'Fire' Hazard

Joss Whedon's new series ''Firefly'' will take flight this fall on Fox, though the sci-fi drama won't get exactly the start he had in mind. At the network's behest, the creator of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' made a two-hour, $8.7 million pilot to kick off the retro-futuristic tale, about renegade space cowboys. What Whedon delivered was a drama heavy on character development and light on action -- so light, in fact, that Fox asked him to bring in the booster rockets and quicken the show's pace. More importantly, Whedon was told to shoot a new, one-hour first episode. ''Fox came out of the box saying we're looking for flash, we're looking for comfort. Though I'm very much in love with what we did, there wasn't a lot of either there,'' admits Whedon. (Fox promises to air the original, two-hour pilot later in the season.) Despite the early confusion, Whedon insists fans will find ''Firefly'' easy to follow. ''I make every episode early on like a pilot, so everybody who hasn't seen the first one'' won't be confused, says Whedon. ''The first six episodes are very stand-alone, very expository, and hopefully not boring.'' When it comes to Whedon, that's never a worry.