From: daviderl31@yahoo.com   
      
   "David"  wrote in message news:p14s5e$s14$1@dont-email.me...   
      
   https://www.quora.com/   
      
   Q.  Should Joss Whedon be blamed for Firefly being cancelled? It seems like   
   his inflexibility on a non-essential plot point caused the show to lose   
   favor and get buried by Fox. If he would have given on that point, could the   
   show have survived?   
   Matt Wasserman   
      
   A.  They didn't cancel the series because Wash was married to Zoe.   
   They almost didn't buy the series because Wash was married to Zoe. They   
   wanted Mal to be with Zoe.   
      
   They cancelled the series because of low ratings. The show had low ratings   
   because they put it in a bad time slot, showed the episodes out of order,   
   and promoted it as something other than what it actually was.   
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   I tried watching Firefly on Fox, but at the time I had satellite TV  and   
   local channels weren't part of the package, so I had to watch using a set of   
   rabbit ears on my TV, and the signal was SO BAD, I just couldn't watch.   
   David   
   >   
   >http://www.businessinsider.com/fox-screwed-up-firefly-2014-9   
   >   
   >          It's Amazing How Badly Fox Screwed Up Joss Whedon's 'Firefly'   
   >   
   >The cancelation of "Firefly" after only one season in 2002 has been held up   
   as one of the greatest tragedies in science-fiction TV. A compelling account   
   and new insight on what went wrong appears in the recently published "Joss   
   Whedon: The Biography" by Amy Pascale.   
      
   "I've never seen him so mad," actor Adam Baldwin told Pascale about when   
   Whedon showed up on set to announce the cancelation.  "He looked at me and   
   said 'I don't have good news. They pulled the plug and this is the last   
   episode. And I want you all to know immediately.'"   
      
   Whedon, who earned a cult following with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and   
   later went mainstream by writing and directing megahit "The Avengers,"   
   conceived of "Firefly" as show about a ragtag group living on the frontier   
   of a space-age civilization, a sci-fi ensemble show with a Western feel and   
   "a gritty realism that wasn't an 'Alien' rip off."   
      
   While the spirit and originality of "Firefly" would win many diehard fans,   
   however, the show's quirks met with resistance at Fox.   
      
   In fact the whole production was almost derailed before it started by a   
   disagreement over a basic plot point. Fox executives didn't like that   
   Serenity spaceship second-in-command Zoe was happily married to pilot Wash,   
   with no romance between her and Captain Malcolm Reynolds.   
      
   " The last thing that Fox said was, ' We will pick up the show, but they   
   can’t   
   be married.' And I said, 'Then don’t pick up the show, because in my show,   
   these people are married. And it’s important to the show,'"  Whedon said in   
   " Serenity: The Official Visual Companion .   
      
   Once "Firefly" was picked up, it was an ominous sign when the network almost   
   held the show to be a midseason replacement in 2003, and it was a likewise   
   disadvantageous when the show was placed instead in the "Friday night death   
   slot" for fall 2002, a time with historically low ratings.   
      
   Fox also created problems by airing episodes out of order. To start, network   
   executives asked for a new pilot episode to replace the two-hour "Serenity,"   
   which introduced characters with an "admirably relaxed (but TV-lethal)   
   pace," as noted by A.V. Club. Whedon and co-writer Tim Minear whipped   
   together an alternative in "The Train Job" that was snappier but left out   
   important exposition. The network continued to delay and move episodes, in   
   part due to conflict from the Major League Baseball playoffs, and   
   inexplicably held the original pilot to air at the end of the season.   
      
   The whole time Fox fought Whedon on plot points large and small.   
      
   Among other things , network executives paradoxically insisted that the show   
   be less dark and that Reynolds shoot more people.  And they definitely   
   weren't having Whedon's idea of having high-end escort Inara Serra inject   
   herself with a serum that causes anyone who rapes her to die a horrible   
   death and then having her get kidnapped and gang-raped, with that horrific   
   scene only hinted at by the discovery of her dead kidnappers.  There's   
   nothing that dark in the show that aired, but there are plenty of disturbing   
   moments that must have made the network nervous.   
      
   Above all, Fox bungled its marketing. Pascale got the details on how bad it   
   was from producer Chris Buchanan, as she describes in a passage that will   
   make fans of the show cringe:   
      
   Instead of advertising "Firefly" as a space western or a gritty sci-fi show,   
   the promotional campaign suggested that it was a wacky genre comedy— “the   
   most twisted new show on television.” Several promos strung together jokes   
   about a “flighty pilot” (Wash), a “space cowboy” (Mal), a “cosmic   
   hooker”   
   (Inara), and a “girl in a box” (River, referencing a plot point from the   
   pilot episode the network refused to air), tied together with the tag line   
   “Out there? Oh, it’s out there!” ...   
      
   “We knew we were in real trouble before the show debuted,” Chris Buchanan   
   says. Fox sent them a promo reel of the spots they’d cut for the show, and   
   the first opened with Smashmouth’s hit song “Walkin’ on the Sun.” They   
   first   
   thought that the promo was for Fastlane, Fox’s highly stylized police action   
   drama. “Then all of a sudden it was like ‘Firefly, the cosmic hooker and a   
   whacked out space cowboy.’ ” Buchanan recalls, horrified. “My mouth just   
   dropped open. When the marketing guy called back to ask what they thought, I   
   said, ‘Well, it’s really great, but that’s not what our show is.'"   
      
   As Pascale observes, the promos would have turned off anyone who would   
   actually have liked the show, while anyone who liked the promos would have   
   been disappointed by the real thing.   
      
   Whatever the reason, "Firefly" didn't get high enough ratings, and even a   
   concerted fan campaign wasn't enough to keep it on the air.  Although fans   
   would get something of a sequel in the 2005 movie " Serenity " and  a series   
   of comic books , many would never forgive Fox.   
      
   Take it from Whedon's mentor, film professor Jeanine Basinger, whose   
   comments were recounted by blogger Nikki Stafford: "[S]he calls it the   
   biggest screwup in television, and if she could kill television execs, she'd   
   kill these guys. She apparently chews them out every time she sees them. She   
   was in on the ground floor on this one, leading him to noir westerns to help   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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