It’s a mystery to me why good shows get cancelled on television and bad ones seem to go on achingly forever. Friends and ER have been on the air longer than I care to remember, but Arrested Development, Deadwood and Firefly get cancelled at their peaks. Firefly didn’t even make it through an entire season. In Deadwood’s case, HBO couldn’t afford another season of the $60 million show. I get it. But, Fox’s Arrested Development and Firefly were the network’s best shows then and for a long, long time. But viewers who “think and watch” are so much fewer than those who’d rather watch (without thinking) the watered down drivel of Friends and ER. What’s the world coming to? Well, we have our memories, no?

One of the best Science Fiction series on television was cancelled not even half way through its first season. Firefly was for me one of those science fiction series that convinced me that all TV wasn’t crap and all science fiction was not wholly too unbelievable to even entertain the possibility of a future where we could live on any other planet but earth.

I often imagine what the world might be like if today were the future. If earth finally became unliveable. What we would really be like in the future. Would we be even stupider than we are now? It’s the reason I like science fiction. When I was younger, I never understood the appeal though I remember watching Sliders with Jerry O’Connell. I loved that show until it became popular and bastardized. Wade (the main female character) started wearing tight clothes and too much makeup and the guys were all done up like man-equins.

Years later I discovered Matrix, which blew my mind. Then I finally started reading science fiction, well only one author really. Well, only one series, really. The robot series by Asimov. The Robots of Dawn also blew my mind. Didn’t know science fiction then, in the 80s, was so smart and progressive. Then I discovered Firefly sometime last year and was as delightfully surprised.

Is it the setting? A future where US and China are the only remaining government. We curse in Chinese. We all regress to simpler times, namely the old, wild west. Some of us regress to even simpler times, when barbarianism was the way to go, no laws, no rules, no human restraint. Spaceships are our homes and the galaxy (and perhaps the universe) is our world.

Is it the characters? An abrasive captain, a sarcastic driver, a right-hand woman warrior, a plucky woman mechanic, a companion (prostitute), a priest, a pre-cog, and a doctor.

My first impression of Firefly was confusion. I hadn’t the foggiest notion what the hell I was watching. But, I was being thoroughly satisfied. There weren’t half naked women in silver aluminum clothing running about, or men in silver spandex chasing them. There weren’t any unconvincing aliens with two heads, no arms and big orbs for eyes. People were speaking more than “American” curing in Chinese. I saw more than white faces in the future.

When all is said and done, the future will have virtually no bounds in code of conduct, in dress, in where we are and what we speak, and how we see “the world”. In many, too many, science fiction shows and films, women are still the second-class, everyone’s very white, the masters of the universe are Americans and so not much has changed.

Granted, Firefly could push the envelope more, but really, for a FOX television show set in the future where people curse in Chinese and regress to the wild west, the envelope’s at the edge. If Firelfy were on a cable network, I’d expect the envelope to fall off the edge.