Television

When Star Trek: The Next Generation was announced, everybody was pissed. "You can't have Star Trek without Captain Kirk!" "The first officer is a soap opera supporting actor!" "The captain is bald??!"

And then, lo and behold, it was the best Star Trek, almost entirely absent of rehashing, paying slavish tribute to, or shamelessly trading on nostalgia for The Original Series.

So, have someone go to the used spaceship dealer, buy a rusty old Firefly class light freighter, and go off on their own adventures. Nothing wrong with new crew, same universe.

Have you watched Killjoys? Very similar vibes

Yeah I love space westerns and unfortunately they're very uncommon and rarely done well. Firefly had the huge advantages of being Whedon at his peak with a great cast (as he often had) at the right time and with the courage to commit to the genre in a way I wish more would.

I don't want more Whedon, his golden era is over and I'm now convinced that he really only excels at the overlying ideas for a show and casting. What I want is someone who loves the genre to do something similar, but better.

'Cowboy bebop' did it three years earlier and much better. But then I'm very partial to jazz and film noir. Then got remade by the same people much grittier as a period piece set in immediately post-feudal police state Japan.

Edit: in kind of the same way a lot of Kurosawa films got remade as westerns

What about dandy guys? In space.