Started watching it. Didn't finish it. DVRd it. Still didn't finish it. Probably won't finish it. Going back to partying on Friday night... which is why I missed the BSG phenomenon sadly. Never watched it. Here it was awesome.
Aubrey Leatherwood www.aubreyleatherwood.com FaceBook * MySpace Imperfection A tale of perfect commitment, perfect love... and perfect sex. The People You Know, The Sex They Have ROMANTIC TIMES NOMINEE FOR BEST CONTEMPORARY EROTICA 2008 ISBN: 978-0-9818905-0-0 To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com From: keithbjohn...@comcast.net Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:25:56 +0000 Subject: [scifinoir2] My Take - "Virtuality" Debut on Fox- Anyone watch the "Virtuality" debut on Fox? I've often given a new show negative reviews, only to love it later. At the risk of continuing that habit.... There are three things I expect from a good scifi show: an interesting, attention-grabbing concept (note that doesn't always mean an "original" one), engaging actors that you like (or hate) and whose actions and experiences mean something to you, and a well-written and executed plot that drives the action, drama, or comedy and keeps you engaged. Note I did *not* say that it has to have great FX, amazing sets, or frightening, slobbering BEMs to keep me interested. Nor does it need ot hinge on space battles, explosions, or lots of action. Those things are great, and certainly enhance the experience of everything from Star Trek to Terminator, from Fringe to Primeval. But they're not the essence of scifi. Heck, some of the best scifi I've ever seen took place in a single room with only the slighest hint of any otherworldliness in terms of costumes or effects, and very little action in terms of fights. "Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits" remain standards of good writing and acting triumphing over the surface stuff. And of course, some of my favorite Star Trek eps of all time deal more with the human condition than an alien attack or a killer computer. It's no accident that a show that literally was built sometimes on cardboard and kitchen implement props still entertains. So no, I don't need action and excitement to enjoy my scifi. Heck, with the proper writing, direction, and acting, someone could make a flick about an intelligent, malevolent layer of paint drying on the wall, and make it engaging. But after sitting through two hours of Ron Moore's "Virtuality", I'd settle for watching the non-intelligent, boring variety of paint slowly lose its water molecules to the aether. There was nothing about the show that pulled me in in this debut. Not the slow, almost tortured pace of the plot, which seemed less like intelligent setup than plodding exposition. Not the curiously dull, vanilla actors, who despite dealing with a mission now menaced by a murderous, rapist VR villain, seemed boring and robotic in their performances. Coming into the show, i thought these people had been on the ship for decades instead of few years (or months?) They all seemed so disengaged, so monotonic in their speech, I wondered if they'd already lost their minds, succumbed to space ennui, or were all doing 'ludes. Even their anger and fear seemed curiously devoid of peaks and valleys of emotion. Imagine an entire crew populated with Edward James Olmos and David Duchovny clones, sitting in a spaceship that looks more like the Big Brother house than a space vehicle, and you get the idea. I'm all for shows that build slowly, that take time to get the action going. Indeed, I celebrate them. But this one made me feel as if I'd come into a room after an argument where the principals have stopped talking, and I'm left to wonder what was said. I didn't get the dynamics of the crew: who liked whom, who had what type of personality, how long they've been in space, what the mission is, or--most importantly--why the whole damn thing is being filmed as a reality TV show. I just know that I was irritated by the now overdone camera work that signals "look at me shake! This is live and real!" I was turned off by the endless shots captioned with "Lipstick cam" or "Hull camera C-374". And man was I bored to tears with the crew sitting around a table in this strangely domestic looking spaceship, starring blankly at each other, emotions sitting (too far) below the surface, looking again like people who just finished--or are about to start--a fight. With the lack of clear introduction, the dull characters, their monotone speech, the damn camera work, and the look of the domestic parts of the ship, I really did feel like I was watching Big Brother. They all sat around sullen, glaring dully at the captain like peeved children too scared to fight but too stubborn to back down. The way they treated the captain didn't seem like the behaviour of a military crew, with their stubborness, but didn't seem as if they had any real power either, as the would-be Bligh kept declaring "I make the decisions". I kept thinking, *This* is the best of the best, the greatest people Earth can find to send on a two-year, two hundred billion dollar mission? Wow--times are tough! Because I was lost and really uncaring about the strangely boring, whiney, even selfish crew, not even the scifi concept of the VR worlds interested me. I've seen that done to death in Star Trek, eps of Twilight Zone, The Matrix--you name it. If I don't know or care about the crew before they enter VR worlds, why would I care to see them engage in virtual sex on a beach, or pretend to be crimefighting rock stars, or Civil War soldiers? Not even the strange appearance of that murderous rapist VR dude upped the action for me. Even his menacing attacks were boring and unoriginal. As I said, scifi concepts don't need to be original, but if not executed well, they can simply become cliched. With the concept, plot, and actors failing to engage me, the only time in the whole show I sat up and took notice was when the ship Phaeton reached the go/no go point and blasted on into deep space. It was kinda cool watching the ship slingshot around a planet, then deploy nukes in space to propel it forward. But alas, that scene only lasted a few moments, and was also devoid of any good FX (and by then I was craving some good FX to get me engaged). I like Ron Moore's work on TNG, especially on DS9, and celebrate what he did with BSG, where he took the concept of scifi being more about plot and acting than FX to a good place. But Virtuality put me in mind of what would happen if someone took all the talky/posing/deep thinking moments of BSG and strung them together without any Cylon attacks, explosions, or space dogfights. Like I said, scifi doesn't need that stuff to work, if those three pillars of concept, plot, and acting are all solid. It can even hold on if two of the three pillars are sturdy. But when all three fail to hold, you better give me some great fights, FX, spaceship battles, and slobbering BEMs bent on eating the human race. What I got instead was a slow, torturous, shaky-cam rendering of Big Brother in space that drove me crazy. I actually think I'd pull out "Silent Running" before I'd watch this debut again. Because I respect Moore, because I know he "gets" the essence of scifi as being the story and the characters, and has made that work, i'll give him a shot. But man, if this show is only about what looks like a house in space with whiney, sullen astronauts who spend their time getting attacked in pedestrial looking VR worlds, and are too stupid to turn off the VR systems, I don't know if I can stay on this ship. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009
