posted
I agree with his points about religion, preachiness, and some of his points about sex. I disagree with him about the lack of technobabble -- I liked that they didn't care enough about that aspect of the story to waste time explaining.
But even if it's not very good science fiction in comparison to Ender's Game and Dune, it's still one of the best Televised science fictions we've ever had.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:First, in the TV show, there was just too much sex.
Is this guy sure he's watching Firefly?
quote:When two characters start a relationship, the first thing they do is have sex.
Does he mean Mal and Inara? Oh wait, no sex. Simon and Kaylee? Wait, no sex there either. Zoe and Wash? Can't be, they've been married for years by this point. Who the heck is he referring to? Did I miss something? Book and Jayne?
quote:By far, the worst things were the scientific flaws and holes in the technology and the lack of even any attempt to explain how and why the technology worked. ... And yet, Firefly has...? Never explained. The problem is never even addressed.
Some of us don't like "hard" sci-fi. Or technobabble sci-fi. I prefer them not to bug me with warp drives and just get on with the story. I think he also missed the fact that it's all within a single solar-system. Not intergalactic like SW or ST.
quote:And then, you have the fact that every planet they land on is like something from the western United States. No variety at all. No alien flora or fauna. No diverse climates.
What about Ariel? The central planets look more temperate, but as they explain in the show, Serenity has very good reasons to avoid those pretty planets.
The man can't even get the names of the characters right. All it sounds like is a person who never really paid much attention to the show he's trying to criticise. It's a junk review, in my opinion, only worth reading for the chuckles.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:And yet, Firefly has...? Never explained. The problem [of faster than light travel] is never even addressed. About half of the episodes start out in the middle of some interstellar voyage, and yet it looks like the craft is just put put puttering along at sublight speeds. On the last episode, in fact, someone actually jumped out of his spaceship and landed on the Serenity as if it were the most natural thing in the verse. After all, it's not like they're going anywhere...
None of the voyages were interstellar. It's one star system. There isn't any indication that travel is FTL.
That doesn't explain the lack of communication lag, nor are the speeds every explained, but this guy has missed some pretty basic stuff in his critique.
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posted
The post works a lot better if one imagines it being delivered by the "Gavin" character from Kids in the Hall.
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posted
I only read the first bit, on the presumption that he made his strongest point first. If he did, his essay is pure bunk.
One of the wonderful things about "Firefly" is the variety of relationships it portrays. The idea that any character who begins to fall for anyone else immediately has sex with them is ludicrous, even considered as an exaggeration. I submit the following counter-examples(Minor Spoilers Ahead, if there's anyone left here who hasn't seen "Firefly"):
The most important romantic relationship in the series is not a sexual one (Mal and Inara) but both of them have sex with other minor characters.
Zoe and Wash have a tremendous romantic relationship of which sex is a relatively minor, but not insignificant, part.
Simon and Kaylee spend the entire series falling in love with each other and comepletely failing to do anything about it.
Mal has deeply loving relationships with both Zoe and Kaylee that are entirely non-sexual... despite the fact that Mal clearly finds them both attractive (cf. "War Stories" and the "I can't know that" comment from the movie).
Simon and River have, perhaps, the most loving relationship in the entire 'Verse, also, clearly non-sexual.
Book befriends, of all people, Jayne, and I'm sure someone will talk about the homoerotic subtexts of being workout buddies, but they clearly do bond and it is also clearly non-sexual.
Mal also clearly cares deeply about anyone who is "crew", a word that he regards as synonomous with, or even stronger than "family".
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Puffy Treat: The comments section is pure gold.
"There are some loons out there like Book, but thankfully they're few and far between."
Book is many things, but he never struck me as a "loon".
And then a rebuttal in the same comments section says this:
quote: Anyone who can dismiss Book, the only really likeable character in the verse, as a loon, has sufficiently impeached himself as a loon that no further comment is needed.
