By the end of the much maligned and grossly underrated sixth season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, it had surpassed “Babylon V” for my personal vote for Best TV Show EVER.
On September 20, 2002, some four months later, Joss Whedon’s THIRD TV show, an unusual science fiction show called “Firefly”, premiered. I immediately fell in love. This was the science fiction show I had been waiting for: No stupid ray guns, no FTL, no dumb sounds in vacuum, and Libertarian as hell. This was EXACTLY the show I had outlined as my concept of a perfect SF show 20 years earlier, during a discussion following “Star Trek: The Search for Spock”.
By October 25, following the episode “Out of Gas”, “Firefly” had displaced “Buffy” as Best TV Show EVER. The following day I wrote a poem about it called “Cap’n Reynolds”…
“Firefly” was in ratings trouble from before the airing of the first episode; the suits who had ordered the show were not the suits who were airing the show, and the current crop of soulless Hollywood weasels didn’t understand the show, and didn’t much like it. I got INVOLVED. By December, I was willing to mortgage my home and/or donate organs to keep “Firefly” on the air… but it didn’t matter. On December 13, the cast and crew were told that it was over, and on December 20, a revamped (and slightly diminished) version of the pilot was FINALLY aired, and “Firefly” went off the air.
I was well and truly heartbroken. I held my breath through Whedon’s efforts to find the show a home on UPN or SciFi, and went into mourning properly in late January when the sets were scrapped.
BUT… There were poems. On January 15, I wrote a poem about Theodora of Byzantium in response to various maddening comments about the character of Inara, and then later that day I found myself writing a Kaylee poem. On the 18th I wrote a poem for the ship herself, and then wrote an Inara stanza for “Courtesan”. By February 6 I had TEN poems, one for each cast member and one for the ship. I sent copies off to Mutant Enemy, targeted to each individual cast member, and eventually got a thank you e-mail from Adam (Jayne) Baldwin.
In December of 2003, “Firefly” was released in its entirety on DVD, and I couldn’t bring myself to watch them for almost two years, at which point the feature film “Serenity” was on the horizon.
Dementia wondered if Mal’s “Love” speech in the final scene of “Serenity” might have been influenced by Whedon’s reading “Cap’n Reynolds”. I wonder as well; I certainly wouldn’t mind.
Uncle Hyena
1/24/2006