Firefly on DVD

Fox didn’t give Firefly much of a chance when it ran this "science fiction western" series, pulling it off the air even before it had finished a single season’s run.

It’s too bad. While the connections to the “western” genre are obvious (one episode deals with a train robbery, except that this train hovers over a single track), there’s nothing really wrong with that; in fact, we kind of liked it, much as we enjoyed the “Moon western” Moon Zero Two when it played theaters back some thirty years or more ago.

Here’s how the liner notes describe the series:

“Five hundred years in the future, there is a whole new frontier, and the crew of the Firefly-class spaceship Serenity is eager to stake a claim on the action. They'll take any job, legal or illegal, to keep fuel in the tanks and food on the table. But things get a bit more complicated after they take on a passenger wanted by the new totalitarian Alliance regime. Now they find themselves on the run, desperate to steer clear of Alliance ships and the flesh-eating Reavers who live on the fringes of space.”

And that’s actually a pretty fair introduction. The series kicks off with a two part episode that sets the scene well and introduces all the regular characters. We learn the background of our hero, Captain Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his crew - a group tested and bonded by fire, and the overall society in which we find ourselves.

Other episodes build on this base, offering some pretty nifty science fiction stories populated by various believable characters with human foibles, all given excellent production values and special effects.

We didn’t put much hope out for Firefly, since most TV shows aren’t really worth watching, and good filmed science fiction is rare as well, but as with Babylon 5, this was much better than we expected. It's a show that’s serious enough, but which doesn’t take itself excessively seriously, and can be enjoyed by science fiction fans and non-science fiction fans alike.

We particularly enjoyed the chief mechanic, played by Jewel Staite, a happy-go-lucky but highly competent young woman who’s at home in her element, and Jayne Cobb, played by Adam Baldwin, a bit of an oafish loose canon. But the whole cast is great, and we also enjoyed seeing Ron Glass, late of Barney Miller, back on the small screen.

We should also mention the music, which features excellent sound quality and which never lets you forget that this is, first and foremost, a Western. It’s great!

The DVD is a four disc set that includes the entire series, including three episodes that never saw the light of day. It’s a good set, with a very nice transfer and enough extras to make it worthwhile.

The picture is presented in anamorphic widescreen, 16x9 TV compatible, and it’s excellent. The series’ great production values and sets come through with outstanding clarity; the images are sharp and clean and the color is wonderful.

Audio is Dolby Digital surround, not 5.1 unfortunately, but despite that oversight it’s still very good.

Then there are the extras, which include commentaries on the episodes Serenity Part 1 & 2, The Train Job, Shindig, Out of Gas, War Stories, Objects in Space, and The Message.

There are also some deleted scenes from Serenity, Our Mrs. Reynolds, Objects in Space, featurettes that include "Here's How How It Was" (about the making of Firefly), "Serenity: The Tenth Character," "Joss' Tour of the Set."

And that isn’t all; you also get to see Alan Tudyk's (“Wash” Warren) audition for the series, a gag reel, and creator Joss Whedon singing the Firefly theme.

Firefly - the complete series, from 20th Century Fox Home Video
675 min. anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1, 16x9 TV compatible), Dolby surround,
Starring Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite, Adam Baldwin, Sean Maher, Summer Glau and Ron Glass
Created by Joss Whedon 

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