Firefly DVD Set Released

Richard M. Nixon writes "As previously reported the DVD set for Joss Whedon's ill fated Western/Space Opera is now available. The DVD has all 11 episodes that aired, 3 episodes that didn't air, commentary on 7 episodes, and lots of bonus features including Joss singing the Firefly theme. It would make a nice Christmas gift for any Whedon fan who has not already run out and bought it. If DVD Sales are good enough, could we see a second season?"

Re:Little late?

[showler]

It would sell better if the stupid-ass stores had it in stock. It's harder to find the DVD set than it was to find the show when it was on Fox.

Josh who?

[Keelor]

If you're going to misspell the creator's name, please don't mention it three times in the article.

Or, you could just get it right and call him Joss Whedon [imdb.com]. Either way.

A movie is in the works

[Keith Mickunas]

Or so I've heard from a couple of sources and it's listed on IMDB. So it looks like there will be more. Personnally I can't wait, I really enjoyed the show and would like to know what happened.

Re:AHHHH!!!!

[koganuts]

Well, Joss has a sense of humor [scifi.com] about its inclusion:

There's some crazy person singing the theme song, which, I can't stress enough, people should just avoid that particular extra. It was never meant to be heard by anybody. ... Yeah, that'd be me. I threw it down. I was like, OK, I'll just throw it down so they know the chords and then we'll get some great old blues singer to sing it and it will be cool. And they were like, "Let's put it on the DVD." And I was like, "OK." And then I listened to it. I was like, "I must die now [laughs]." I can't stress this enough--not a singer. ... But the embarrassment is outweighed by the fact that I love this show as hard as anything I've loved, and to have it exist on the DVD shelf and in perpetuity is such a great thing for me.

Re:Maybe a movie?

[DdJ]

...at one point in the commentary they said they didn't want to spill all of the beans in case there is a Firefly movie...

IMDB [imdb.com] says it's in production right now. Looks like they got everyone they needed to participate.

Re:Maybe a movie?

[thegrommit]

For some additional background on the series, Cinefantastique [64.5.52.62] has an episode guide with comments from Joss Whedon and Tim Minear.

Re:What's so good about Firefly?

[AKAImBatman]

1. Excellent characters
2. Amazing story development
3. Best special effects, bar none
4. A space captain who isn't a wus. (e.g. In the pilot, a bad guy is holding the teenage girl captive while evil space cannibals are approaching. The captain arrives in the middle of the hostage situation, and instead of negotiating, he - without missing a step - simply shoots the guy, picks up his body and throws it out the rear cargo entrance so they can take off.)
5. NO FSCKING "techno babble". No bloody deflector dishes, transporters, hyperspace gizmos, exotic particles, gravity wave engines or anything else.
6. No sound in space.
7. Soft title music that gets stuck in your head and won't let go.
8. An interesting back-story. (e.g. the episode "Out of Gas")
9. You can't take the sky from me...

Go to suprnova.org (no typo) and download "Our Dear Mrs. Reynolds". You'll be hooked, I guarantee. :-)

Me too

[gmhowell]

Surprised this wasn't already mentioned. I was going to do a review for slashdot, but whatever.

Good stuff. Good dialog, good characters, good stories. You can see the threads that Whedon was going to build up and play out emerging, particularly the second time through.

So far, I've only made it through 1.5 discs (about 6 episodes?) and have only some mild complaints. First, the swearing is as lame as it was in Farscape. Second, the commercial breaks are very obvious. Looking at most of them, it would take very little to make the transitions a little smoother. Purists would probably object. Some episodes seem to just 'stop'. While in the larger scheme of things that would work, as episodic TV, it doesn't.

And one of these days, I will figure out whether Inara or Kaylee is hotter. A modern day Ginger vs. MaryAnn. (Yes, this is what a recent JE of mine is about, complete with linkage). At least Mal is hotter than the Professor for the ladies:)

Official Firefly Board

[eforhan]

In case anyone would like to discuss DVD's or Firefly in general:
[prospero.com]
http://forums.prospero.com/foxfirefly

This was the official Fox board, and is now run by Mutant Enemy.

