I’ve just got back from the Buffy con in Blackpool, which I’ll blog about as soon as I can get this scanner working for the photo’s of me hugging famous folk.

When I booked my ticket it was just a Buffy con, but over time they added extra guests, and it became a joint Buffy and Firefly con.

I’d heard a lot about Firefly but had never actually seen it. It was cancelled mid-season in America after 14 episodes, and was shown here only on the Sci-Fi channel, which I never saw.

But as I was due to meet the stars, and the dvd set came out a couple of weeks ago, I bought it and watched it through.. and it was great, it was really great.

I’m not into my Sci-Fi really, I don’t watch Star Trek any more, never bothered with Farscape or Babylon 5 etc, and this is just another space opera .. shouldn’t be my type of thing… but ..

It’s a Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel) show. One of Joss’s great strengths is in the characters he creates, and the relationships he builds between them. It doesn’t matter whether it’s set in a California High School, LA, or outer space, what’s really memorable about his shows are how you feel about the characters. How gutted you are when one dies, or loses an eye (poor Xander).

And in Firefly, even after only a few episodes, the characters are great. The dialogue was full of memorable moments. There were hints dropped at big secrets to be revealed throughout the storyline … all trademarks of Joss … and they cancelled it 🙁

I watched the final episode on the dvd … and … that was it, it just stopped, there was no closure, no storylines tied up, they just stopped filming halfway through an episode, and it ended.

This happened in 2002, it’s not new news, but was new to me as I’ve only just seen the show, but from what I’ve read, Firefly seems to be widely regarded as a great show unjustly cut down. But there was a small hope …

Joss has written a Firefly movie called Serenity, which actually goes into production in a few weeks. It will be cool to see Firefly on the big screen … but that’s still just 90 minutes of Firefly, instead of 45 minutes every week, so the hope was that the movie would be a success and lead to a new series being commissioned.

But no, talking to the Firefly stars this weekend, that can’t happen, and for stupid reasons.

Fox, the network who cancelled the show because they didn’t want it, have sold the rights to Universal, who are making the movie. But one of the terms of the contract was that it can NOT be made into a tv series..

…

Fox didn’t want the show .. but are making sure nobody else can pick it up either … wtf! why do that? 🙁

On a brighter note, we found out something this weekend that we’re not supposed to know .. IF the movie is succesful, it’s actually planned to be a movie trilogy .. which is kinda cool.

But the chance of Firefly back on our tv screens is pretty much nil … bloody networks 🙁