What, Kaylee's not likeable? Wash? I mean, I like a lot of the characters on Firefly but I understand why someone might not characterize them as likeable. But Kaylee?
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I tend to agree with most of the sentiment posted here. He's basically wrong on every point. The sex issue in Firefly was no more or less prevalent than in every TV show on air now. He's comparing modern TV to TV of ten or 15 years ago, and frankly, a lot has changed. Even more so, he's comparing Firefly to Asimov. Asimov, genius though he was, was a well-known prude. If you toss in Heinlein, one of Asimov's contemporaries and (to many's minds) equals in SF, then Firefly comes off as incredibly square.
There are a lot of "good" sci-fi novels/universes where religion is a minor to non-existent issue. And besides, there was a fair bit of talk about religion, it just wasn't central to the plot because most of the characters were non-religious.
Technobabble? Technobabble is a requirement for good sci-fi? I'd laugh but it's not even funny. Technobabble is the bane of sci-fi everywhere! I know everyone doesn't agree, but the point of sci-fi is it can't be explained fully. Trying to explain it is just throwing up screens to deflect people's vision from seeing what's really there. Star Trek TNG was great until they started "solving" all their problems with technocrap. Bab5 was good because they didn't give more than the scantest explanations for what they did. Dune was great and its sequelae were bad because of the disparity in explanations. Technobabble is a crutch used by bad authors to throw smoke in front of bad writing.
quote:Originally posted by theCrowsWife: Sure, but this guy watched Serenity first.
--Mel
Oh, and so did I. I really didn't think Firefly could be any good. I was not a fan of Buffy and Joss Whedon doing sci-fi just seemed like a bad idea. Some friends took me to see Serenity, and I bought Firefly shortly thereafter.
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posted
I love how he cites Ender's Game as an example of good sci-fi where the characters relate to each other without having sex.
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posted
I'm trying to remember - besides the married couple, did ANYBODY have sex over the course of the show besides the one getting paid for it and in flashback?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I find it dificult to believe the commentator watched the same Firefly series I did. Given the profile, I wonder if the person has watched many modern non-lds tv shows at all, and been raised in a very, very sheltered environment pre-college. I think they are revealing far more about themselves than the series by their opinions on it.
posted
See I always saw Kaylee's explanations of the propulsion system's particulars as very technobabblish.
As for Simon and Kaylee's relationship I think there is definately sexual tension there. Simon is too proper to jump into things but Kaylee clearly wants to be intimate with him, but obviously her feelings for Simon are not just sexual in nature she genuinely loves him.
Either way his point about sex seems to be without adequate merit.
As for religion. I just don't think the show went on long enough for religion to be fleshed out as much as I think it would have been. I thought Book was a VERY interesting religious character. Of course it helps he has some hidden special ops butt kicking past that we will never know about but is always hinted at.
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I also assumed that the voyages were interstellar, simply because it's hard to fathom one solar system in which *every* planet is virtually identical and "Class M". But, on the other hand, they don't have FTL engines, so...?
If it was explained in Serenity, I missed it.
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posted
I agree with the linked post that Inara's relationship with and reaction to sex didn't seem to be consistent or make sense.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Her reaction in Heart of Gold made sense to me. She wants Mal but for whatever reason can't be with him (or believes she can't), and then he went and slept with someone else. She said the proper "enlightened" things about sex when they bumped into each other in the hallway, the things that Companions are supposed to believe, but in private she was hurt by it--she just didn't want him to know that.
Posts: 957 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I disagree on pretty much every count. It's true that the science is flawed--though not for the reasons the author gives--but this really doesn't bother me. I mean, heck, Star Wars has sound in space, and Star Trek can accelerate beyond the speed of light just by wishing it so. (I frankly would have preferred that the planets not all be in one system. This strains credulity far more than any FTL workaround, because in the genre we're already used to giving creators FTL as a freebie, in order to make the rest of the plots workable.)
