Joss on Tim;
Q) When you were putting Firefly together, out of all the people that you were working with at the time, how did you select Tim Minear as the other show runner?
Through deceit and evil. I wish I were kidding.I had not intended to use Tim. I was desperate to use Tim. I had three people I absolutely knew could run a show. They were David, and Marti, and Tim, and David and Marti alreadty were show runners. And I promised David Greenwalt, to his face, I would not take Tim away from him when I did Firefly. But I could not find anybody even remotely of the caliber of Tim, and somebody - a very smart person a good friend - took me aside and said "Be realistic. If you don't move Tim to Firefly, you will never see Buffy or Angel again. If you don't have a second in-command who can control the set when you walk away from it, you never will. And the only way to make thingts even is to put him on that show." And it was true. And I didn't want to admit it, because I made a promise and then I had to go back on it. And needless to say, David did not take that lightly, nor should be have.
Not just because of that, there were many factors involved, but David left Angel and then Marti had her baby right away, and all of a sudden, I had an even better reason to spend time on Buffy and Angel -- I had no show runners. So it really was difficult, because I just had so much work, but once I made the dicision, once I knew I had to do it, it was so easy. And Tim had been dying to do it. And then all of a sudden, I had a second half, I mean, as much as anybody I've ever worked with. Tim had the same voice and came in at the very beginning, the way David with Buffy, and informed the voice of Firefly so much and did so much pf the great stuff. He was the guy I wanted, and I realized eventually that was the guy I needed; and my god, from the first moment, he understood the show as well as any human being, and brought so much to it that I think of it as he were a part of it. There was never a time when I hadn't hired him."