Reception
Critical Response
Many reviews focused on the show's fusion of Wild West and outer space motifs. TV Guide's Matt Roush, for instance, called the show "oddball" and "offbeat", and noted how literally the series took the metaphor of space operas as Westerns. Roush opined that the shift from space travel to horseback was "jarring", but that once he got used to this, he found the characters cleverly conceived, and the writing a crisp balance of action, tension and humor. Several reviewers, however, criticized the show's setting; Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle felt that the melding of the western and science fiction genres was a "forced hodgepodge of two alarmingly opposite genres just for the sake of being different" and called the series a "vast disappointment", and Carina Chocano of Salon.com said that while the "space as Wild West" metaphor is fairly redundant, neither genre connected to the present. Emily Nussbaum of the New York Times, reviewing the DVD set, noted that the program featured "an oddball genre mix that might have doomed it from the beginning: it was a character-rich sci-fi western comedy-drama with existential underpinnings, a hard sell during a season dominated by Joe Millionaire".
The Boston Globe described Firefly as a "wonderful, imaginative mess brimming with possibility". The review further notes the difference between the new series and other programs was that those shows "burst onto the scene with slick pilots and quickly deteriorate into mediocrity... Firefly is on the opposite creative journey." Jason Snell called the show one of the best on television, and one "with the most potential for future brilliance".
Reviewers also compared Firefly to Whedon's other series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Chocano noted that the series lacks the psychological tension of Buffy, and suggests that this might be attributable to the episodes being aired out of order. MSN, on the other hand, pointed out that after viewing the DVD boxed set it was easy to see why the program had attracted many die-hard fans. "All of Whedon's fingerprints are there: the witty dialogue, the quirky premises and dark exploration of human fallacy that made Buffy brilliant found their way to this space drama".
Fandom
Firefly generated a loyal base of fans during its three-month original broadcast run on Fox in late 2002. The initial gathering point where they met was the Internet message board started by Fox for viewer commentary on Firefly. This site, now affectionately known as the Original Board or OB, is still in active use a decade later. These fans, self-styled Browncoats, used the OB to organize and try to save the series from being canceled by Fox only three months after its debut. Their efforts included raising money for an ad in Variety magazine and a postcard writing campaign to UPN. While unsuccessful in finding a network that would continue the show, their support led to a release of the series on DVD in December 2003. A subsequent fan campaign then raised over $14,000 in donations to have a purchased Firefly DVD set placed aboard 250 U.S. Navy ships by April 2004 for recreational viewing by their crews.
These and other continuing fan activities eventually persuaded Universal Studios to produce a feature film, Serenity. (The title of Serenity was chosen, according to Whedon, because Fox still owned the rights to the name 'Firefly'). Numerous early screenings of rough film cuts were held for existing fans starting in May 2005 as an attempt to create a buzz to increase ticket sales when the final film cut was released widely on September 30, 2005. The film was not as commercially successful as fans had hoped, opening at number two and making only $40 million worldwide during its initial theatrical release.
On June 23, 2006, fans organized the first worldwide charity screenings of Serenity in 47 cities, dubbed as Can't Stop the Serenity or CSTS, an homage to the movie's tagline, "Can't stop the signal". The event raised over $65,000 for Whedon's favorite charity, Equality Now. In 2007, $106,000 was raised; in 2008, $107,219; and in 2009, $137,331.
Another campaign on June 23, 2006 referred to the date as Serenity Day, on which fans bought—and got others to buy—copies of the Serenity and Firefly DVDs in hopes of convincing Universal that creating a sequel was a good business decision. On this day, Serenity and Firefly were ranked second and third, respectively, on the DVD Best Sellers list. The dates for both campaigns were chosen because it is series creator Joss Whedon's birthday.
In July 2006, a fan-made documentary was released, titled Done the Impossible, and is commercially available. The documentary relates the story of the fans and how the show has affected them, and features interviews with Whedon and various cast members. Part of the DVD proceeds are donated to Equality Now.
NASA Browncoat astronaut Steven Swanson took the Firefly and Serenity DVDs with him on Space Shuttle Atlantis' STS-117 mission in June 2007. The DVDs were added to the media collection on the International Space Station as entertainment for the station's crews.
