Giant Freakin Robot

This may sound a bit crazy, but my assumption is that many of you out there are fans of Joss Whedon’s short-lived space-western, Firefly. That may be completely off base, but we’re going to operate under this hypothesis for the time being. Now, many fans are known to occasionally collect souvenirs, trinkets, and other memorabilia from their beloved film and television franchises. And now is your opportunity to purchase and own a unique piece of the Firefly universe.

Shawna Trpcic is a costume designer who has worked with Whedon on number of projects, and now she’s taken to everyone’s favorite online auction site, eBay, to sell some of her concept sketches from shows like Firefly. (There are also drawings from the likes of Angel, Cabin in the Woods, and others available.)

2012 is the 10-year anniversary of the premiere and cancellation of Firefly, the cult-hit TV series that became a widely popular sci-fi property. The series was so popular in fact, that even after the series’ cancellation, Universal Studios gave Joss Whedon $39 million to make a full-length feature film titled Serenity in 2005. Seven years after its release in theaters, fans are still waiting for a sequel.

In an interview, Sean Maher, who played Dr. Simon Tam on Firefly, discussed his surprise that Joss Whedon doesn’t have plans for a Serenity 2. Maher admits,

You know, I’m one of those people. When I see him, I’m like, “I don’t get it. Aren’t you like king of the world right now? Can’t you do anything? And I know we can’t do another show. I get that. A television show would be very tricky with all of our availability, and I don’t think that’s in the realm of possibility. But what about another movie? You just shot ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ in 12 days. You’re kind of amazing at that. You made that happen.” I wish I could wrap my head around it a little more. So when people ask me if there’s another one, I say, “You know, I don’t think so, but I don’t know, and I kind of don’t understand why.”

Of all the ways to extend entertainment franchises, one of the cheesiest is to skew towards a younger demographic and kidify it. The less-inspired projects, though, are completely overshadowed by the classic quality exceptions, such as Muppet Babies, Tiny Toons, and even Marvel’s A-Babies Vs. X-Babies is pretty cute and silly. Few fully realized television dramas could ever make that transition successfully and retain any of the elements that make the show lovable. Sons of Sons of Anarchy? Bweaking Bad? Parenthood? Wait, I think MTV did that one.

Since it only lasted 14 episodes, Joss Whedon’s Firefly has become elevated to legendary status by its devoted fans. While the show is a damn near perfect run of television, its few flaws are easy to overlook simply because it is what it is, and we probably won’t ever get any more of it. But what if we did? While fans (and fan fiction writers) will likely continue imagining the five-year Firefly run of their dreams, we do at least have some concrete news about one particular episode that could have been, courtesy of the brain of one Alan Tudyk.

Tudyk, of course, played Hoban “Wash” Washburne: ace space pilot, dinosaur enthusiast, and occasional leaf on the wind. According to castmate Nathan Fillion, the man who put the tight pants in Captain Tightpants, many of the actors pitched their own ideas for episodes, but Alan Tudyk was particularly prolific on that front. And Alan’s ideas tended to be…outside the box. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Fillion revealed the Alan Tudyk-scripted Firefly that could have been. Brace yourself…

Alan Tudyk definitely pitched the most episodes. He had a great one where there were some criminals who engage in illegal dogfights, and there was a planet where one side of the planet was perpetual night. They had these big, feral dogs there that were so mean and awful, and we had to go out and trap them. We had this dog [pheromone] of some kind, and Jayne was messing around, and splat!, the thing bursts and we’re all covered in this [pheromone]. So we have to run back to the ship with these feral dogs chasing us, and we get the dogs back to the hold of the ship, and we’re safe. But in the journey back to get them back to the criminals, River comes in, communes with the dogs, and domesticates them. So now they’re the same dogs, just nice.