Episode 87: The Big Damn Podcast (Firefly/Serenity with Monia Ali)
Monia, the Exiled Fan, returns for the third part of our exploration of the Joss Whedon-verse. This episode focuses on Firefly (2002) and the movie Serenity (2005).
This was a fun episode for me because I was involved in the fandom for Firefly during its heyday and participated in the build-up to the release of the movie Serenity. As I mention in the episode, I was even on a couple of Yahoo Groups lists for “Browncoats” aka fans of Firefly and reading through some of the saved emails brought back memories of the era. It was really a different time in fandom 20 years ago. The fan-run podcast we discuss in the episode was called “The Signal” and although it is no longer active, the archives are thankfully kept and maintained. Anyone interested in fandom research should find it an interesting listen—especially the section on “Guerilla marketing,” which introduces the kinds of fan behaviors that are now extremely common in fandoms like… One Direction and K-Pop. Fans were encouraged to “convert” new fans through the buying of multiple copies of the DVD Boxset and to advertise the show in their everyday lives, like a fan army of evangelists. I was too broke at the time to have afforded not one but two DVD Boxsets but I’m sure I tried to recommend the series wherever I could.
Firefly died a tragic death via network indifference but was brought back to life like Frankenstein’s monster through the film Serenity in 2005. As we discuss in the episode, the film performed poorly. A combination perhaps of the current fallow period for Space Opera and the experiment of leaving the marketing almost completely up to the fans. Despite the fan agitation for a trilogy, there was no more content and Joss Whedon moved onto bigger things—like Marvel. As we discuss in the episode, it’s possible Joss Whedon used the film as an audition for the lucrative world of Capeshit, at least that is how the film read to me in 2025.
One of the most interesting threads of picking Firefly back up in 2025, is that my watching it coincided with my watching the final season of The Righteous Gemstones, the season premiere of which was a flashback to… the American Civil War.
Joss had said that he was inspired to create the Firefly ‘Verse after reading Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels (1974), which is essentially a novelization of the battle at Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Personally, I suspect that the blockbuster Ken Burns documentary on the American Civil War, which premiered in 1990, might also have been an influence. I also re-watched that before re-watching Firefly and the documentary holds up very well. I highly recommend it to anyone who finds themselves interested in the American Civil War but at a loss at where to begin with the thousands and thousands of books on the topic.
The late Shelby Foote, in that documentary, tells the story of the Confederate soldier much better than I could.
As I say in the episode, the American Civil War remains an incredibly fraught topic in the United States and perhaps because of that (and the lack of appeal to the almighty Global Audience), it had fallen out of fashion with Hollywood in recent years, which is why I was so pleased to see it return with The Righteous Gemstones. And for those looking for more American media that captures the same outlaw frontier quality as Firefly, Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) is excellent.
I’ll also throw in a plug here for a few of my favorite books on the American Civil War for those looking to dip a toe in. The late Tony Horwitz wrote two excellent books on the era, one on John Brown, the abolitionist martyr, and another on the afterlife of the Civil War in then-contemporary America (Don’t Farb out, man!). Drew Gilpin Faust’s book on death and the Civil War was also excellent. And the book I mention in the episode is Rebel Yell by S.C. Gwynne. John Jake’s soapy epic North and South is also a fun read, for all your melodrama needs.
Some of the things we discuss in the episode are:
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” by the Band is one of my favorite songs and always reminds me of Mal Reynolds in Firefly. Perhaps only a Canadian songwriter could have captured that Southern pathos so perfectly.
“Joss Whedon Is My Master Now” was a popular T-shirt in this era. Unless you were there in the thick of it, it’s hard to imagine just how beloved and influential he was with a certain segment of the nerd community. The hero worship was real.
The afterlife of Firefly was really a product of the TV on DVD era, the same as Freaks and Geeks.
For more on… THE MESSAGE, you can check out The Critical Drinker’s Firefly and Serenity coverage.
Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman script eventually leaked and was the subject of much online derision. Who is to say how it would have been received in 2006, though. I also misremembered the date of the book on Wonder Woman, which came out in 2014. At that point, I likely would have associated Whedon with Wonder Woman’s creator William Moulton Marston. Whedon was also attached to Batgirl at one point. Yay, feminism!
I always saw Kaylee as something of a “Farmers Daughter” and it looks like TV Tropes agrees with me. (Ado Annie is a legend.)
Resident Alien is a great show! Monia and I both belong to the Alan Tudyk Fan Club.
Joss Whedon was an outspoken capital A “Atheist” of a type that you don’t see much anymore. Perhaps best exemplified by Penn Jillette’s Church of Bacon.
“I’ll be in my bunk.” is one of the many annoying memes associated with Firefly fans and is a prime example of why normies were turned off from the show by the fandom.
Sean Maher, who played Simon, would come out as gay in 2011. He and Jewel, who played Kaylee, are very cute BFFs in real life—perhaps one reason why they had zero sexual chemistry in Firefly and Serenity.
David Krumholtz is great (shout out Freaks and Geeks!) and I don’t blame him for his lame character in Serenity.
Joss Whedon loves Kitty Pryde.
Ben Edlund created The Tick, which I loved. I find big dumb guys funny, go figure!
Farscape takes a little while to ramp up but it’s great!