Andor - writing

[Kumquatqueen]

Firefly is one of the purest shining gems in a sea of rubbish sci-fi dross. Pure brilliance.

Firefly was intended to be a Western set in space, rather than 'pure' SF. But it's the ideas and scripts that really set it above your average SF/F show.

In that way, it's similar to The Expanse, where people act intelligently in complex situations. (Also Naomi and Crisjen, if this is the thread for badass female characters. And Drummer...)

 

[StillStunned]

I was rewatching a few episodes of Andor at the weekend, and I was struck again by how natural the dialogue is. But some of the foreshadowing...

In Episode 6, before they rob the Imperial base, Nemik is complaining that he couldn't sleep. Andor replies, "Don't worry, you'll sleep when this is over." Oooph!

 

[EricaLynch]

Missed this whole thread.

Soo, my 3 cents.

Andor made The Mandalorian look like Xena. Probably the best thing that has ever come from the SW universe.

I LOVE Firefly and I have a serious crush on Kaylee. Still waiting for the episode when Inara teaches her some tricks (sorry didn’t mean to go there).
I would love a reboot, but also scared that it would not be as good, and lose the charm the original series have.

Borat? Nah.

OMG, my thoughts are exactly following yours! Andor was amazing! Love Firefly, a reboot....hard to say, and I'm very tentative...hard to capture that unique feel with that particular cast.

 

[EricaLynch]

Firefly was intended to be a Western set in space, rather than 'pure' SF. But it's the ideas and scripts that really set it above your average SF/F show.

In that way, it's similar to The Expanse, where people act intelligently in complex situations. (Also Naomi and Crisjen, if this is the thread for badass female characters. And Drummer...)

Yess....exactly. and The Expanse is absolutely amazing...plus, who wouldn't have a crush on Camina Drummer???

 

[StirlingMorty13]

Missed this whole thread.

Soo, my 3 cents.

Andor made The Mandalorian look like Xena. Probably the best thing that has ever come from the SW universe.

I LOVE Firefly and I have a serious crush on Kaylee. Still waiting for the episode when Inara teaches her some tricks (sorry didn’t mean to go there).
I would love a reboot, but also scared that it would not be as good, and lose the charm the original series have.

Borat? Nah.

Loved Andor.... wasn't expecting it to be so good and was pleasantly surprised. Bit of a slow burn to begin with but story really came to life with lots of sub-plots and twists. Definitely better than Ahsoka.
The wife is a big Firefly fan, but I never really got into it. Maybe something to do with hot male actors....

 

[onehitwanda]

Crisjen

God I love her.

 

[CyranoJ]

Firefly is one of the purest shining gems in a sea of rubbish sci-fi dross. Pure brilliance.

I have such mixed feelings about Firefly.

The chemistry of the cast was golden, probably unexcelled in almost any SF show. I love those characters. Book especially was a favorite, and we never really got to explore the fullness of his past as someone who clearly was once a ruthless spymaster but who made the transition to being a committed man of the cloth. But I love all of them. Kaylee must be protected at all costs.

They did lots of cool things with the setting. Their solution to the problem of Sci-Fi Cursing (subbing in Mandarin phrases instead of attempting shit like "frelling" this and "frakking" that) was particularly gorram welcome. (And "gorram" is such a great example, a believable evolution from the English language that really lands.)

I really enjoy the flavor of the Space Western.

On the other hand... the Space Western shit was way too fucking literal, in an uncomfortable way. And I don't mean the episode where they literally had the crew transporting longhorn cattle between moons. No, I mean that the story had really super-duper-explicit analogues to the Civil War, the North and the South... and in-fiction the heroes came from a version of the South that was cleansed of any really uncomfortable questions of moral iniquity and where the real moral problem was the "North" of the story "meddling."

That shit is the most basic substance of Lost Cause mythology. It's literally what Lost Cause mythology is. It effectively made the long-arc storyline into SF Confederate apologetics with rayguns and spaceships. There's no way to make an explicit allegory about the "War of the Northern Aggression" without creating Lost Cause apologia. There just isn't.

