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A wonderous vision of the future started in the all too short run of the TV series Firefly continues in the big screen version of it, Serenity. The TV show and movie is about the crew of a star ship that is as much unlike the USS Enterprise as it can get. It's a ranshackle freighter skippered by Mal Reynolds, a man part Han Solo, part Jesse James. He was on the losing side of an intersteller civil war against the Alliance, a buraucratic, oppressive government that seems to consists of people who believe quite fervently they know better than other people how they should live their lives. Captain Reynolds and his motley crew, including his former second in command from the war, her husband the pilot, an engineer who is as cute as she is sharp with the hyper drive, a muscle bound mercenary in a constant state of mutiny, a preacher, a courtesan, and a doctor and his troubled (to say the least!) sister eck out a thin living doing odd jobs out on the frontier, some of them not exactly legal. They bicker and at times almost come to blows. Especialy due to the fact that the doctor's sister is wanted by the Alliance government for having been "enhanced" and damaged by a top secret government labortory.

Oddly enough, this crew might well save the human race among the stars. The story is a paean about how the unlikeliest people can become heroes and how the right of individuals to live free if an absolute. I hope there will be many more films in this "verse."