When the rebel Independents (known as Browncoats) illegally and unsuccessfully rose up against the Alliance, we in the upper echelons knew that squashing the rebellion would be a problem. It is easy to kill people, but killing ideas is far, far more difficult. Even the Blue Sun operatives have a difficult time of it (and controlling them is another issue entirely). Containing the ideas of rebellion has proven nearly impossible. Even getting the television show canceled didn’t help; it only strengthened the base of people allied with the Independents.
Now we have learned that the Browncoats are on the verge of successfully getting the word out via the fledgling spaceflight organization called NASA. Our attempts at stopping the launch of their primitive rocket by controlling the local weather have only been partially successful; the hail storm merely delayed them.
However, after some more thought, we have decided to let this go. The recordings being launched will only further show how useless it is to rebel against authority, and any attempts to censor it may result in further publicity for them, and a widening of the fan base.
Still, our Blue Sun operative on board the Space Station may yet prevail. Little do the Browncoats know she is with us and not them… even though she took the codename Suni despite our protests of being too obvious.
We’ll see how this turns out, but we have confidence we will prevail. For everything there is a season, but for some things, they only get one season.
Tip o’ the space cowboy hat to Interplanet Sarah.
June 4th, 2007 at 9:25 am
I hereby declare this the most important shuttle mission ever
June 4th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Houston, I’ll be in my bunk!
June 4th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Shiny!
June 4th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Nice try, Phil, but you can’t stop the signal.
June 4th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can’t take the sky from me.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Huh?
June 4th, 2007 at 11:45 am
and…horses.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:46 am
There is an astronaut taking up DVDs of the TV show Firefly on the ISS. A lot of the seemingly out-of-context comments are quotes from the show.
If you do sci-fi at all, Firefly is a good one. Was killed before its time, and the fans refuse to let it die (and did a pretty good job keeping it alive, too–a movie was made from the series 2 years after it got canned).
June 4th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Laguna, let me ’splain.
Phil is being all creative and artsy with his post (bless his sci-fi soul), by writing what is essentially another “hey! new NASA mission!” post with a unique and cool twist. He is writing his blog entry from the perspective of someone who lives in the world that Firefly was set in.
Firefly is an awesome show that got poorly managed by its network, FOX, and was cancelled before its time. But the fans, who call themselves Browncoats, continued to grow the fan base which allowed the DVDs to sell extremely well. So well in fact that a movie called Serenity was made about the characters from the TV show.
Hope this clears things up.
–Euterpe
June 4th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Euterpe -
“poorly managed by its network?” You are being extremely generous.:)
And Phil, do you have proof the astronaut up there now is a purplebelly?
June 4th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Thank you euterpe for translating this into something a poor german US TV station trashcan recycler can understand. This show did not make it out of the FOX trashcan and onto our screens.
June 4th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Then get thee to the internet post haste and find those shows! Hurry! There is no time to lose!
(I know the show but I didn’t have a clue what Phil was on about…)
Pete
June 4th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Ahhhh. I still don’t have a clue what Phil was talking about – I don’t watch Firefly – but I loved it anyway. Even more, perhaps, BECAUSE I didn’t get it. It was so randomly weird!
June 4th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Ok, so I gave up. Too much firefly and serenity on this Blog.
I just ordered the 4 Disk Firefly DVD Set.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:25 am
May the recording media (ie- DVDs) be kept in a sacred place, and to forever after become required afterhours viewing for every new crewmember within their first few months.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:29 am
Laguna, check out also the film http://serenitymovie.com/main_site.html
June 5th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Hope you enjoy it, Laguna.
Browncoats (myself included in that) tend to be pretty enthusiastic about the show. The good news is, about 95% of people that I’ve introduced Firefly to have really enjoyed it. So, sorry for being somewhat overbearing about the show, but it’s what we do.
This Web site has a good podcast that explains the whole Firefly phenomonon pretty well to people who are new to it.
http://signal.serenityfirefly.com/specialshows.html
June 5th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Hope you enjoy it, Laguna.
Browncoats (myself included in that) tend to be pretty enthusiastic about the show. The good news is, about 95% of people that I’ve introduced Firefly to have really enjoyed it. So, sorry for being somewhat overbearing about the show, but it’s what we do.
June 5th, 2007 at 3:39 am
Not Mandatory
Hey, Phil – where’s our review of the astronomy in the movie Serenity?
June 5th, 2007 at 3:39 am
Same here. Just added Firefly and Serenity to Netflix..
Cannot…resist…BA…scifigeekness….
June 5th, 2007 at 4:05 am
I got his back.
B.A. starts thinking with his jan-do duh ee-kwai-ro, I’ll step in.
June 5th, 2007 at 7:03 am
Laguna2 Said: “Ok, so I gave up. Too much firefly and serenity on this Blog.
I just ordered the 4 Disk Firefly DVD Set.”
You will not regret it, but after watching those you will find yourself buying the movie “Serenity” as well.
I bought the Firefly DVD set a while back inspired by another of BA’s posts and following comments. Taikong suoyou de xingqiu saijin wo de pigu the BA Blog is costing me money, I suspect that BA get baksheesh from Fox.
June 5th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Hey, that’s great news! I’m always glad to see a great show get recognition, and I can’t think of a better venue for a showing of Firefly than LEO. (Well, maybe High Saturn Orbit, but that’s a ways away, alas.)
That twigs a thought of mine, though, rather late… the mission number (STS-117) is rather reminiscent of a key character in another of my fannish obsessions… (”I need an action figure.”)
— Steve
June 5th, 2007 at 10:43 am
As a purveyor.. make that surveyor – of fine SF everywhere, I can state unequivocally that the top two SF shows are, Farescape and Firefly. (I almost included MST3K there, but that was technically not SF, but humor).
The original Star Trek, Enterprise, and Battlestar Galactica (new version) round out the top 5
What irks me the most, about all this is that I had the chance to watch Firefly when it was on originally, and panned it. Instead of sticking to my usual rules, I got in only 20 minutes or so of the pilot.. somewhere in the middle – and went on to do something else.
A year ago, my business partner loaned me his DVD set (his idea). I watched them all, straight through – a number of times – for an entire weekend.
Watch! You to will adopt the brown coat, and understand Serenity.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Lurchgs, you saw 20 minutes in the middle of the first aired episode, and that was enough to pan the show?
Of course it didn’t help that the first episode was not the pilot. Fox didn’t air the pilot until they had decided to cancel the show.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
WTF?
June 7th, 2007 at 5:34 am
Ruth,
See above posts for explanation. it should clear up most things.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Heh. It’s a very shiny story, the DVDs going up. BTW, thanks for the plug for The Signal, we do our best
And Laguna2, you won’t regret it! New Browncoats are always welcome.
I think this must be the first conversion via Bad Astronomy. Very shiny indeed! (This thread is commented on on our forum at http://fireflydvd.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3570 )
Nick from The Signal
June 8th, 2007 at 3:10 am
thanks for the shiny press. for those interested in the full story of thrilling heroics, head over to http://www.breakingatmo.com.
June 13th, 2007 at 10:09 am
[...] and Serenity for the ISS to keep in their permanent collection. They went up there last week. (h/t Bad Astronomy and Bloggity) Posted by Garrett on June 13th, 2007 in Space, Firefly [...]
June 19th, 2007 at 8:32 am
[...] on the exact time of touchdown. There has been no word on whether she was able to watch any Firefly episodes, [...]
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
I would also like to point out that Firefly has almost always been great about the “no sound in space” idea, in addition to creating a sci-fi ‘verse that does not require faster-than-light travel. =)
Good astronomy abounds, Browncoats!