Joss Whedon

DISCLAIMER: I’m cheating a little bit here since I’ll also be talking about the movie Serenity.

DISCLAIMER: I won’t be calling myself a Browncoat. Not my thing.

TEACHER: Earth-That-Was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many. We found a new solar system: dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Each one terraformed - a process taking decades - to support human life. To be new Earths.

The Central Planets were the first settled and are the most advanced, embodying civilization at its peak. Life on the outer planets is much more primitive, and difficult. That’s why the Central Planets formed the Alliance, so everyone can enjoy the comfort and enlightenment of civilization. That’s why we fought the War for Unification...With all the social and medical advancements we can bring to the independents, why would they fight so hard against us?

RIVER: We meddle...People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run don’t walk we’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.

TEACHER: River, we’re not telling people what to think. We’re just trying to show them how.

—Opening scene of Serenity, written and directed by Joss Whedon

Serenity began as the all-too-short-lived Fox television series Firefly, which, I think, given a full life, would have become Joss Whedon’s finest work. Buffy might always remain his signature piece — it has an undeniable universality or Zeitgeist to it that makes is special — but Firefly could have taken Whedon and his work to new levels of quality. Yet it never had a chance. Apparently bewildered by a show they’d agreed to buy and air, Fox buried it on Friday nights, scuttled its two-hour pilot in favor of a rush job that had to explain the universe and the characters in one hour while being exciting, and canceled it before all the produced episodes had aired, showing the original pilot as a consolation prize. Oh, and they used Smashmouth (what works for Shrek doesn’t always work) in their summer advertisements for it while a heavy-handed voiceover tried to explain the show with something like, "Four outlaws, a doctor, a preacher, a prostitute, and a naked girl in a box." I’m not sure if they squeezed "a cute mechanic" in there, too, but the ad was enough to make my not particularly sarcastic mom snicker, "Ohhhh, boy!"

To be fair, Firefly wasn’t as easily definable as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the title almost says it all) or Angel (vampire detective spun off from successful show with cult following). Let’s see: spaceships that don’t fire weapons at each other, guns that still fire bullets (but make a cool whirring sound when they’re cocked), horses sometimes, nine main characters, people speaking in a weirdly antiquated way and also sometimes using Mandarin, an angry, bitter but handsome lead who was the loser in a civil war and whose crew as often as not engages in illegal or semi-legal activities, and it’s filmed with handheld cameras like a 1970s movie. I believe Variety referred to it as a "space oater." So I guess they thought, "Smashmouth. That’ll do the trick."

That list merely represents details just as Buffy being a vampire slayer is really just an important detail. Like all of Whedon’s work, Firefly lives and dies with its characters and their situations. OK, Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) was one of the independents, or browncoats, mentioned above. They lost big. Now he captains a cargo ship, named after the battle of Serenity Valley, the battle that ended the war. He mostly sticks to the more independent-minded and "primitive" outer rim planets and moons by choice. That’s important. The man could probably follow Alliance regulations, find plenty of work, live comfortably, but he doesn’t want that. He fought for an independence he didn’t get, but, gorram it, he’s going to have it anyway, even if it means breaking laws, doing distasteful jobs, going without, asking the same of his crew. It means that much to him. Everything in the show starts with his character, his desire for independence: the jobs he takes (i.e. the situations of most episodes), the people he chooses as crew and passengers (i.e. the cast), and the emotions and themes of the show. And here’s where Firefly differs from Buffy and even Angel. As petulant as Mal might seem, his and the show’s concerns are adult concerns and, spaceships aside, grounded concerns, as simple as, "How do I buy food for my family (the crew)?" and as big and complex as, "How do I maintain my sense of self, my integrity, my dignity when the world around me doesn’t want me to?" As Bruce Springsteen (how’d he get in here?) has made clear time and again in his songs, it only takes a short bridge to connect those two questions. Frankly, as much as I love those other shows, there’s something refreshing in characters not dealing with a potential apocalypse.

But Whedon being Whedon, even this simpler definition only shows the core of the show. Like all his work, Firefly blends and bends genres, often whenever he and his writers see fit. First, he takes the standard science fiction focus on government and navy and big goings on and shoves it way in the background. Firefly, as he’s said, tells the stories you wouldn’t find on Star Trek, what’s going on in the daily lives of regular folk out there. Of course, they’re not completely regular folk, and they run into plenty of bigger-than-life trouble - sadistic businessmen, the Alliance, Reavers (cannibalistic men gone mad at the edge of space), bounty hunters, sexy con artists, even a sword-wielding dandy - but Mal’s general strategy is to avoid that kind of trouble, stick to doing the job, and move on. It rarely works out that way.

