I’m leaking the script of the seapunk Firefly resetting we were asked to develop to save the show right before it was cancelled, because why on earth not, at this point?
A few weeks ago I got laid off from Ventrelli productions. They hit me with it out of nowhere. Among the many things broken on that day was the NDA I signed when I first joined the studio, as a result of this they naturally had me shred most of the paper copies of various things that I had sitting around in, under, and on top of my desk before packing up, cause you know, that’s a reasonable imposition to make on someone who’s just been fucking fired for unstated reasons after working for you for over a decade... But anyway, among those documents were the seapunk† Firefly concepts we put together for Fox Broadcasting around the time it was cancelled. The idea, at the time, was that maybe a transition to a more down-to-earth yet still largely unexplored kind of setting would help it to find its demographic, personally I think it worked(hence keeping copies of everything on my desk and reading them once a month every month for 3 years). The ocean of a large colony world was a great setting for Firefly and it did well with our focus groups, the reaver hulks were fucking terrifying and the ship to ship action has a lot more human impact than spaceship to spaceship action, unfortunately, Fox’s then president of entertainment was not sufficiently moved by our findings and they decided not to go ahead with it. Of all the concept art and the three pilots we wrote, all I could get away with was the first few pages of the script for the second episode. If you can imagine your own score, I think this gives a pretty clear impression of what it could have been like.
**** Passing slowly over a still, black sea. The water laps. We speed up, and slow down as we arrive at a large steel island, floating above the water. It's clear there are no boats here, no engines to move it. Here a small group of people are sitting. Each wears a leather collar. We are moving forward in the same direction, grazing past the platform, we speed up again, another platform whizzes by, and another and another and another, then empty sea for a time. A large brown hauler is coming towards us. It's Serenity. The sails are retracted. the camera slows and retracts to match its speed. We see Wash in the bridge with a look of distress on his face.
Wash turns around and strides off into the recesses of the boat. The camera follows him through the glass, the sound of the engines transitions to a steady thrum.
We see Kaylee fiddling with something on the wall, she sees Wash's expression and automatically repeats his concern, turning around to follow him wherever he's going.
**** The camera rushes ahead to Captain Mal's quarters. The room is dimmed and the wrap-around screens are alight with the face of a highly masculine man with a tattoo above his right eye and long braided swept-back hair[see page 3 of concepts].
The man is smiling. Mal's smile is but a mask. He has a bad hand but he knows he's in a spot where he can't afford to show it.
camera sits behind Mal, we see enough of his face to see his smile drop. Screens in front of and around him all display the man's face clearly.
Mal:"Enough. There's a mutually beneficial arrangement to be made here, and if you aren't straight with us you wont even get the proposition, because we'll turn our boat right around and go back where we came from."
The man projects bewilderment Slaver:"I don't understand, we've already made a deal, -"
Mal:"You're the most ruthless slavers in the Pacific. You'll sequester anyone you can get your hands on. Especially crews beyond the reach of the federation, like mine. The deal you pretend to have agreed to with us was *unreasonably* generous, -"
Slaver:"You said it was very reasonable"
Mal:"Yes. Unreasonably so. Now you expect me to believe you'll follow through with the shipment even though you can profit more from scrapping my ship and selling my crew?"
The Slaver projects ennui Slaver:"What you're not taking into account, Mal, is that -"
The slaver is interrupted when Wash bursts into the room with Kaylee in tow; Wash: "MAL! They're sending a speeder!"
Mal looks to the Slaver with a "how do you expect me to react" look Slaver:"It's a bond, you dolt!"
Sarcastic tone Mal:"Oh so we're just going to enter into a bond agreement with the most ruthless slavers-"
Slaver:"OUR COLLATERAL. FOR YOU. You hold it while you're in the territory, This is how we do business with the likes of you who do not know the meaning of trading in confidence!"
Mal pauses. (Seen behind him, Kaylee is covering a smile. Wash looks gormless [Note to Jewel, Kaylee has read Palau's character and is almost entirely sure that Mal is making a fool of himself. However, there is also a vain of naive faith in the humanity of a slaver at play here, she is surer than she should be.]) Mal:"If your men make any sudden moves -"
The slaver is incensed. Slaver:"No men. It's a remote controlled DINGHY. All that's on it is collateral."
