Virtuality: Bring it on.
I just wanted to use my fairly tiny platform to plug a pilot for a TV show I just watched on HULU. It's called Virtuality, and it's about a crew on a ten year mission to a distant planet. There are twelve of them, each of them difficult people, and they are cramped in a small artificial environment in deep space. Their only escape from their daily drudgery is to put on some virtual reality goggles and live out their fantasies. I won't go into details, but things start to go wrong, first with the virtual reality program in which roams a violent personality, one that doesn't belong there, and then a terrible accident that is either the result of a technical malfunction or sabotage. Now the crew doesn't know who they can trust, and their one refuge in their virtual reality system no longer seems quite safe. Take it from a writer: This is a good set up for a pressure-cooker of a show.
This program is the next step for Ronald Moore of Battlestar Galactica fame. Yes, BSG was based on a cheesy show from the 1970's, but the second generation got rave reviews from practically all quarters. Science fiction can be a hard genre to sell, and TV science fiction, because of its kitschy history, is even harder. Though BSG never got a huge audience, it remained the darling of critics almost to the very end, and deservedly so. This show was the very best writing on television, to my mind, and I like to think of myself as a pretty good judge of good writing.
I think Virtuality is prepped to head into some interesting territory, questioning the nature of reality, our experience of it, and how the uncertainty of our perceptions affects our psychology. This is deeper than almost anything on TV, so I'm not surprised that Fox, the network that initially contracted for the pilot, decided not to pick up the series. They canceled Family Guy years ago, only to bring it back when they realized it had a huge following on the Cartoon Network. That says it all. So maybe Fox isn't the right place for Virtuality, but it deserves to be on TV, and I wanted to add my voice to those asking that this series be picked up and aired. The writing is very good, and good writing deserves support.
My suggestion: NBC should cancel Merlin, and invest in Virtuality instead.
This program is the next step for Ronald Moore of Battlestar Galactica fame. Yes, BSG was based on a cheesy show from the 1970's, but the second generation got rave reviews from practically all quarters. Science fiction can be a hard genre to sell, and TV science fiction, because of its kitschy history, is even harder. Though BSG never got a huge audience, it remained the darling of critics almost to the very end, and deservedly so. This show was the very best writing on television, to my mind, and I like to think of myself as a pretty good judge of good writing.
I think Virtuality is prepped to head into some interesting territory, questioning the nature of reality, our experience of it, and how the uncertainty of our perceptions affects our psychology. This is deeper than almost anything on TV, so I'm not surprised that Fox, the network that initially contracted for the pilot, decided not to pick up the series. They canceled Family Guy years ago, only to bring it back when they realized it had a huge following on the Cartoon Network. That says it all. So maybe Fox isn't the right place for Virtuality, but it deserves to be on TV, and I wanted to add my voice to those asking that this series be picked up and aired. The writing is very good, and good writing deserves support.
My suggestion: NBC should cancel Merlin, and invest in Virtuality instead.
posted by Amy at 9:19 PM
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