Firefly to fly again! (sort of)

Nathan Fillion seems to have caused quite a stir on the web with his comments this last week when he told Entertainment Weekly, in an interview,  that he would gladly dust off his gun and brown coat to play Captain Malcom "Mal" Reynolds again if asked.

To quote the interview, '"It was my favorite job ever. What wasn’t great about it? I got to wear a low-slung holster. I got to ride horses. I got to have a spaceship. I got to act mean and curmudgeonly. [Creator Joss Whedon] is really good at kicking characters in the nuts so the other characters would have laughs at my expense and that was great too."

So where did this all come from? Well, die hard Browncoats have been asking for this for a long time (myself included), but mostly it's because Firefly is coming back to cable.  The Science Channel will begin running the series starting March 6th. In addition to running in full...it will be run in its original order as was intended by creator and writer Joss Wheadon.

As a fan of the series I would love to see it return with new episodes. But, I'm not sure it would work for a couple of reasons.

First the majority of the cast is tied up with other TV projects:

Nathan Fillion -- Castle
Gina Torres -- Huge
Alan Tudyk -- free (legally speaking..not so sure)
Morena Baccarin -- V
Adam Baldwin -- Chuck
Jewel Staite -- Free (But shouldn't be!)
Sean Maher --  Free
Summe Glauu -- Cape (but may be free soon)
Ron Glass -- free

So...essentially you have Wash, Kaylee, Simon and Book free to come back for a new show without having to put off other shows.

The second problem is that of those four who currently have no other commitments...two of the characters died in the movie Serenity (Wash and Book). I guess you could always set the new series between the final episode of the previous show and the events of the movie. But, filler stories like that seem to always lack something since you know the ultimate ending of the characters arc. On the other hand you do have the vast majority of the characters that survived and it could be interesting to see where they go after the loses they suffered during Serenity.

As much as the fan boy in me would love to see Serenity fly again with the old crew on board I think it may be something that is best left the way it is. A great series tragically killed before its time. A show that had a solid cast and crew who produced top notch story telling, only to be grounded by a network that is notorious for having no patience with shows.

Even if FOX did admit they made a mistake and offer to bring the show back. Even if you could get the whole cast and crew back together. Even if the stars aligned and all this happened....there's no guarantee that we would all wouldn't have our hearts broken again! Plus, with the limitation set forth in the movie we wouldn't get to see a whole lot of growth from the characters.

Inara and Mal would still be lying about their feelings. Wash and Zoe would still be married (granted you could throw a twist into that in true Joss fashion), River would still be crazy, Kaylee and Simon would still be dancing around their feelings, Jayne --- would still be Jayne, and we would never get to find out what Shepard Book's story really was. Which would box you into how the characters could grow.

Sure you could give them many more years of crazy space adventures. Adventures that would be fun, funny, heart breaking and heart warming. But, in the end you would realize that there is only so far you can take the character growth without jumping past the events of the movie.

If there was an honest to God ground swell to raise cash to buy the rights to the show from FOX so Fillion and pals could make it themselves...I'd throw in a few buck. Or, better yet...plan a vacation around their shooting schedule to help lend a hand! 

Currently there is one main place that you can show your support for Fillion and the crew of serentity...on Facebook on Twitter there is no set account..but you will see the hash tags everywhere...even a few of the writers have said they would jump on board to help out!

Fingers crossed that we will soon see more futuristic Space Cowboy adventures of a ragtag bunch of strangers who turn out like any other TV family. They lived, loved, fought, lost, triumphed and cursed in Chinese all on one of the coolest spaceships to hit TV.