Fleeing from the beatification of Michael Jackson, I stumbled onto the TV show pilot, Virtuality, on Fox last night.  Written by Ronald Moore and Michael Taylor, the show takes numerous Star Trek:  The Next Generation staples and turns them on their head.  It’s certainly not perfect, but if I could be so bold, it’s definitely television with more than one brain cell.

Ronald Moore has gotten a great deal of credit for his re-imagining of Battlestar Galatica and well he should.  That show was driven by strong character conflicts and it wrestled with the interaction of science and faith while holding a mirror up to our present culture.  And Virtuality is no different.  The pilot for the show makes clear that Moore wants viewers to question reality in ways that would make Philip K. Dick proud.  But this latest outing seems to owe more to Moore’s pent-up frustrations with his days spent working on the various Star Trek franchises than Battlestar Galactica.  And that’s evidenced from more than just the fact that the captain’s name is Pike.

Basically the premise of the show is one big holodeck malfunction episode, that hoary device that Star Trek:  The Next Generation (and later Voyager) pretty much patented.  You know the drill.  Character gets trapped on holodeck running favorite holo-novel because the main character has become sentient or an alien being thinks it’s the only way to communicate with the crew.  By the end of the show, the ship is ticking down to a warp core breach and it’s up to a select member of the crew to pull the plug on the holodeck to keep the ship from blowing up. 

In this episode of TNG, we follow the crew of the Phaeton, a ship on a ten-year mission to a distant star system because the Earth will die if they don’t.  (I’ve already forgotten the name because it’s totally unimportant).  The crew is given enhanced virtual reality modules to pass the time to counteract the psychological effects of prolonged space travel.  And as you’d expect, they start to malfunction, of course, when people start seeing Lyle the Intern who gives them the Solaris treatment. 

Is it a problem with the program?  Is it a manifestation of their own space madness?  Have they created this intruder from their own subconscious?  We’re supposed to want to figure this out.  But snark aside, Moore uses this device particularly well when one of the female characters is sexually assaulted in her virtual world.  The crew is then forced to confront the question of whether the rape in the character’s mind is any less a violation than it would be had the rape actually occurred.  And while we’re thinking about that, the idea is expertly brought right back to strengthen the drama of the show.  Clea Duvall, this show’s Starbuck, comforts the victim with tales of her own violation by noting her view that once the rape is happening, it’s not really happening to the body anymore.

That’s where Moore really plays to his strengths.  He’s very good at taking a sci-fi idea and turning it on it’s head to make it seem more realistic.  More importantly, he often able to take that idea and use it to re-inforce the character drama.  Sure J.J. Abrams does it better, but Ronald Moore is definitely no slouch.  Even if, as Samuel L. Jackson says in Pulp Fiction, this pilot is one of the ones that becomes nothing, Moore’s craftsmanship does deserve attention when one of his ideas makes it to the little big screen.  [Oh, and as a side note, one of the characters actually sang the theme to the Munsters in Japanese as part of her virtual fantasy.  Pretty niche little nod there.  I’m sure the Comic-Con folks loved it.]

Like Abrams (and Lindelof), Moore also sets the show up to tackle big themes rather than to merely delight in tech-driven wonders.  The mystery virtual man who is harming the astronauts in their holodeck adventures seems to be leading them to some adventure beyond the space one that we tuned in to watch and that the characters signed up for.  Specifically, the captain’s virtual experience goes beyond his own death and presumably into the afterlife.  Then he goes all Christopher Walken in Brainstorm on the crew.  Needless to say, they find his meth-addict-like urge to press forward a little disconcerting to everyone else on the mission.  This suggests that choosing the name Phaeton for the ship may be only slightly less ominous than calling a ship headed to the sun, Icarus (as Danny Boyle did in Sunshine).  Phaeton was the son of the Sun God, Helios.  Phaeton tried to drive his dad’s flaming chariot only to lose control and fall from the sky.  It’s also related to Lucifer, suggesting that Moore has some Promethean lightbringing in store for us should the show get picked up.  It’s very clear that were more likely to be going on a voyage with Arthur Gordon Pym than Captain James T. Kirk.