Now the problem with a show about unintentional heroes wandering around space is that it could easily become B.J. and the Bear In Space, falling into the trap of that well-worn television staple — the wandering hero saving the guest star of the week. Luckily, and not surprisingly, that doesn’t happen with Firefly. Each episode has its own structure, its own tone, its own focus: the life-and-death drama of "Out of Gas," the heist story of "Ariel," the broad comedy of "Jaynestown," or the philosophical character study of "Objects in Space. Firefly also has an ensemble of complicated characters (and no chimps.)

At Mal’s side since the war has been Zoe (Gina Torres), loyal soldier — maybe to a fault — and probably the only person he trusts, and for that reason, she also has his ear, the ability to sway his opinion, his choices, though more often than not she follows his lead and clearly sees him as a leader for reasons we get some idea of from flashbacks to the war. Her husband Wash (Alan Tudyk) flies the ship and provides first and foremost comic relief. Why they’re together, hard to say, but it works because of the actors’ peformances and their interaction. Wash also often serves of the voice of reason, the regular guy saying, "Do we really have to kill people?" That Zoe and Mal have such a close bond, well, sometimes a problem.

Adam Baldwin plays the man they call Jayne, the wild card of the crew: kind of dumb, lots of surly, completely untrustworthy (Jayne looks after Jayne), not afraid of speaking his mind, wearer of T-shirts and funny hats, eater of food, gun user, gun collector, gun namer, son of a bitch, and frequent bunk visitor. Yet he’s somehow lovable. Baldwin gets a lot of credit for that, but thankfully it dind’t seem like they would ever totally redeem his character had the show lived on. His unpredictability made him an asset to the show because it made him a danger to the crew and their passengers. Jayne’s opposite is Kaylee (Jewel Saite), the heart of the crew, the ship’s naturally gifted mechanic, cute and sweet but also sexy, the emotional conscience, the one person besides himself Jayne might give a damn about. When you see her with a gun, it feels wrong. When you see her romantic urges stifled, it feels wrong. When you see her feeling like she didn’t do her job, it feels wrong. And she, more than other characters, brings out the qualities in Mal that allow the audience to believe that he can be a decent man, even if he’s pissed off most of the time.

Serenity also carries passengers, all there for different, mysterious reasons. Inara (Morena Baccarin) is a registered companion, a sort of legal prostitute but more like a courtesan. When the ship goes to a planet or moon, she makes appointments of her choosing, and she actually brings them respectability. Why she’s out in the middle of nowhere with this crew remains a mystery, but something drove her away from the inner planets. She and Mal also share unrequited interest in one another, which often plays a screwball comedy, but also has a lot of weight to it. They’re grown ups, and their emotions seem grown-up, especially in "Heart of Gold" (an unaired episode on the DVD set). In a brief scene, Inara, alone in her room, responds to an unintentional betrayal, and this scene, Baccarin’s performance, and the off-handed way it’s filmed actually make a decent but not special episode mean a great deal more. She reaches her breaking point, and it leads to what would have no doubt been a crucial turning point in the season.

Ron Glass plays Shepherd Book, a preacher looking to get back with people after a long stay at an abbey. On the surface, he seems exactly that, a man of peace among people who aren’t always peaceful, a preacher trying to give advice to a man, Mal, who doesn’t seem to believe in anything, but Book has his own secrets. As the show progresses, we see that he knows a lot about military matters, and in one episode we hear rather unpeaceful thoughts from him and a bounty hunter says, "That ain’t no shepherd." We never learn his secrets, but the movie Serenity offers hints, though all he has to say on the matter is, "I wasn’t born a shepherd." Mal doesn’t like talk of God ("That’s a long wait for a train don’t come," he says in the movie), but he seems to respect Book, as do the others. They played this in a more obvious way in the movie, but it’s not hard to believe, given Glass’ dignified performance (plus he went to my alma mater, so I got to give him credit).

SPOILERS NECESSARY: The last two passengers play a crucial role in advancing the story, creating conflict, and revealing character. When Simon Tam (Sean Maher) first appears in the pilot episode of Firefly, he’s all cool and distant mystery, wearing fancy clothes and hiding behind John Lennon sunglasses. He has a large container he needs transported and is quite touchy about it. The box turns out to contain the naked girl from the unfortunate ad, and she turns out to be his sister River (Summer Glau), who he managed to free from some kind of Alliance facility. As he tells the crew, she’s a genius, and the government got their claws in her because of that, and they did things to her, things that made her want to get free, and things that made her crazy. Simon and River are fugitives, but Mal takes them on, perhaps seeing something of himself in them. If we could see them through Jayne’s eyes, it would be like a cartoon, and they’d be money bags. It also becomes clear as the season progresses that River has abilities beyond those of a normal person, even a genius — she can read minds. Between this, her madness, and her fugitive status, as well as apparent skill with weapons, she poses a threat to the crew, and they’re considering her fate...when the show gets cancelled.

