"Virtuality” is Groundbreaking for Gays (Too Bad It’s a Mess)

Gene Farber as Val Orlovsky, Jose Pablo Cantillo as Manny Rodriguez

Tomorrow night, viewers will see something extraordinary on American television: leading gay characters in a science fiction program – on a broadcast network no less.

Problem is, the rest of the pretentious, slow-moving mess of a show is about as far from extraordinary as you can get.

Fox is billing Virtuality as a “two-hour original science-fiction thriller.” But it was originally intended to be the pilot for a series that the network was once highly touting. After all, it was created by Battlestar Galactica’s Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor, who also wrote this pilot movie.

Somewhere between Fox’s initial enthusiasm and the execution of the idea, something went very wrong. Fox made the right call in letting this one die.

But you have to give Moore and Taylor credit: they’ve managed to cram in at least one plot element from just about every science fiction project ever made.

In Earth’s very near future, a ship is sent into space on a ten-year mission to a nearby solar system. In order to cope with the confinement of the space ship, the crew members are all given access to sophisticated “holodeck”-like virtual programs (like in Star Trek).

The problem is, the programs are malfunctioning, and people are being hurt (like in Westworld) – or maybe they’re being deliberately sabotaged by the smarmy on-board representative of the “Consortium” (like “the Corporation’s” smarmy Paul Reiser character in Aliens).

Then, six months into the space mission, scientists discover that global warming will make earth uninhabitable much sooner than everyone thought (like in The Day After Tomorrow).

The crew has to decide: do they return to earth and their families, or do they keep going forward, in hopes that they’ll find an intelligent species that might be able to help Earth survive (like in The Day the Earth Stood Still)?

And if all that isn’t enough, the whole interstellar journey is also being filmed as part of a reality show, a huge hit all over the planet (like in The Truman Show). We often see what happens on the ship from the point of view of the show’s camera (like in Surveillance 24/7) and the characters sometimes even address the camera directly (like in The Blair Witch Project).

Virtuality: A little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of confusing

Given all that’s going on, you’d think the show couldn’t possibly move at a snail’s pace. But somehow it does – probably because all this takes forever to explain.

To make matters worse, this is very much a “set-up” pilot, not a “stand-alone” one. In other words, everything that happens only happens to explain or set up what was going to occur on the intended television series.

Alas, there is very little “stand alone” story here. Any actual action doesn’t kick in until well into the second hour. With no series forthcoming, Virtuality as a TV movie couldn’t be more pointless.

And the gay characters? As a couple played by Jose Pablo Cantillo and Gene Farber, they’re a delight – cheeky and affectionate with each other at times, bickering at others – and it’s wonderfully refreshing to see such characters in a sci-fi setting.