I know it’s not a genre show, but Castle has it’s genre moments, including this shiny montage of Firefly references.

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One of the most anticipated panels at Comic Con this year was the Firefly 10th Anniversary Reunion panel. The reaction from fans, ten years after only a 14 episode run, is hardly surprising for fans of the show…but still no less impressive.

Check it out after the break…

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I’m betting the word ‘Firefly’ made you at least take a look at this post. And since you’re reading this on SF Signal (the purveyors of all fine things science fiction) I’m betting you like Firefly. A lot. You may even have a browncoat to your, but you’ve definitely seen Joss Whedon’s truncated masterpiece several times. You may have even tried to introduce Firefly to that special someone in your life. But what happens when that someone doesn’t like Firefly (I know! Crazy right?)? Singer/songwriter Mikey Mason takes drastic action. Was he in the right? You decide!

We SciFi fans know what we love, and we love Firefly. Firefly, the short-lived, much obsessed about, canceled-before-it-had-a-chance television show, is still very much on the minds of fans and, oddly enough, the actors who were involved in the show.

The Science Channel has picked up Firefly for broadcast, the first time since 2008 that the show has been on basic cable. As part of the buildup to the shows premiere on March 6th, Fillion has done an interview with Entertainment Weekly that has stirred up Browncoats everywhere.

Nathan Fillion, who portrayed Serenity captain and Browncoat Malcom Reynolds, still thinks about the show. It’s his “what I would do if I won the lottery”. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said:

“If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to ‘Firefly,’ make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet.”

Firefly‘s loyal fan base – the Browncoats, have started to mobilize. Fillion is the head of that army (officially or unofficially), so when he speaks, they listen.

There’s already a campaign to help The Science Channel get the best rating possible for airing reruns of the show, and now some fans have registered HelpNathanBuyFirefly.com.

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With Fox moving Fringe to Friday’s ala Firefly, this Fringe/Firefly mashup seems appropriate.

[via Great White Snark]

Over at Gizmodo, Joseph Shoer, Ph.D candidate in aerospace engineering (fun fact: I had two separate college roommates who were both in A.E., at the same time!, until they weren’t) wrote this incredibly interesting and lengthy article on the physics of space battles, focusing on what a real battle might look like, what weapons, both offensive and defensive, might be deployed and what types of ships might be used. There’s not much on tactics, but you wouldn’t expect and aerospace engineer to be too up on that sort of thing; however, given the awesomeness of the rest of the article I’ll let that slide.

This article got me to thinking about how space battles are portrayed in science fiction on TV and film. Most of what we see is the Star Trek style battle with what would be capital ships apparently within visual range slugging it out toe-to-toe, waiting for someone’s shields to die first. There is also an amazing amount of huge spaceships zooming around and banking (in space? WTF? Banking against what?) all over the place. Unrealistic and, really, unimaginatively shot.

I then tried to think of cool space battles I had seen and I couldn’t really think of many. What I did come up with was a list of shows/films that did something a bit different:

Babylon 5 – One of my favorite SF shows of all time (#1) really changed the way space battles were shown on TV. First, the Starfurys actually used all three dimensions intelligently to maneuver around in and the big capital ships didn’t have shields and used centrifugal force to generate gravity (but turned off in battle) and things looked really different from the Trek styles. Lots of fighters zipping around and harassing the bigger ships. Toss in the Vorlons and Shadows with their ‘rip your @$$ in two’ beam weapons and things could get really interesting. The visual style was there, even if I wanted more! bigger! battles. Here’s a taste:

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[via ComicMix]

Most of us around here really like Joss Whedon’s Firefly series. But one thing that always bugged me was that I never had a good handle on how The Verse looked, physically. Considering an apparent lack of FTL drives, multiple star systems seemed right out, with all the ‘planets’ seemingly existing in one system. Well, according to the Firefly Ship Works, The Verse does indeed cover multiple star systems, and they have created a wonderful, full color map of The Verse that details all the planets and locations from Whedon’s Firefly universe. Just check out part of the map below:

This is just part of the map, check out their webpage for more images. I really, really like the way this map has been presented. The colors are fabulous and seem to fit the show very well, as does their choice of font and use of Chinese characters. The only quibble I have, having not seen the full size map nor a really high res image, is that the map may be informationaly dense. But dang, it sure looks sweet. If you’re going to be at the Creation Serenity Convention in Burbank next week, you can buy your own map: $27 for a fold-out roadmap version or $35 for hand rolled poster version, which would look mighty nice in an office cube. I’m just sayin’…

This is why I love the Internets…

A while back, seemingly the result of a seriously lapse in editorial judgment or a drunken binge gone horribly wrong, I posted the lyrics to “Summer Glau (Makes Me Feel Fine),” mostly as a way of destroying the association between her name and the Seals and Crofts song, “Summer Breeze”. (It didn’t work.)

Along comes John Anealio, musician and proprietor of Sci Fi Songs, a website where John collects his recordings inspired by the works of speculative fiction. John has taken my Summer Glau lyrics and set them to an original tune of his own.

The result is “Summer Glau“. It’s simply awesome and you must go and listen to it.

Well done, John!

During the TV/movie writers strike a few months back, Joss Whedon (creator of such hits as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly) and his friends decided to do something different. They felt they wanted to give this new-fangled internet a try and use it to produce content they could actually make money on without involving traditional producers. The result, is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a 3-part web-series that was released for free on drhorrible.com for a short few hours.

JP commented on it last week, and unfortunately at the time the first act went up the server was overloaded. Unfortunately, it slipped out of my mind at that point. But thanks to one of the SFSignal crew (props Kevin!) I was reminded of it late Saturday and watched the entire 45min yesterday.

