Firefly 1-01: Serenity

Episode:

1

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Writer:

Joss Whedon

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Director:

Joss Whedon

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Air Date:

20-Dec-2002

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Firefly's feature-length pilot episode Serenity (not to be confused with the feature-length feature film Serenity that caps the series off).

Actually to be honest I'm not watching anything. I already watched the episode ages ago and I had a first draft of this article written up, just waiting for me to give it a final pass. I'd even written the text down by the 'Next Episode' picture at the bottom. The text said that the next review was going to be "Babylon 5 season 1, episode 4 - Infection", so that helps narrow down when this article was supposed to be published. Seems that it was originally meant to go up a few days before the 21st June 2016. I get distracted sometimes and forget things.

This means I watched Serenity in a more innocent time, before Joss Whedon's fan site Whedonesque.com shut down when his ex-wife accused him of multiple affairs, before he was accused of being abusive to actors, and before Justice League. Though it would've been a couple years after Adam Baldwin helped make Gamergate a thing. Honestly I think it's best I'm getting this done now, before anything worse comes out. Though if I'd just waited a few months later I could've posted this on its 20th anniversary.

Firefly aired its one short season in late 2002, at the same time that Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit season 7 and Angel reached season 4. That means that Whedon had three series he'd created running simultaneously, which is maybe a little much, even if Tim Minear was the actual showrunner of this one. I checked their US ratings, out of curiosity, and if these numbers I got from the internet are correct then all three shows were getting roughly the same viewers. (Then I threw Star Trek: Enterprise on the chart as well, seeing as that was in its season second at the time, and it was roughly the same as well.) But I guess Fox expected more from its expensive space show as it was axed after 14 episodes and they didn't even air 3 of them. Also they aired this pilot episode last!

Alright, I'm going to go through the whole story scene by scene, recapping, screencapping (from the PAL DVDs), and typing whatever commentary I can think of as I go. This article is going to feature SPOILERS for exactly one episode, this one... except I'm also going to mention something from the pilot of Outlaw Star. So exactly two episodes then. But nothing more.

Star Trek: Nemesis

Written by:

John Logan

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Directed by:

Stuart Baird

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Release Date:

2002

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about more Star Trek! This time though I'm watching the last of the Next Generation movies and possibly the worst of them all: STAR TЯEK: NEMƎSIS! The reversed letters are there because the film's all about duplicates and mirror opposites. Also...

You know, from the video game Diablo. It's called Exocet if you're curious.

Anyway, there's a reason I'm writing about this particular film on this particular day and that's because it's Star Trek: The Next Generation's 30th anniversary! Yeah, it's not the ideal choice, I'd rather watch the pilot, Encounter at Farpoint, or maybe even something good, but this is what I got.

I'm also getting a bit of deja-vu here, as we already had a big Star Trek anniversary last September when the Original Series hit 50. Also, it was Voyager's 20th in 2015 and it'll be Deep Space Nine's 25th in 2018. You get a series with this many spin-offs and it's anniversaries all decade long. Oh, plus it's Star Trek: Discovery's 0th anniversary this year, seeing as it just aired 4 days ago. They could've held it back or moved it forward a few days to sync them up, but nope!

Nemesis itself came out in December 2002, which means that it had to struggle with being the first post-Galaxy Quest Trek movie. It's also the first Trek movie to have to deal with the Star Wars prequels raising the space opera VFX game, with Attack of the Clones having twice the budget to play with. It's hard to say that it was a lack of money on screen that killed Nemesis though, when it was Maid in Manhattan that beat it to the #1 spot in the US box office! The film opened badly and then fell to oblivion, with one of the worst second week drop-offs in the history of motion pictures.

Paramount had brought on a big name Hollywood scriptwriter for this one (Gladiator writer John Logan), and a legendary editor to direct (Stuart Baird), so they were convinced that the series must be suffering from 'franchise fatigue' and cancelled all plans for fifth Next Gen film. It was seven years before they'd dare releasing another Star Trek movie again, this time with J.J. Abrams at the helm and a budget. Worked out better that time.

Okay, there'll be SPOILERS and screencaps beyond this point, so continue at your own risk. I'm considering the whole Trek franchise up to 2002 to be fair game, but I'll not spoil a thing about what was released after it.