Firefly - The Complete Series [2003]

Product Details

Actor : Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite
Format : Box set, PAL, Widescreen
Aspect Ratio : 1.78:1
Binding : DVD
EAN : 5039036016025
Number of Discs : 4
Product Group : DVD
Region Code : 2
Release Date : 2004-04-19
Running Time : 630minutes
Studio : 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

ASIN : B0001B3YTM

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

Much praised and much missed after its premature cancellation, Firefly is the first SF TV series to be conceived by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and cocreator of Angel. Set five centuries in the future, it is a show where the mysterious personal pasts of the crew of the tramp spaceship Serenity continually surface. In fact, it's a Western in space where the losers in a Civil War are heading out to a barren frontier. Mal Reynolds is a man embittered by the war, yet whose love of his comrades perpetually dents his cynicism--even in the 14 episodes that exist we see him warm to the bubbly young mechanic Kaylee, the preacher Book, the idealistic doctor Simon, even to the often demented River, Simon's sister, the psychic result of malign experiments.

Firefly is also about adult emotional relationships, for example Kaylee's crush on Simon, the happy marriage of Mal's second officer Zoe and the pilot Wash, the disastrous erotic stalemate between Mal and the courtesan Inara. Individual episodes deal with capers going vaguely wrong, or threats narrowly circumvented; character and plot arcs were starting to emerge when the show was cancelled. Fortunately, the spin-off movie Serenity ties up some of the ends; and in the meantime, what there is of Firefly is a show to marvel at, both for its tight writing and ensemble acting, and the idiocy of the executives who cancelled it.

On the DVD: Firefly on DVD is presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 with Dolby Surround Sound. It includes commentaries on six episodes by various writers, directors, designers and cast members as well as featurettes on the conception of the show and the design of the spaceship Serenity, four deleted scenes, a gag reel, and Joss Whedon singing the show's theme tune, more or less. One of the things that emerges from all of this is how committed to the project everyone involved with it was, and is--unusually, you end up caring as much for the cast and crew as for the characters.

Customer Reviews

Impressively flexible and palatable (2008-10-06)

At first it looks and sounds light and even amateurish, and then you understand it is fully positioned on another level. It is a mixture of several genres within the frame of a science-fiction film entirely contained in , and around, a special spaceship called Serenity, a spaceship that is a firefly, a bug, a burning insect. The first genre is the functional and psychological happenings within a team of nine people who are together for both the best and the worst, in order to transform the worst into the best, or at least the better by being together. The team is limited to nine people, a perfect diabolic and satanic number, and no manipulation like Serenity is the tenth character will take that dimension away. Nine is perfect because you always have at least one who is totally set apart from the regrouping of people into couples or pairs. And in the end you wonder who is the one who is really apart, who is totally odd, alone because of the various and subtle compositions with only one couple that is really defined as such and all the others being transient, multiple, varied, changing, shifting at various levels of possible realization. In a way it is Star Trek revisited but without all the hullaballoo that goes along with the soldiers, the mechanics, the petty personnel of a flagship. The second genre is of course, recurrent and varied too, the western but in many realizations too. Of course we have the very traditional space western or space cowboy film, like in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, seen from the point of view of the driver marooned on the side of the road after having been forced to lend his car. But there is more. We can think of other models: Dead or Alive, Bonanza (even), Mad Max, a vague allusion to Star wars with the Alliance, a lot of Jules Verne, William Gibson and a few others, even at times, though they might not know it, Ron Hubbard, and the bordello in the desert is so close to some Indian bordello in some Bollywood classic. We do not have John Wayne and the Indians, but we can afford not to have that genocidal side of the western. The next genre is more trendy and modern with some kind of loose and yet very emotional sensual, erotic even, life or imagination. Many allusions, visual or linguistic, and even here and there an allusion to gay people, slack, as they come up like in one episode, though this side of personal life is warded off nicely, and the allusion to crazy, insane and yet envisaged incest was purely rejected from the series and is a supplementary scene, meaning, a censored one, even if self-censored. We could go on for ever with that game. But what is important is that the film or the series is highly original in the end. It is deeply human and humane, deeply attached to justice and fairness, even with someone who trips into treachery for a slight moment, or one episode. At the same time it is ruthless and even maybe cruel by indifference like when bringing the millionaire to the easy lady he had made pregnant and whose child he had tried to steal knowing that he was going to be shot blank on the spot by the mother, or also when they get rid of the bounty-hunter by just pushing him into space where he is going to die slowly, except of course if he shortens his life himself and commits suicide. The series is also highly imaginative and each episode really has a knack and appeal of its or their own. We enter the episode and we will be released only when the case is concluded. Each episode is perfectly self-contained, even when what is announced in one episode does not take place in the next one because the announcement is the punch line of the concerned episode and it would unbalance the next episodes if it were made true. So they whirl around with a pirouette, when they bother, or they just forget, or they think of it and discard it to the supplementary scenes. Self-containment is the best quality of each of these episodes. In other words quite a successful series that, it is true, found its magic achievement in that final symbolic metaphoric blending of Serenity and River, of the escaping spaceship and the mentally disarrayed girl. Then the team is one and the odd shot of that team becomes the heart and soul of it in this final blending. The route has been run from the beginning to the end and the final harbor has been reached beyond all the deserts and dangers possible. They can live happily ever after. There is a certain fairy tale dimension in this series, and it is one of its stronger assets.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Very Good (2008-09-24)

