Post by B5Erik on Jul 9, 2015 3:32:07 GMT
Without a doubt Joss Whedon's Firefly was a great show. It was a fresh take on the interstellar Sci-Fi TV concept.
The outer colonies were not high tech - they were low tech with bits of high tech equipment thrown in. The colonies start from scratch, and build up from there. It takes decades, if not centuries. That was a great concept, and it worked amazingly well. The combination of space opera and western made for a unique show, and the writing, acting, and direction was outstanding.
But Fox screwed it up. First, they showed it out of order, leaving the two-hour pilot episode for last. Second, they didn't show all the episodes. The story was harder to follow for those reasons, and the show lost viewers leading to it's premature cancellation. After the initial burst of promotion Fox let the series die.
Now, I don't for a second believe that the show would have been some runaway monster hit, but it could have gotten good enough ratings to warrant several seasons had Fox just handled it correctly. But they didn't, and then they cancelled it. A funny thing happened, though, on it's way to obscurity - the series became a huge seller on DVD. For several years after the show was cancelled.
Firefly was such a big hit on DVD (and later, blu-ray) that Whedon got a feature film made. A feature film which bombed at the box office - then sold well on DVD and blu ray. Go figure.
If there had been the options (Netflix, etc) for series to get picked up then that there are now we might be talking about Firefly, the four or five season show rather than the 14 episode show that we have now.
At least they are 14 great episodes. (And a great theatrical movie...)
The outer colonies were not high tech - they were low tech with bits of high tech equipment thrown in. The colonies start from scratch, and build up from there. It takes decades, if not centuries. That was a great concept, and it worked amazingly well. The combination of space opera and western made for a unique show, and the writing, acting, and direction was outstanding.
But Fox screwed it up. First, they showed it out of order, leaving the two-hour pilot episode for last. Second, they didn't show all the episodes. The story was harder to follow for those reasons, and the show lost viewers leading to it's premature cancellation. After the initial burst of promotion Fox let the series die.
Now, I don't for a second believe that the show would have been some runaway monster hit, but it could have gotten good enough ratings to warrant several seasons had Fox just handled it correctly. But they didn't, and then they cancelled it. A funny thing happened, though, on it's way to obscurity - the series became a huge seller on DVD. For several years after the show was cancelled.
Firefly was such a big hit on DVD (and later, blu-ray) that Whedon got a feature film made. A feature film which bombed at the box office - then sold well on DVD and blu ray. Go figure.
If there had been the options (Netflix, etc) for series to get picked up then that there are now we might be talking about Firefly, the four or five season show rather than the 14 episode show that we have now.
At least they are 14 great episodes. (And a great theatrical movie...)