|
|
It comes as no surprise that a television series has been created that has merged the themes of cowboys and science fiction.
What does come as a surprise is the length of time its taken for someone to actually write and produce a series on this subject.
I know there was Bravestar, but this is the first real life cowboy in space series. The story is that Earth has had all its resources used up so people take to the stars.
They moved to a new solar system with lot of planets which are terraformed to make them inhabital.
An inner core of planets form the 'Alliance', those not conforming live on the outskirts using technologies that is not that advanced.
The inhabitents of the planets build their living quarters similar to what Europeans did when they moved to America and Australia.
The adventures have similar storylines to Western films such as a train robbery.
The crew of the ship have different backgrounds to one another including a brother and sister who are wanted by the Alliance.
If you are looking for an array of weird and wonderful alien creatures then you will be dissappointed because there aren't any.
There aren't any aliens in American history so why should they appear here now ? It is seen as a breathe of fresh air, a sci-fi without aliens by some. Others see it as a disappointment that there aren't any.
The idea was to concentrate on the characters and storylines and not latex faces.
The series was not as successful as it should have been, in part due to it being broadcast at an awkward time on a Friday night, its episodes were jumbled, the original pilot episode was misplaced.
Those in the UK were a bit better off, the series was shown in proper order on the Sci-Fi channel. Whether it would have been successful if the series had been shown in proper order is open to debate.
Joss Weddon, the producer returned to the series years later with Serenity, a big budget movie. In this film, they explore the origins of the Reavers (sometimes mispelt as Reevers), the closest thing that Firefly has to aliens.
The Reavers are said to be men that went to furthest reaches of space, went crazy and came back to brutalise the inhabitents of the planets. In the series there was very little of the Reavers but they play a big part in the movie.
|
|
