I finished Firefly: The complete series last week, having watched all 14 episodes, all of the extras, and had a little time to digest the show. I loved it, and it’s a shame that it ended just as the characters were all becoming interesting. River in particular finally became a semi-decent character in the last episode.The show mixes both the feel of the wild west, with the tone of a space opera. Not only is the romantic notion of the whole “One man and his gun” western feel there, but there’s tons of technology. It just feels like a cool place to live, a combination of a simpler time, with some of the nuances of our techno-centric information society.
I think the part I love the most is how loyal Joss Whedon is to his actors. Malcom played the big bad on the final season of Buffy, Zoe played the big bad on last season’s Angel, and the guy who plays Mal and Zoe’s old war buddy in “The Message” played a new vampire with a psychology degree in the final season of Buffy for one incredibly fun and memorable episode, before playing Knox in this season’s Angel.
I think that the feature film version of the show (to be called “Serenity” after the name of the ship) will be a lot of fun, especially if they play up some of the cool villians they created.
I added a couple of links to the side-bar. In particular the Looney Tunes DVD’s that I just got (6 discs in all), and Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale, both of which I’ll talk about here in the future.