Three-Down Theatre: You can’t take the sky from the Riders, but will their comeback work?

Pressing forward with our Three-Down Theatre series of season previews, here's a look at the Saskatchewan Roughriders, who are hoping to recover from a disastrous 5-13 2011 but are sticking with quarterback Darian Durant.

Film: Serenity.

The story of how Serenity was made seems to fit this Riders' season. It started life in 2002 as the TV series Firefly, but despite tremendous creative peaks and critical adoration, the show was cancelled after just a single season. The word got out about the show, though, the audience only grew, and a massive fan campaign provided the impetus to carry on with the series as a movie in 2005. Similarly, the Roughriders hit significant peaks with a 2007 Grey Cup victory and back-to-back runs to the Grey Cup game in 2009 and 2010 (although they narrowly lost both of those games to Montreal), but the 2011 campaign was about as dismal as a series cancellation. As with Firefly, though, the fan interest never went away, and the team will be hoping that can carry them to a revitalization in 2012.

Serenity's about the ragtag crew of the titular Firefly-class transport and their struggle to survive against overwhelming odds (and eventually do much more than that). They're a group put together by captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), and he bears more than a few similarities to Saskatchewan general manager Brendan Taman. Both have been through substantial ups-and-downs over the years, with Reynolds winding up on the losing side of a war for independence and Taman toiling in various CFL jobs until he got the general manager's gig in Winnipeg, then leaving that position to work in an oddly-tiered Saskatchewan leadership structure (first under Eric Tillman, then doing the day-to-day work during Tillman's suspension, then as the general manager but under vice-president of football operations Ken Miller). Taman's got his own ship now, though, and like Reynolds, he's making bold moves, particularly acquiring Odell Willis and Brendon LaBatte. His early moves have resulted in the Riders extending his contract before the team assembled entirely by him even plays a game, so he should have fuel for a while.

Taman and Reynolds are the ones responsible for assembling the group, but someone else will be piloting it. In the TV series and the movie, that's Hoban "Wash" Washburne (Alan Tudyk, otherwise known as Steve The Pirate from Dodgeball), whose amazing piloting skills are second only to his dinosaur-battle narrating abilities. In Saskatchewan, the controls are in the hands of rookie head coach Corey Chamblin, and while he hasn't yet dropped a line as good as "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!", his enthusiasm is contagious. Chamblin's rise to this position of responsibility has been meteoric, with him going from defensive backs coach in Winnipeg and Calgary to Hamilton's defensive coordinator last season and then taking over as Saskatchewan's head coach after only a single season as a coordinator. Of course, the last man to do the Hamilton DC to Saskatchewan HC transition didn't even survive the season, and this comparison carries its own ominous undertones. We'll see if Chamblin can overcome it.

There's always room for a tough mercenary, whether his name's Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin) or Odell Willis. Cobb may occasionally be known for funny hats and witty one-liners, but he also packs a pretty impressive punch, between his gun "Vera" and his grenades (when Mal allows him to use them). That could go for Willis as well; sure, he talked a big game as part of Winnipeg's "Swaggerville" defence last year, but he also was an opposing quarterback's nightmare on the field, tying for the league lead with 13 sacks and playing a crucial hybrid end/linebacker role for the Bombers. The Riders were inexplicably able to acquire him for second- and fourth-round draft picks this offseason, and although he got into off-field trouble with a DUI arrest in Atlanta, he could still be one of their most crucial pieces. Perhaps if he succeeds on the field this year, he'll even get a statue and a song.

Perhaps the most pivotal character in the film is the secretive River Tam (Summer Glau), who proves to be not only the reason the Alliance is after Serenity, but also the key to overcoming them. The closest equivalent in Saskatchewan is quarterback Darian Durant, and although River's female, Durant should be flattered by a comparison to someone who accomplished perhaps the most impressive bar-fight victory since Patrick Swayze in Road House. (A humorous side note here is that the Alliance manages to start tracking down the crew of Serenity thanks to surveillance video of that bar fight, while Saskatchewan, presumably worried about similar occurrences, took the unusual step of banning fans from some practices this week thanks to notes about their plays and formations being posted on fan forums; while the belief in this corner is that this is an overreaction and that there isn't much that can be gained from that kind of information, it's interesting that the team's getting paranoid about this.) When Durant's in form, the comparison's pretty accurate; in 2010 in particular, he dissected defences the way River dissects Reavers, throwing for a league-leading 5,542 yards. The team's going to need a strong aerial showing from him this season, as the ground game looks to be in the hands of players largely unproven at the CFL level and the defence carries its own concerns. When Durant's on, though, you can't take the sky from this team.

Prediction: 7-11, third in the West, outside the playoffs thanks to an East-to-West crossover.