The show stars “TV’s Doogie Houser” Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, Nathan Fillion as his arch-nemesis Captain Hammer, and Felicia Day as the love-interest Penny. My guess is these folks that Joss has worked with before were willing to give his alternate business model a try and that’s who is on the project (witness the crew contains his 2 brothers as well.) I applaud their attempt and I hope it works out for them because I have to see more.

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And so, sadly, we come to the end of Firefly, with perhaps the best episode of the season, “Objects in Space”. Jubal Early has to be the most interesting bounty hunter ever created (sorry Boba), certainly the most philosophically read. Add in some sneaky River action and you’ve got a great ep.

So, comments from our readers on the Sunday Cinema feature. Did you like it? Not? Would you like to see more? Hulu has quite a bit of SF fare to post.

All you need to know about this episode can be summed up in one word: hookers. You want more? OK: Space hookers.

And a bad guy who rides around in a really cheesy hovercraft.

Ever have one of those day where your buddy sends you his corpse in the mail? Me neither. But Mal has. Find out what he does in “The Message”.

Since we didn’t post any Firefly episodes last weekend, we’re making it up to you today with a double feature, of “War Stories” and “Trash” (where I believe, if you’re so inclined, you can gaze upon Mal’s posterior).

Remember to share and enjoy!

More after the jump.

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The number of episodes remaining keeps getting smaller, but we keep bringing them to you. This time it’s ‘Ariel’, where Simon smuggles River into a hospital to figure out what happened to her.

Enjoy.

Ah, Valentines Day…a time when people can stop and appreciate those they love the most. Or, in the case of geeks like us, a time to think about fictional couples in science fiction…

6. Leeloo and Corbin Dallas (The Fifth Element)
   The romantic themes of “true love conquers all” is still alive and well in the future. Of course it helps if you fall in love with a hot, scantily-clad, god-like being. Mooltipass indeed. (No we didn’t show a picture of both Leeloo and Corbin — see aforementioned note about “hot, scantily-clad, god-like being”.)
5. Fry and Bender (Futurama)
   Futurama shows us that metal and flesh can be a great combination. And who said relationships have to be between two humans? Fry always wanted to get with the one-eyed Leela, but he always wound up with Bender. In the end.
4. Princess Leia and Han Solo (Star Wars)
   Their on-screen chemistry was top notch…especially considering Lucas was suggesting Leia hook up with her brother. Ewww. Harrison Ford’s “I know” ad-lib in The Empire Strikes Back has become the stuff of legend. Geek legend, to be sure, but legend nonetheless.
3. John Perry and Jane Sagan (The Last Colony by John Scalzi)
   Scalzi’s old-guy-in-young-man’s-body protagonist John Perry is quick to quip and immediately likable. It’s almost enough to be jealous of his independent wife, Jane, who gets to have him…jealous in a non-touching man-love sort of way. Jane can hold her own against any adversary. Together they support and respect each other in a picture-perfect relationship that manages to stay realistic.
2. Zoe and Wash (Firefly/Serenity)
   Tough female characters are hot, and I don’t mean “all the rage”. The fact that this one falls for the class clown fulfills the fantasies of every geek who thinks he’s funny, which is to say, every geek. Those archetypes would be enough, but throw in Joss Whedon’s dialogue and you have a ménage a tois of brilliance.
1. R2D2 and C3PO (Star Wars)
   Laurel and Hardy, Fred and Ginger, Roy and Trigger. You can’t think of one without the other. For SF fans, you can’t think of R2 without thinking of C3PO. They’re like a bickering couple that’s been together forever, but can’t live apart. They just happen to be robots. And I think we all know who wears the pants in this relationship. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I know a lot of people like this one, but I always found the last minute rescue of Mal to be completely unbelievable. Just how many ships are there in the depths of space for the crew to come across and ask for help?

It smacks of a deus ex machina and spoils the episode somewhat for me.

Ah yes, ‘Jaynestown’, what’s not to like? And who can forget the Ballad of Jayne Cobb.

Today we have very interesting episode, “Our Mrs. Reynolds”, wherein Mal winds up getting married to a mystery woman. Hilarity and angst ensue! Of course, this entire episode is just a setup for seeing a nekkid Mal in a later episode.

Four episodes down, ten to go. Today we present “Safe”, where Simon and River are kidnapped by locals who really, really need a doctor. But not a programmed killing machine.

Despite my lackluster viewing experience with The Sarah Connor Chronicles, one bright spots remains: Summer Glau. Tough female characters are irresistible, and Summer plays them well. (See also: Serenity.)

Yet whenever I hear her name, I don’t think of the elfin beauty or the kick-@$$ karate moves…I think of that damn 70′s song from Seals and Crofts called “Summer Breeze“. So, to hopefully purge me of this bizarre association, I offer this:

Summer Glau (Makes Me Feel Fine)

(Sung to the tune of “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Crofts)

See the girl all curled up in the cryo

Not a stitch of clothing found in sight

Mal is ticked off wond’rin’ ’bout the Doctor

I don’t care, I’m feeling alright

CHORUS

Summer Glau, makes me feel fine

I can’t shake her image from my mind

Summer Glau, makes me feel fine

I can’t shake her image from my mind

See the tree branch lying on the cold deck

She picks it up, maybe thinks it’s fun

Snap us back to now, see the worried crew

Don’t look now but River’s got a gun

[CHORUS]

Followed by agents, their hands painted blue

They have no idea just what she can do

‘Cause when she sees what’s playing on TV

Fruity Oaty Bars, now it’s time to kick @$$

See the angel punching and a kickin’

Not really sure what she could do

She’s a weapon, a source of destruction

She’s a vital part of Malcolm’s crew

[CHORUS]