From Hollywood Reporter



And this is from Variety



Ron Moore, Michael Taylor and Peter Berg working together on a sci-fi series. That's shot up my excitement factor

Hadn't heard Berg was on until now. Cool.

I hope he lends his Friday Night Lights aesthetic to the camerawork. I'm also glad we're seeing some sci-fi shows that are about NASA and more realistic space exploration vs. rayguns and warp drive.

If RDM makes it, I'm there. However, I'm worried that we had something similar in Fox before. Just as Fox are busily remaking the 'X-Files' they have done a similar concept before. Anyone remember "Harsh Realm" with Terry O'Quinn? Virtual Military World gone bad.

Now, next, the should remake 'Millennium' and then we will be in business. Too bad they didn't do 'Reaper' ('Brimstone'-lite for slackers) that way we would be back to 1996 all over again.

Everything old is new again at Fox.

Maybe fanboys everywhere could get their Space: Above and Beyond remake.

IO9 has some spoilery details about the pilot.

Well, very original title (not). Is seems every other hack-VR story from the '90s had a title like that.

Concept sounds decent, though. Not a BSG fan, myself, but I've liked Moore's other work so I may just check it out.

Casting News

Nice casting. I thought he was great in Master and Commander. I'm a big BSG fan, so I'll definitely be checking this one out. Wow, 3 sci-fi shows I'll be checking out on Fox, a network I thought I'd be boycotting for life. Ugh, it's hard out there for a TV fan.

Even More Casting:

Damn. Now I may actually have to watch this. Damn you Nelson Lee!

My feelings exactly. The cast looks good so far. Hope for more brits though. They have done an amazing job with Ron on BSG.

The guy who played Shen is on the show? Righty, I'm in.

They just announced Clea Duvall from Carnivale and Heroes was cast as the ship's engineer.

Sienna Guillory? Oh my goodness. I'll watch anything with Sienna Guillory in it (for which loyalty her agent seems bound and determined to punish me; Resident Evil: Apocalypse was as enjoyable as tweezing gravel out of a bicycling injury).

Further, with as many genre projects as Fox seems to be launching, they can't possibly treat them all badly. Somebody's gotta win the jackpot, right?

Are you thinking of VR5? With Lori Singer, David McCallum, Louise fletcher, and will Patton? That was cool, and geek that I am, still miss it.

More on topic:SF, Berg, and pretty cast and a potentially cool premise? I'm there.

The Futon Critic just posted a detailed and positive review of Virtuality.

I have have to admit, although I planned to watch for Nikolaj Coster-Waldau I wasn't really that impressed with what I'd heard about the premise so far. However, now that I've read The Futon Critic's review I'm definitely interested. There were a lot of things in it that I didn't expect and found really cool (like the on-board reality show. Ha!). I should have known that if Ronald D. Moore was involved it would defy my expectations.

I'm really really excited for this.

This looks EXTREMELY interesting, but whether or not I watch will depend on when it airs; if there's any conflict at all with Joss Whedon's Dollhouse in terms of airing schedules, this is getting the short end of the stick. DH is my most anticipated series of the season, and I'm going to have a really hard time waiting til January.

This and Dollhouse will be on the same network, so there's no conflict.

Great write up, it's got me excited for a premise I found a bit weak. I sounds now more like the parts of Sunshine and Mission to Mars I liked, before both those films fell of the rails storywise.

It seems similar to DH with the idea of them being able to do lots of different genres of stories per episode.

For something I'd written off as dumb, it does sound surprisingly good. I'm very curious what this 'game changing' ending is.

It kind of reminds me a little of part of Earth 2 when they'd use those virtual reality headsets, and the doctor was using VR to communicate with the council.

One problem though... Surely this can't work on network television?

Well, you know, this is Fox we're talking about. If there's a way for two shows on the same network to conflict with each other they will surely find it ;-)

Actionmage


Thanks, now I know I'm not the only person in the world that misses that show.

Ron made the hacktastic cheesefest dreck of Original BSG into something amazing; so I am in! Plus, he has the cautionary tale of Eick's Bionic Woman remake to heart, I assume. He has to show that he is the one with the excellent vision. I have good wishes for this project, if not high hopes.

Does there have to be a bug in the system? Honestly. A thousand interesting stories can be imagined before something goes wrong with the software/hardware/wetware.

VR5, I recall, interested me at the time. I'd not be adverse to Netfixing them to see if I still feel the same. Louise Fletcher rocks in everything she ever did that I saw. Even DS9.

Danggit! I do not want to get my hopes up for this show, because I know it will not end well. Curse you, Fox!