That part of it grossed me out (we even had "Indians" in-frame, as the unremittingly savage "Reavers"), and especially as they dressed this enterprise up with a diverse cast. I also saw what they had planned for future storylines and honestly... I'm kinda glad it got cancelled when it did. These kinds of questions would have gotten harder and harder to avoid the longer it had run.

I miss the cast and their wonderful dynamic. The underlying flaws notwithstanding, there are very few episodes of television of any kind that can compete with the combination of humor, pathos and action that is "Jaynestown," just for example. But I truly believe the underlying flaws would've brought it low if it had lived longer.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I have such mixed feelings about Firefly.

I hear you. Some of my complicated feelings about that show come down to the RL people involved - several of the major names have since milkshake ducked in one way and another, and that's really changed how those bits hit now. Some of it also comes down to other people pointing out tendencies in the story that can't be unseen once seen, and some to hearing snippets of where they were planning to take the show.

The chemistry of the cast was golden, probably unexcelled in almost any SF show. I love those characters. Book especially was a favorite, and we never really got to explore the fullness of his past as someone who clearly was once a ruthless spymaster but who made the transition to being a committed man of the cloth.

I agree but I do wonder whether that's another thing that benefited from the show's axing. It's really easy to drop hints that somebody has a mysterious past and get the audience's minds whirring about the things that hadn't said. But if the story goes on long enough, you eventually have to decide whether you're just going to keep on teasing forever - and eventually the audience will notice, and realise it's nothing but hints - or you have to reveal something more substantial. Which requires having something substantial to reveal. If the author was only teasing to begin with, trying to fill that in belatedly usually leads to disappointment.

...or we could just go look for answers on Ao3.

But I love all of them. Kaylee must be protected at all costs.

...particularly from Joss, if the last episode was anything to go by.

That part of it grossed me out (we even had "Indians" in-frame, as the unremittingly savage "Reavers"), and especially as they dressed this enterprise up with a diverse cast.

Diverse... in some ways yes, in others no.

Multiple distinct female characters, hooray! (There's a lot to be said about how the show treats those characters, but I've said it before; I'll save people's patience this time around.) Multiple distinct Black characters - two in the main cast and two major antagonists, in between the series and the film, if I haven't forgotten anybody. That's better than a lot of shows do. But then:


There are a couple in minor roles, if you go through the series closely, but those roles probably get less time than either the Operative's katana or Mal's Mandarin-speaking.(No, neither Summer Glau nor Morena Baccarin are Asian.)

Trying to remember if there was any queer rep beyond Inara having a female client at one point. I guess that's still more than a lot of shows manage, but "hey the conventionally hot babe also digs chicks" isn't exactly heroic risk-taking.

I miss the cast and their wonderful dynamic. The underlying flaws notwithstanding, there are very few episodes of television of any kind that can compete with the combination of humor, pathos and actions that is "Jaynestown," just for example. But I truly believe the underlying flaws would've brought it low if it had lived longer.

Hard agree. There was a lot that I loved in there but by the end of "Objects in Space" I was starting to feel that maybe it wasn't the same bits that Whedon loved in it.

 

[CyranoJ]

I hear you. Some of my complicated feelings about that show come down to the RL people involved - several of the major names have since milkshake ducked in one way and another, and that's really changed how those bits hit now.

The revelations about Whedon's on-set behavior were something else. And Adam Baldwin's public Adventures in Gatorism were particularly foul. I think it's a tribute to his in-show work that his aggressive IRL madness has failed to entirely spoil Jayne for me.

But then:

View attachment 2282777
There are a couple in minor roles, if you go through the series closely, but those roles probably get less time than either the Operative's katana or Mal's Mandarin-speaking.

This was the major drawback of the Asian language usage. If you're going to make Asian languages a major presence in the setting, there really should be Asian people present to justify it, and nobody appears to have thought of that: it was just set-dressing for the Space Western concept, not a thought-through worldbuilding decision.

Trying to remember if there was any queer rep beyond Inara having a female client at one point.

Yeah, not really. "Diverse casting" as the early Oughties went, I should say.