The other week, I came across an interesting article in the Weekly Standard (yeah, that Weekly Standard) on Joss Whedon’s upcoming Firefly movie (née half-season cancelled Fox show), Serenity. Firefly was a highly regarded, but totally doomed space-western show that I’d never really bothered to look into despite having heard good things about it (not being a huge Whedon fan, being way too busy, and not watching TV being some strong factors).

The article piqued my interest though, especially in light of the whole Global Frequency thing and my pleasant surprise with Battlestar Galactica (another show doing very smart online stuff — and yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of TV programming the past few months for someone who doesn’t even own a set anymore).

I ended up going through the series this past week, and came away impressed. It starts out smart and grows on you as it goes on – there’s a lot of character, both in the uh, characters, and the settings (a wild-west spin on humanity’s 26th-century interplanetary colonization, with an Anglo-Sino Alliance occupying ‘civilized’ core worlds surrounded by frontiersy border worlds). I should mention however that the pronunciation of the Chinese phrases they interject are mangled laughably beyond belief (and comprehension).

Perhaps as interesting as the story in the show is the meta-story of the show: put in a Friday death slot and shown out of order by Fox TV execs, but subsequently kept on life-support post-cancellation by the dedication of both fans and the production crew, and given a new lease on life as a feature film following strong DVD sales (as strong as it’s ever been right now, currently the #8 top seller on Amazon.com, 1.5years after release – and yeah, they sold me a copy).

Sci-Fi channel will airing all the Firefly episodes made (including 3 never aired by Fox) in the next couple weeks, which should be an interesting movie lead-in (if my math is right, they won’t get to the end before the movie comes out – maybe that’s planned to encourage DVD sales?)

I don’t know if there’s a moral to this story. The Fox execs are making money hand-over fist despite their blindness, but at least it highlights both the changings dynamic in entertainment consumption and also hints at the additional opportunites available for those with vision – Global Frequency highlighted the opportunities for seeding (ahem) pilots and seeing what takes, while things like the Family Guy and Firefly perhaps points to a viable model of recognizing and continuing quality shows canned before their time (that’s exploiting known-quantity, low-risk, untapped revenue streams to the suits).