Firefly, the Joss Whedon-created sci-fi Western that came and went in 2002, is back on the Science Channel, its two-hour premiere on Sunday night reminding us how good the show was, and why it was pretty much doomed from the start. Nathan Fillion headed up a cast of ragtag characters, a group morally compromised in varying degrees, united in trying to avoid domination by the Alliance, oppressive victors in a war we saw being waged six years earlier in this 500-years-in-the-future series. Fillion’s Mal Reynolds is a reassuring archetype — the wry loner forced to become a leader of men and women.

Heard now, some of Mal’s pronouncements (written by a staff that included, in addition to Whedon, Jane Espenson, Ben Edlund, and Tim Minear) can sound simultaneously like John Wayne-John Ford-movie dialogue and libertarian tracts: “That’s what governments are for — to get in a man’s way,” to take one of this evening’s examples. [Read The Rest Here]