I don't actually like the sound of the premise much, but I'll put up with a lot to watch Nikolaj Coster-Waldea and Clea Duvall.

First order of business in the set: Clea Duvall's hair goes blonde, so she can be Starbuck Jr.

IIRC, it currently is. Well, it was when she was on Heroes, and I think it was when she turned up on Grey's Anatomy.

Don't know who the rest of the cast are, but I'm so there for Clea. She just rocks so hard.

My thoughts exactly. My interest increased 1000-fold when I read the post that Clea had been cast.

Apparently there will be two Gay cooks called Manny and Val in the show:

http://www.afterelton.com/blog/michaeljens...sentation-grade

That is all.

Interview with Peter Liguori at the TCA Press Tour: Talking 'Dollhouse' and 'Virtuality' with the head of Fox. The good stuff starts about halfway down. No plot or casting spoilers, just some mention of the mood/idea they're aiming for and lots of nice things about Ron Moore :-)

And they're cute! I have to say I'm really looking forward to this.

Hmm, according to this source, they are listed as Mathematician and Geologist, so yay for avoiding the "sassy cook and heart of the crew" cliche (if my source is correct). On a shallower note, I did not like afterElton's nagging insistence on how important gay characters in SciFi are, permanently implying that not including them is next to blasphemy. I really appreciated RDM's frank explanation he gave in another interview. He said he did not know how to write them convincingly and neither did he want to make the token 'gay episode' to be done with this topic once and for all. This man has really my respect, especially after feeding my stalker-ish impulses with his podcasts.

As for the show itself, I am soooo excited about this project, I just can't wait. The idea of a space crew jammed in a tincan, years of living together ahead mixed with a mystery-bug in the holodeck - sign me in! After RDM made my head whirl with all the mindfraks in BSG I have best hopes for this new project. However, the interview with the Head of Fox gave me a pause. When asked about the pilot model vs picking up whole seasons, he answered:




I know, such an answer was to be expected and yet it brings up painful memories of "Serenity". "Very ambitious, thank you very much, and now go away." *sigh*

I come here after checking out the afterelton link on Virtuality. I will definitely keep my eyes on this project because of RDM.

From imdb, they got James D'Arcy! I am also glad Nikolaj Coster-Waldea will get another chance.

Oh, I feel sorry for him. It's pretty unfortunate for a TV writer to be unable to write men. Or maybe he was talking about lesbians, so he doesn't know how to write women? I guess most of the characters on BSG weren't done by him, then.

I loved all of these shows so I hope I'll like this one too.

I'd appreciate it a lot more if it had been the first explanation I heard from his camp about why there had been absolutely no gay characters featured in the first couple of years on the show. If I recall correctly, the original explanation was that maybe some of the existing characters were, and we just hadn't seen it yet. Since, y'know, the show had never had time to concentrate on anyone's love life, gay or straight, what with the overriding story of humanity's near extinction. Oh wait...

Whenever someone scrambles for an explanation for seemingly discriminatory treatment and comes up with multiple different stories, I always suspect the real reason is something unflattering that they're afraid to admit to.

I just hope whoever draws the short straw and gets the assignment of writing for The Gays on this new show doesn't regard them as some weird alien species that has to be given motivations and behaviors completely different from human beings.

If this be the case, I definitely share your concerns. Dangling the carrot in front of the audience is only fun for some time until you either hand it over or leave it. Not sure, which explanation came first. FWIW, I remember reading the other explanation (not able to write gay relationships) on RDM's blog.




Ha ;) RDM said something about having a lot of gay writers on his staff, so let's hope the best *fingers crossed* And thankfully, he spared us from "the gay episode", as a token for the fans and to be rid of the topic once and for all. I think Star Trek TNG did this once. Something about an alien race of asexual beings, supressing everyone in their society, who shows signs of sexual orientation.




I believe there is still a difference between writing a relationship model you are familiar with and one you do only know little to none about. Adding to this, there are also a lot of pitfalls in this topic to avoid, as no one wants to be accused fueling stereotypes. There are even a lot of gay writers, who suck at writing gay relationships, so I can understand that a straight writer is hesitant writing about such a topic. It's not that I want to defend every writer's ass for avoiding this topic for any reason - god no. It's just that I somehow sympathise with RDM's explanation.
Perhaps his podcasts fuel a stalkerish fraternisation with him. Anyone experiencing the same feelings? Please?

