If only...

I've just finished re-watching the TV series 'Firefly', on DVD.

If you enjoy Science Fiction, and you've never come across this gem, beg, borrow or buy it NOW! It is a genuine lost masterpiece. It was the series that Joss Whedon created after he'd finished 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', and concerns the crew of 'Serenity', a Firefly class spaceship.

The series is beautifully made with a core cast of genuinely interesting characters, in a future where humans terraformed and colonized the planets and moons of an unspecified volume of space. Life in the colonies is pretty basic and is essentially a sort of futuristic Wild West, with any and all the technology that would be available by then. In a typical frontier spaceport you could expect to see horse-drawn carts alongside hovercars and shops selling spacesuits and stetsons. Unlike the 'Star Trek' universe, not everything is shiny and new, with most things looking pretty well-used. Also, unlike 'Star Trek', there are no aliens.

Sadly, the FOX Network weren't bright enough to let Whedon and his team deliver the programs as they were originally conceived, and they insisted on broadcasting episodes out of order. They were apparently scared stiff that if they didn't put loads of action in the first programs, people wouldn't bother to watch, regardless of the fact that nobody would know who the characters were, because the introductory episode hadn't been shown. After mucking about with the episode order, and moving some episodes aside to fit in sporting fixtures, FOX decided that the ratings weren't good enough, and cancelled the show after just 11 episodes had been transmitted.

Luckily, an extremely loyal and active fan-base lobbied for a DVD release, and when it duly appeared it included all the episodes in the correct order, as well as another three that had not been televised and a bunch of DVD commentaries and extras as well.
This DVD sold like crazy, and the popularity was so convincing that Whedon was able to get a green light from Universal Pictures to produce a full length feature film, 'Serenity', for cinema release.
It was some consolation

There is a story that after the TV executives first saw the pilot episode of Star Trek,
one of them said, "It's pretty good... but you've gotta get rid of the guy with the ears."
Fortunately for 'Star Trek', this suggestion was ignored.

If only similar sense had prevailed in the board-rooms at FOX, when 'Firefly' was created.