Firefly 1 of 10 Most Influential Space Western by Haken

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Firefly 1 of 10 Most Influential Space Western

POSTED BY: HAKEN
UPDATED: Monday, November 30, 2009 01:43
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009 1:36 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

According to SPACEWESTERNS.COM, 'Firefly' is #5 of the ten most influential space westerns.

I would have put 'Firefly' as number one, but that's just me.

View the full list here:
http://www.spacewesterns.com/articles/116/

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009 4:39 PM

FREEBROWNCOAT

THaty was the strangest piece of writing I think I've ever read. Babylon 5 a Space Western? Aliens?

Just about the most specious connections possible.

Can't agree with much of what I read there.

FIREFLY truly was a space western and made no bones about it. Traders and smugglers on the edge of civilization, terrible enigmatic enemies in the Reavers, authority trying to bring them under their thumb. Yeah I can do that.

And done with grace, skill and really great writing. Along with a defined character ensemble, it just don't get better'n that.

IMHO of course.

"She's disturbing my calm."

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 12:05 AM

GREENDAALE

I do not agree with the rating Firefly got. But I bet Fox is behind it. They rigged the vote. Just like they did in Afganistan.

Vote Josh for President of Fox

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 3:56 AM

DMI

Expired, forgotten, spoiled rotten.

Where was Cowboy Bebop?
-e

I pray for one last landing,
on the globe that gave me birth.
Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies
and the cool, green hills of Earth.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 4:20 AM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Star Wars and Star Trek are the only ones on the list that really belong. I'm not familiar with Star Craft, so maybe, but Alien was Space Horror, BSG was based on religious allegory, and B5 based on cold war intrigue. Cowboy Bebop definitely should have been considered, along with Outlaw Star.

wo men ren ran zai fei xing.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 4:21 AM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Quote:
Originally posted by greendaale:
Vote Josh for President of Fox

Josh who?

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 4:31 AM

ASARIAN

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
According to SPACEWESTERNS.COM, 'Firefly' is #5 of the ten most influential space westerns.

I would have put 'Firefly' as number one, but that's just me.

View the full list here:
http://www.spacewesterns.com/articles/116/

That's gotta be the dumbest review I've ever read, LOL. Aliens a space Western?? "Aliens directed by James Cameron, follows a much more obvious classic Western pattern. A group of homesteaders disappear and the cavalry is called in." So, now every complicated escape and rescue op is a space Western? Babylon 5 a space Western?? Battlestar Galactica a space Western?? Firefly a space Western?? (Oh wait! Yes, it is). And the only other real space Western that leaps to mind, Outland, isn't even mentioned!

Double dumb-ass on you, Lilly!

--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 5:32 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Quote:
Originally posted by DMI:
Where was Cowboy Bebop?
-e

I pray for one last landing,
on the globe that gave me birth.
Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies
and the cool, green hills of Earth.

Yo, a shout out to Heinlein in your sig. Caught just a flash of it, hadda come back and see who-- thought you mighta been EC...

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 5:39 AM

DMI

Expired, forgotten, spoiled rotten.

Quote:
Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
Quote:
Originally posted by DMI:
Where was Cowboy Bebop?
-e

I pray for one last landing,
on the globe that gave me birth.
Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies
and the cool, green hills of Earth.

Yo, a shout out to Heinlein in your sig. Caught just a flash of it, hadda come back and see who-- thought you mighta been EC...

Hell yea. Green Hills of Earth is more of a space western than most of the stuff on that list. lol
-e

I pray for one last landing,
on the globe that gave me birth.
Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies
and the cool, green hills of Earth.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 6:14 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

No Outland?

Egregious , outlandish oversight...

Makes more sense than a lot of stuff on that list...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_(film)

Copy and Paste Entire Link into your browser to see Article
<(o)>

SHOCKED ! by this :

'...On August 18, 2009, studio Warner Brothers announced that director Michael Davis had been hired to direct a remake of the film from a script by Chad St. John. No casting or start date information was announced.'

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 6:17 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
Star Wars and Star Trek are the only ones on the list that really belong. I'm not familiar with Star Craft, so maybe, but Alien was Space Horror, BSG was based on religious allegory, and B5 based on cold war intrigue. Cowboy Bebop definitely should have been considered, along with Outlaw Star.

wo men ren ran zai fei xing.

