Fox’s Virtuality

Kali asks what I think about the upcoming Fox show from Ronald D. Moore (“Battlestar Gallactica”) “Virtuality”, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Commander Frank Pike. The show’s about the starship Phaeton which is on a 10 year mission to a distant solar system. To keep the crew occupied, they use a series of modules that put them into virtual reality worlds. Everything goes great until a “bug” in the system starts messing things up.

(You can read further details at Reuters and at The Futon Critic).

Now this sounds like an interseting premise for a movie, and is very open ended for a show. It’s basically people playing around on Star Trek holodecks, although more like the Matrix, I suppose. At first glance the lack of direction for this show seems like it wouldn’t have a good focus, but remember this is coming from Ron Moore. A lot of people were surprised that someone would actually do a remake of “Battlestar Galactica” and even more surprised that it was a good show.

I’m still not certain. It has possibilities, but the open-endedness of this show really bothers me. Unless the show has a clear purpose, and it establishes it right from the start, I think people will be wondering where it’s headed. Trying to survive a 10-year journey doesn’t seem to be much of a premise.

I guess we’ll see.

(Thanks to Kali!)