Production: USA, 2002
Cast: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, Summer Glau, Ron Glass.

An intriguing series with a disappointing result: it lasted only 15 episodes plus a big screen movie which can be considered as the last episode.
In a far future, the survivors of a war (who had been fighting for the losing faction) do their best to carry on their lives. They own a Firefly class spaceship (this is the reason for the title) which name is “Serenity” (title of the first episode and of the motion picture). Their job is trade and smuggle, just like “Star Wars”’ Han Solo (whose clothing is similar to the series characters’).
Their universe is largely colonized by humans, with deep social differences: rich people live in huge cities filled with high technology, poor ones live in hostile planets whose environment is quite like the old west.
There’s another similarity: the war lost by the characters’party was between an alliance which wanted to unify all the planets under a central government (ant they finally won), and, on the other side, the planets which wanted to remain independent (and lose the war).

And this recalls the American Civil War, when the confederate soldiers were on the run and gathered in outlaw bands which are still remembered in the wild west history.
The main character is seargent Malcom Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), the ship’s commander and leader of the gang; his second in command is Zoe Washburne (Gina Torres), his fellow soldier during the war; Kaylee Frye (Jewel Staite) is the ship engineer, a girl whose behavior towards the ship is similar to Star Trek’s Scotty (the series is full with quotes and similarities: in the movie a wrecked ship is found and its name is “C-57D” like “The forbidden planet”’s ship); Hoban Washburne (Alan Tudyk) is the ship’s pilot and Zoe’s husband; then Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin), a mercenary, and Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin), who works in a tender shuttle.
One of the ship’s businesses is also carrying passengers, so in the first episode come aboard the pastor Derrial Book (Ron Glass) and Simon Tam (Sean Maher), a young doctor who carries with him a cryogenic capsule containing his sister River (Summer Glau). She has a superior mind, and the Alliance has made cruel experiments on her. Simon has saved her, and is trying to discover what they did. The alliance is pursuing them, and the Serenity crew agree to help them in change for Simon’s work as the ship’s doctor.
Serenity has not only to run from the Alliance, but also from the reavers, humans who have become crazy and cannibal, whose origins will be discovered only in the motion picture at the end of the series.

 

15 episodes, color, 45’

1) Serenity part I
2) Serenity part II
3) The train job
4) Bushwhacked 
5) Shindig
6) Safe
7) Our Mrs Reynolds
8) Jaynestown
9) Out of gas

10) Ariel
11) War stories
12) Trash
13) The message
14) Heart of gold
15) Objects in space

16) Serenity (id., 2 hours movie, 2005)


 

 



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