5 Cancelled Genre TV Shows That Were Too Ahead Of Their Time

Years before The Guardians of The Galaxy were saving the universe while striking it big at the box office, there was another group of space travelling misfits. Firefly debuted in 2002 on the Fox Network, and was cancelled after 11 episodes aired. Fox didn't even bother broadcasting the three remaining complicated episodes. While it developed a cult following, it never became the blockbuster hit that GOTG was. However they are quite similar.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy was a comic book unknown to general mainstream audiences. Even non-comic book readers know who Captain America is, but GOTG didn't have any built-in recognition aside from being part of the Marvel brand. This is similar to Firefly, which was an original creation without a pre-existing network of fans, aside from those fans of the Joss Whedon "brand" consisting of his other hit shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Both teams travel around in "blue-collar" spaceships just eking by, and not above stealing and smuggling to make ends met. Both shows mixed humor and action with a leader who was a bit of a charismatic scoundrel. When the chips are down though both captains have a heart of gold, and lead their rag-tag teams to be heroes.

Firefly had the right stuff to be a hit, but unfortunately just not enough people saw it at the time. If Fox promotions for Firefly had slow-motion shots of Nathan Fillion swaggering down the hallway to Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling"...perhaps things would have worked out differently for the Serenity crew.