Firefly's pilot was supposed to be a wicked-long movie about how this rag-tag band of mercenary rebels got together. Apparently, it was so boring the network scrapped it and had ol' Joss redo the pilot as a regular show, an hour-long affair that'll air Friday, September 20 at 8 p.m. on Fox. We still get to know our characters, but without any of that boring exposition nonsense. There's a brief montage, Terminator II-style, at the beginning with a narrator from the James Earl Jones School of Broadcasting to explain that these kids are Independents, who lost a war to the Alliance and now have to hide out on the edge of the galaxy. No wonder the two-hour movie was scrapped. What a yawn.

The captain of the ship is Mal, and it's made clear that even though he's a criminal, he's Honorable. He gets most of the funny lines, but unfortunately, they usually just come out sounding snarky. Also on board is the space hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold promoted to the gills in the Fox promos. She's a hottie, but her professional ethics prevent her from getting the get-down with Mal, whom we can tell would like to partake of her zero-gravity goods. There are the requisite attractive youths who are smitten with one another, a hot-head without respect for authority, a married couple, a preacher, and a girl who was rescued from a scary place called the Academy where they did Bad Things to her that have turned her into the chick from the Don't Say A Word commercials. We were just waiting for her to writhe around on a stretcher and chant "I'll never te-ell!" She spends most of her screen time hiding behind her stringy hair and muttering cryptic phrases that are supposed to be spooky.

The premiere of Firefly finds our crew robbing a train for a client who looks like the love child of Sigmund Freud and Colonel Klink. (It's comforting to know that even 800 years in the future, the Nazis are still convenient bad guys.) The train robbery is pretty clever, and the sets and effects look mighty swank. Everything is coated with Western Dust outside the ship, and the insides of the ship are an appropriate blend of futuristic technology and disrepair. There's even a fight in a full-on western saloon where we learn that 800 years in the future, there is a lot of wicker. Or maybe it's rattan. We're not sure.

Between the evil Nazi who ends up on the outs with the crew, the Academy creeps pursuing the "I'll never te-ell!" girl, and the obvious sexual tension, there is plenty of material to keep Firefly going for at least a season. We hope that Joss tones down the snark and cultivates more of the genuinely clever black humor that makes Buffy such a favorite. With a little more funny, then this might just be a winner. You can't go wrong with all that wicker.

The Vicar