11-16 07:43 pm
eye_of_a_cat) wrote2005-11-16 07:43 pm
Entry tags:
Firefly
(They're just never going to show this on terrestrial TV here, and I gave up waiting.)
I've seen bits of Firefly before (most of one episode and snippets of another), and of course heard a lot about it on LJ and other places, so I'm not completely new to it. There were characters I didn't know, though - I don't think I'd seen Inara or Book before, and Kaylee only briefly - and all I knew about the general concept was Western-in-space.
I've now seen up to 'Shindig'. So, first thoughts:
1) It's so pretty. Not just the special effects or the actors, but the whole thing - scenery, costumes, photography, everything. I could watch this with the sound off. And all the little world-building details are amazing; I don't know if they always work individually (the holographic pool table jarred a bit, because, well, why?), but that never really matters, because the overall effect is amazing. Horses and spaceships and rifles and bar fights and Chinese slang.
2) I'd heard people accuse Joss Whedon of recycling his existing characters here. I don't think so, although there were a couple of moments - some of Kaylee's lines, River mimicking Badger's accent - that did look a bit familiar. But then, I don't think the characters themselves are copies of Buffyverse characters. Kaylee sounds Willow-ish sometimes but still isn't Willow, and River doesn't map onto Drusilla. (Apart from the evil vampire thing, Dru's insanity always made her look like more of a threat - River's is clearly damaging to her. And I've seen the little mini-trailers for Serenity, and an episode where she does some weird psychic stuff, and she's obviously not helpless, but she's still broken where Dru was just scary.)
3) Maybe I'm just imagining this, but... is there an undercurrent of very libertarian political ideology here? I don't mean that Joss Whedon's morphed into Heinlein', but I kept seeing... something. Like the war stuff at the beginning, and the 'you can't take the sky from me' in the song - but then, it's a Western, and the war stuff probably has more to do with the American civil war anyway. And I don't know enough about the American civil war to do anything with that. And then some of Mal's comments about the role of government - but then, it's Mal, and I get that we're not supposed to see Mal as the unproblematic hero and voice of truth. And then the Alliance themselves as big-government tyrants - but then, evil empires aren't new in sci-fi. And then, just after deciding that I was just imagining this, reading a Firefly review that raved about how great its political and moral ideology are for someone who likes Ayn Rand's work. Am I hallucinating this, or what?
(As an aside. sci-fi based on the English civil war would be a really interesting idea. Except that it would mean having a futuristic leader in a futuristic Britain who gets in trouble for ignoring his parliament, appointing unelected favourites to positions of high authority within government, and imprisoning suspected enemies of the state without trial for unreasonably long periods of time. And that would just be crazy.)
4) Speaking of Firefly reviews: yes, it is sci-fi. Really. I don't know what it is about recent sci-fi shows that makes reviewers praise them at the expense of their genre, but I've seen it with the new Battlestar Galactica as well: "it's not sci-fi, because it's good!" Or, more specifically - "it looks like sci-fi, but it has complex characters/interesting ideas/flawed heroes/intelligent writing!". How in the world does that follow? And yet:
"Firefly had a look at what every other science fiction show has ever done, and then completely ignored it. In this future you will find no aliens, no transporter beams, no planet of the week, even arguably no heroes."
"The story itself is engaging, and doesn’t allow the futuristic backdrop to rob it of a plausible storyline. It is not a prerequisite to have enjoyed Sci-Fi previously — this isn’t traditional Sci-Fi."
"It is a shame that [BSG] is overlooked by many people as just a "sci-fi" show, but it is so much more. Most critics as well as the relatively large number of fans [...] recognize that this is a compelling drama that just happens to take place in outer space. It deals with weighty subjects such as genocide, human flaws, paranoia, and religion.
Plus Edward James Olmos's comments about how "if they showed one four-eyed monster or alien, I was going to faint on camera, and then I'd leave the show." Thank heavens the spaceship-flying killer robots only had two eyes.
Yes. It is sci-fi. It isn't sci-fi-but, it's just actual, plain, conventional sci-fi. Are people really so embarrassed about liking it that they'll ignore everything else the genre's been doing for sixty years? Argh.