Like the other shows from this week of posts, Firefly’s cast is first-rate, and like most of those shows (Buffy and Angel being exceptions), they seemed to know their characters immediately. The performances grow over the few episodes, but the characters in the pilot don’t feel all that diferent than the characters in the film. When the show originally aired, it felt like it took a few episodes to find its groove, but watching them again in the proper order, it feels stronger, sure of itself from the start but still full of potential.

The tale of Firefly’s early demise and improbable resurrection as a theatrical film has been told many times elsewhere, but basically, a confluence of events led to a second chance for Whedon, his cast, and the show’s fans. Whedon says he promised the cast he’d bring Firefly back in some form, and then he had to fulfill that promise. In an odd way, Fox cancelled Firefly at the right time because it happened as the TV on DVD boom had started, and Fox Studios (not to be confused with the Fox Network - network bad, studio good) released the series, including the unaired episodes on DVD. It sold. It sold well. Beyond that, a loyal and vocal fan base had emerged even before the DVD release (as well as a loyal but quiet fan base of people like me), and many of them set about promoting the show with parties, by buying the DVDs for friends and family, and holding charity events, including raising money to send DVD sets to soldiers abroad. Whedon, by his account, had already gone to Universal, and they wanted to make a movie. DVD sales and fan loyalty certainly must have bolstered their confidence in the project, and Whedon and the cast openly credit the fans for keeping them motivated throughout the process.

The film Serenity picks up months after the series ended and opens with the dialogue quoted above. Some folks have left the ship, some have new roles, tension between some characters has grown, but it’s business as usual, crime and running. A man called simply The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wants to find River. She might have learned deep Alliance secrets while under their experiments, and "Secrets are not [his] concern. Keeping them is." The Operative adds something to the story that Firefly didn’t have - a true enemy, though not a villain in the strictest sense of the word. He’s a man who believes in the benevolent if totalitarian goals of the Alliance, a man who does his job without asking questions, a man not to be trifled with, and always, always very friendly.

I don’t want to say much more about what happens in the movie because it does have a mystery in it. In broad strokes, The Operative’s pursuit and character changes in River caused by his pursuit lead to the discovery of a secret, the secret that has perhaps turned River’s government-caused brain damage into something far worse, and a secret that leads Mal to a place where has no choice but confront the big questions of his life.

For most fans, this one included, Serenity was an artistic success, though like its forbearer, it was not a commercial success. Whedon had many unenviable tasks - introducing the characters, situations, and concept to new fans without boring the old ones or slowing down the story, giving all the characters (the whole cast returned) something to do and important moments, making a big-budget sci-fi adventure for a relatively small budget, and keeping it all entertaining and intelligent and moving. I think he succeeded on most counts. You don’t have to watch all thirteen episodes of Firefly to get Serenity, but many people might have stayed away, thinking that, since every review and every article inevitably mentioned the cancelled show angle. For the most part, it looks like it had a good-sized budget, and it’s entertaining, intelligent, and moving. Most importantly, it doesn’t feel like a long episode of the show (see many Star Trek movies) but the major events of a season compressed into two hours. Each section of the movie has the potential to be expanded into one or more episodes of television.

Sacrifices had to be made, though, this being a two-hour movie instead of a television series, and most of those came at the expense of character development. Mal and River still go through a lot, and they were focal points on the show, too, so that makes sense. The other characters do get their moments, but the actors had to accomplish a lot through subtle means - gestures, looks, body language. For instance, Whedon mentioned in a recent interview that Kaylee and Inara are best friends but don’t say a single word to each other, and so he and the actors had to show this affection through proximity and gestures. This is where knowing the show becomes important. You bring all of that with you and can supply a lot of the subtext, and I have no doubt that in general, fans felt a lot more of the emotion than newcomers. Nature of the beast. Nevertheless, if you haven’t seen Serenity or Firefly and don’t want to commit to a half a season’s worth of television, check out Serenity. If nothing else, you’ll get two hours of entertainment.

The story of Malcolm Reynolds and the crew and passengers of Serenity probably ends with that movie - except in comic books maybe. The film didn’t do well at the box office, though it had that loyal fan base and received generally positive reviews, surprising critics unfamiliar with the show like Roger Ebert with its wit, fun, intelligence, and emotion. Hopes rest in it finding new life on DVD (in spite of hideous cover art) and convincing Universal to greenlight a sequel or someone to revive the TV series or, at worst, a direct-to-DVD or Sci Fi Channel original sequel. Still, I think many fans find solace in this Malcolm Reynolds speechifying from Serenity:

You know what the first rule of flying is...Love. You can learn all the math in the ’verse, but you take a boat in the air you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she’s hurting ’fore she keens. Makes her a home.