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Firefly
Episode 1.01, "The Train Job"
Written by Joss Whedon & Tim Minear
Directed by Joss Whedon
Air Date: 09.20.02
Check out our double shot review with Ultra Magnus' Review and Hollyfeld's Review.
So... how do you rate a premiere that isn’t really a premiere?
By now you most likely know that Fox pulled the intended pilot and will show it later this season, and that "The Train Job" was merely moved up in the production schedule. Supposedly, this was done because the actual pilot was "too slow" or some such. Well, we won’t know for sure for a few more weeks, but I can’t help but think this was a really bad move.
"The Train Job" feels in every way like a filler episode that we shouldn’t have seen any time soon. Right off the bat, we’re given 45 seconds of narration and back story that are far more interesting than the 59:15 that followed it. 500 years from now, mankind has finally spread out into the galaxy. Predictably enough, there is much political unrest. Most of the inner worlds are under Alliance rule, whereas the border planets remain mainly independent. People will do just about anything on the frontier to survive, and that’s where the Serenity and her crew come into play.
One thing that the episode does do well is introduce us to all the characters. And damn are there a lot of ‘em. You’ve got a captain, his 2nd in command, a pilot, a hooker, a mechanic, a tough guy, a doctor, a fugitive, and a priest. The cast is good, and Adam Baldwin as Jayne definitely stands out. The dialogue is also good for the most part, which isn’t really a surprise since Whedon co-wrote (and directed) this one himself. The only thing really lacking here was an interesting storyline. The set-up is simple enough – Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his crew have been hired for a job. An unsavory fellow with a pretty mean streak wants some Alliance crates stolen off a train. Should be an easy gig, but you already know there’s no such thing. They successfully steal the crates (I guess somehow the electromagnetic train didn’t notice a field disturbance from a massive space ship flying right above it) but Reynolds and Zoe are held for questioning with the rest of the passengers. It doesn’t take long for them to notice everyone in this hellhole is sick. The sheriff of the town (Gregg Henry, one of my favorite character actors) informs them the stolen crates were filled with medicine, but now they’re shit out of luck. Naturally, our heroes have a sudden change of heart. The new plan becomes to return the crates, and then deal with the repercussions of not living up to their end of the deal...
I can’t say I found any of this bad, per se, but even given the unusual situation with the production schedule I expected more from the first episode. Something that’d really hook me in. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll still tune in next week because I think there’s a lot of potential here, but we only caught a glimpse of it this time out. Having said that though, there’s a lot to this show I’m not sure about just yet. Billed as a sci fi/western, it seems awfully heavy on the western aspect (what’s with all that music?), with very little science fiction at all. (putting regular people in fairly regular situations in outer space doesn’t automatically make it science fiction, it’s just a different setting) At a glance the show seems to be largely about the merits of political unification versus autonomy. And as far as that goes it certainly seems Joss would have been a Confederate sympathizer. (just talking about states’ rights here... )
In any case, I was amused. But not nearly as much as I would have hoped. For what it’s worth, I did find it more entertaining than last week’s Enterprise. But I still have one question – why the hell did Reynold’s employer want that medicine? Oh well, maybe it doesn’t matter.
Here’s hoping Fox gives it a chance to find its groove before the hammer falls. But for now, I give "The Train Job:"
Episode Rating: 6 out of 10.
I assume a lot of the people who were disappointed in the first episode of Firefly expected something different. (Like the pilot episode, perhaps.) I think they expected an action-packed adventure filled with scantily clad women and wise-cracking cool dudes in coats. They expected Buffy. They expected Angel. What none of theme have figured out yet is... they got it. Firefly is to sci-fi what Buffy and Angel are to horror.
Joss’ previous shows have turned their respective genres on their ears – Buffy was about the helpless girl in the horror movie being feared by monsters everywhere. Angel was about how being a vampire would probably be more akin to alcoholism than the smoldering coolness The Lost Boys endorsed. And so Firefly is not Star Trek, or Starship Troopers, or anything else with the word "star" in the title (well, maybe Dark Star). It even seems to deny the two most popular notions about mankind’s future in space: there are no aliens, there are no robots. It’s just mankind, and it seems like we haven’t changed a bit.
After using up Earth’s resources, humanity branched out by colonizing and terraforming new planets. But control of these planets became an issue, and war broke out. People fought, people lost. And the people who lost - those fighting for galactic independence - are the shows heroes. Firefly is a thinly veiled allegory for the aftermath of the Civil War, and we’re cheering for the Confederates (without the slavery thing, though).
But the major bone of contention, the aspect of the genre Joss would appear to have flipped a bit too far on its ear, is that the thing just wasn’t a thrill ride. People talked to each other throughout most of the show. What gets me is that they actually had witty, character-driven, interesting conversations – since when do we punish writers for good writing? On a practical level, the decision to make the show more character-oriented is an incredibly wise one. Since the heyday of Dr. Who, science fiction shows with potential/constant budgetary concerns had to rely on quality writing and characters to compensate for potential visual limitations. And while the first episode of Firefly was hardly up to Dr. Who standards, any series that warrants a positive comparison to that BBC classic is pretty okay in my book.
Plotwise, Firefly is probably most recognizable to many people as a live-action version of Cowboy Bebop. Friday’s episode featured the ragtag crew of the Serenity agreeing to perform a train heist for a tidy sum, only to discover the shipment they had stolen was medicine badly needed for a stricken mining town. Like any protagonists would in a show like this (all but one of them, that is), they decide they need to return the goods. The Sheriff lets them go (for no particular reason – the worst-written scene in the episode), and they get to keep flying. This particularly derivative storyline is easily the worst aspect of the show thus far, and the tired genre cliché of finding a ghost ship with a terrible secret would appear to be coming up next week.
What saves this show from mediocrity, which the well-thought out concept described above could not do on its own, is the well-drawn characters, and those occasional moments that remind us that not everything has been done before in the sci-fi genre. Adam Baldwin’s Jayne is clearly the breakout character of Firefly – a weird fact, since he would seem to resemble the guy who beat up potential Firefly fans in high school. Most of the other characters get something of a short shrift this time around, but with an apparently solid ensemble, future episodes could take them to places we would like to go ourselves. The show’s playful use of a jet intake, and the appearance of the first henchman in history to throw his knife and actually hit a hero, helps ease the pain, and encourages us to expect the unexpected every once in a while in what could otherwise be a very formulaic series.
Firefly is not a great show, and probably won’t be until it firmly establishes the niche it wants for itself in the sci-fi universe. I have the feeling that the writers of the show have figured out exactly what it is, and that they’re all pissed that the audience haven’t gotten the introduction they so sorely needed to understand it themselves. As it stands, based on the nothing that came before it, and the hopes that I have for afterwards, I give the first episode of Firefly:
Episode Rating: 7.5 out of 10.
Entertaining, but for various reasons that may or may not be Team Whedon’s fault, not quite whatever it is yet.
Incidentally, I have also decided that Firefly fans should officially refer to themselves as "Ass-Blasters." Spread the word...
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