It is interesting when you think about how some of the most beloved sci-fi TV shows of all time never even got the chance to tell their story to completion. Indeed, among the many great series cancelled far too soon, one of the most oft-referenced examples is Firefly — a unique take on space odyssey stories by incorporating styles and themes reminiscent of classic Western movies and TV shows.
Unfortunately, even with a talented cast led by Nathan Fillion and being the brainchild of Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, this 26th century tale of a misfit crew of outlaws traveling a distant, colonized solar system was tragically halted before its journey had reached its intended destination. So, why exactly did Fox pull the plug on Firefly after airing just 11 of the 14 episodes that were filmed? Let’s see if we can answer that question below by analyzing the most essential factors of the cult favorite’s brief broadcast history.
There was a time where I would’ve called Firefly the best sci-fi on television. But that time was before the public knew of Josh Whedons mysgonstic ways and also before better shows like The Expanse, Severance, The Boys or For All Mankind.
It was a wonderful cast, but at this point I am just happy they majority of them went on to better things instead of wondering what could’ve happened in a full series run.
Ratings weren’t good, so ad sales were probably bad, It barely made the top 100 TV shows in the ratings and was getting 4.7 million views on average according to Google. At the time that was not a good number, Fox’s teen drama The O.C. which came out in 2003 was doing 7-10 million viewers an episode for its first year. Sadly, sci-fi shows usually get bad ratings and advertisers don’t want to pay to put ads on those shows and then boom, cancelled.
People will point to Buffy and Angel as examples of Sci-Fi that wasn’t canceled sometimes, and that’s not fair because they aired on UPN/CW and that channel has always allowed bad ratings.
Showing the opening episodes in the wrong order probably didn’t help
I agree, it was really disjointed when airing on TV, it’s much better when watching in the right order.
In addition to this, Whedon played chicken with the network. He was leveraging the last season of Buffy and Angel to push for FF’s success.
His action resulted in S5 being the last season for Angel, cut short, Buffy S7 being a mess, and killing his own passion project Firefly. His hubris killed the show as much as the network did
Rupert Murdoch doesn’t understand Science Fiction. That’s also why they aired the episodes in a totally stupid order.
At first I was interested, because sci-fi, but space cowboys were a meh from me. Couldn’t get into it. Then it was gone.
