Meh. Firefly was a decent show, but I didn't feel much arc going on, although it's possible that it would have been amazing with 5 seasons. I felt it was more cowboys in dystopian outer space than B5 which was about politics, military strategy, philosophy, love, hatred, revenge, technology, society, war, and thus grand space opera.
Firefly had some good ideas, but its whole "space western" (or more accurately, "space American Civil War") motif was in my (admittedly unpopular) opinion slapdash and awkwardly executed. I cannot take a show seriously that expects us to believe, in the far flung future, in an entirely different solar system, anyone will actually utter the phrase "twixt my nethers" in common parlance.
I mean... that's just stupid.
Compare it to the anime Cowboy Bebop, which in my opinion did it correctly, blending the themes of the Western genre without forcing in the tropes and idioms in ways that threaten to break immersion.
> Firefly had some good ideas, but its whole "space western" (or more accurately, "space American Civil War")
“Space Western” is more accurate; except for a couple of flashbacks, the Civil War analog was past-and-background, just as is the case with the Civil War itself traditionally in the Western genre.
> Compare it to the anime Cowboy Bebop,
I'd rather not, since (despite the Western genre being an influence on both), they are so radically thematically different that there is really no point in comparison.
You’re also forgetting that it was supposed to all take place in one solar system, was it something like 80 planets?
I liked the idea of a Chinese culture, was this in parallel?
The western idea was a bit too TV friendly.
True the arcs weren’t that perceptible I realised them as Serenity rushed through them all; I did like the Han Solo angle of not independent of a huge state enterprise. Although a bit about what a “confederate” vibe implies
If Firefly counts, Babylon 5's attempted successor Crusade counts more so. It supposedly had 5 years planned, and was also cruelly cancelled after a lot of network notes and drama including airing some episodes out-of-order/at weird times.
JMS at least didn't try to cram the remaining plot into a single film. Some of the plot is out there as unfilmed scripts and some made its way into book series, and most of it we may just never know at this point because WB doesn't care about Babylon 5.
Ouch, Joss Whedon tried to cram it into the film Serenity when Firefly got cancelled, I daresay there's far more detail I am not versed in.