Originally Posted by D

Well, it's my understanding that the reason that Firefly flopped was political.

The guy who was behind the show, and pushed for Fox to pick it up left the network soon after it did - and not on good terms... so, what you had was a couple of people taking his place that not only had absolutely no interest in the show, but, in fact, had political cause to show that their predecessor's ideas sucked, and Fox was better off without him.

So, they aired episodes out of chronological order, and kept switching the time-slot that the show was broadcasted (I think that in the time it took the 10-or-so episodes that aired to air, the show went through 3 or 4 time-slot changes). No show could stand up to that kind of treatment.. and so, it didn't.

I was like "wtf," when they cancelled it, too... but at least they recognized enough of a following to come back around and make a movie out of it.