Fox just ran a two-hour TV movie that’s obviously a set up for a series. I think it would be a pretty good one.
Virtuality is set on board the first deep-space exploration vessel Phaeton. The crew has been picked for their various areas of expertise… and how interesting they’ll be on camera. See, part of the plan for their 10 year trip in search of a new place for humans to move to is to broadcast the day to day goings on of life aboard the ship.
Kind of like The Real World: Deep Space.
And that’s pretty much how the story plays out.
All the conflicts and interpersonal drama framed like your typical reality show. At first, I found it a bit annoying. But by the halfway point, I was kind of caught up in the actual sci-fi aspects of the story. See, the real hook is the virutal reality gear that the crew uses to alleviate the boredom of long-term close-quarters living. Of course, there’s also the ubiquitous ship computer (named Jean) with the erily calm demeanor, no matter what’s going on.
Oh, and then there’s the strange guy who keeps showing up in the crew’s VR sessions. He tends to do things like shoot them and push them off mountains during otherwise peaceful and relaxing happenings.
By the end–which really wasn’t a sutiable end for a stand-alone movie–there’s a whole lot of mystery and the crew is locked in to their long trip to another star.
The cast is pretty good: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (New Amsterdam), Clea DuVall (Carnivale), Sienna Guillory (Eragon) all raise the quality far enough above “reality TV” level that the show is watchable. The mystery, though, is what makes it interesting.
That mystery is co-written by Battlestar Galactica‘s Ronald D. Moore.
Here’s the official Fox Preview of the show:
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