Could Firefly return from the dead?

One of my favorite TV shows of all time was Joss Whedon’s Firefly.

It shared the same wit and narrative scope as Whedon’s show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but threw in a cool science-fiction/western aesthetic that I really loved.

Sadly, Firefly got swatted out of the airwaves before the first season had finished airing – the victim of cable television’s very short-sighted attitude towards television shows.

Fans – who call themselves ‘browncoats’ after the defeated revolutionaries from the TV show – were expected to be satisfied with the (admittedly sublime) movie adaptation that followed.

But apparently, there is a chance Firefly will fly again.

Star Nathan Fillon, who plays the Han Solo-esque Captain of the starship Serenity, joked to Entertainment Weekly that he’d buy the rights to the show if he won $300 million on the California lottery and start producing new episodes himself. Devoted Browncoats read that promise – and promptly started fund-raising.

Entertainment Weekly calculated that it would cost just a tenth of Fillon’s hypothetical lottery jackpot to score the rights to Firefly – but that depended on 20th Century Fox being willing to part with them. In addition, you’d need a pretty hefty change jar to fund a series, even on the Internet (unless you wanted it to look like the plucky, but underfunded Browncoats: Redemption fan film.)

Nevertheless, even the possibility is exciting. Firefly was so beautifully written that it’s a crime its no longer on television. The characterization was perfect, the scripts were laugh-out-loud funny and the onscreen action was intoxicating.

My favorite episode was Ariel; the ultimate heist scenario.

In that episode, the Serenity crew stole medical uniforms and infiltrated an alliance medical center to steal supplies.

True to Whedon’s style, the treacherous Jayne donned a hospital nurse uniform and promptly attempted to sell two of his crew members to the authorities.

Meanwhile Simon Tam – the only one actually qualified to wear that doctor uniform – discovered the severity of the medical experimentation performed on his traumatized little sister, River.

To pack all that into a single hour-long episode was outstanding production work – easily the rival of anything on TV today.

Maybe, even if 20th Century Fox are unwilling to part with the rights to Firefly, they’ll see from the devoted fan-following just how much promise the show holds and return it to our screens in short order.

After all, the devoted fan sight fighting to raise the money already has 100,000 subscribers. If that's representative of the ones willing to donate their time and effort - how many other fans would be willing to tune in?

Torchwood Returns!

Russell T. Davies - the complex genius who breathed new life into the Doctor Who franchise - is both a hero and a nemesis of mine. It's hard to ignore the fact that he created a visionary new imagining of one of my most beloved TV shows - but it's also hard to ignore the fact that he took that triumph and thoroughly smooshed it into the ground with spin-off monstrosity Torchwood.

Torchwood: Where plot and characterization fail to collide

Yet despite the cruel words I've had to say about Torchwood, I was insanely excited to hear star John Barrowman tweet that the ill-fated alien detection agency was returning for a forth season. Almost immediately, I've got high hopes about the return - after all, all the annoying characters have been killed off and I'm enough of a Barrowman aficionado to watch it purely for him.

However, I can't help thinking it also has the intense capacity to suck.

And that's the great contradiction with Russell T. Davies - everything he creates winds up in the annals of awesomeness or the slimepits of suck and there's never any 'middle ground.'

In that respect, he strongly reminds me of another science fiction legend - the great Joss Whedon. Whedon is the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly (and used to live in my home city of Winchester, no less.) Both are chubby, poorly dressed and have the ill-fated capacity to bring brilliance or banality to whatever enterprise they touch.

Case in point, in Joss Whedon's example, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Simply the most sublime TV show ever, Whedon perfectly balanced comedy, horror and action for seven seasons, before finally wrapping the series up in a climax that saw the town of Sunnydale literally consumed by the Earth (explaining why California business insurance is so high - even with all the earthquakes!)

That triumph mirrors Russell T. Davies, who brought Doctor Who back from relative obscurity and created a brand new formula that made a forty-year-old TV show more relevant than it had ever been.

But while they both hit home runs, they also struck out with the follow-ups.

