Fox tell Moore his ‘Virtuality’ sci-fi pilot sucks
Ronald. D. Moore of Battlestar Galactica fame has been working with Fox to bring a new science fiction series to the screen, titled ‘Virtuality‘. Virtuality follows the crew of the long-range starship Phaeton who play around in a virtual reality computer program whilst traveling through space – sort of like Star Trek’s holodeck. The story follows them as something goes wrong with the virtual reality program.
The pilot has been filmed and whilst sci-fi fans are rejoicing at the news of a new sci-fi series from Moore, Fox are not. Fox have reacted poorly to the pilot claiming that it isn’t mainstream enough, feeling that the pilot will be unattractive to mainstream audiences.
It seems to Fox sci-fi is only sci-fi if it isn’t too sci-fi. What does this narrow vision mean for Moore and his sci-fi series? Moore is now forced to take Virtuality back to the drawing board and attempt to rework it into something more palatable to stupid people. Actually it’s a bit worse than that, because Fox’s reaction puts the possibility of a full series in doubt. i09 have gone as far as to suggest that you may never get to see the pilot, something they consider to be a ‘masterpiece’ and considering they’ve read the script I’d suggest they’ve got a pretty good idea of what this new series has to offer.
The way I see it is that Fox continue to stifle creativity by pushing the ‘mainstream’ and ’stand alone episode’ ideas into their productions from a foundation of financial fear. They continue to do everything in their power to avoid anything truly innovative or visionary unless it’s so innovative that it looks like making a lot of money, but to be guaranteed of that they need to let someone else take the risk first (ala Watchmen). It continues to amaze me how often they produce an imaginative television series and then make stupid decisions that kill the series ratings, only then to blame the genre rather than their own decisions.
My guess is the Virtuality pilot will have its day, but that the green-light for a series will not be given until Fox gauge how the pilot is received. Despite the potential of a new Moore sci-fi extravaganza, I have to say I almost hope Fox cancel it and force Moore to move to a network that will respect his talents. We don’t need more ‘mainstream’ television series. We need more television networks allowing less-mainstream creative geniuses to do their thing.
We can only hope.
May 28th, 2009 at 4:02 am
Sorry Darren, but you’ve got to stop molesting RDMs leg. Fox is a company that has been doing this sort of thing before RDM and his ilk were glimmers in their Mother’s eyes. Face it, RDM is basically a one-trick pony who heretofore has never created something Original. When he finally “attempts” it, it’s basically a “dark, Gritty, Mosaicy” Star Trek knock-off. Let’s see, a 5 year mission, oops, I mean 10 year mission, of the Starship Enterpri… oops, I mean Photon, er, Phaeton. The Intrepid crew uses their Holodeck, oops, I mean Virtual Reality computer to pass the time.
No Wonder Fox put the dump Date airing on it. It has RDM BSG Finale level Stink Bomb written all over it.
Come back to me when that miserable hack RDM actually “creates” something, without having to bag other peoples work to do it.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
It starts out crappie and just gets
crappier. Turned it off after half
hour and watched a DVD.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Boring. Junior high level and mentality. Another night-time soap-opera trying to be passed off as a ’sci fi’ “show”. I tivo’d the whole thing and basically fast-forwarded the entire show 80% of the time. One 5 min. action scene near the end out of 120 minutes of dialog & sitting around talking. Low budget. Boring. Fox ‘execs’ are rich with their cigars and large swimming pools – you think they care what kind of @!#$% gets aired? It was easy to tell this was ‘produced’ by the same ‘battlestar galactica’ bunch. Fox doesn’t get it. Like I said years ago – less TALK more action MORE EFFECTS you network ‘exec’ idiots!
June 27th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
It’s always questionable listening to viewpoints from one person who admits he only watched half and the other who admits he didn’t watch 80% of it. It is simply impossible to ‘get’ a whole picture from its parts.
Virtuality was excellent. It had a lot of deep philosophical themes. The acting was spot on. The uniqueness of it was spot on. The potential was obvious.
I hope to hell it gets the green-light as we need more sci-fi for adults who think.
