Five hundred years in the future, a group of people eek out
a living on their firefly-class spaceship, the SERENITY, captained by MALCOM
(Mal). His second in command is ZOE, an
old war buddy from the rebellion against the central government, the ALLIANCE. Other characters are 'WASH', the pilot and Zoe's husband, INARA, a
respected courtesan, JAYNE, a mercenary with questionable loyalties, and
KAYLEE, a mechanic. The crew scavenge derelicts, transport passengers and
freight, and sometimes steal. It's a hard life, and it's made even harder by
periodic harassment from the Alliance.
In the pilot episode, their lives become even more
difficult. They pick up new passengers,
including SHEPHERD, a minister, and SIMON, a physician who brings along secret
but valuable 'cargo'. It turns out this
cargo is his younger sister, RIVER, a genius beyond description whom Simon
rescued from the clutches of the Alliance
and sacrificed his career and fortune in the process. The Alliance considers River their property to
experiment on and has made capturing her a high priority.
Now the crew of the Serenity have the Alliance on their backs full force. In
addition, the REAVERS, barbaric savages who love to torture their victims,
intermittently threaten them.
Complicated? Not really. The hour-and-a-half pilot
introduces the various characters at a reasonable pace, and their personalities
are distinct enough to tell them apart without difficulty. The opening scene, a
prologue where Mal and Zoe are fighting a hopeless battle against the Alliance, is confusing if
you don't know the background, but afterwards the story makes sense.
The pilot episode is fun. You meet the crew, get to know
them, follow them on a few adventures, and see how their problems work out. Each
of the following episodes (I've seen three) is self contained, which to me is a
negative, but the episodes are different enough to be interesting. The series
resembles Farscape, which also describes the adventures of a group of
kindhearted misfits, but the characters and plots in Firefly are much more
developed and realistic.
Firefly has been described as a space western, which is
fair. As a workout video, I give it ++++ - it will usually get your pulse up to
a run.
No comments:
Post a Comment