While I don't think "Serenity" was quite as good as the best couple of Firefly episodes, I'd hardly consider it a sucky or unrepresentative pilot.

I didn't say it sucked, just that it was a pilot, as was "The Train Job," and that pilots have to demonstrate certain aspects of the show. But I can understand connie neil's reaction (post #4065) to it---to the point that I sometimes recommend "Our Mrs. Reynolds" as an intro to the series when I loan my DVDs.

But...what happens to the pilot functionality?

I am staying with it, on the strength of the amusing quotes and the opinions of folks here. And I've got people over on LJ tossing plot bunnies over my rabbit-proof fence (must go to Idaho and win the lottery). There's oodles of potential in that world.

Connie, it just gets better and better. That's the truth. Though for pure quality it probably peaks at the 3/4 mark.

I love the Serenity pilot. I thought it was everything the series needed for a launch.

I fell in love with the show, never to recover, on the scene of Wash with the dinosaurs.

I watched it for the first time with 3 friends, and I was the one urging to do the watching, based on recommendations here and massive curiosity. The first scene, of the big battle, really didn't do anything for me (I can never keep up who is who in scenes like this, where everybody is dirty and it's all dark and they're all shouting). It turned completely off friend#1. By the time of the stealing, right afterwards, friend#2 was all "OK, it's cool, but we've seen stuff like that already all the time". Then there was Wash and the dinosaurs and I fell in love so I paid much less attention to actual people and quite more attention to fictional characters on the screen.

By the time the first half of the pilot was over, however, all three of us were completely hooked. Through the end, neither of the friends answered their cellphones (which, for an Israeli, is a huge thing). We were cheering and gasping and totally inside what was happening in that world and to those characters.

Friend#1 never watched an episode again (to her defence, she has 3 kids, not nearly enough sleep, and is sorry she never borrowed it from me). Friend#2 not only watced the whole way through, but also converted her husband. Friend#3 is the one I kept watching with, and she was probably the one of the ver first Israelis to own the DVDs. Oh, and I went nuts on the internet with too many ramblings. But then again, it was here, so you already knew that.

The pilot worked perfectly, for me, in the sense of introducing the characters, with more than just "this is X and his job is Y". Each one of them had, if not a full personality (that I felt like only seeing part of), enough to make me interested and curious about what that personality may be (Book, River). I think I understand the decision to open with the big battle and abandoning scene, the framing of the whole state-of-affairs and state-of-mind for anything that happens afterwards, but still. And it's all a "me" thing, the difficulty to associate with these sort of scenes.

Did those who don't like the battle opener prefer the originally filmed rescue scene? I thought Mal's superstitious bit in the splosions version was a neat bit of exposition, but prefer the original opening that FOX rejected.

Did any regular SF readers have problems with The train job not introducing things propper like?

Did any regular SF readers have problems with The train job not introducing things propper like?

I thought this was a huge problem. For all that I love the show, I'm pretty sure The Train Job was intended to be the "new" pilot. And while I know the network wanted less exposition, I can't help but think that our boys could've at least worked in, say, INARA'S NAME. (I'm pretty sure they never call her by name, not through the whole episode.)

ETA: First chapter of the Serenity novelization is online. It looks like it is fairly spoiler free, as it is essentially narration of the first scene of the episode "Serenity," not the movie. It does reveal that Zoe has a last name (possibly I'm the last person to discover this). [link]

I'm pretty sure they never call her by name, not through the whole episode.

They don't. I've never noticed it before (probably due to watching the pilot first, as it was meant to be), but you're right, they don't.

They mention clients and Compantions and that the shuttle is hers and her respectability when compared to the rest of the crew, and emphasize that later when she comes in all her dress-up to save Mal and Zoe, but not her name. It runs along with how they try to characterize the relationships between all the characters right in the beginning, I guess - captain, losing side, "sir", wife, piloting, job, and all that spoken information right before the opening credits, between all the hitting and the visual information and the ship itself.

Did I hallucinate that post about the Serenity ad before Wedding Crashers? I can't have -- I mean, I went into the movie hoping I'd see one, but now I can't find the post that tipped me off.

Mikey's deleted one, perhaps?

'fraid it was--some overhurried clicking. Don't think the ad's tied to a particular movie BTW--just in the rotation at AMC.

As for the pilot. I agree with Nilly, but I make recommendations based on what I know about the people to whom I loan my DVDs.