For Joss Whedon, that follow-up was Angel - which followed the adventures of Buffy's former paramour Angelus, as he tried to make a living solving mysteries in Los Angeles. Originally, I blamed the show's failure on star David Boreanz - but after watching him excel in the current TV series Bones I realize that the shortfall was firmly in the hands of Whedon.

Meanwhile, increasing the business insurance rate of everybody who lives in Cardiff, Russell T. Davies mirrored Whedon's exploits with Torchwood - a spin-off show that followed the adventures of what was arguably his greatest creation: Captain Jack Harkness.

But despite being arguably unsinkable (Captain Jack, played by John Barrowman, is so charismatic even I'd question my heterosexuality around him) Torchwood was a convoluted mess that spent far too much time pontificating about Davies' political opinions (Welsh devolution, gay marriage) than preventing alien invasions.

It's finally time for residents of Cardiff to check their insurance information and prepare for another alien invasion now that a new series is being commissioned.

And for us beleaguered sci-fi fans, we're left wondering whether Russell T. Davies will decide to emulate Whedon's best with this new series - the simply astounding Firefly - or the worst - the nonsensical mess that was Dollhouse.

Whatever the result, it's worthwhile acknowledging that Whedon is no less than two sci-fi series ahead of Davies - yet has ultimately failed to hit commercial gold.

The Sarah Conner Chronicles

Although there's often no rhyme or reason behind cable-television's scheduling, they saw fit to grace us with a brand-new episode of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles again last night.

Overall, this show is brimming with potential. Last night's surprisingly low-key victory for John and Sarah Conner (and their loyal, foxy Terminator pal) promised a pot-boiling plotline that could wind up very satisfying.

Unfortunately the writing continues to be atrocious - with characters acting randomly and stupidly. The Connors themselves are needlessly reckless at one moment, then reticent to 'draw attention to themselves' by saving innocent lives (like the suicidal student in the previous episode.) Hardly the stuff of the future leaders of mankind.

Additionally, huge liberties are being taken with established Terminator-lore - making the character's baffling actions even more inexplicable.

It's a pity that the writers manage to wrangle the complex plots into manageable scripts, but trip over the foundations of characterization and dialogue (which should be the easier part of the equation.) It's just lazy writing and spoils what promises to be a ground-breaking sci-fi drama.

We can only hope things improve. Since the FOX network has axed much more promising shows in the past (like Joss Whedon's breathtaking Firefly) the stakes are high and I'm not convinced the current Terminator team is capable of pulling it off.

Firefly or something like it...

*Dull Explosion*

Mal: What was that?

Wash: Did you see that?

Mal: Was that the primary buffer panel?

Wash: It did seem to resemble...

Mal: Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my Gorramn ship for no apparent reason?

Script of Serenity, by Josh Whedon

Twenty five miles an hour on Livingstone Avenue and there was a crunch, followed by the 'ding' of metal bouncing down the asphalt.

It wasn't a primary buffer panel - but it did appear that a relatively significant piece of my Lincoln Town Car had decided to divorce itself from rest of the vehicle.

Now this didn't unduly worry me. American cars have a large amount of redundant bits attached to their undercarriage which drop off (or stay on) depending on the weather. But it did remind me of Mal's speech at the end of the movie Serenity. His words of advice to wayward River reminded me of my philosophy towards my slightly-less-than-reliable automobiles:

You can learn all the math in the 'verse... But you take a boat in the air that you don't love... She'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds.

Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down... Tells you she's hurting before she keels. Makes her a home.

Now I do not claim this to be a WISE philosophy behind ownership of classic automobiles. But a deep sense of affection is definitely an advantage when owning a vehicle which occasionally costs more and runs less than anticipated.

For all her many failings (there was that week when she returned an appalling 11.8 mpg) my shiny red Lincoln manages to turn heads and spark conversations that a more sensible Honda or Toyota could never do.

And I've learnt that the more you love your inconvenient, but magnificent automobile - the more other people seem too, as well.

Which is handy, since remarkably, the more loved she is, the better she runs. The more reliably she starts. And for some unknown reason, the less petrol she drinks. Right now, we're hitting a down-right puritanical 16.9 mpg.

That must be a lot of love at work.