filkertom | Oh, and, by the way....

I don't believe I love Firefly as much as I love Babylon 5. Certainly not in the same way. However, I love it way the hell more than I ever loved any version of Star Trek.

The movie kicked my ass but good. Can't wait for the DVD. I genuinely had no idea of anything coming up -- scrupulously avoiding all spoilers actually worked this time -- and so the plot took me by surprise, and made perfect, awful sense.

Shepherd Book's death shocked me... but nowhere near as much as Wash's. Now I know why all those people online, including

huskiebear, have such hatred for Joss Whedon. Very damn effective, and seeing the dinosaurs on the console after just about broke my heart, in exactly the same way that Dumbledore appearing in a portrait in McGonagall's office near the end of Half Blood Prince did.

And I was really starting to get the vibe that Joss was gonna kill 'em all off. I knew he wouldn't pull any kind of Omega 13 maneuver from Galaxy Quest, which absolutely worked the one time and now never can be used again. But that whole let-the-bodies-hit-the-floor scene just kept getting worse and worse....

A gazillion excellent moments, and surprisingly the witty banter didn't seem as flippant as it does in the show (not that there's anything wrong with that). It was more the gritty, snarly kinda banter people pushed to the edge use to keep from going mad. And damn River was scary beautiful scary. The doors closed, and I thought, gone, gone, gone... and then they showed her fighting the Reavers, and I gaped.

Like The Lord of the Rings, like Galaxy Quest and Home for the Holidays, this is one of those movies that cries out for a Best Ensemble Cast Oscar. The crew, the Operative, the twins, Sarah ("Someone's at the door") Paulson as the woman in the holo, the guard down in the vault... all great.

Thanks for waiting for me, gang. It's all shiny.