The show in some ways feels like a western.
Here's what creator Joss Whedon says:
During a visit to Stage 16 at the Fox studios, Whedon explained his concept for the series: a western in outer space.
Sitting in a director's chair in front of the ramp into the cargo bay of the Firefly-class space ship Serenity (imagine the back end of a Navy amphibious troop transport), Whedon said the goal was to do a show where space is the place, but the characters are entirely human. No aliens, no monsters, no robots.
"I believe we are the only sentient beings in the universe, and 500 years from now we will still be the only sentient beings around," Whedon said. "Aliens are something everyone else is doing."
Whedon was inspired to create "Firefly" after reading Michael Shaara's Civil War book "The Killer Angels" about the Battle of Gettysburg. "I got obsessed with the minutiae of life way back then," Whedon said, "early frontier life and when things were not as convenient as they are now. We wanted to do a show in the future that had a sense of history, that we don't solve all our problems and have impeccably clean spaceships."
Consider this the anti-"Star Trek." Set 500 years in the future, the series is not set on Earth, which won't be seen in the show, but in a solar system of several Earth-like planets that have been colonized by humans. It's an era in which American influences mingle with those of the Chinese -- Chinese newspapers and art decorate several "Firefly" sets -- and the series takes place following a civil war fought over whether planets should remain independent or join an alliance. The alliance won.
The show features roots music as underscore, and when things explode in space, there's no sound.
"We just wanted to get away from the bombast of space, Space SPACE! It's just normal life and I wanted to put something else in people's heads. I didn't want the giant, orchestral, Jerry Goldsmith thing. I just felt like it had become de rigeur," Whedon said. Since there is truly no sound in space, Whedon nixed the expected explosion sound effects. "It also helped get rid of the idea of the space we've become used to seeing."
"Firefly" is largely influenced by westerns, but also the idea of colonization and the notion that all immigrants bring their past with them.
"I want it to be 'Grapes of Wrath' as much as 'Stagecoach,' " Whedon said. "It's not just about westerns, it's about life when it's hard and the idea of people always having the same problems they've always had ... We have nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things." |