I've seen bits of Firefly before (most of one episode and snippets of another), and of course heard a lot about it on LJ and other places, so I'm not completely new to it. There were characters I didn't know, though - I don't think I'd seen Inara or Book before, and Kaylee only briefly - and all I knew about the general concept was Western-in-space.
I've now seen up to 'Shindig'. So, first thoughts:
1) It's so pretty. Not just the special effects or the actors, but the whole thing - scenery, costumes, photography, everything. I could watch this with the sound off. And all the little world-building details are amazing; I don't know if they always work individually (the holographic pool table jarred a bit, because, well, why?), but that never really matters, because the overall effect is amazing. Horses and spaceships and rifles and bar fights and Chinese slang.
2) I'd heard people accuse Joss Whedon of recycling his existing characters here. I don't think so, although there were a couple of moments - some of Kaylee's lines, River mimicking Badger's accent - that did look a bit familiar. But then, I don't think the characters themselves are copies of Buffyverse characters. Kaylee sounds Willow-ish sometimes but still isn't Willow, and River doesn't map onto Drusilla. (Apart from the evil vampire thing, Dru's insanity always made her look like more of a threat - River's is clearly damaging to her. And I've seen the little mini-trailers for Serenity, and an episode where she does some weird psychic stuff, and she's obviously not helpless, but she's still broken where Dru was just scary.)
3) Maybe I'm just imagining this, but... is there an undercurrent of very libertarian political ideology here? I don't mean that Joss Whedon's morphed into Heinlein', but I kept seeing... something. Like the war stuff at the beginning, and the 'you can't take the sky from me' in the song - but then, it's a Western, and the war stuff probably has more to do with the American civil war anyway. And I don't know enough about the American civil war to do anything with that. And then some of Mal's comments about the role of government - but then, it's Mal, and I get that we're not supposed to see Mal as the unproblematic hero and voice of truth. And then the Alliance themselves as big-government tyrants - but then, evil empires aren't new in sci-fi. And then, just after deciding that I was just imagining this, reading a Firefly review that raved about how great its political and moral ideology are for someone who likes Ayn Rand's work. Am I hallucinating this, or what?
(As an aside. sci-fi based on the English civil war would be a really interesting idea. Except that it would mean having a futuristic leader in a futuristic Britain who gets in trouble for ignoring his parliament, appointing unelected favourites to positions of high authority within government, and imprisoning suspected enemies of the state without trial for unreasonably long periods of time. And that would just be crazy.)
4) Speaking of Firefly reviews: yes, it is sci-fi. Really. I don't know what it is about recent sci-fi shows that makes reviewers praise them at the expense of their genre, but I've seen it with the new Battlestar Galactica as well: "it's not sci-fi, because it's good!" Or, more specifically - "it looks like sci-fi, but it has complex characters/interesting ideas/flawed heroes/intelligent writing!". How in the world does that follow? And yet:
"Firefly had a look at what every other science fiction show has ever done, and then completely ignored it. In this future you will find no aliens, no transporter beams, no planet of the week, even arguably no heroes."
"The story itself is engaging, and doesn’t allow the futuristic backdrop to rob it of a plausible storyline. It is not a prerequisite to have enjoyed Sci-Fi previously — this isn’t traditional Sci-Fi."
"It is a shame that [BSG] is overlooked by many people as just a "sci-fi" show, but it is so much more. Most critics as well as the relatively large number of fans [...] recognize that this is a compelling drama that just happens to take place in outer space. It deals with weighty subjects such as genocide, human flaws, paranoia, and religion.
Plus Edward James Olmos's comments about how "if they showed one four-eyed monster or alien, I was going to faint on camera, and then I'd leave the show." Thank heavens the spaceship-flying killer robots only had two eyes.
Yes. It is sci-fi. It isn't sci-fi-but, it's just actual, plain, conventional sci-fi. Are people really so embarrassed about liking it that they'll ignore everything else the genre's been doing for sixty years? Argh.
no subject
Le sigh.
no subject