There are enough depictions of sex that I don't let my nine-year-olds watch the show. But his characterization of sex as the driving force behind the relationships fails on two levels. First of all, it's not an accurate representation of Firefly. Second, unfortunately, it is a pretty accurate description of a lot of modern relationships, so much so that a show which depicted relationships having such an arc would not be inaccurate, for a wide subset of people.
I found Firefly's treatment of religion respectful. Sure, you can deconstruct that treatment, as the author did, but I think it's better to look at the surface, at what the creators were trying to do, rather than condemning them for not doing it as one would have done it, given the opportunity.
I question the breadth of the author's exposure to science fiction, based on the repeated comparisons to the Ender series and Asimov, as if they pretty much defined sci-fi as a genre between them. Lessee . . . a book about children on a space station and a Golden Age series, from an era where explicit sexuality was not common in mass market books . . . yeah, that really proves a point--not.
And the most important place where the author of the blog has it wrong: Firefly is far better than Serenity.Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
You can edit or delete your previous post by clicking on the little paper and pen icon in the upper left of your post.
I've always considered firefly more of a human drama than a sci-fi series. To me sci-fi means annoying meaningless technobabble and aliens that look exactly like humans except for pointy ears or bumpy foreheads. Firefly is so much more than that, primarily it's a chance to examine consistencies in human nature under fictional circumstances. The reviewer seemed to have a ax to grind, it was a little too pg-13 for his tastes, so he threw in some fluff in order to make a coherent point.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Oct 2005
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There's no need for you to cross that line and be personally insulting. I have no interest in turning a conversation about Firefly into a competition of who can "get" whom. My conversation with you about this is over.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Don't you guys remember the Kaylee sex? I think that was one of the most "AAAAAGH!" moments in the series for me (in Out of Gas) when he walks around the corner and we find Kaylee and the mechanic.
anyway, just adding to the sex list. I won't even read this review as I may take the critiques personally.
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
That wasn't a personal insult, porter. That was an emphatic disagreement with what you were saying. Inara's reaction was very consistent with many women I know, so much so that I am a little bemused that people could find it obviously unrealistically inconsistent.
You are a self-admitted prude, as, I'm guessing is the author of this review. I guess I'm suggesting that you may not have an understanding of the common worldview in which Inara's behavior is realistic.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Doesn't matter whether the voyages were interstellar. From the standpoint of a little tiny spaceship travelling immense distances through the black, relative velocity is nil. Whether someone can jump from one spaceship to another is also merely a matter of relative velocity.
I was bothered, however, by the fact that spaceships coming in opposite directions had the opportunity to look each other over as they meandered by. They should have flashed by in an instant.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by dantesparadigm: You can edit or delete your previous post by clicking on the little paper and pen icon in the upper left of your post.
I'm aware. My computer is acting... oddly. I'll take care of it.
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
You could probably suggest he doesn't know women like Inara without being rude. To suggest he doesn't know many women at all is, I think. And, assuming that he does know many women, virtually all of whom are not like Inara, he could easily throw the same line back at you. You both obviously travel in different sample sets; attempting to universalize either of your experiences would be a mistake.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: Don't you guys remember the Kaylee sex? I think that was one of the most "AAAAAGH!" moments in the series for me (in Out of Gas) when he walks around the corner and we find Kaylee and the mechanic.
I've always thought Whedon put that in there to give some perspective on Kaylee's relationship with Simon. Her language often discloses her as being sexually liberated, yet when it comes to Simon, she can't bring herself to be up front about her feelings. The "Out of Gas" scene makes it clear that Kaylee would have jumped Simon's bones if she hadn't cared that it might cheapen the relationship.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I appologize for my flippant remark. It wasn't intended rudely, but I could see how it could be taken as such.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:I was bothered, however, by the fact that spaceships coming in opposite directions had the opportunity to look each other over as they meandered by. They should have flashed by in an instant.
