Browncoats, unite!

Roderick T. Long has joined the growing number of libertarian Browncoats, those diehard fans of Joss Whedon's all-too-brief, half-season Firefly TV series from Fall 2002. Long admits to having missed the show entirely during its original run (as did most everybody), but so many people encouraged him to watch it that he bought the small box of DVDs and became a new convert.

I've written about Firefly many times on this blog, so I'll let Mr. Long do the talking for a moment:

"What's it about? Well, its main 'gimmick' is that it's a Western set in space, but that doesn't tell you much. Imagine the Star Wars universe but grittier, with lower tech, better dialogue, and no aliens, plus the Rebellion is over and it failed. A more embittered Han Solo is still flying his second-hand spaceship around the Outer Rim, taking ethically questionable assignments, dodging bullets, and trying to avoid imperial entanglements. Oh yeah, and cursing in Chinese. Plus Princess Leia is a psychotic teenager who can kill you with her brain.

"Where Firefly shines is precisely where Star Wars doesn't -- in character and dialogue. The show also has a strong, albiet implicit, libertarian edge to it. (Switching analogies, the creepy bureaucratic Central Alliance is what the Federation in Star Trek would really be like.)"

Of course, as I've mentioned before, the entire Firefly cast returns this coming September 30 in a full-blown theatrical movie titled Serenity (which prompted the poster above). You can't always kill a good thing.