A series pickup still a possibility?

Ron Moore thinks it’s still possible. In an interview with SCI FI Wire, Moore says that FOX is still mum on whether or not Virtuality has life beyond its backdoor pilot. He also talks a little bit about what audiences might see, should FOX move ahead with a series…

I think they would be extensions of what you see in the pilot. We would be following all of those storylines. The green-eyed man [Jimmi Simpson] is obviously a big player, and what’s his connection to what’s happening in the virtual world? Is there a connection between him and events in the real world? The biggest mystery of all is “Well, what happened to Pike [Coster-Waldau]?” What did Pike see in his vision? Did he have a foreboding? Did he know what was going happen to him in that airlock? Is that part of what he saw in his vision? Did he start believing in the reality of anything that was happening?

I think some of the fundamental questions on the show go to things like “What is real? What is not real in this story? What is manipulation? What is not manipulation?” If we went to series we would continue to explore that, and we’d play different characters starting to unravel different mysteries. What are they telling them from Earth, and is that true? Are they just being paranoid? Is somebody aboard manipulating their messages, the virtual reality? There are a lot of mysteries and certain interesting things that were set up that we would continue to play if the show went to series.

The full interview can be found here.

Horses in space?

SciFi blog io9 recently posted a few production pics from Virtuality. The first is of Captain Frank Pike’s chiseled jawline in his Civil War simulation. The second is VFX supervisor Gary Hutzel standing in front of what looks like some sort of garden habitat, but could also be one of those Hobbit houses from Lord of the Rings. Click the thumbnails for larger versions.

Things so far…

The good news: the Virtuality pilot IS airing. The bad news: the Virtuality pilot is airing July 4th, a night when no one will be home, and no one will be watching TV. On the surface, it looks like the show is dead and FOX is only looking to make back a little cash on its investment, right? Not so fast! These past couple of days, a few hints have been dropped suggesting that Virtuality’s future may be brighter than we thought. On his blog, Doug Drexler (Academy Award winner and CG supervisor on the pilot) had this to say…

…just got the word that a show we thought was dead is now on the fast track. It’s Ron Moore’s “Virtuality”. It just goes to show you how this business goes. It was dead, dead, dead… now it’s alive, alive, alive… and they want it now, now, now!

He also mentions that as of right now, FOX is mum on whether or not the show will go to series. This article, from Airlock Alpha, gives a lot of the same information, albiet a little more cheerfully. Take the time to check it out.

What do you think? I remain cautiously optimistic. For a while, I didn’t think FOX would even bother airing the pilot. Now that they’ve given it the go-ahead, maybe all the brouhaha Drexler is talking about is just for the one and only episode we’ll see. Or maybe someone at FOX has seen the light, and we’ll all get the series we’ve been hoping for.

Tell us what you think, and thanks to readers Ania and Jessica for the tip!

One more day!

Set your DVRs everyone, because there’s only one more day until the premier of BSG season 4.5! It seems like it was only yesterday when we were waiting a year between seasons 3 and 4. Oh TV, why do you torture me so? Anyway, these are the show’s LAST 10 episodes, and are sure to make all of our socks roll up and down. Enjoy, everyone!

Chapter 10

In last week’s episode, we saw Flash racing to Emperor Ming’s hideout! Now, the stunning conclusion!

Bad Omens

A bit of Virtuality news has trickled in from this month’s TCA conference, and what I’ve read hasn’t exactly warmed the cockles of my heart. As things stand right now, director Peter Berg is busy recutting the episode – down from two hours to one – for nervous FOX execs who say the pilot is a little too “dense” for them.

When asked to comment, executive-producer Michael Taylor gave the following statement to newsite Televisionary…

Ron and I think the show is great as is. A lot of people definitely would dig it, and not just the Battlestar audience; this could have an even wider appeal, and as a network show it should. And we’ve also already cut it down quite a bit from its original two-hour run time to satisfy network concerns about pace and to prune some storylines.

But at the same time, Reilly’s right about it being a little dense. It’s dense in the same way Battlestar was/is, in that it introduces a bunch of complex, intriguing characters, along with a compelling sci-fi scenario with several layers to it. In other words, it’s dense in the way good science fiction often is. The pilot puts a bunch of balls in the air but I think it does a great job of juggling those balls and setting up the scenario up in a way that makes it easy for the audience to understand without having to be hit over the heads with a lot of heavy-handed exposition. That said, it’s definitely challenging material, the kind of story you need and want to pay attention to, especially in the pilot. But to us that’s what made it so much fun to create, and what will ultimately pay off in series, by allowing us to tell exciting layered stories in the mold of shows like Lost (and Battlestar, of course).

Pete Berg is confident he can recut the show into a one-hour format, and he certainly has the chops to do it, as well as the experience (Friday Night Lights) of creating network shows that are both emotionally compelling and accessible. So Ron and I are taking a hands-off approach and letting him do his thing. Hopefully, Kevin Reilly and the other execs at Fox will like what he comes up with and we can look forward to seeing this show on the air.

Of course, this is Hollywood, and projects can get stuck in Development Hell for years and years before finally airing, if they air at all. So, as awesome as this show looks/sounds/is, it would probably be best not to take anything for granted until we start seeing Virtuality commercials in between American Idol and 24, both of which will undoubtedly last another 10 years.

Chapter 9

Chapters 7 & 8

The end is nigh.

MediaBlvd Magazine has a pretty good interview up with Ron Moore and David Eick from this past week’s TCA tour. All oldies but goldies. The end of Battlestar, Caprica, and what projects they’ve got coming up.

On Battlestar…

There are questions remaining and hopefully they’ll be answered in these final 10 episodes. But how do you answer them without making it feel perfunctory?

Some if it will just be on a crawl in the end credit. By the way, in case you were wondering. Well, you know, I mean it’s – that’s the trick of doing it. You know, you, we – the first decision was not to try to answer every single thing in the last episode. Because then the last episode just becomes, you know, a running tally of, oh and there’s this question, and oh and there’s that question and so and so and so and so. And we wanted to kind of, you know, there were certain things that would be raised naturally earlier in the story line. And then you could sort of deal with them on a case by case basis. And you just wanted each sort of revelation and each sort of answer to sort of have its own kind of moment in the sun, and not to make everything a giant mystery. And to sort of let it proceed organically. It was a bit of a trick. But it didn’t seem like it was too burdensome as we went through it. It felt kind of natural. And as we broke out the last 10 episodes there seemed like there were natural sort of places where we could explain this. And oh that revelation can go here. And, you know, and oh we’ll fill this detail in there. And we’ll still save these pieces for the end.

On Caprica…

What’s the latest on Caprica?

Caprica has been picked up for a full season. We start shooting that probably in July. We’re putting the writing staff together now and the crew. And, you know, just staffing up and getting ready to go. We’ll start breaking stories probably in February or maybe even as soon as the end of this month, kind of depending when all the pieces go together. We have a game plan of sort of what the general story line is and sort of some direction. So we’re not starting completely from scratch. So things are well in hand. In Caprica we feel really good about that.

The entire interview can be read here.

Chapters 5 & 6