Of course, Moore also has a little fun with us in the show by giving us abundant references to sci-fi shows.  He actually drops direct dialogue from Aliens into the show (in the pipe, five by five).  The "sinister" computer is given an updated Hal-like eye, and there’s even an air lock accident.  (You’d think that air lock doors would not swing out into space.  I know, I know, Apollo 1, but on a big ship built in space, those rules wouldn’t seem to apply.)  And he shows that he has an idea for the way real space travel would likely look now.  Touch screen controls and updated versions of the Star Trek P.A.D.D.s where you can actually see the stuff on them.  Setting off large nuclear bombs behind the ship to simply push it rapidly forward rather than giving the ship a "warp drive" or even requiring it to carry fuel is pretty clever.  I’m not an astrophysicist so I have no idea if it would work, but it’s smart enough to seem like it came from NASA.

And that’s another way this show seems to be a clear reaction to Star Trek.  It’s about an extended space mission, but no one is singing cum bah yah here.  There’s real concern that the characters may go stir crazy.  They don’t all gather around the poker table or gather in ten-forward.  They get on each other’s nerves and tend to withdraw from each other. 

This leads me to the show’s Phaeton-like overreaching.  The show is self-consciously wrestling with the question of "what is reality" through it’s use of virtual reality devices.  And it’s definitely more eXistenZ than Lawnmower Man.  But, on top of that, the mission also doubles a reality show similar to Big Brother.  Moore takes advantage of this by designating levels of cameras to signal to the audience levels of trustworthiness (a la Memento).  The different shots range from security cams to lipstick cams, suggesting a move from objective to subjective views of events.  We see portions of the broadcast show (thank you Starship Troopers and Series 7), but we also see behind the scenes stuff.  Or do we?  This is another way that Moore has made it so we question the things we’re seeing.  And he also takes advantage of the ability of the audience to pick out where an actor is blue screened into a virtual setting by making that obvious visual effects editing a clue to the audience that we’re watching something that isn’t real.

All of this is really neat, of course, but it was a bridge too far for me.  See, if this mission is Earth’s last best hope, I just don’t think we are simultaneously going to turn it into a reality TV show.  I don’t care if they needed the funding or if this is a psychological way to connect the crew to the Earth, it just seems bogus to me.  And even if we
were going to do that we wouldn’t put our psych officer in charge of production with a motive to manipulate the crew in order to goose the ratings.  At bottom it seems like the motive for the virtual reality modules would be contrary to the motive for the realty TV show, and so it seemed like too much of a stretch.  Thematically it’s brilliant, but from a common sense perspective it just doesn’t work for me.

And neither does the increased paranoia.  The Next Generation also had it’s share of paranoia episodes with Riker thinking he’s lost his mind in "Frame of Mind" and the crew unable to sleep in "Night Terrors."  This show promises a sustained level of that, which isn’t entirely appealing or all that believable.  Astronauts are heroic when it comes to their jobs.  They are trained, in times of stress to remove their emotions and focus on the job.  They’re more likely to react like Chelsey Sullenberger landing the plane in the Hudson to a crisis event than question their purpose or existence.  After all, Jim Lovell go pretty quiet and matter-of-fact during Apollo 13.  That type of professionalism and reserve in the face of danger is inspiring.  Star Trek got that, and it seems that Ronald Moore has forgotten that in his attempt to distance himself from his Star Trek past.

At the end of Battlestar Galactica, the show became incredibly dark, and this show looks like it’s picking up where that one left off.  Shows that self-consciously revel in the darkness of humanity have a hard time finding large audiencees.  This show was already behind the eight-ball in Fox’s Friday night slot during the summer, and they didn’t exactly do a media blitz to get people to tune in.  All these things could make this show a tough sell, regardless of how literate it is.  Critics will probably love it, but I’m not sure audiences will have tuned in.

But it does give me hope for Moore’s remake of The Thing.  Moore is supposed to be working a big-screen adaptation of the John Carpenter classic, and this sure looks like a precursor to that.  He packs a real sense of dread and isolation into this pilot, just the kind of thing for an Antarctic expedition that uncovers a mimetic alien.  Unfortunately, it’s not really the kind of thing you want to see on a Friday night.  All in all, it was a really intelligent idea that could really be used to great benefit.  Suddenly Susan is proof that networks have done far worse when it comes to greenlighting television shows, so why not give this one a chance?  Perhaps they’ll be willing to pick up a few episodes if for no other reason than to let Mr. Moore can exorcise his Star Trek demons once and for all.