Why Firefly Failed.
Sci-Fi Weekly columnist talks about the pitfalls of mixing the scifi and the western.
(Note: the URL for this column will change next week when the current issue of SFW is archived.)
March 18 2003
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dafnap | March 18, 03:22 CET
WannaBlessedBe | March 18, 03:43 CET
A show like Firefly needs the kind of push that Fox gave 24 or ABC gives Alias (by the way, am I the only person alive not impressed with Alias. I find it humorless and overwrought) but Fox dumped it into a death slot and then marketed it like it was Fastlane (which the seemed far more commited to).
Critical acclaim may have given Fox more of an incentive to keep the show alive but they killed any hope of that with the decision to not air the pilot which offically labeled Firefly as a troubled show. They also held out giving any critics screeners of the first several episodes unitl the last minute as if they were afaraid of bad press. This is indicitive of a network believing a show is a failure.
I don't know if Firefly would have found an audience even if Fox had confidence in it. Sci-fi is a difficult sell on network TV so maybe no amount finesse would have put this show over but it would have been nice to see Fox try.
In the end, I am glad to see what I got to see of Firefly and hope we get to see the three unaired episodes one day.
Unitas | March 18, 12:14 CET
the_zeppo | March 18, 12:26 CET
Firefly had no comfort zone. There was too much uncertainty and chaos about it. Too many characters. The plots were kinda soapy. I think that was part of what Whedon wanted to do. Make it more gritty and real. Do what no other television series has ever had the cajones to do.
This would have worked over time, but time wasn't in Firefly's favor. Had Whedon started this series back in the middle 1990s, it would have been more successful. Today's political and societal climate is a bit too conservative for such experimentation.
ZachsMind | March 18, 18:58 CET
The problem, I think, was not so much as the fact that you couldn't understand what was going on, but the fact that Fox never aired it in order in the first place. They showed the fifth episode first, the first introduction last, everything was mixed up, out of the loop. Where one story left off, wouldn't get picked up until episodes later. The execution, in my opinion (but then again I'm biased to Captain Spacepants)wasn't the problem, it was Fox's delivery.
dafnap | March 18, 19:43 CET