n the future, the ragtag crew of the "Firefly"-class transport ship Serenity ekes out a living, taking on legal and not-so-legal jobs in colonies off the beaten path, avoiding the central planets of the all-powerful Alliance. That's because its skipper, Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds (Fillion), and his first mate, Zoe (Torres), fought on the side of the Independents and found themselves among the losers when the galaxy-wide civil war came to an end.
Now, as he travels through space, Mal has taken on a few stragglers from the war: Book (Ron Glass), an itinerant preacher or "shepherd"; Inara (Baccarin), a sleek courtesan and legal prostitute who entertains clients in her private shuttle; and Simon (Sean Maher), a wealthy physician who has liberated his troubled and gifted sister, River (Summer Glau), from a mysterious Alliance stronghold. Rounding out the crew are Zoe's husband and the ship's pilot, Wash (Alan Tudyk), the spunky mechanic Kaylee (Jewel Staite), and the mercenary Jayne (Baldwin), who is along for the ride. For now.
In the opening episode of the show, Mal, Zoe and Jayne barely escape a saloon brawl, but return to the ship with word of a new job. A sinister gangster wants Mal to rob a train on its way to a small town on a border planet. If he does well, he'll be paid handsomely, the gangster says. If not, well ...
Undercover, Mal and Zoe board the train, which is headed to the outpost of Paradiso. They encounter a squadron of "Feds"—troops of the Alliance—who prove to be a complication when the Serenity and the rest of the crew swoop in for the heist. Mal and Zoe remain with the train and wind up in custody in the dusty town, and the crew of the Serenity debates whether to make the appointed rendezvous or ride to the rescue.
As the clock ticks, Mal learns that he's been hired to steal something that doesn't sit right with him. Does he go through with the job, which will mean a lot of money, or back out, which may incur the wrath of the gangster and his scary henchmen?
Meanwhile, River is having visions of mysterious men with blue gloves ...
Highly anticipated and deservedly so
One of the most anticipated series of the season, Firefly comes from the fertile imagination of Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, and it is both pleasantly original and comfortingly familiar. Based on the single episode provided for review—co-written by Whedon and executive producer Tim Minear and directed by Whedon—Firefly is kind of an anti-Star Trek. It combines Star Wars-like space adventure, Road Warrior-like dystopia and Silverado-like wild-west action, seasoned with a little Asian spice.
As in Whedon's other series, Firefly is chock-full of quirky, witty characters. In this case, they speak in the cadences of westerns, backed by guitar and fiddle music, but say things like, "I had to rewire the grav thrust because somebody won't replace that crappy compression coil."
The premiere episode, "The Train Job," reworks a familiar western plot—the great train robbery—but with a twist. There's enough action and whiz-bang visual effects to satisfy Fox, which reportedly dumped Whedon's original two-hour pilot because it took a little too long to lay out its elaborate mythology.
But Whedon and Minear also work with great efficiency to establish the main characters, to plant the seeds of a few likely story arcs for the season (including an X-Filesy arc involving River) and even to hint at romantic tension among virtually all of the major characters.
As director, Whedon makes use of handheld camera and a few other tricks to underscore the grittiness of Firefly's desert universe, while at the same time filling the letterboxed frame from time to time with images of elaborate spacecraft, orbiting stations and the Alliance's mother ship.
Viewers expecting a Buffy clone will be disappointed. Like the Buffy spinoff, Angel, Firefly is more adult and deals with darker themes—in this case, how a person does the right thing when outside forces, or the simple need to survive, constantly pull him in the other direction. The show is also less directly allegorical than Buffy, though the series' deeper subtext has yet to emerge.