What about VR5 and Harsh Realm? I know that they have been cancelled pretty fast (probably because they were "ambitious"), but are they worth having a look? Is there any closure or is the plot left unfinished? I am quite traumatized after watching Oddysey 5 and being left in the cold with a cliffhanger ending. My expectations of Virtuality is something between "Solaris", a dash of "Sunshine" and "2001" (replacing the undecipherable mindfrak with somewhat more accessible mindfrak). Can't wait to watch all my expectations turn over.

Harsh Realm was pretty cool, in my opinion, and although there's no closure a lot of the puzzle is revealed for you to solve how you want it.

Reraizure I don't buy this for a second. It feels more like an excuse than an explanation and gay people aren't so wildly different from straight people for this to even make sense. RDM tackled a ton of controversial topics in BSG that I'm sure he has had no direct experience with. It's hard to believe that gay issues was the one area his imagination was too limited to take on. As for stereotypes, the most egregious are pretty obvious and easily avoided. I promise as long as he gives the gay characters in Virtuality the same depth as the other characters he won't have a problem writing for them. It's only when writers make gay characters cardboard cut outs, a source of lame jokes, or unrealistically perfect people that they begin to run into problems. I appreciate that he didn't want to reduce the topic to a very special episode (though god knows everything else from unions to racial cleansing was free game for a very special episode on BSG), but the rest of that argument doesn't fly. His comments to AfterElton were much more well considered and I appreciated his candor especially right now when most TV sci fi writers are still shying away from the topic altogether.

In this case, Zero Hour, let's say we agree to disagree. That's ok, because on this:



I totally agree with you.

ElectricMonk, thanks for the encouragement, a "Harsh Realm" DVD set will be at my home soon. Yay for more escapism! Boo for Fox cancelling a show which seemed to have a lot of promise. Again.

A fan site did do a bunch of Harsh Realm scripts for future episodes (including the one actual script that was released) of which I reviewed some (badly, I was young) a very long time ago as The Bishop.

On a sidenote: Watched Harsh Realm, loved it, especially Inga Voss - this woman seems to use botox like Paris Hilton uses lipstick, yay!

In more serious news, the Virtuality Blogreports that:



Naturally, I am fuming. Fox, this was your one chance to redeem yourself, after you killed several of my dreams with a lead pipe in a very nasty way - and you blew it. No, I will not wait until I watch the show to judge this decision more justly, because Fox's execs have constantly proven to be a bunch of monkeys in suits so to me they are guilty until proven otherwise.

Ok, gotta go and kill some puppies to vent some steam.

Yes, BOO! I how much this will affect what was planned for the pilot; because typically things may change between the pilot and subsequent episodes. I hope it doesn't. But this only counts if it gets picked up to series, right? (Big IF)

It's hard for Sci-fi is hard to stay afloat on network TV (especially FOX), so I was planning to enjoy the pilot, and not get my hopes up.

Trini, I share your reservations. When will the Execs ever learn? Sometimes it is worth paying for a show with a small, but devoted fanbase and much critical acclaim instead of hoping to catch the interest of the mainstream. What does "more mainstream" mean anyway? More angst? A love triangle? A love polygon? Oh, why not even a more procedural plot? Maybe the show should sport some woman in catsuits?

Damn, I am still fuming, because there goes my hope to watch some good scifi. Again. This %§"§$§"% at Fox remind me of the execs who hired David Lynch, asking him to make a family show. Overpaid and dumb as rocks.

If the show doesn't garner a large enough audience to get ratings that convinces advertisers to support the show with ad buys, then, no, it isn't worth paying for. I'm a grizzled veteran of many, many beloved, niche shows that died, and ultimately, there's a limit to the prestige loss leader shows any network can afford. Everyone else needs eyeballs, and sadly, lots of the genre type shows I love don't get them, or they don't get them in a form the networks can monetize.

FUX will kick out the gay characters and lobotomize the rest. Mainstream. Pass.

Hugin, I know, ecnomically speaking, such shows are not worth maintaining, but in my opinion maintaining such a show should be regarded as a thing of prestige.. Like an orchid, it might not be useful, but surely very nice to look at and nice to present on your mantlepiece. Especially with good critical acclaim, it can raise the overall reputation of the network.

Yeah, I know, I should take my meds and shut up, but a man can dream, right?

Why does FUX even pick up s/f shows at all if they're just going to tinker and mainstream (i.e., suck the life out of) them? Good grief.

Reraizure: angst, (heterosexual) love triangle, and more procedural/episodic? Yup, yup, and yup. *sigh*

Every show should sport women in catsuits!

Has anyone read the pilot script yet? I thought it was fairly good, with some rather disturbing moments.