Anyone here catch the premier of Firefly? It's supposed to be "big budget sci fi" on Fox, but it's from the same guy who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was just wondering how "Bad" it is, if it's Bad at all, and whether it's worth watching.

I found Firefly a good show to watch. Its a sci-fi/western blend. This first episode had our "heroes" robbing a train. That's right. A train. Great stuff. Wish I had taped it.

Science wise:
One amazing thing: the spaceships did NOT make noise in space!
There appears to be gravity control.
The space ships apparently use some sort of jet engine while in atmosphere and some other sort of glowy drive in space.

The intro is: "After the earth was used up we found a new solar system and hundreds of new earths were terraformed and colonized. The central planets formed the alliance and decided all the planets had to join under their rule."

Interesting. Hundreds of new earths in one system? What are the chances of that? I suspect, having watched Joss Whedon's shows before, that this was intentional.

I liked the show though. I shall watch it again.

I watched it as well and it wasn't half bad. I especially like the part where he kicked the bad guy into the engine intake.

I like it too. I didn't really watch for Bad Astronomy (I don't know enough to do it justice) but I though the show was good.

And kicking the guy into the intake was really cool.

"I will find you and hunt you down and kill you..."

<kick><foomph>

Bring out the next henchman!

I loved it, the western flavor was refreshing for a sci fi show. The weapons were cool, all had a western six shooter feel to them, but they were obviously much higher tech then that, I think they did a good job with the western flavor but still leaving it futuristic.

I missed the start, but what I saw, there wasn't much bad astronomy, but then again I've learned to watch sci-fi without looking for astronomy [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

The train was cool too. It looked like it was a mag-lev type thing.

I was really impressed with the whole thing.

What time slot was this sci-fi/western saddled with?

Sorry, I don't watch enough TV. Since I'm a big fan of Buffy, I'll make an exception for this show.
[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Fridays at 8 pm.

I used to be a Buffy fan, but the last few seasons haven't appealed to me as much.

It was on on Friday, 8PM on Fox.

Oops, forgot to say--it's on Fox.

That's 8pm Eastern on Fox.

http://www.fox.com/firefly/

Cute show and definitely a Western flair. Check out some of the titles of upcoming episodes.

One of the Alliance characters made a statement about travelling "70 million miles to get here" and not wanting to waste the trip. 500 years in the future, in a galaxy-wide alliance, wouldn't that be more like a trip to the corner 7-11?

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Thanks, y'all. I'll try to catch it.

The NY Times magazine had an article on Firefly and Joss Whedon. (Free registration required.) Kinda of interesting.

8PM Pacific too, when not preempted by baseball.

I found it pretty fun.

Doesn't seem they had much time for any BA, since most of the story was on the ground.

If I recall correctly they used some sort of "gravity drive" for interstellar travel, but they didn't really mention relative time/distance or how it worked (guess the writers haven't had much time to figure that part out themselves... BA I smell a consulting job). And I thought they implied that all those terraformed worlds were in many different systems...

Interesting plot device though with the terraforming. Nice how they explained that sometimes can't predict every possible result of a new technology in alien environments.

The follow-on show "John Doe" was interesting as well.

Not bad Astonomy, but some bad reality in John Doe (I only watched a couple minutes, but I turned it off because of this)... he spits out a string in binary and a kid goes "the source code for DOS!" or something of the like. DOS wasn't written in binary, so giving the source code in binary would be... well, stupid. Not to mention taking a rather extended period of time. 64K may be small now, but actually saying that many 0's and 1's would take a looong time.

I'm not sure if they explained later on, but if the guy knows everything why not ask him to write out a unified field theory? Or cure cancer? Or rewrite the lost works of various ancient philosophers? I suppose they can get around those by arguing he only knows what people currently know (they might have done so already).

Anyway, the ads seemed to imply he was going to pull the old "psychic detective" schtick and help solve murders. While a nice enough career path, I'd have to imagine that there are some rather more broad applications to put the entire knowledge of the human race toward.

Firefly was good enough that I'll try and watch the second episode. I was amused by the "old west meets sci fi" flavor, and I'm thinking they'll probably be more scientifically accurate than most of those shows seem to be.

btw, I think modern jet engines get fouled (or fowled) up when birds get sucked in... I'd have to imagine that a human body would make a real mess out of one. Even in the future. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Ok, you've convinced me, all of you--I'll have to watch it. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Er, I'll have to *tape* it and watch it later... Friday at 8:00 is a bad time, even for someone with only a marginal social life. What were they thinking? Argh!

I saw it, but wasn't too impressed. My main impression of the show was that whoever came up with it has been watching an awful lot of Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star.

Or - write a decent TV show? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I didn't see the show, but with modern turbofan engines, anything of decent mass going through the intake will snap off a whole bunch of the fanblades, unbalance the rest of the fan, and do bad things to the actual burners.

Because of the strict tolerances for fanblades, they're made of rigid alloys to prevent wobble at high RPM. This makes them brittle and fairly easy to break, as metals go.

However, who's to say that In The Future[TM], someone won't have gotten around the rigidity/brittleness tradeoff in materials science? Reaching, I know, but nice to think about.

I saw a video once where a maintenance worker accidentally go sucked into an intake of a fighter jet. Amazingly he came out the other end with just a few scratches. I never heard how the engine ended up though.

Yeah, that part bugged me too, it would take forever. And how would the kid know he had all those 0s and 1s memorized and didn't just rattle a bunch off.
And is his knowledge updated or something? He later makes a killing on indonesian rice futures or some dang thing, and the stock broker asks him what crystal ball he used, he says something like "no crystal ball, just an intant knowledge of the indonesian stock market". Those things change moment to moment...

I did end up watching more of John Doe then you, but I bailed after 30 minutes.

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"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

More 'John Doe'...

Well, I liked it. Or at least I liked it enough to keep watching it for a while. There are a few thoughts though.

1. The rules for the 'knowledge memory' thing needs to be defined pretty darn pronto or else it will turn into a cheep trick. The pilot seems to hint that he has access to "public" knowledge, i.e. knowledge that the average citizen with no security clearance could aquire if they knew where to look. After all, he had to hack into the conviction records for the kidnapper.
2. They will have to keep the show from devolving into "Gilligan's Memory" where each show he is just moments away from finding out all the answers and then loses them. This sort of crap is just to &%^*ing frustrating to watch!

Well, I know I'll be watching Firefly and John Doe tonight [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"