What made Firefly so good was the friendships and relationships, the sci-fi western was there cause, 'y'know, some people enjoy sci-fi westerns, it did not rely on that, as if there was nothing else to the show.
But how much of that sci-fi western was there really, in the show? Not much, I don't recall any spacebattles, memorable gunfights or set-pieces. edit: Unlike with Buffy, which from the beginning, had a healthy doseage of the superheroic action throughout.
and talking about western staples used in the show, that episode about Mal having the duel with that guy? Man, i thought that was boring.
I have the boxset, haven't watched it in years, so i could be forgetting some parts that were supposed to satisfy that aspect, but when i saw the movie, i was like, 'Ok, now they are starting to fulfill the action quotient of the show i thought would be there.'
Because you need the characters, the action and the story arcs, and all FF really had going for it was the characters, that is, if you found the characters compelling.
But I do think Buffy was very campy. Firefly had Joss's brilliant and irreverent sense of humor, but it was toned down so that the darker, more dramatic elements of the story weren't overwhelmed by it. It was just frankly a more mature show with adult characters (even if one of my favorites, River, was a teenager with the broken psyche of a child). He also created his own mythology to the 'Verse that despite only having 14.5 hours (16.5 if you count the movie) to it, that is fascinating and al encompassing. It is frankly one of the most imaginative, unique, memorable and HUMAN visions of the space opera ever attempted.
Buffy had episodes and drama that were as mature as any in that show. i don't know how much of the show you watched, but if you are thouroughly versed in it, I can only say that I strongly disagree with you that FF was the more mature work.
But, of course, buffy stretched to 7 seasons and had many different tones going through episodes, season 5 was probably the most successful in the regard of being mature, the last one he did the showrunning on(most important job being taking a last writing pass over every script) b4 he left to work on FF.
So, he was scientifically accurate to space creating an eerie and unique aesthetic to his space elements and then found a scientific reason/excuse to have sound when his big space battle finally came? You just described someone who successfully figured out how to have his cake and eat it too. What's wrong with that?
My main point originally was that he had painted his wagon into a corner with that rule, and if the show had not been cancelled he would have had some right wonky space battling going on, I mean, what is he going to do, have every battle take place in the upper atmosphere of planets cause he realised he had made a daft descion to overrule sound in space(God often thinks twice about that rule he came up with too btw).
But they're not based on aliens. They're not the old cliché of an alien race like Klingons or some such nonsense. They were based on the inaccurate prejudiced view of Native Americans held by pioneers who spun these stories (and led to films like Stagecoach and The Searchers).
They're not "invading aliens." They're a brilliant element of the western, not the sci-fi genre. And they play into Firefly's libertarian theme (the government made them by literally trying to social engineer a population). While I don't agree with the politics this underlines, it is pretty brilliant writing.
ok, they were not like Kilingons, but they were did take the role of invading aliens of a different sort. disagree if you must, but that is how I feel about them. Let's say he did make them aliens, and they did the exact same things in the movie, you would be sitting here typing up the same kudos for their inspiration, there is nothing wrong with them conceptually, all i am saying is...they could just as well have been a made up alien race.
and as to your point below, ok, you may be right, perhaps there would have been enough going on in the mythos that he didn't need any more non-human types coming into play and ripping it up once the Reaver plot was taken care of, but it's always good to leave it open for yourself to have an alien presence(and the Reaver's 'alien/non-human' presence did an an element of excitement that was lacking in the tv series imo).
But, knowing Whedon, if he had come up with a good story later on about some aliens coming into play, he would have just said fug it to his rule, and wrote them in, so i guess that was not really a problem, unless he wanted it to be.
Mal is the most interesting protagonist that Whedon ever created, IMO, and how he would react to a second civil war is unknowable. The show could go from space-western to a sci-fi epic war. How the crew would grow from losing Wash has a thousand potential directions (look how confused the fangirls and their fanfics are about where to take the show
), there is so much potential we'll never see realized. Who needs aliens when you have these characters and this setting?
But I respect your point about our differences on Buffy and will leave it there.
ok, yeah, and i answered that point above as it flowed in from what i was saying about the reavers.
