|
sunshine jen: The Great Space Escape
Fly Fly Firefly
Last week, while poking around the local library, I found the DVDs for the 2002 sci fi show, Firefly, and borrowed them on my card. I had heard great things about the show from some sci fi buddies, but I had never seen it. I had heard that it was about a crew of smugglers on a space ship (Firefly class) called Serenity, and if I liked Blakes 7, I would probably like Firefly. It was dark and cynical but also light-hearted and funny and there was a whole wild west thing happening too.
The show lasted only a few months on fox in 2002, but the show aired on sci fi channel and the DVD sold well, so a movie (called Serenity) came out in 2005. That's the basic gist of it. There are probably Firefly fans out there who can write books on the history of it. Don't you go looking here for Firefly facts. I deal only with Firefly fun.
I started watching the episodes, and I liked them. It is dark and cynical but also light-hearted and funny and there is a whole wild west thing happening too. There are nine characters on the ship and no space aliens or strange new worlds. The characters on the ship don't always get along, but that's the fun of it. Not since Kerr Avon and Roj Blake mixed it up for 26 episodes of Blakes 7 has dysfunctional space travel been so much fun.
The Firefly show is set 500 years in the future. We've overpopulated the earth and have started colonizing planets in space. The government has become a huge united bureaucracy which can not police all the planets, so smuggling and lawlessness is rampant especially on the 'outer' worlds which tried to break away from the alliance of planets but lost that war.
In this future world, we do not see the bureaucracy workers toiling away in their futuristic cubicles as they transfer information from one department to another. That would be a pretty dull vision of the future. Instead, we escape from the rigors of the cubicles on a space ship. We fly away to different planets which all look like Southern California.
As I watched the Firefly episodes, I too took off with the crew and could temporarily escape my mundane week. As I watched the last of the episodes and then the movie, I felt a whole jumble of emotions ranging from regret and depression (I could've written this show, I could've been someone, I could've been a contender, I could've had class) to giddy happiness (my sci fi buddies did not let me down, uuuu look at the arms on that fella) before settling on something close to serenity (oh whatever, time to make cocktails).
Then my brain really started to work in a good way. It pushed all the psycho stuff to one side and really got to thinking. I like it when my brain goes to the thinking place. It's very constructive.
So on this show, we can all fly away with this wacky crew on their space ship. We can fly off to different planets. We fly through space. We move. But we don't really move. We're still sitting at our television. So how do we fly away without moving? How do we virtually move? Duh, we surf the web. Okay, so we're on our virtual space ships pointing and clicking and pointing and clicking through different worlds of different words, so my question to you gentle reader (because it is all about you, no really, it's all about you, yes you), my question to you is. . .
If the happyrobot was a space ship, what would be your role on it?
Or if the happyrobot was a space ship, where would you go?
|
|
|
