CANCELLATION -- What happened to Firefly...
Though the show had a loyal following during its original broadcast, it was cancelled by the Fox Broadcasting Company in December 2002 after only 11 episodes out of the 14 produced, were shown in the USA and Canada. Low ratings were blamed for the cancellation; it was also suggested that Whedon's additional responsibilities on Angel after co-creator David Greenwalt's departure from that show was a contributing factor.
In the hopes of getting another network such as UPN to pick up the cancelled show, fans formed the 'Firefly Immediate Assistance' campaign, but were technically unsuccessful.
Fans attributed the low ratings in part to actions of the Fox Network. Firefly was promoted as an action-comedy rather than the more serious character study it was intended to be; episodes were occasionally preempted for sporting events, and the episodes were not aired in the order that the creators had intended. Most notably, the two-hour episode Serenity was intended to be the pilot episode, as it contains most of the character introductions and back-story. However, FOX decided that Serenity was not a suitable pilot, and so the second episode, The Train Job (written in 2 days) was rushed into production to become the pilot episode.
The sequence of episodes aired in USA and Canada:
* In the USA and Canada, starting on September 20, 2002, Fox broadcast the episodes on Fridays at 20:00 (except for the second hour of the pilot which was shown at 21:00). The order was 2-3, 6; 7-8, 4-5, 9; 10, 14, 1; with 11-13 unaired in the USA.
Firefly on DVD
In December 2003 a Boxset of all 14 episodes were released in North America, soon after followed by a global release, and by September of 2005, it had sold approximately 500,000 copies.
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) etc. Dus de serie is zeker wel tof en boeiend, maar de eerste aflevering bevat wel veel bedenkelijke wendingen.