"And that makes us mighty"

Orson Scott Card is right: Firefly "is the greatest science fiction television series ever created." And as agonizing as it was, maybe it's a blessing that the Fox television network mishandled it so badly, running the episodes out of order and taking it off the air long before its time.

I say that because the show really did leave just as it was coming into its own, with a rich tapestry of stories left to tell. And there's a show business axiom: "Always leave 'em wanting more." And people who encounter Firefly very often want more. more. more!

What a blessing, though, that it disappeared long before "its time" - before it ran out of stories, before the marvelous cast and crew could get tired of each other, before the fans started to take it for granted. Because what an enormous amount of positive energy was generated by taking the show off the air before "its time."

The result has been an enormously successful DVD box set of the episodes that aired, plus three more. And the result has been perhaps the greatest science fiction movie ever created, Serenity, based on this "failed" greatest science fiction TV series ever created.

And now here's another nifty little result: "Done the Impossible: The Fans' Tale of Firefly & Serenity," a marvelous valentine to Joss Whedon, the cast and crew, and the fans whose enthusiasm provided the fuel for the engine that drove it all.

I've only scratched the surface of this interactive DVD-ROM, which is to say I've watched the 80-minute documentary, and I couldn't stop smiling through it. The passion Browncoats have for these characters and these stories is infectious - and it seems to me it's a healthier infection than that of the Trekkies and similar obsessed fans who came before them. Because the characters who inhabit the Firefly world have no Starfleet or supernatural Jedi forces to help them fight the nastiness of the universe - they can only depend on their own wits, and each other. And that makes them mighty, and that makes them real.

I fell in love with these characters before the end of the pilot episode, which - because I missed the whole thing before it landed on DVD - I had the good fortune of watching first. "Serenity" may be the finest 90-odd minutes of television ever made, just as Serenity may be the finest film. If this is where the miracle ends, they are marvelous bookends. It's just easy to believe, with so many people wanting more stories so passionately, that someday the creators will revisit these characters and this 'verse.

"Done the Impossible" belongs in the collection of every Browncoat, and then some.