This always bothered me, too. The ships usually look as if they are moving slowly because the starfield changes so slowly due to distance. The ships should move very quickly relative to each other.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I figure that spaceship drives there put out some sort of effect that magnifies the ship for people viewing them proportional to the distance between them. So, they really are far away from each other and moving fast, it just looks like they are close and moving slow.
posted
First off, I think it's funny that he loved the movie and didn't like the series. Personally I love the series and find the movie to be average/mediocre.
Second, I think he's off on the sex. I agree that there IS a lot of sex, but as the author says, there's no more than in BSG, which I don't think anyone would call bad sci-fi. But I don't know what he is talking about with regards to the role of sex in on screen relationships. I don't recall that at all, considering the non-married main characters never have sex with each other, only with minor single episode characters. Further, I think he is cheapening a companion. He's accusing Joss of being preachy when Star Trek, which I think many would call the most widespread TV sci-fi had one of the first on screen kisses between two females when Dax on DS9 fell in love with a previous hosts' wife. It's not preachy, it's realistic. Companions aren't just hookers, like he says and Mal constantly abuses her with. There's more to it, and the more part is explored numerous times in the show, but he totally missed it.
And what the hell was the 'I'm only in it for the sex..." thing? Sure Jayne took advantage of that, and Mal ended up with what's her name, but clearly there was more between Mal and her than just payment. And clearly they weren't in it for the sex or the money, but just to help out, as is their wont to do. Mal and Inara (yeah that's right buddy, you cheated her out of a vowel) have a more complicated relationship, based on a lot of unsaid but fairly obvious emotions that is totally believable, and yet both sleep with other people. But I think it was specifically because Mal slept with that woman, who was both a friend of Inara's and another companion that upset Inara so much. Most sci-fi ignores sex entirely, it doesn't show the pro and the cons. It's only recent sci-fi that addresses it in a realistic way.
Third, okay, he has a point about some of the science. It's insanely unbelievable that even with extremely advanced terraforming that so many planets could be within the habitable zone of the solar system. Earth is barely within the habitable zone, and Mars, with some terraforming, could also be livable, but the rest of the solar system is dead so long as we have the star that we have, and will remain so for millions of years. The FTL thing is covered in Serenity where they explain all that, but for someone who hadn't seen the movie, I can see how that'd be extremely confusing.
The thing about it though, is that it was less about the science aspect, and more about the actual characters and story. The fact that it was set in space doesn't necessitate a lengthy explanation of the technology, though I too thought it was silly that EVERY planet with the exception of the very central core were all desert planets. It also made little sense that one of the nicest planets, Miranda, was the furthest away from the sun. But I can ignore bad science if the story is good, and the story IS good.
It really is more of a western than a Sci-Fi. It's closer I think to what Star Wars might have been if it had focused on Han Solo's early life as a smuggler.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
The one point I do agree with him is the fact that 90% of the planets were basically Wyoming. After the 5th or 6th "American West" planet, I wanted to scream in frustration.
Most of his other points I disagree on.
However, it is worth noting that for me, the "Science Fiction" part of the show is perhaps the least interesting. I think if the show took place on a merchant vessel in the 18th century, very little would have to be changed, and that I'd have enjoyed the show just as much.
To me the character interaction and development were the best parts.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
The problem is, as I see it, the author is defining bad as "disagrees with my moral code" as opposed to "possessing quality" or "is believable". If that's the criteria he's using, I can't really fault him, except for the numerous factual errors he makes. However, that's a pretty worthless distinction for people who are not him and who don't care about his moral code.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:The one point I do agree with him is the fact that 90% of the planets were basically Wyoming.
90% of the planets they landed on, which were established as being frontier planets that were harder to terraform and given less support, so that they'd be kinda barren. In fact, these were the type of planets that the definitely grey legal status Firefly crew could work in.
There were plenty of core planets that were much different. This difference lent contrast to the different types of people/places and played an important part in some of the episodes.
I don't know, complaining about the planets sounds sort of like complaining that a show about smugglers has them always hanging out in seedy bars near ports.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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