Virtuality Review/Analysis of Fate
I read Variety almost daily and watch plenty of TV, but I wouldn’t even have known the TV movie/pilot Virtuality existed were it not for it being on Hulu’s homepage.
It’s a sci-fi movie that was meant to be a TV pilot, about a group of astronauts on a 10 year mission to save the world. They visit a virtual reality world to loosen up, but soon someone keeps showing up and virtually killing them during their relaxation time.
Because of the poor publicity, at least as far as I perceived it, I think it shouldn’t come as a surprise the show posted very poor ratings (also not helping matters is that it aired on Friday).
As it says at The New York Times website: “That Fox is broadcasting “Virtuality,” a film meant to introduce a series it has not scheduled, on a Friday night in June — one week before the Fourth of July — carries with it the cruel weight of a live burial.”
But as far as the quality of the program, it’s definitely a strong piece of work.
I was immediately intrigued just from knowing Ronald D. Moore (of Battlestar Galactica fame) was involved. Galactica also started with a pretty epic movie (I believe it was a miniseries, actually) and only got better as it transitioned into a full-blown series.
Now Virtuality probably won’t have that happen. It’s good, but not the type of thing that will inspire a crazily devoted fanbase, it just hadn’t really blossomed yet, though there were definitely signs it was going to.
But it’s definitely playing with some interesting themes, hints of religion/spirituality, questions about the nature of reality, consumer culture criticism and I suspect it would only get better with time.
also
SPOILER
They kill the lead (Commander Frank Pike, a charming Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in the pilot. Which takes big cojones. But it seems he may live on in the virtual reality world the astronauts visit to blow off steam.
END SPOILER
The cast is uniformly strong, and while the special effects might not be top notch that could be intentional to delineate which scenes are taking place in the virtual reality modules.
I for one was intrigued by the ending, which suggests strongly some sort of spiritual and maybe even Matrix like situation where the world the astronauts think they are inhabiting is not what it seems. But it’s left ambiguous enough that it could be anything.
The pilot was directed by Peter Berg (!) a fine director who is deeply in love with handheld cameras, which seem to pop up frequently here as they did in Berg’s Friday Night Lights.
The show also does a neat job making it appear like different video sources are being used, because the crew is on a virtual reality show and the ship has security footage the show often switches around with the source of the video changing often. It’s a neat touch that keeps the visuals from going stale in the cramped environment.
The show received “generally favorable reviews” according to Metacritic, and probably cost a pretty penny to produce. It could have gone to interesting places.
Oh well.