I was just having fun with you Frank.
There are those who are "fans" and then there are those who are rabid fans, and the rabid types will know all the angles, inside info, quirks, continuity errors, etc. I'm not one of those, mind you, but I saw an opportunity to play one for a moment
Kinda like my favorite Saturday Night Live sketch of all time, "Get a Life" with Shatner as the guest star, where the fans were asking questions and it was apparent they tracked his every move and knew more about his life than HE did.
Hollywood is so much into "What have you done for me lately" that it's scarry. You would think that Joss Whedon, having delivered a HUGELY popular Buffy shoiw, and a pretty well beloved Angel show, would have been given more time to develop Serenity into another strong show. But as you say, they messed with him from the very start.
He was given a budget and latitude, and he went about his work. Then before the show even aired the execs saw the first 3-4 shows and said "We want you to show them in this new order!
What's up with that?!? So the pilot episode, the one that pulls the crew together, sets the background, and builds into the backstory, was shelved, and the networks aired a different show as the pilot. As people tuned in and caught episodes, it felt disjointed. They felt they had already missed the first few shows that built the premise, so they decided "I'll catch up with this during summer reruns, and build from there."
Which of course, never happened, because the opening blows the show suffered proved fatal. Stupid network execs. You can probably take a cop show or a lawyer show or a hospital show and rearrange the episodes and not get too muddled. But sci-fi probably more than any other genre (except for 24 which, by it's very premise, MUST be watched in sequence). requires continuity of character development and unfolding of plots during the first season.
Stupid network execs.
Steve