Virtuality: The Revenge Of The Holodeck

Ron Moore is TV's God. JJ Abrams has passed the buck to his Lost and Fringe co-producers while he fannys around in movie land. Joss is back in TV land...but Joss don't wanna be funny...unless he's blogging on the net with Dr Horrible. So it's up to Mr Moore. Battlestar Galactica, the greatest TV show of the decade, has finished. The pilot for its prequel Caprica was daring and rather bloody good.

And he's at it again with new science fiction pilot Virtuality. Set on the Space exploration ship Phaeton in the near future, a small crew of astronauts prepare to leave the solar system on a ten year mission to a local star, in a bid to save the Earth from environmental collapse. To help the crew psychologically, theve installed a virtual reality system (like Treks holodeck but in goggle form).

The space mission itself privides a strong bedrock for drama. But Moore adds to this a bunch of professionals, who all have very troubled personalities, even before the mission begins. Then there's the virtual reality angle; there's a murderer/rapist in the dream world thats apparently not part of the program. So who's the evil programmer on the crew. And who killed that key crew member at the pilot's climax?

In true Ron Moore fashion, the premise leaves the writers free to explore philosoiphy, religion, psychology and sociology...as with all good ship shows, it puts a cross-section of society under the microscope. It even deals with news, media, fame and the nature of reality as the crews mission is streamed to Eath in a Big Brother, fly-on-the-wall documentary.

It's brilliant, and under Peter Bergs confident direction, the reality TV feel for the piece really comes off. All it's missing is the explosions.
And that's the downside...to the shows continued production. It's being produced by the Fox network, a company that has already shown its distain for fantasy based TV (see Dollhouse/The Sarah Connor Chronicles) by dumping Virtuality in the infamous Friday Night Death Slot...where TV show go to die. It appears this is the case as this intelligent and gripping pilot was unwatched by nearly everyone.
Unless the Sci-fi channel pick this up, Virtuality is doomed. But when they're about to unleash another Stargate series, I have little faith in the future of smart sci-fi on TV. Fingers crossed with Caprica.