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"Firefly," a sci-fi Western fusion series from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon, is one canceled show whose unfinished season led to a happy ending.

The program, about a hardscrabble space crew 500 years in the future, lost its bid for survival on Fox's fall 2002 schedule after 11 episodes, with three more finished but unaired. Whedon and crew wanted their work on those episodes shown somewhere, anywhere -- and fans wanted that, too.

But Whedon resisted the idea of burning off those installments as summer filler.

"Fox still owned the property and could maybe fill a summer slot or something," Whedon said. "But then it became an advantage. If they never aired these, then we could put them on the DVD as something that made it more exciting."

There were three unaired episodes -- one about a bordello beseiged by a ruthless warlord, another about a dead body who returns to life and a third involving the crew's heist of an antique laser-gun. The four-disc set including all 14 episodes was released in stores last month.

Whedon currently is writing the script for Universal Pictures to turn the "Firefly" story line into a feature film. Successful sales of the DVD could help spur that project.

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and sales of Fox's short-lived Firely have prompted creator Joss Whedon to mull a feature film.

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