God, if I have to hear anymore boo-hooing from all these whiny Joss Whedon fans bawling about how their beloved "Firefly" got canceled from television prematurely, I'm going to vomit. Look, your show got cancelled because it sucked. Accept it. Move on.
"Firefly" was like "Star Trek" for the underclass. In fact, one could see Whedon setting up his show to be the anti-Trek in almost every episode. Based on the much-mourned TV series, "Serenity" reeks of the same kind of creative conceit one sees in network television where a series that owes things to other shows manages to pays tribute to them and thumbs its nose at at them at the same time, in that nepotistic I'm-kissing-my-sister-but-I-don't-really-like-it kind of way.
Mal (Nathan Fillion) is the captain of his own ship in not a dissimilar fashion from Han Solo before George Lucas decided to go back and ruin Han's character by having Greedo shoot first. Mal shoots first. Mal is a thief. Mal has had his faith in humanity destroyed by the war against the Alliance, the ruling body in the galaxy. Aboard his ship are a collection of other thieves: Zoe (Gina Torres), who fought alongside Mal in the war, Wash (Alan Tudyk), Mal's pilot and Zoe's wussy husband, Jayne (Adam Baldwin), a stupid tough guy, and Kaylee (Jewel Staite), Mal's hot mechanic. Newer to the crew are the doctor, Simon (Sean Maher) and his sister, River (Summer Glau), who are running from the Alliance. Apparently, the Alliance invested some effort in experimenting on River and her brain and now consider her a threat, so much so that they've sent an operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor) after them. No longer on the ship are Shepherd Book (Ron Glass) and the "companion" Inara (Morena Baccarin), but they soon show up in the story, which means that Serenity (the name of the ship) has to make some inexplicable pit stop to go see them.
Like any other science fiction show, be it "Star Trek" or "Babylon 5," to write any more here would be to waste a whole lot of time explaining inside details of sci-fi nerd-trivia to people who don't really care. For instance, if I explain that Mal and crew must travel through a mass of Reaver ships to get to their destination, about 90% of everyone reading this is going to think to themselves: "What the hell is a Reaver?" Therefore, I would have to explain that Reavers are cannibalistic, monster-like humans who live on the edge of space. Then I'd realize I was wasting my time.
