So, I signed up for the free blogger viewing of Serenity (website here), which is tonight, and being a big fan of Joss Whedon am very much both looking forward to it and hoping I actually get in, because the info says it’s not guaranteed and to get there 45 minutes early. I guess if disaster strikes I can always go see something else instead.

This is the official synopsis of the film, and I’ve seen the trailer which looked very promising too:

Joss Whedon, the Oscar® - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.

I’m on the third season of Farscape now, and noticing how the themes of family and relationship actually work in that. When they tried to take Star Trek into those human personal places it always seemed a bit arbitrary and tacked on; you either got episodes about people or you got episodes with real stories and events. In Farscape the two are one and the same; the long-running plots that dictate individual events are relationship-driven. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it seems like a big leap forward, and something that would be hard to do outside of sci-fi. So I’m very interested in what Joss Whedon has done with this leap forward. I haven’t seen any of Firefly at all (although if the movie is good no doubt that will change soon) but Buffy was about unreal events in the real world, and although the relationships in it were interesting and certainly more significant than you might expect for that time, the plot was driven more by some sense of cosmic providence, with people having to fit into that for better or worse.

So, we’ll see.