When you live in a solar system as seemingly empty as the one in Firefly, it’s important to keep your spaceship in good working condition, as the crew of the Serenity finds out in “Out of Gas”. Also! Always listen to Kaylee when she tells you the ship needs a new compression coil. Actually, just always listen to Kaylee.
Tuning In Episode 8: Firefly, Out of Gas
Lev
-So 2003 was when television was really starting to get great: The West Wing and Arrested Development you mentioned, but also this was when HBO was really cranking: The Sopranos, The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm were all on and Deadwood was just around the corner. I actually have a theory that this is why Enterprise was a totally doomed show from the start: Berman and Braga, for all the bullshit they fed us about how Enterprise wasn’t going to be a standard Star Trek show (It’s a prequel! That doesn’t have Star Trek in the title! With characters that fight each other! And rub lotion on each other in one of the worst creative decisions they ever made!), they rolled it out in the same way as all their other shows: nice and slow, giving it generous time to find itself. But this wasn’t the late 1980s where there were, like two good shows on TV. Even by the early aughts there was too much good stuff on. Nobody in the present day would ever subject themselves to anything like TNG Season 1 in hopes it would become better. This is why I don’t hate Berman quite as much as some Trek fans do. I think he was a pretty good producer for the 1980s TV scene, but by the aughts he was a total dinosaur who couldn’t adjust to the new TV environment at all. That’s not entirely his fault, though his total mismanagement of the movie franchise was, and he should never have been given that portfolio.