Quote:
Originally Posted by VaporPunk
"Space western" makes me think of Firefly. This makes me sad...  Even after all these years, I cannot forgive the cancellation of this show. |
Firefly is evidence that Tucker had it all wrong, precisely because it is *exacty* a space western wthout being space opera. It is a character-based piece, after all.
Firefly was great because the narrative was built around the characters and the characters were recognizably human and with one exception far from super-human. Or even particularly noble or heroic. (By any definition of "hero".)
And a pretty good political commentary on the perils of statism and entrenched bureaucracy; the central worlds ended up with a tyranny by inattention and political correctness.
Whedon summarized it best in the one line: "We don't want to tell them what to think, just *how* to think."
One would hope that whoever made the decision to cancel FIREFLY just as the show had found itself was properly chastised after UNIVERSAL bought the rights and made SERENITY.
I'm pretty sure there are an infinity of parallel unverses where FIREFLY is still running to robust ratings.
(Of course, it also means those universes didn't get Dr Horrible, Castle, or Dollhouse.)
And speaking of pesimistic SF, you can hardly beat Dollhouse for its unflinching exploration of humans' ability to exploit each other and themselves. Dark themes darkly explored to great effect.
So, of course, it got cancelled.
The same as SGU, Space Above and Beyond, Caprica, and pretty much every example of intelligent SF on TV.
Which should be no surprise, of course since SF is not a mass market genre by any stretch.
Yup, we live in dark times without question.