'Virtuality': A Journey or a Destination?

An Uncertain Future Nags Pilot on Fox

"Virtuality," airing tonight on Fox, depicts a group of astronauts in Earth's not-too-distant future on a 10-year journey to a planet outside the solar system. The twist: Their lives are broadcast 24-7 to 5 billion viewers back home as the first interplanetary reality show, complete with corporate product placement and an on-board host and producer.

It's a promising premise and a fun bit of social commentary from the writers of the critically acclaimed Sci Fi series "Battlestar Galactica," Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor. The two-hour "Virtuality" is smartly filmed, even given the now-obligatory use of hand-held shots, by Peter Berg, director of "Hancock" and "The Kingdom."

The 13-member cast of the spaceship Phaeton also manages to pull off the toughest task faced by an ensemble group of unknowns: differentiating themselves from each other by establishing their own characters.

All that said, "Virtuality" has one big problem: It was produced as a pilot for a television series, not as a stand-alone film.

This means that it does not resolve itself as a film does, which the writers have admitted in interviews. It ends with a cliffhanger, meant to whet your appetite for the coming series.

Except: Fox has not decided if it will pick up the series, the network said yesterday.

So you may well ask yourself, "Why should I spend two hours of a summer Friday night watching a sci-fi show if there's no guarantee I'll ever know the outcome or see the characters again?"

Umm . . .

Because it's raining outside? Because, like this author, you'll watch almost anything set in space? (And, no, we're not going to make the dateless-Friday-night-sci-fi-geek joke. Those wounds are too fresh.)

Yep, those are pretty much the reasons. So let's assume they apply and dive into the pilot.

"Virtuality" is promising enough to overcome its so-'90s name and concept. To maintain sanity and retain some sense of privacy on the decade-long space voyage, crew members slip into virtual reality worlds by putting on goggles. Once inside, they can ride bikes, paint landscapes and even have affairs with married crew members. But then, a stranger -- not a crew member, not a character written into the program -- starts showing up in everyone's virt-world and killing them.

They survive in the real world, of course, though emotionally scarred. It would be reckless of this review to not warn of one particularly troubling virtual rape scene somehow deemed suitable for broadcast television. ("Virtuality" is rated TV-14.)