In an interview with Assignment X, Tim Minear suggested one thing he’s learned from his many cancelled shows: avoid the confusing, one-word title.
Well, I knew this going back to – pretty much every show that I’ve worked on has had a terrible title. WONDERFALLS doesn’t tell you anything, THE INSIDE doesn’t tell you anything, FIREFLY doesn’t tell you anything – none of these titles tell you anything. [TERRIERS sounds like it will be] a reality show about dog grooming. On the other hand, I will say this, when I imagined DRIVE, I thought, “Well, DRIVE – that is an active title. It’s one word, it tells you everything you need to know about this underground cross-country road race” – and nobody watched that either. So I have no answers [laughs].
So, if you were going to pitch Firefly today, what would you name it?
Keeping in mind that “Like Star Wars But From Han Solo’s Side” is probably unworkable.
(Here’s parts 2 and 3 of the interview. Well worth the read.)
Heh. Well…”Dollhouse” also didn’t last too long…
But “Chuck”, and “Castle” seem to be surviving pretty well. “House” too. “Fringe” may be getting cancelled soon, but it’s still lasted a few seasons. And even though the quality of the show itself went a bit downhill, “Heroes” stayed on-air for what, four regular-length seasons?
I honestly think I wouldn’t change the title. To something flashier? Nah. As it is, “Firefly” summarizes far too much about the show for me to ditch it. It takes some viewings-through to fully understand it, but oh well.
Hmm. This is an interesting and difficult challenge, because the concept of “Post-Civil War western, except the Confederates were the good guys and not racist, but in space” is far too complex to summarize succinctly enough for a title.
I agree that “Firefly” wasn’t the best title for the series. “Serenity” actually made far more sense in context, but that would probably (in the marketing sense) drive viewers away.
If I had to summarize the series, the best word I can think of is “Postbellum”. Not sure how well that would work from a marketing standpoint.
The only other title I can think of is “Can’t Take the Sky From Me”, which is a good summation of the FEEL of the series, if not its content, but that might require reworking the theme song to make it less heavy-handed.
If one were willing to slightly change the concept of the series, and perhaps make it as if the main character were reminiscing, then it could be called “Malcolm’s Last Stand”.
Or you could just be silly and call it “Mal & Zoe & Wash & Jayne & Kaylee & River & Simon & Book”, which has a certain literal zest to it.
Lurker here, interested in this because I am terrible at naming things myself.
I think high concept shows can have vague titles – House, Monk, and Castle are easy-to-remember and don’t need to do much PR for the show, because you only have to watch the show for about five minutes to know what it’s about.
Firefly was supposed to be an active name, right? It, after all, has the words “fire” and “fly.” But I agree that it’s actually a bit mysterious.
Anyway, the best alternative I can think of is Browncoats, but I’m not sure this is at all better.
I don’t think a title makes or breaks a series, although it certainly doesn’t hurt. As a counterpoint to Wonderfalls (and like Drive), Dead Like Me had a fabulous title and was a great series; it still didn’t get picked up for a third season.
When I posted this, I was thinking something like “Can’t Take the Sky” as being suitably Westernish, suitably space-ish, and odd enough to get notice, but I still wasn’t quite sure about it. Whedon’s shows all defy easy labeling.
Although “Dollhouse” was a great name for that show…
@Andy: It wasn’t the reason, or even a main reason, why it was cancelled. But it didn’t help marketing, either.
“Cowboys… In Space!”
“The System” – because it’s set in one, it’s what our BDH’s are fighting against (and because ‘The ‘Verse’ sounds far too much like a poetry show ).
Or ‘Into the Black’ because it reeks of isolation.
Or ‘Star Whores’. But that’s just my Companion-based spin-off…
(Good to see you back, by the way)!
Wild Wild Space.
Big Damn Heroes.
Hey, might as well go with it.
Captain Malcolms Sing Along Ship! But I jest. Actually I love some of the above names, sky and black included. Captain Malcoms Crew would have been workable, although perhaps tying too much to Nathan Fillion when he was an equal piece of the pie. Frontiers seems suitably western, but would have caught the Trekkie ear. When we look at the evidence all of Whedons shows had one word titles. Buffy (granted with a sub) Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse. Also, Tim is wrong. I watched and really loved Drive. That series is just begging for a comic book or video game reboot.
“Spaceship Firefly” would have informed me better. I found the show after it had been canceled.