Firefly

I’d been hearing debates about whether this series – one season only, it seems – is “libertarian”, so when I found the complete series/season on DVD for $5, I decided, “What the hell”.  It’s only 14 episodes (one season), so it’s not hard to watch all of it fairly quickly.  And they made a movie, “Serenity”, as well.  Joss Whedon, responsible for the more recent Avengers films, is behind it.

Characters.

Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) leads a ragtag team of misfits across the universe doing various freelance assignments for consenting parties – some legitimate, some a bit shady - under the watchful eye of the Alliance, some space dictatorship similar to The Empire but without any compelling villain like Darth Vader to spice things up. 

Zoe (Gina Torres) is nominally Mal’s partner and Wash’s wife.  She served with Mal in the war and shares his battlefield experience.  So far as I can tell, she serves as “first mate”.  Despite the close relationship there doesn’t appear to be any romance between them, but that doesn’t stop Wash from being a bit jealous anyway, and matters eventually reach a climax, so to speak.

Wash, the pilot (Alan Tudyk, the pirate guy from “Dodgeball”).  He knows what he’s doing, but doesn’t bring anything special besides that.

Jayne (Adam Baldwin, “Animal Muther” from “Full Metal Jacket”), the muscle.  He can be counted on to make off-color remarks and threaten to sell out the crew to a higher bidder.  His loyalties remain in question.  However, he isn’t as brutal and stupid as he pretends to be, but the rest of the crew can ascertain that, as can Mal.

Kaylee (Jewel Staite), the ship’s cute female engineer, rounds out the actual crew.  She has no formal training in engineering, she simply has a natural aptitude for it and won the job when she clearly knew more than the engineer who was banging her.

In addition to the crew, there are a few characters who serve as passengers and assist as their skills permit.

Inara (Morena Bacccarin, Deadpool’s GF, who is actually a carioca! From Rio de Janeiro) a “companion” (courtesan) – she rents a shuttle from Mal and conducts her business discreetly.  She doesn’t really get along with Mal, and they spar off about his hangups about her affairs.  Tacitly he acknowledges his hypocrisy – he is, after all, a smuggler and a rogue – but he can’t avoid acting on it.

Shepherd (Ron Glass, aka Venus Flytrap from WKRP in Cincinnati) is what passes for a priest in this universe, and he typically acts as a spiritual advisor (though Mal is overtly atheist) and a “ship’s counselor” like Deanna Troi, minus any special empathic powers. 

Doctor Simon (Sean Maher) and his sister River (Summer Glau) are refugees, fleeing from the Alliance.  River was a test subject for bizarre experiments, and the Alliance is actively searching to get her back, which no one on board wants, though they still resent the unwanted Alliance attention this causes.  A few times Mal threatens to dump the pair off on the nearest inhabited moon or planet, except that he can’t be sure they won’t be picked up by the Alliance in the near future and doesn’t want to be responsible if that happens.  For his part, the doctor is mostly useful as a doctor – which the crew lacks - while the sister is the “freaked out chick who was molested by the Alliance but occasionally adds something useful to the plot”. 

Plot.  Each episode features some sort of “job” or trying to escape the clutches of the Alliance, or even both.  I think of Mal as loosely analogous to Han Solo – if anyone had bothered to chronicle the various jobs and assignments Han & Chewie had handled prior to taking Luke, Obi-Wan and the Droids to Alderaan. The humor is attenuated.  There’s a modest degree of romance and naughtiness – despite having a courtesan on board.  By the way, Christina Hendricks, “Joan” from “Mad Men”, adamantly insists she has not had a boob job.  She’s in TWO episodes as Saffron, a beautiful but deceitful woman, and is clearly NOT as well-endowed as she was in “Mad Men”. 

Oddly, there are no robots/droids and no alien species.  All planets/moons are terrestrial with breathable atmospheres.  The special effects are virtually non-existent and no one “uses the Force”, although River seems to have various powers which are unusual, misunderstood, almost never controlled and which only come out when the plot needs them.  However, all this strikes me more as a function of the show’s budget and not due to the writers’ lack of imagination. 

Serenity (DVD).  This was the movie that followed the season.  From what I can tell, “Firefly” will NOT get a Season 2, and this movie was intended as a de facto S2 to keep the fans happy.  The same characters, the same actors, the same things going on, but a bigger story over two hours, also featuring a special Alliance operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor – good actor, horrendous name) tracking down River and the gang.  And finally they tell us where the Reavers came from.  Overall an excellent finish to a good show. 

Politics.

Is it Libertarian?  If you call rebelling against the Alliance that, perhaps, but then “Star Wars” is much more so.   Hell, even “The Dukes of Hazzard” would qualify (Darth Hogg?  The General Falcon?).  However, it might be more appropriate to say that much of our current culture features protagonists who are highly individual, rebel against authority, and do their own thing.  Mistrust of government, especially any sort of authoritarian or totalitarian government, is a recurrent theme.  It’s such a common theme in American TV and movies that its appearance here is hardly original or groundbreaking.   However, I’m not aware that Joss Whedon is libertarian.  It looks like he has views which very closely match the libertarian ideology but expressly refuses to admit he’ s a libertarian.  “I believe in [all the central facets of the libertarian ideology] but I’m NOT a libertarian.”  Facepalm.  In fact, there appear to be quite a few celebrities who could be described this way:  Jesse Ventura and Clint Eastwood come to mind immediately. 

Anyhow.  Although not explicitly intended as libertarian propaganda, I’d say that – like P&R – it’s a show that winds up being libertarian by espousing, indirectly, many values libertarians hold dear while not endorsing any contrary views.  Or you could treat it as “Star Wars Light”.