GDJustin said:
No, see it IS a question of ratings and potential; at least, that was the question
I was asking.. Now you're trying to change the question
I'm changing the question in order to reflect Fox's history of canning shows left and right without giving them a chance. I'm not saying I necessarily expected their execs to do otherwise, mind you, but it seems to be that there are an inordinate number of Fox shows that just aren't given a chance to reach an audience. Considering the popularity of TV shows on DVD, I hope TV execs are starting to understand that giving a show a chance to gather an audience can pay off in the long (or, really, mid-term) run with box set sales.
Would Firefly have succeeded had it not been given the shaft by Fox? Hard to say. You could be right and the show was just too quirky to find an audience. However, quirkier shows have succeeded in the past, and considering the word of mouth Firefly has received since - and it was getting amazing buzz shortly after it's DVD release, not just in the past year or so - I think it showed the potential to sustain itself quite nicely.
Was the show "OMG amazing"? In it's best episodes, I think Firefly made for damn fine television, and even it's mediocre episodes were perfectly solid fare. However, what it's fans, myself among them, really mourn is the lost opportunity to see the show fully fleshed out and able to achieve it's potential over the course of a full season or two. Thankfully, we got the movie, which provided a short version of the two-season outline Whedon was working on, so in the end there's at least an ending. But, man, I would have been happy to watch a whole helluva lot more Firefly than that.
Of course, we should probably be thankful to get as much of the series as we did. Drive (also produced by Tim Minear) went from a 13 episode half-season commission to a 6 episode half-season, of which two episodes were broadcast before being cancelled, two more aired later, the last two were promised to reach broadcast, were delayed, were cancelled, and finally showed up on Fox's website briefly before vanishing for good. Now, that's a brutal shafting. I wonder why Minear even bothers to pitch shows to Fox anymore.
FnordChan