June 27th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Ok, here’s a viewpoint of someone who watched the whole thing.
Virtuality was HORRIBLE. It had moments of potential here and there but just ruined them all with utter stupidity and plot holes smacking you in the face. The whole captain shuttle lock was like a joke. And the computer’s responses were written without any thought.
It was just insulting to be a viewer of this terrible piece of garbage. This is a sci-fi for adults who don’t think and have no standards for how they spend their time.
June 27th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Ok, here’s a viewpoint of someone else who watched the whole thing.
Awesome, philosophical and creative show. I ask powers that be to green-light a series.
June 27th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
I appreciate everyone’s views, but a rule on Sci Fi Scoop is constructive, reasoned comments only. No insults or personal attacks please. If you want to criticize something then do so by pointing out specifically what you didn’t like and why with balanced perspective. Thanks! Always remember that even if you don’t like a show there is a team of creative, hard working people who put their blood sweat and tears into it. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t give you the right to attack them. Remember, you can only ever convey your personal opinion at any one time about what you do and don’t like. No single person can ever claim a show IS or ISN’T anything. What one person might loathe another might love. It is as simple as always bearing in mind and having respect for the truth that your view is not THE view.
Now go forth and discuss Virtuality!
June 28th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Much too cerebral.
You know; like the original Star Trek pilot.
June 29th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I liked it, it was smart and entertaining. If you’re going to sit back and complain about this show being a rip off of Star Trek, grow up. Yea, no shit it’s going to be a lot like Star Trek. How long has Star Trek been around? Just about anything you’ll see that involves traveling through space, exploring other planets, or trying to make human life in space possible is going to look like Star Trek.. get used to it. If you don’t like it, fine.. here’s a tip: Don’t watch it. I personally hate a lot of TV shows but i don’t go around bashing every single one i don’t LOVE right off the bat. It’s sad that people waste so much time completely trying to damn something instead of praising it if it’s -good-. I didn’t really like Dollhouse much at all until episode 7 when things actually started to unravel into something i WANT to watch. Also, if you didn’t give it a chance and decided to stop watching.. i don’t think your opinion means jack shit to someone who DID, whether they liked it or not.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:37 pm
I would watch another episode if they aired one just to see if it could actually get any worse… It was a reality show meets 2001 a space odyssey, nothing original there. As far as the cast goes they weren’t even likable and very forgettable. Stuff like this makes me wounder why shows like Firefly get canceled and while I was no big fan of Enterprise the worst episode was much better than Virtuality could have ever tried to measure up to.
July 4th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Ugh, this pilot was terrible. It’s a collection of the most clichéd, charmless characters I’ve ever come across wrapped up in an idiotic concept. I like BSG, but why is it that every single character this guy makes is some mentally dysfunctional person with some brooding trauma in their past.
Yes, when we pick a crew for our 10 year, mentally stressful voyage, we’re going to pick the most screwed up people we possibly can.
I have no desire to see “Real World in Space” with ridiculously vapid and screwed up characters.
July 4th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Yep, much to cerebral and not dumb enough for the masses although what Steve says was quite accurate. When I watched it I felt like the characters were not accurate representations of the type of crew to represent Earth on a ten year journey that would really be picked, even if they’d already gone a bit bananas after 6 months in space. Perhaps if they’d already been in space for 5 years or something then yeah.
It would have been better to start them all off semi-perfect and watch them slowly go down hill over time.
July 6th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
It’s barely cerebral, not “much too cerebral.” The only deep concept the show has going for it is that potentially what the crew know as reality is in fact just another simulation. That’s old hat, explored sufficiently by Star Trek, The Matrix, The 13th Floor and probably a dozen other pieces of fiction I’m not aware of.
He’s several years too late (or many years too early for people to have forgetten) in piloting a show around the concept of “questioning the nature of reality”.
There’s nothing smart about it. It’s just a bunch of unlikable, unbelievable characters centered around an unoriginal concept.
July 6th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
As a Philosophy lecturer I would like to say that the philosophical can never be considered sufficiently explored by nature of the fact that the subjects we are curious about are always filled with more questions than answers.