A fan-made, not-for-profit, unofficial sequel to Serenity, titled Browncoats: Redemption, premiered at Dragon*Con 2010 on September 4, 2010. According to the film's website, Whedon gave "his blessing" to the project. The film was sold on DVD and Blu-ray at the film's website, with all proceeds being distributed among five charities. The film was also screened at various science-fiction conventions across the United States, with admission receipts similarly being donated. All sales ended on September 1, 2011, one year after its premiere, with total revenues exceeding $115,000. Community discussion continues regarding screenings in conjunction with the Can't Stop the Serenity project.
Cult Status
In 2005, New Scientist magazine's website held an internet poll to find "The World's Best Space Sci-Fi Ever". Firefly came in first place, with its cinematic follow-up Serenity in second. In 2012, Entertainment Weekly listed the show at No. 11 in the "25 Best Cult TV Shows from the Past 25 Years," commenting, "as it often does, martyrdom has only enhanced its legend."
Brad Wright, co-creator of Stargate SG-1 has said that the 200th episode of SG-1, is "A little kiss to Serenity and Firefly, which was possibly one of the best canceled series in history". In the episode, "Martin Lloyd has come to the S.G.C. [Stargate Command] because even though "Wormhole X-Treme!" was canceled after three episodes, it did so well on DVD they're making a feature [film]". The follow-up film, Serenity, was voted the best science fiction movie of all time in an SFX magazine poll of 3,000 fans. Firefly was later ranked #25 on TV Guide's Top Cult Shows Ever. The name for the Google beta app Google Wave was inspired by this TV series.
On the CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper is a fan of Firefly. When he and Leonard Hofstadter are discussing their roommate agreement, they instill a passage in which they dedicate Friday nights to watching Firefly, as Sheldon believes it will last for years. Upon its cancellation, he brands Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox, a traitor. During the second season of The Big Bang Theory, in episode 17 ("The Terminator Decoupling"), Summer Glau appears as herself, encountering Sheldon, Leonard and their friends on a train to San Francisco. When Raj tries to hit on her he says that although he is an astrophysicist, she was actually in space during the shooting of Firefly. Glau chides him for believing this and Raj backtracks, saying, "Those are crazy people!"
On the NBC comedy Community, the characters Troy and Abed are fans of the show. They have an agreement that if one of them dies, the other will stage it to look like a suicide caused by the cancellation of Firefly, in the hopes that it will bring the show back.
In the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries/pilot, a ship resembling Serenity appears in the background of the scene where Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) is diagnosed with breast cancer. Serenity is one of several spaceships inserted as cameos into digital effects scenes by Zoic Studios, the company responsible for digital effects in both Firefly and Battlestar Galactica.
In an interview on February 17, 2011, with Entertainment Weekly, Nathan Fillion joked that: "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". This quickly gave rise to a fanbased initiative to raising the funds to purchase the rights. On March 7, 2011, the organizers announced the closure of the project due to lack of endorsement from the creators, with $1 million pledged at the time it was shut down. Those fans are now working on creating their own fan-funded science fiction production company.
In March 2011, comedian Mikey Mason released on YouTube a music video for an original song entitled "She Don't Like Firefly". The humorous clip details why he had to break up with an otherwise perfect geeky girlfriend.
Joss Whedon, Tim Minear, and cast members Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Summer Glau, Adam Baldwin and Sean Maher reunited at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con for a 10th anniversary panel. Ten thousand people lined up to get into the panel, and the panel ended with the entire crowd giving the cast and crew a standing ovation.
A tenth anniversary special, Browncoats Unite, was shown on the Science Channel on November 11, 2012. The special featured Joss Whedon, Tim Minear, and several of the cast members, in a discussion of the history of the series.
The television series Castle, where Nathan Fillion plays the lead character Richard Castle, has made ongoing homages to Firefly. Castle has props from Firefly as decorative items in his home, has dressed up as a "space cowboy" for Halloween ("You wore that five years ago," cracked his daughter), speaks Chinese that he learned from "a TV show loved", and has made rapid "two-by-two" finger motions while wearing blue surgical gloves. He has been humorously asked if he has ever heard of a spa known as "Serenity", and Firefly catchphrases such as "shiny", "special hell" and "I was aiming for the head" have been used as punchlines during various dramatic scenes in Castle. He has worked a murder case at a science fiction convention with suspects being the cast of a long-cancelled space opera that only ran for a season, and has had incidental interaction with people portrayed by his Firefly co-stars Adam Baldwin and Gina Torres.