As the wonderful Darth Vicomte has no doubt informed many of you, Serenity Day will take place on the twenty-third day of June, to honour and support the great (yet short-lived) television series Firefly, and its continuation on the big screen in the form of the movie Serenity. Now, if you haven't hit the back button yet while letting out an exasperated "not another one of them bloggers on about that Firefly show again! By the Emperor's Black Bones, this is a Star Wars website!" you may be wondering why my Serenity-related blog isn't gracing the pages of the Star Wars official site on the twenty-third of June.

This is merely a prelude to my foray (which will occur on the twenty-third, pending any unforeseen disaster or excessive procrastination) into the wonderful world that Joss Whedon has created. No, not Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That other show. The one with the ship that looks like a bug. Firefly.

In the name of practicality and common sense, I am blogging today in order to inform readers of Firefly, Serenity, and the day on which we celebrate them. Now, enough prologue, and on to the prelude!

Firefly has a great amount of appeal to it. It's accessible to almost anyone, even those who aren't fans of science fiction. The Firefly universe (or "the 'verse," as those who are in-the-know would say), a blend of the past and the future, never feels foreign in the slightest to the viewer. Besides, Firefly is more about characters than outrageous special effects, epic space battles, and astounding visuals anyway. Having been informed of said television series by Star Wars fans, I found that I could identity with the characters and conflicts of Firefly both on a personal level and because it contained elements of the only science fiction that I knew and loved -- Star Wars.

Firefly has, in a nutshell, everything I loved about The Empire Strikes Back.

This is not to say that Firefly is simply a re-hash of one of the greatest movies of all time. On the contrary, it is refreshingly unique and unlike anything else on television or on the big screen.

Whereas Star Wars chronicles the exploits of the son of the Chosen One and a Princess with a prominent role in the Rebel Alliance, Firefly follows the lives of rather ordinary people. While Luke, Han, and Leia fight to restore freedom and democracy to the entire galaxy, Malcolm Reynolds, having been on the losing side of a war that is now long over, simply wants to travel the skies, free from the grip of the Alliance, taking jobs as they come. In the words of Joss Whedon, "this show isn't about the people who made history; it's about the people history stepped on." The crew of Serenity may not overthrow an empire or save the galaxy, but each character's struggle makes this show fascinating. They are always the underdogs, and their adventures are never epic; if they get paid at the end of the day to keep Serenity in the air, that's all that matters. Firefly is definitely not a futuristic piece of mythology, nor is it a textbook example of the hero's journey. Firefly breaks the typical science fiction and space opera mold by focusing on everyday people who were given the short end of the stick, and tried to make the best of it. In the immortal words of Jayne Cobb, "you took that end and you...well, you took it. And that's...well, I guess that's somethin'."

Despite these differences, Firefly contains the very same fundamental elements that made The Empire Strikes Back such an excellent movie.

From a military standpoint, the events of The Empire Strikes Back are relatively insignificant in the great scheme of galactic history. Call in the fleet junkies and the number-crunchers -- they'll agree. Did the rebels achieve any military victories over the Empire during this time? At the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, viewers learn that the rebels have been driven off of Yavin IV, and are now hiding from the Empire in a base on Hoth. From this point until the credits roll, the rebels have done no obvious damage to the Imperial war machine. They have not wrested any planets from Imperial control, nor have they destroyed any superweapons. In the final moments of the movie, the Rebellion has simply regrouped, and they are in roughly the same situation as the one in which they began the movie. Likewise for the Empire. Sure, they managed to chase the rebels from Hoth, but the rebel fleet is largely intact, and Vader failed to capture both Luke and Leia. On a military and statistical level, the events of The Empire Strikes Back could be omitted completely from the history books.

Yet on a personal level and in terms of characterization, The Empire Strikes Back consists of the most important turning points in the entire saga. And, earth-shattering revelations aside, the second installment of the original trilogy contains brilliant and compelling character development.

Both the Millennium Falcon and Serenity provide fascinating settings for interaction between characters. Whether it's a YT-1300 or a Firefly-class transport, spending extended periods of time together aboard a spaceship brings out both the very best and the very worst in people. And the result can be anything from shipboard romances to ugly confrontations. Perhaps Mal best described this dynamic during his conversation with Simon in one of the first few scenes of Serenity: "So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don't push me, and I won't push you." With tension between characters running high at times and nowhere else to go, relationships are tested and strained to their breaking points.

Han and Leia's storyline throughout the second act of The Empire Strikes Back deals with people and their reactions to being in dire circumstances and in constant danger. Cut off from the Rebel fleet, Han Solo desperately maneuvers the Falcon from one dangerous situation to another. At this point, Han and Leia aren't seeking to engage the Executor in an all-out space battle; their goal is escape and survival. They're taking on one challenge after another, each time narrowly escaping with their lives. And most importantly, they react to each situation like normal human beings. They aren't all-powerful superheroes who stay cool, calm, and collected every time they run into a dangerous situation. They get frightened, they make mistakes, they take it out on each other, and they fear for their own lives. These characters could easily be your next-door neighbours who managed to somehow stumble into a galaxy-wide conflict. The Empire Strikes Back succeeded in making a fantastical science fiction epic feel familiar by telling the stories of characters that the audience could relate to.

Firefly is compelling because the show centers on characters that we can relate to, as they face unique, yet familiar challenges. As Firefly creator Joss Whedon said, "It's about nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things. That to me is what's interesting." The crew of Serenity is faced with the challenge of struggling to get by, either in the strict and Alliance-controlled core, or on the lawless outer rim planets. Though they live in a futuristic setting, they must cope with the same problems human beings have today, and they react to these problems in the same way that normal people would.

Like in our lives, nothing ever goes according to plan in Firefly. And each character has their own way of dealing with this. Some express their discontent with sarcasm, some get frustrated, but most of the time, like everyone here on earth, they simply make do and keep going. Captain Malcolm Reynolds is never completely sure of himself and sometimes does a bad job of faking it. And yet he doesn't let this hinder him, and everyone else along for the ride had better hope for the best.

Situations such as these are very compelling, simply because we have emotion invested in the characters and we have no idea how it's going to turn out in the end. Plot twists, surprises, and complications meet these characters at every turn. And whether the characters meet these challenges with lightsabers, blasters, and thermal detonators or primitive slugthrowers and their sharp wit, I'll keep watching either way.