I thought the first 2 or 3 episodes were a little slow but stuck with it and was ultimately rewarded.On the skin of it it's a Space-Western, but somehow it is more than that. My fiance doesn't like sci-fi series or westerns yet she loved this series.By the end of this series you know most of the characters well and it's set up for a great second series which of course there isn't! There is however the film Serenity which is a good film but never answers questions about (for example) the past of Shepherd Book.Watch this series and the only dissapointment you will have is that they only did 1 series.

Forget the genre. (2008-09-23)

Either you like it or you don't, it's all subjective.Forget about it being sci-fi or post apocalyptic even. It's a cracking good tale that rollicks along, but at a much slower pace than the movie (Serenity); & that allows it that little bit more time to gel, for the characterers to grow into 'friends,' so that you avidly look forward to each new episode.The humour is so much more apparent in this slightly slower paced setting, not having to cram all of the action into so few minutes.The suits who run the US networks, & routinely kill off the the good, the exciting new shows, & the shows which they think do not pull in enough of the big advertising bucks should be the ones who got the boot. Watch it, listen to the dialogue, love it.I did & still do.

Not as incredible as everyone says... (2008-09-23)

I bought this after the rabid recommendations of friends. And didn't like it. I realise I'm probably the lone voice of dissent here, but I just don't think it's anything incredible. Sorry. There is much better stuff out there, if you widen your viewing choices.'But it's a western in space!' the fanboys and girls cry, again and again, as if that were enough in itself to justify its status - well, it isn't. There have been much better western series (Deadwood) and much better sci-fi series (Battlestar). Against these, Firefly just can't compete. It just doesn't feel like it's for grown ups.This mixed-genre premise is not adequately exploited in the show..it's just 'there'. In trying to serve two masters, it merely distills the maximum dramatic potential of either genre by a half. It doesn't know what it wants to be, and does neither amazingly well.Firefly is competent, solid, but nothing stellar...I never found it gripping, and the wilfully quirky characters are often merely irritating, there for 'aren't we wacky' cachet. The dialogue they are given, (Joss Wedon's Buffy esque verbal tics much in evidence here) which some find quirky and unique, seem so idiosyncratic as to be entirely unbelievable as real people. Trekkies, sci-fi fans, anyone into that kind of niche stuff, will find much to love here, and they ought to pick it up. But don't tell me it's 'the best tv show ever' - that's the opinion of those who haven't seen enough good TV.

Wonderful! (2008-09-22)

This series has everything I want in a t.v show. It's funny, there's plenty of drama, believable characters that you can relate to and even a bit of romance.I generally don't like to rewatch things but I've watched firefly at least five times!

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