Lower Decks

Tonight on FOX you can watch the two-hour pilot telefilm for Ronald D. Moore’s Virtuality. It runs from 8-10PM Eastern. Originally scheduled for the July 4th weekend, the pilot tells the story of a group of astronauts on a ten-year mission who spend their days immersed in virtual worlds designed to keep them from going insane. Things apparently go very, very wrong and people start dying. Oh, and the entire journey is being filmed as a reality show.

Sounds weird, right?

FOX decided against picking up the pilot but for some reason it is being broadcast as a standalone movie. Whether or not it will end with a cliffhanger remains to be seen. It’s possible the ending was altered to allow for a satisfactory conclusion. James Poniewozik has written a rather glowing review of the pilot for TIME.com, calling it “sweepingly ambitious, thought-provoking and visually well-imagined.” It is not without its flaws, however, and he suggests that the reality angle is unnecessary.

Like Poniewozik, I’m surprised that FOX deemed the pilot worthy of being broadcast but not being turned into a weekly series. It’s likely that the themes Moore attempted to address in Battlestar Galactica (with varying degrees of success, depending on who you ask) simply aren’t what FOX was looking for.

Although I was critical of Battlestar Galactica during its last two seasons, and felt that the finale was a huge disappointment, I’ll be watching Virtuality tonight. It’s only two hours out of my life, after all, and if I don’t like it I don’t ever have to think about it again. But who knows. Maybe it will be as brilliant as the first season of Battlestar Galactica.