Firefly TV series

If you haven't seen this series, it's a sci-fi show by Jose Whedon about a future world set in year 2517, when China and the USA joined in a co-dominion government to rule over human space and its colonies. The show was later done in the re-imaged movie "Serenity", which can be ordered on DVD's. The show has an all-north American staff and it's quite funny to see them try to speak Chinese in the show.

The Firefly TV series is avail for download legally from Direct2Drive for only $1.99 per episode. Check it out!


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Awesome series, i got the DVD too, i got obsessed with this for a while.

FRUITY OATY BARS!!

Interesting how Serenity felt like all Joss Whedon wanted to do in the series crammed into a feature length movie. I'm not sure it worked as a movie the way it was done but good special effects.

As for the US/China alliance... Where were the Chinese? Yeah you saw them in the background but that's about it. You didn't even see them anywhere as part of the alliance forces. Interesting if there was something the series never got a chance to show. Realistically that alliance would never happen. More like divided by US and Chinese spheres of influence but they would never tread in that direction. Besides I read in an interview that Joss Whedon originally had it with the Japanese but his wife was more in tune with world affairs and told him to make it Chinese.

AssassinsMace said:

Interesting how Serenity felt like all Joss Whedon wanted to do in the series crammed into a feature length movie. I'm not sure it worked as a movie the way it was done but good special effects.

As for the US/China alliance... Where were the Chinese? Yeah you saw them in the background but that's about it. You didn't even see them anywhere as part of the alliance forces. Interesting if there was something the series never got a chance to show. Realistically that alliance would never happen. More like divided by US and Chinese spheres of influence but they would never tread in that direction. Besides I read in an interview that Joss Whedon originally had it with the Japanese but his wife was more in tune with world affairs and told him to make it Chinese.

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Well i thought what it was, was because it was something about the China and the USA being the only superpowers remaining or something like that in the future which is its like that.
As in i assume the rest of the countries in the world don't exist after that.

AssassinsMace said:

As for the US/China alliance... Where were the Chinese? Yeah you saw them in the background but that's about it. You didn't even see them anywhere as part of the alliance forces. Interesting if there was something the series never got a chance to show. Realistically that alliance would never happen. More like divided by US and Chinese spheres of influence but they would never tread in that direction. Besides I read in an interview that Joss Whedon originally had it with the Japanese but his wife was more in tune with world affairs and told him to make it Chinese.

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For those unfamiliar with the series, in the firefly sci-fi universe, the bulk of Chinese space immigration went to a planet named Sihnon, which is also the home to Inara Serra.

When mankind first colonized space, Earth was still divided between the American and Chinese sphere. The Americans went on to establish the colony planet of Londinium, while the Chinese established Sihnon. These 2 planets became the major power houses, while other colonies were small and mostly rural. There was no strong central authority that extended out to the colonies.

Sometime after, the governments of Sihnon and Londinium decided that they'd join forces and bring the entire human civilization across space under one central authority, the Union of Allied Planets (aka Anglo-Sino alliance). The border planets refused to submit and eventually lead to the unification war, in which the rebels lost. The TV series takes place a few years after that point.

Some folks complained about the lack of Chinese people in the TV series. Had the producers been given more money to complete the TV series, they might've done an episode set on Sihnon or some other Chinese colony and actually hire a bunch of Asians for the shoot. But the funding was cut short and the series ended prematurely. =/ If only they had been funded by the Sci-Fi channel.

Racial/ethnic presence and relations in TV shows has always been a pretty hot topic. I think Firefly should have hire more Asian actors, but not done in an overly-PC way like... ultra-feminism in ST: Voyager, or the black/white interracial pairings in the latest Doctor Who TV series. Geez okay we got it... you want to show modern UK is not racist, fine, but the sheer number of black/white couplings in the show + Xmas special is just silly.

In the show, the characters actually make curses in Cantonese, which were never edited/censored in the TV broadcasts.

I see it more of a US-Chinese-Japanese codominion. You will see many signs in the ship either Chinese or Japanese.

The name "Serenity" marked on the ship is actually in Chinese. The Firefly class of ships were apparently Chinese.

If I remember from the movie, there was a classroom scene where they were teaching Chinese to a bunch of kids. The displays on the PDAs or terminals were also in Chinese.

Interesting background info on the Firefly world. I watched but never got any deeper into the show.

If you watch reality shows, they license the format to other countries so they can make their own version. I wonder if Hollywood would ever do that for something like Star Trek. Just imagine a mainly Chinese crew on a starship. I wonder if they would ever allow that to happen since they would lose some creative control. I read that Gene Roddenberry's wife didn't like Deep Space Nine because it depicted war throughout the series run. I thought it was the best of the recent Star Trek series because I like good long story arcs.

Majel Roddenberry did not like DS9 and a whole lot of other fans didn't either, because DS9 in a sense isn't what you would call in the spirit and vision of Trek. Just because it is set in the Trek universe does not mean it shares the spirit. Maybe its more of Moore's vision of Sci Fi, but not Roddenberry's. Well since Gene died, everyone tried to impose their own vision of Trek but none of which I feel were close to Gene's own vision.

I believe that Gene's ideas of a pre-Federation is what is reflected in the series Earth Final Conflict and his ideas for post-Federation ended in the series Andromeda.

Interesting since a lot of people I hear liked DS9 best out of the recent series. It's like the Empire Strikes Back of the Star Wars run. I don't know how you can escape the possibility of "war" in a setting like this. The only difference between DS9 and something like the original series and Next Generation is that their "wars" were contained in one episode.

Personally, I couldn't get into Earth Final Conflict nor Andromeda. As for Moore... I had hopes for Battlestar Galactica because of DS9 but the it was only in name. Now there's only one season left and now they're finally going to look for Earth. If they wanted to do the Iraq analogy, they should've done it a lot earlier on the colonies and not make an entire series over it and call it Battlestar Galactica.

AssassinsMace said:

As for the US/China alliance...

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From what I understand the real reason there was use of Chinese was more to ensure the cast could swear and yet get it past the censors. Maybe also a recognition that there might be just a few "international" languages left for people to communicate in.

The idea of the alliance was just a convenient way to get the Cantonese swearing in, I think.