For those who have come in late to the story, I am a member of what some might call a cult that worships Firefly and Serenity.
Firefly was a TV show created by Joss Whedon, who among other things was the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which lasted less than one season. It was shown on the Fox Network who evidently weren’t exactly clear on what to do with a quirky, character driven, space western whose principals ran around in a spaceship, used six-shooters, rustled cattle, and whenever feeling strong emotions would rattle off a phrase or two in Chinese.
The end result is that only 11 of the 14 filmed episodes were ever shown on TV and the show was canceled.
I never saw Firefly on TV during that season.
However, Firefly fanatics, often called Browncoats from the color of the jacket that the Captain in the show wore as did other rebels during the losing war against the Alliance (don’t ask, rent the DVD’s), agitated and lobbied enough that Universal decided to authorize a film version of the show named after the name of the spaceship, Serenity.
I saw Serenity in a movie theater and loved it. Rented the TV DVD’s and loved the TV show even more.
Since then I have demonstrated the results of that passion in a number of different ways. I hosted a Firefly lunch once a month for the three years I was a the US Department of Transportation as the CIO for a small but equally addicted group where we watch one of the Firefly TV episodes, repeating the set when we finished the 14 filmed episodes. Getting dispensation from the DOT General Counsel that we were conducting Team Building exercises, we showed the two-hour movie, Serenity, twice, at the end of each cycle.
I attend and this year worked at the annual showing of Serenity at the Arlington Cinema and Draft House which also servers as a fund raiser for Equality Now, a favorite charity of Joss Whedon.
And here I am finishing up my Yangtze River cruise in China, getting ready for the eclipse we hope to see in Wuhan. The other day at lunch, I sat with members of a family from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
“Edmonton”, I noted, is the home of Nathan Fillion, the Captain in the TV show Firefly. Amazingly the response from the otherwise seemingly normal fellow members of the group, was the beginnings of a detailed discussion of which episode they liked best and which individual scenes illustrated the qualities of each of the characters from the show. They too had not seen the show on TV, were loaned the DVD set from a friend, watched the shows and joined me in wondering how such a great TV show could have been canceled.
The family was even familiar with the Edmonton comedy group, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggy, a completely unexpected bonus. A conversation I rarely have been able to have anywhere and certainly unanticipated on the Yangtze River in the middle of China.