Firefly: Serenity

"As is often true of fantasy/sci-fi themed shows that get cancelled, the rabid fans of Firefly, who'd dubbed themselves "brown-coats," protested the network's decision. They also bought DVDs, lots of them, selling three times the amount they were supposed to sell; there was clearly a market. Universal cagily picked up on this and gave the series a second chance, this time as a feature film.

In Firefly a band of mercenaries survive on the fringes of civilized space. It is five hundred years in the future and the galaxy has just ended a brutal civil war. The captain of the ship "Serenity" is Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds and he was on the losing side of the conflict against the totalitarian pan-galactic government called the Alliance, which sought unification and harmony among all the planets, at any cost.

Also on the losing side was Mal's second-in-command, Zoe, who owes the captain her life, which she repays with fierce loyalty. Zoe's husband, Wash, is more laid-back, even though he has the stressful task of piloting the ship. Kaylee is the perpetually vivacious, engineer and Jayne is a mercenary with very little loyalty to anyone at all. On the show they ended up bringing along a brother and sister in their travels, Simon, a secretive doctor and River, a psychically gifted young woman whose physical and mental talents are such that she is considered a dangerous weapon and a threat to the stability of the galaxy.

Serenity starts out with a little back-story as Simon frees River from an Alliance deprogramming center. Almost immediately they are being tracked by the relentless Alliance Operative. He will stop at nothing to get River back, since it turns out holding a psychic in a secret naughty government installation could be a bad idea... she somehow knows some deep, dark governmental secret, though neither she nor Simon has a clue as to what it may be.

The Operative is so ruthless that it becomes evident that harboring River has become prohibitively expensive for the crew of "Serenity." As they scrape by, from friendly port to friendly port, they realize they may have to go to the edge of the known universe, through the vicious race of cannibals called the Reavers, to get themselves out of their current jamb. All of this is thrown at the uninitiated viewer as if they should know what a Reaver is, or that the next port they're going to is safe for them. The interplay among the characters feels comfortable, as small reactions tell of entire histories (or at least a season's worth of association).Part of the fun is connecting the dots."

-IMDB review, slightly edited and paraphrased.

I was a huge Firefly fan, and between Firefly, Futurama, and Family Guy, I'm convinced Fox couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag. Such complete bungling of some of the best shows on TV, while they push another season of the latest Paris Hilton shit on us... sigh, I have to go take my blood pressure medicine.

Go see the movie. It's witty and cool. River kicks a whole lot of ass.