Creator: Joss Whedon
Years: 2002
This ranking may be too high, as I’ve seen most of the episodes only once and that was five years ago. But I don’t remember a single moment while watching the fourteen episodes where I was bored or annoyed. Most of the time I was engrossed and sometimes on the edge of my seat. I love the space opera meets western niche and I feel Whedon hit all the right notes. Speaking of right notes, damn the soundtrack is good.
The casting is pretty damn good and unlike a lot of first seasons of shows, these characters hit it off with each other immediately. Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin are fantastic and the rest hold their own.
Out of Gas was one of my favorite episodes, with great cinematography and fraught with tension. The Reavers are a sufficiently creepy enemy they have to deal with on the outskirts of civilized space while running away from the primary government. Even then, there is usually a good bit of humor in each episode. There’s some camp like in Whedon’s other series Buffy and Angel, but he has better actors to pull it off here.
I really would have loved to see his direction with the show had it not been cancelled. The movie Serenity was pretty good but you can tell he had to do a rush job on resolving the loose ends from the show.
Death By Troggles 
A masterful piece of TV. Bring it back!
I love this show and the majority of the performances in it (Fillion, in particular, is fantastic). I feel like the second and third seasons of this show would’ve been among my favorite of any show ever.
For the record, Serenity was my gateway to the show, so it’s got huge nostalgic value to me. It might not hold up quite as well as the show, but it’s still top notch.
Also, this show hits the exact sci-fi sweet spot for my mom and dad, who I’m pretty sure have watched this series in its entirety at least 6 times.
Same here. I watched Serenity on a whim, then went and purchased the series. If I were doing a similar ranking, it’d be awful close to the top five for me.
I remember when this aired originally and read Rob Malda of Slashdot complaining about Fox’s treatment of the show. In 2003, I acquired the show, watched it, loved it, and got several others hooked on it. Not long after I spotted the DVD boxset on sale and bought that. I watched Serenity possibly opening week.
I always wondered how I would feel about this show if it didn’t end so early. I think one reason it was so good was from the pressure to deliver something to save the show each week.
For as much as I adored the first episode of this show, it’s still the only one I’ve seen. I keep it near the front of my queue, because surely this time I’ll watch it. I think I’m put off by knowing that it’s going to end so soon, and I’ll probably just be annoyed by that fact.