I finally watched Serenity last night (sorry Cat). Bleh.
Before I launch into my rant, I want to make it clear that I loved the TV show. Loved. It was great, and until Battlestar Galactica started, I viewed it as the saving grace of Sci-Fi, particularly after the damage done to the genre by Enterprise. It was Joss Whedon at the height of his powers (alright, maybe not as good as Numfar doing The Dance Of Shame), witty, cynical and incisive.
So what happened?
Katherine recently introduced me to a wonderful term - Jumped the shark. It is a reference to a scene in Happy Days where the Fonz jumps over a shark on a pair of water skis, and is generally the point in a series where you realise that it’s got pretty crap, usually because something fundamental has altered which changes the dynamic (like Buffy graduating), or the story becomes so slow moving that it practically grinds to halt (I’m looking at you, Lost). With Serenity, Firefly jumped the shark.
Two ‘main’ characters with suspiciously little screen time prior to that point are killed off - Wash has about two lines (both comedic) and then dies (a bit unessarily if you ask me). Book is no longer a member of the crew, but shows up just long enough to say ‘Ooh, I’m old and wise, but have a dark past that I’m only going to hint at’, much like in the TV series, but then also dies, so we’ll never know. Malcom then orders the crew to tie the dead bodies of Book and his family to the front of their ship. ‘But they’re our friends!’, says Kayleigh, voicing the collective conciousness of the watchers of the original TV show. Talk about burning your bridges, it’s like Whedon is really sick of Firefly by this point.
Talking of Kayleigh - her and the good Doctor hardly get a look in, apart from a brief exchange at the end where they promise to have a shag at some vague point in the future. Nice resolution of that sub-plot. Such romance. Really touching.
The Reavers, oh don’t get me started on the Reavers. They had such potential. As an embodiment of absolute, relentless evil they are on a par with the Borg (proper, collective Borg from the episode ‘Q Who‘ or the Battle of Wolf 359. Not that First Contact pseudo S&M rubbish (hey, the film was good, but having the ‘borg queen’ is pretty far removed from their orignal premise. Then getting her trying to shag Data *rolls eyes*)), but far more visceral, more primeval. And then Serenity. I’d always secretly hoped that they would turn the whole flesh eating zombie type thing on it’s head and reveal them to be intelligent and highly advanced, despite their feral appearance, but no. Their beginnings were so pedestrian it was painful to watch (10% had the opposite reaction! Oh no! That didn’t show up in the lab tests! Hmm. Now I come to think of it, that might explain those mice that started eating the other mice.), and somehow a short video of this revelation manages to turn the suddenly unquestioning assassin (who has previously shown no tendency to be influenced at all and entirely single minded in his purpose to kill River) against the coalition. Oh and Mal just happens to have had that nerve cluster moved. How convenient.
Yawn. Thank god there’s not going to be another one. Oh shit.
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