Yes, the film and television medium quite regularly revisits the same questions, but then what is the difference between one medium doing it and another, such as a University or group of Theologists? Since the film medium has different characters facing those questions we are inevitably faced with different answers from the perspectives of those characters.
In the case of Virtuality, you have a virus infecting the Virtuality system that as yet has no explanation. It might be parallelled to Agent Smith in the Matrix and thus have a kind of counter-balance nature to what the Captain may have become (as alluded to in the end), or it might be something entirely different. That is just one example of an unanswered question from the pilot that may turn out to be a different imaginative slant on the similar themes relating to the question of what is real.
Steve mentions that it’s the same old “just another simulation” but then is it? The nature of intelligence and sentience and self awareness is not left purely to what we perceive as reality, so was it just simulation? Was Neo a program? Was Smith a program? But were they real or simulation? Define real?
Questions of reality are always cerebral because even now the human race has no answers about its origins and only now is science beginning to demonstrate that reality may in fact be a hologram (do a search on that in recent news, or do a search for ‘holographic universe’), indicating that what we think is ‘real’ may in fact be the simulation.
So was Virtuality “much too cerebral?” Of course. Anything that extends beyond the limits of our perceptions, which are based upon our conscious minds and therefore are limited to the “cerebral” to reason our experiences through are always “much too cerebral” for if they weren’t we would already have all the answers.
Virtuality for me was another cerebral story in the making and it is a shame that we won’t get to see the writers take on those subjects being explored in more depth.
January 10th, 2010 at 3:55 am
Point 1) Anything in space is going to slightly resemble Star Trek. Agreed.
Point 2) 2001 A Space Odyssey meets a reality show. No Duh!
I think the show is excellent. Gripping and strait to the point. It would be a shame for Fox to axe it so soon becuase I for one would like to see more!
I give it a good 5/5. – Really engoyed it.
January 10th, 2010 at 4:02 am
Anyway, Sell it to SyFy! SyFy would embrace it and probably finance the continuing episodes.
July 26th, 2010 at 12:04 am
I watched the pilot, and I thought it was utter pith. I like stories that make you think–this show is not one of them. It carries the veneer of a thinking person’s diversion, but only the veneer. In the end it was just lousy. I liked some of the character development, but most of it was really cheesy and two-dimensional.
I would have absolutely NO interest in watching this as a regular series whatsoever. No love for FOX, but they made the right decision, even if they did it for the wrong reasons. We do need more heady TV–something that challenges the viewer is a *good* thing–but something that *pretends* to challenge the viewer is not… it might be okay for the kiddies, and who knows, maybe given a season or two to develop it would actually turn into something that doesn’t suck.
But “potential” doesn’t equal entertainment.
Further, the CGI is bad. PLEASE don’t use bad CGI. If you can’t afford to make realistic looking renderings, then you shouldn’t have any renderings at all. If you *MUST* have renderings (and in a show like this, it’s pretty much necessary) then they have to be good. Since they aren’t, the creators should have picked some other genre.
The whole reality TV angle? Ridiculous. I can’t stand reality TV and I don’t want to watch pretend reality TV.
But the most irritating thing here is of course the “cerebral facade”–a paltry formulaic approach dressed up as something deep and philosophical. It’s insulting to the intelligence of the viewers. Spare us. This is not “LOST” in Space. In fact, go back and watch the very first episode of “LOST”–the dramatic camera work, excellent composition and dialog, and a complex plot that asks questions for which there *are* answers. This entire thing had a “we’ll figure out why this happened later if we get the money to make this” about it. If they really knew where they were going, they did an incredibly poor job of packaging it.
In the end, I’m not sold, sorry. This was crap. I’m sure some people will like it, but I couldn’t stand it. The only upside for me was getting to see Clea Duvall again, even though her part asked nothing of her.
But yes, go ahead and sell it to SyFy… bad original programming is their forte. At least it would mean a steady paycheck for these actors, many of whom I feel have real talent.
August 17th, 2010 at 12:44 am
Found it a bit boring and none of the characters very likeable. Bit obvious where its going – The space flight itself is a virtual reality show. Had potential but never realised