Star Craft was not a sci-fi western. It was regular sci-fi, with humans colonies cut off from their homeworld at war with each other and two separate alien species.

While a number of Terran (human) units had rustic accents, perhaps even to the extent that some of the units were derogatory charicatures of "rednecks," there were no horses, and it was hardly a story about the frontier, lawlessness, cowboys, bandits, settlers/pioneers, explorers, and hard living in rugged lands beyond infighting between the colonized worlds.

Again, not a western, and any list that includes it as such is questionable. ...As well as any list that includes Aliens, BSG, and Babylon 5 as sci-fi western. They were really stretching with the western elements and comparisons they make.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 7:35 AM

IMNOTHERE

Quote:
Originally posted by asarian:
And the only other real space Western that leaps to mind, Outland, isn't even mentioned!

Talking of "actual classic Western plots re-made as SF", don't forget "Battle Beyond the Stars"!

Meanwhile, in the "I wouldn't call them Space Westerns but they're more like Space Westerns than fracking BSG" category, we have:

"Pitch Black"/"Chronicles of Riddick"
"Blake's 7"
"Farscape"
"Star Cops"*
"Andromeda"

(*brilliant but short-lived BBC show from the 80s, doubly blighted by with "Worst. Title. Ever." and "whoops - we wasted the entire budget getting the Moody Blues to do the signature tune" - not to be confused with "Space Precinct").

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 8:50 AM

ASARIAN

Quote:
Originally posted by greendaale:
Vote Josh for President of Fox

"It’s JOSS. Not Josh. It’s not a typo, that extra ’s’. No ’h’. K ?" -- Jewel Staite

--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 8:58 AM

TESKA

well i'll drink to stupid countdowns that hardly make sense, apparently they were drunker than i am by 5. Aliens? Really?

People who put cutesy political quotes in their signature should be tortured and fed their own family and/or pets.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 9:08 AM

BYTEMITE

Just five? Y'all must be drinking everclear.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 10:17 AM

STORYMARK

Some of those are really off base, but I can buy Aliens as a Western.

There really aren't any other genres with Homesteaders getting wiped out by hostile natives, with the cavalry rushing in to clean up.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 10:26 AM

BYTEMITE

It's more the miners that I thought was a stretch, it's not at all like 19th century prospecting. Maybe the homesteader interpretation works, but I'm still not sold, and I still think it's a bit of a stretch. I think it's more that there are surface-deep similarities, rather than Aliens is a Sci-Fi Horror Western.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 10:51 AM

STORYMARK

Miners or homesteaders, works either way.

And of course it's not like 19th century prospecting.... it's a metaphor. Not everything chooses to push the juxtaposition quite as obviously as Firefly.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 11:10 AM

BYTEMITE

If the western elements exist only as a metaphor, is it a western, or is it a metaphor for pioneers/settlers, miners, and 19th century fears of Indian abduction?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_Western
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Western

I think to be considered a western, the western elements have to be overt. Just some guy calling himself a "space cowboy" doesn't make a show a sci-fi western. The most recent episode of Castle is not a sci-fi western because Castle dressed up as Mal and called himself a space-cowboy.

In Firefly, Mal IS a space cowboy in the sci-fi western sense, because he was at one point a rancher, and now actually wrangles cattle (sometimes) on a spaceship. Firefly and Serenity are an example of both Space Westerns AND Sci-Fi Westerns.

Star Trek, Star Wars, and Aliens seem to be Space Westerns only, because they do not put futuristic technology anachronistically juxtaposed with primitive wild-west settings and storylines. That is, assuming the western elements in those are strong enough to be considered western, I still think it's a stretch.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 2:35 PM

TESKA

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Just five? Y'all must be drinking everclear.

I'm an alcoholic, not a frat boy, I start drinkin' when I wake up.

And I love Everclear, it makes the bad things go away.

People who put cutesy political quotes in their signature should be tortured and fed their own family and/or pets.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009 2:39 PM

BYTEMITE

Ah.

Except, it seems, for lists.

