Saturday, September 03, 2005

I Stand Corrected

According to an article in Wired Magazine, the Sci-Fi Channel does in fact have rights to air all the episodes of Firefly, including the ones that went unaired in the original 2002 run on Fox. The Sci-Fi Channel's website indicates that the 10-hour marathon on September 27 will air the first 10 episodes of the series, transposing episodes 9 and 10. This, much to the chagrin of some of the fans over on the forums. Episode order is a bit of a sore subject with die-hard fans, since the original run of the series on Fox botched the episode order so badly the series barely made sense. Unlike a lot of TV shows, Firefly has actual story arcs and character development. A lot of the drama in the pilot, which Fox saw fit to air as the final episodes, depends on the audience not knowing how the series works out. The cliffhanger between Part 1 and Part 2 of the pilot, for instance, is, "Whoa! That crate contains a cryogenically frozen naked teenage girl! Who is she and what is she doing with a guy who--now that you mention it--seems a little too uptight?" When that is used as the resolution to the characters instead of the introduction, you can see how it wouldn't quite play the same.

My guess it the order switch for the marathon is to provide a better lead-in to the "Inside Serenity" special, since the episode they end with in the marathon contains a key development in the plot line that plays an important part in the movie.

1 comment:

Janet said...

Also, there were three unaired episodes