got this firefly opening theme song lyrics:
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don’t care, I’m still free
You can’t take the sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain’t comin’ back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can’t take the sky from me
There’s no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can’t take the sky from me…
or you can listen to it for yourself. i still can’t help but shed a tear everytime i listened to it.
pretty much it describes the whole main theme of the series. which i couldn’t say the same with startrek enterprise opening theme song, it just didn’t capture the whole feeling of startrek enterprise.
i first heard about firefly from avi, but it didn’t immediately interested me. then one day i read a comment from the web (i can’t recall exactly where) praising firefly as the only good science fiction series. intrigued and feeling a tad impulsive, i decided to buy the dvd from amazon.
nevertheless, i am deeply impressed. it is the best science fiction series i ever saw on TV screen.
it is 500 years from now. the earth-that-was can no longer sustain life, so the humans went to the sky and colonized other planets on other solar systems. the last remaining power from earth-that-was is america and china, and they formed the anglo-sino alliance. the colonies that didn’t want to join the alliance, formed the independent forces, and fought the unification war, and lost. the independent forces (the browncoats) last stand was the battle of serenity hill.
the central character, captain malcolm reynolds, was one of the browncoats abandoned by his superiors at the battle of serenity hill. although he still hates the alliance, he decided to go on with his life, bought a firefly class ship, and named her after the hill of his last battle, serenity, and became a privateer.
as he doesn’t accept unification under alliance, he operates his ship on the outer rim, where the alliance has less control. he is accompanied by his four main crew: firstmate and also a woman warrior zoe; the comical pilot wash (whose also zoe’s husband); the tough mercenary jayne which loyalty is money; and the ship mechanic kaylee. and there are four others who are really passengers, but ultimately joined the rest of the crew. first is inara, she is a registered companion (to put it bluntly, she is a legal prostitute in alliance term), she rented one of the two serenity’s shuttles. then there is shepherd book, a christian preacher, but in my opinion he’s the future modern day shaolin monk as he is well adept in both unarmed fighting and weapon handling (the actor is also a buddhist). and the last two are siblings, the older brother is simon tam, a highly skilled surgeon; the younger sister is river tam, a hyper intelligent kid who escaped the academy with her brother help. by escaping the academy, simon and river become fugitives of the alliance, or the blue sun corporation to be exact.
the series has this retro feel, as the outer rim planets are under developed and still use horse as means of transportation. although the civilization already invented laser guns, the most common weapon still uses ordinary ammunition and long barreled revolvers! it is indeed the wild wild west feel. it is also faithful to science in outer space scenes, you can’t hear spaceship engines swooshing when it comes near, and explosions in the vacuum are silent. very few scifi renders the silence in outer space. there is also one outstanding characteristic of this series: it has no aliens!
sadly the series is cut short by fox, but because of that it became a cult series. the good news is universal is making a movie called serenity, and the story takes place six months after the last episode “objects in space”. more good news is universal made a contract with the cast for three movies, so we can expect two more of firefly movies on the silver screen. i must admit, although i’m a starwars fan, i feel more anticipation to watch serenity than starwars episode 3. for my friends, if you want to watch firefly, we could make arrangements to make an informal gathering, watching the whole firefly episodes.
