Sci-fi 'Firefly' is a bonanza of miscues from 'Buffy' creator

L-R: Adam Balwin, Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres star in the new one-hour sci-fi adventure series FIREFLY premiering Friday, Sep. 20 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ��2002FOX BROADCASTING CR:Michael Lavine/FOX less L-R: Adam Balwin, Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres star in the new one-hour sci-fi adventure series FIREFLY premiering Friday, Sep. 20 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ��2002FOX BROADCASTING CR:Michael ... more Photo: Handout Photo: Handout Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Sci-fi 'Firefly' is a bonanza of miscues from 'Buffy' creator 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

FIREFLY: Science-fiction drama. 8 p.m. Fridays, Fox.

JOHN DOE: Drama. 9 p.m. Fridays, Fox.

Forget all the talk about there not being a good comedy this season. Inadvertently, Fox may have struck gold with the corny disaster that is "Firefly," the hugely anticipated sci-fi series from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon.

In fact, this series might qualify as a tragedy as well as a comedy if Whedon's name weren't attached. He's extremely talented and "Buffy" remains one of the great gems on television, so there's hope that he can do something to fix this show, or at least stop viewers from laughing when they're not supposed to.

That may be asking too much, however, since Whedon seems completely wedded to the idea of mixing the Wild West with "Star Wars" in one of the most dangerous high-concept ideas in years.

"Firefly" is set 500 years in the future, following a "universal civil war" that united all the planets and ended in victory for a totalitarian government called the Alliance. Those who fought for independence now scrape by for a living. One of these swarthy types is Capt. Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), who runs a small transport spaceship called Serenity. He and his ragtag crew take any job -- legal or not -- to keep going.

That crew includes Zoe (Gina Torres), Mal's second-in-command; her husband, Wash (Alan Tudyk), who's also the pilot; Kaylee (Jewel Staite), the fresh- scrubbed ship's engineer; and Jayne (Adam Baldwin), the dumb muscle.

On board are the beautiful Inara (Morena Baccarin), who's a prostitute -- because that profession is now "legal and highly regarded." She takes in companions as they soar through the galaxy. And there's Book (Ron Glass), a religious man spreading the gospel planet to planet. Plus there's a doctor, Simon (Sean Maher), and his crazy-genius sister, River (Summer Glau), who escaped the clutches of the Alliance and may have been part of a secret experiment of theirs.

So, you've got your Han Solo type and then, well, you've got Whedon's inexplicable love for "Bonanza." In more than a few scenes, you half expect Hoss to come out and say a few lines.

Maybe Whedon was shooting for a kind of "Mad Max" mood, which would have been terrific, but instead "Firefly" feels like a forced hodgepodge of two alarmingly opposite genres just for the sake of being different.

Oh, it's different, all right. With the syrupy, folksy language that's meant to recall cowboys on the prairie ("bes' be goin' " and "t'aint" and so on), it's more side-splitting comic material than drama. Which raises the question:

What the hell was Whedon thinking?

Let's see if this makes sense: In 500 years we've got gigantic flying spaceships and even trains that seem supersonic, but everybody's got six-guns and old shotguns and they wear chaps and leather vests? Come on. If the language isn't silly enough, there's a terrible score to back it all up. That's supposing you get through the opening two minutes, where a ridiculously hokey voice-over sets the stage for what's to come.

To call "Firefly" a vast disappointment is an understatement. Whedon has proven he's capable of brilliance, but this is mere folly.

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On the other hand, Fox has come up with a premise in "John Doe" that should keep viewers coming back -- if the writing improves a bit and the show elevates itself above being a mere cousin to NBC's old "Pretender" series.

"John Doe" is about a man (Dominic Purcell) who wakes up nude on an island, then swims to Seattle, where he's pulled from the water by some Khmer fishermen. Dazed, he begins conversing with them in their native tongue. Thoroughly confused, he quickly learns that he knows everything -- literally, everything -- except who he is. Every piece of arcane knowledge from construction details to how many M&Ms are in a package to science, math, linguistics -- everything.

But he's not a psychic. He can't predict the future. He's color-blind and sees the world in a kind of grainy black and white -- though sometimes images or people appear to him in color. Why? He doesn't know. Is he a government experiment, an alien, a brain-damaged loner? Nobody knows.

In the pilot, he helps the police solve a puzzling crime -- which he'll probably do on a regular basis -- and lands a job playing piano in a Seattle club because, well, he sat down one night and found out he could play. Same thing happens in a car, a helicopter, etc.

It's a nice little gimmick, and Purcell is compelling in the lead. What "John Doe" will have to do now is build on the pilot, which is good but not great. The series can't fall into a rut of him solving crimes or magically saving lives. It has to stay fresh and inventive, which shouldn't be too hard, given the freedom of the concept.

Can it maintain the allure, the mythology it presents in this first episode? Not even John Doe himself knows that. But one promising sign comes at the end of the pilot. Without giving anything away, it will make you want to watch the second episode. And in the crush of the fall television season, that alone might be a miracle.