Firefly

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that Firefly was going to be a western in space. Sure enough, when I watched the first episode, it was about the gang robbing a train, western style. I thought my worst fears were realized as this is the type of science fiction I hate most.

Take any western and change the indians to aliens. Changes the horses and stagecoaches to spaceships. Presto! You have instant sci-fi. I felt that way through exactly one episode. By the third one, I was hooked on an amazing show.

It looks to me like someone at Fox wanted to sink the show. You run it on Friday night (kiss of death), show the worst episode first, and then don't bother to show the first episode until much later in the season.

FWIW, for So Cal Slashdot readers...

[koganuts]

Joss Whedon and several members of the cast and crew are scheduled to appear at the LA Comic Book and Sci-Fi Convention [comicbookscifi.com] (yeah, the convention will be full of geeky fans, but check the list of past convention guests [comicbookscifi.com] and you have to admit that it's pretty damn impressive, and the admission price of $7.50 can't be beat either) this coming Sunday to promote the DVD, and Fox will have them there for sale for $25.00:

Joining JOSS on stage at 1:00 P.M. will be TIM MINEAR (Writer), BEN EDLUND (Writer-also creator of THE TICK Comic Book), Stars NATHON FILLION (CAPTAIN MALCOLM "MAL" REYNOLDS), GINA TORRES (ZOE), ADAM BALDWIN (JAYNE), RON GLASS (BOOK "THE SHEPHERD"), and MORENA BACCARIN (INARA). Fox Home Entertainment will have GREAT PRICES on DVD's at their table at the Convention! Fox will have the FIREFLY COMPLETE SERIES DVD COLLECTION on sale for just $24.99. They will also have BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER Season One-Five for $34.99. ANGEL Volume One and Two will be on sale for $34.99. X-2: X-MEN UNITED will be on sale for $14.99, and X-FILES DVD's will also be on sale.

It'll be interesting to hear his thoughts on the TV series, on FOX network execs, the DVDs, and the upcoming movie project (which contrary to recent reports, has a very long way to go [tvguide.com]). Plus if you go, you'll have a chance to rib Joss on singing the theme song. :)

Re:Worth the Bucks

[hchaos]

Well, it would if you could figure out how to set off gunpowder/cordite... in a vacuum...

For all of you who don't know anything about explosives, explosives are generally self-oxidizing, meaning that they work without exposure to atmospheric oxygen. It's this characteristic that gives them their explosive properties.

Un-aired episodes a let down

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched every single aired episode of Firefly when it was broadcast. The reason that's amazing is because I haven't had "TV" for years. I actually contracted with a co-worker to record them for me. I wanted it that bad.

And I wasn't disappointed..not at all. It delivered everything I wanted it to be. Best series on TV in decades.

I pre-ordered my DVD set the first day it was available at Amazon (months ago). I finished watching the whole thing 2 days after I got it. (working days even)

I cried during the special features when the cast and crew talked about how they felt about the show...cried because the show was gone.

I loved every episode..probably more the second time than the first time.

If there was a problem, (and I think it might have actually been a problem) the 'un-aired' episodes were crap. They didn't have the magic, the appeal. They seemed poorly written, flatly acted, and just 'not interesting.'

Contrast that with the aired episodes, which were nigh unto perfect.

It could have been a sign that they weren't able to keep up to task. Perhaps they'd given us the best they had, and they were running out of magic even in the first season. Maybe it's just that the un-air episodes were also unfinished, and they didn't get a chance to 'polish' them. Who knows.

Anyway....I still love FireFly. I'm still glad I bought it, and I'll watch MOST the episodes over and over. I still don't have TV, so it doesn't help me much to have it still playing or not. But we did get the season 1 DVD sooner than if the show was still going on. :)

Re:Great news!

[sTalking_Goat]

no. they had first shot and turned it down because they had Battlestar Galactica in the works. There's talk of a movie though

The Chu shie fook executes at the Fox network

[Richard M. Nixon]

First, the swearing is as lame as it was in Farscape.