Mal is completely unmoved. Mal:"If it comes within 30 yards we'll run a superheated rod through it, Palau."
The slaver is affected by this. He was not expecting quite this much suspicion. Slaver:"Send a pod to meet it at 60 yards then."
Wash:"It'll hit 60 yards in less than a minute."
Mal turns, mentally preparing to deal with the visitation. Mal, to the Slaver:"60 yards, Palau. No less, or your collateral sinks and we walk."
Slaver:"It's understood, Mal."
Mal cuts the line and strides out into the hall. Wash is backing away toward the pod bay as he asks Wash:"It's on?" Mal:"Yes it is." Mal To Kaylee:"What're you smiling about?"
She waives him off, despite feeling he is being overbearing, she likes to see him captaining as passionately as he is, and does not want to impede it with an appeal to moderation. Kaylee:"Nothin Cap'n". Mal has to set his perturbation aside before turning to yell into the quarters of an unseen Jayne:"Jayne, hostiles incoming NOW. Man the railer!" Pausing Mal:"But don’t shoot until I say so!" The camera follows Mal into the pod bay as Simon tries to keep up beside him.
Simon:"What's going on?"
Mal:"Slavers are sending a speeder. They claim it's naught but collateral. If it's a capture crew, I'm all they get, understood?"
Simon:"The only reason I'm here is to protect my sister from people like this, this is mine. Let me handle them."
Mal stops. Mal:"Fine."
He turns around and starts walking the other way.
We see Mal climb the stairs to the cockpit then we follow Simon into the pod bay[see page 2 of concepts], where Wash is waiting holding a life preserver and a pistol, the pod ready to go. Wash:"Oh, you convinced the captain to let the boat go down without him, huh?" Simon:"Something like that."
Wash smiles. Wash:"Don't mind Mal. All you're going to find in there are a few crates of rum. You won't need this," as he hands Simon the gun. He lingers in letting go of the gun to say something Wash:"But if it is a capture crew on that boat, you wanna get a hit in right here." Pointing to his right pectoral. "That's their whipping shoulder. Injure that and they wont be able to subjugate you quite as hard as they otherwise would when you're-"
The speaker system interrupts Mal:"This is your captain speaking. The slavers' dinghy arrives in 15 seconds. Jayne, hit it with the railgun if and only if it comes closer than 50 yards. Simon, if you see crew, be ready to shoot to kill. We were told it's completely unmanned and a lying slaver is a slaver at work."
The rest is basically.. the collateral package turns out to be what we call a gilded slave, a highly trained, very valuable bonded servant, through her we get an insight into the living conditions. We eventually meet Palau and we see how ceaselessly professional the slavers are, they discuss paranoia on the seas and have some human moments when we find out when and how Mal came to be so paranoid, then of course it leaves us with some moral tension when the gilded slave is compared to River and we're forced to leave her behind. I loved firefly, and it breaks my heart as much as anyone else that Fox didn't buy our concepts. I’d always hoped that one day Ventrelli would produce a spiritual successor to Firefly in-house, it was clear to me that everyone on the writing team groked the spirit of the series well enough to do do that kind of thing, to make nontrivial changes to the composition, setting and cast and still carry on the essential spirit of the show. Unfortunately at this point almost everyone in that team has left the studio, so unless some patronage miracle occurs, all hope is lost and never shall we be reunited. †: Seapunk as in “fuck the hegemonies of the land, the ocean is free”. In our conception of seapunk, seagoing knowledge served a role comparable to hacking knowledge in cyberpunk, any punk who could exploit the systems of the sea would find a transcendence from monopolistic, exploitative game-systems of land based economies, just as a cyberpunk hacker could transcend the rules set out by the megacorporations that dominate cyberpunk settings. Though this is primarily what we meant when we said Seapunk, there were hints of the flouro and pastel of the contemporary seapunk aesthetic in the visual side of things... which was... downright serendipitous, really.