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Thursday, October 29, 2009 8:23 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
If the western elements exist only as a metaphor, is it a western, or is it a metaphor for pioneers/settlers, miners, and 19th century fears of Indian abduction?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_Western
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Western

...Star Trek, Star Wars, and Aliens seem to be Space Westerns only, because they do not put futuristic technology anachronistically juxtaposed with primitive wild-west settings and storylines. That is, assuming the western elements in those are strong enough to be considered western, I still think it's a stretch.

All good points , but what do you think of this ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_of_the_Gun

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Thursday, October 29, 2009 9:39 AM

BYTEMITE

Sci-Fi western episode within a space western series.

Not completely unexpected, considering the origins of the series and the pitch for it.

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Thursday, October 29, 2009 11:18 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Sci-Fi western episode within a space western series.

Not completely unexpected, considering the origins of the series and the pitch for it.

Whoa...Good point !

" 'Wagon Train' To The Stars ".

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Thursday, October 29, 2009 12:25 PM

IMNOTHERE

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
If the western elements exist only as a metaphor, is it a western, or is it a metaphor for pioneers/settlers, miners, and 19th century fears of Indian abduction?

Maybe the latter:

I've never taken the speech patterns, clothes, six-shooters and music in Firefly as literal - it seems pretty implausible that a future society would replicate them. However, if Joss had invented some futuristic frontier society with its own distinctive costumes and language he'd have had to work in a huge slab of boring exposition to explain how things work.

However, as soon as you see the western trappings in Firefly you instantly understand what sort of society you're dealing with, and Joss is spared having to invent a plot-device character with mysterious yet convenient amnesia who needs everything about the verse explained to him.

I'm not sure about the Wikipedia "space western" concept: Trek, Star Wars etc. draw their tropes from a variety of sources including pulp space opera; Shakespeare; Hornblower; WW2; fairytales and the Bible (wasn't Star Wars partly based on a Japanese story?) Why single out the western over all those other influences?

ISTR the whole "Wagon Train in Space" pitch with Star Trek was not so much about western themes as to explain how you could have a SF show with a regular cast to studio bosses who, then, equated SF with Twilight-zone-style anthologies.

The list that started all this even had "Babylon 5" as a space western - sure, you can pick out western tropes in that, but only if you ignore the far more obvious "Lord of the Rings meets Lensman meets King Arthur with a dash of Dune and a side order of Macbeth" themes...

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Thursday, October 29, 2009 12:33 PM

BYTEMITE

Yes, I agree. I think that the western elements here have, in a lot of cases, been expanded beyond their original influence on the shows in question in order to be able to call them "western."

For example, I've always considered Star Wars more Sci-Fi Fantasy than I have western. The only part of it I could really consider western was in episode IV on Tatooine. That's maybe 30 minutes out of 6 movies.

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Thursday, October 29, 2009 1:08 PM

CYBERSNARK

Quote:
Originally posted by ImNotHere:
Talking of "actual classic Western plots re-made as SF", don't forget "Battle Beyond the Stars"!

The "Western" plot in this case being a remake of a Japanese movie.

(The Seven Samurai > The Magnificent Seven)

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Friday, October 30, 2009 10:33 AM

IMNOTHERE

Quote:
Originally posted by Cybersnark:
The "Western" plot in this case being a remake of a Japanese movie.

(The Seven Samurai > The Magnificent Seven)

Well, yes, that illustrates the ultimate hole in the "Space Western" theory: westerns draw on the same pool of recycled plots as every other genre.

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Friday, October 30, 2009 10:54 AM

RALLEM

That list was seriously flawed by not including many films which should have been there and by including many films which should not have been there. The opinion of the writer is suspect for that reason and I think he or she should receive 14 lashes in a public flogging. jk ;)

http://www.swyzzlestyx.com/index.html

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Sunday, November 29, 2009 11:16 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
According to SPACEWESTERNS.COM, 'Firefly' is #5 of the ten most influential space westerns.

I would have put 'Firefly' as number one, but that's just me.

View the full list here:
http://www.spacewesterns.com/articles/116/

SHINIER , UPDATED List :

http://www.spacewesterns.com/spacewesternlist/

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Monday, November 30, 2009 1:43 AM

PEACEKEEPER

Keeping order in every verse

Oh come on now. As much as I love the BDH's, this is like saying that Rice Pudding is the most influential dish of rice based products.

Peacekeeper---keeping order in every verse!!!

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