I haven't seen Farscape so I don't know about its swearing. The swearing in Firefly was actually Chinese. Joss's idea was that in the future the only two superpowers that survive are the United States and China, and thus everyone knows both English and Chinese. (But reserve the Chinese for the swearing for the ease of the audience I assume.)

Incidently, the /. editors cut one sentence from my statement: The Chu shie fook executes at the Fox network were Sha gwa to cancel this show. And I thought that was the sentence that would get this article posted :)

The cool thing about swearing in Chinese is that they could get away with saying stuff that the censors would otherwise never allow. It is kinda like Kenny on South Park, where you can read between the lines to guess what they said. Except in this case you could potentially look up what they are actually saying. The downside is the actors were not exactly fluent in Chinese and people who are would probably not understand them.

Second, the commercial breaks are very obvious. Looking at most of them, it would take very little to make the transitions a little smoother.

I think Joss did this deliberately. At least in the pilot (the real one that didn't air until the last broadcast) after a shot of the Reavers' ship he wanted a pause for tension. He said they couldn't have 2 seconds of black, because the computers would automatically cut to commercial. How he got by this is he used the darkest gray that wouldn't trigger the cue for commercial.

And one of these days, I will figure out whether Inara or Kaylee is hotter.

I guess that depends on whether you like geek girls. Kaylee is clearly a geek. And she looks hot with engine grease on her face. :)

Re:Been there, done that

[Richard M. Nixon]

We need some open source movie making (perhaps with Blender and cheap clusters such is just around the corner). Version 0.1 of OurGreatOnlineAnimatedSeries might suck, but by Version 0.8 it'll be the best thing on, beating anything from Hollywood hands down.

Takes more than software to make a movie. You got special effects, but unless you want to do it all animated you need actors, cameras, sets, sound stages....

They essentially built the ship for the Firefly set. You could walk from one end of the ship to the other. It also made for some very cool long shots (Is that what they're called?) where a character is followed from the kitchen to the hold.

Oh, wait, I read again and I guess you did mean completely animated. It is a good idea. It would be great to have everyone and their grandmother's dogs making anime. However, I would still like to see the genious that the Chu shie fook executes at the Fox network were too Sha gwa to appreciate. Angel is the only good show left on television right now.

Re:Me too

[Anonymous Coward]

First, the swearing is as lame as it was in Farscape.

In Farscape, they used made-up words with the incredibly stupid conceit that the words weren't being translated by the "translator microbes." (For the love of god.)

In Firefly, the writers wrote out the lines in English, then had a consultant translate them into Mandarin Chinese, which the cast learned phonetically. Their piss-poor pronunciation was explained away by saying that the pronunciation of Chinese had evolved over the past five centuries.

Lame? Hardly. To the contrary, it was actually incredibly well thought-out. Besides, you get a free Chinese lesson while you watch. Nee boo gai kai nee duh hwang chiang.

Re:An example of what to expect

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no! You missed the best part!

The scene starts with the henchman on his knees, hands bound. Mal (the captain) waves a wad of cash in his face, says, "This is all the money Niska paid us." (Niska's the bad guy.) "I want you to take it back, 'cause we're square now."

Henchman gives a lengthy, spit-filled speech about how they'll never be square, how no matter where they hide or how far they run, he'll find them.

Mal winds up and kicks the henchman into the engine.

Immediately the second-henchman-in-command is hauled out in front of Mal. Mal waves the cash again: "This is all the money Niska paid us."

"Yeah, yeah, man," new guys says. "I'm with ya all the way."

High-larious, I tell ya. Never seen anything like it. And damn sure never will, now. Stupid Fox tien shau duh pieces o' go se crap-it-all-to-hell.

Re:Firefly

[JonMartin]

Just to nitpick, Firefly was not strictly a Western, but rather a metaphor for the post-Civil War Reconstruction era of the United States. It's just that most Westerns are set in the same time period. Reynolds and Zoe are ex-Confederate soldiers, the Feds are the Union army, the outer systems are the western territories, Reavers are the savage Indians (as they were viewed at that time), etc., etc.