Virtuality

[seriousfic]

For those of you worried Ron Moore had lost his edge after BSG, this is the first time I've seen a sexual assault victim comforted with "maybe you have a rape fantasy" on network TV.



I was hoping for BSG season one and I felt like I got reheated season four, only without the characters I loved from season one (and I'm pretty sure the lesson you learn from BSG is not "we need less of the old actors"). I mean, I like Kara Thrace as much as the next, but did we really need to hire Clea DuVall to play her again?

And it seems like it wants the central question to be what is reality and what is fantasy, only it can't come up with any good examples. Like, if you have an affair in cyberspace that is exactly like the real thing only you're not swapping semen, is that cheating? Yes. If you're raped in cyberspace, have you still been raped? Yes. So not very compelling watching people debate over that.

And for another thing, we have the assassin in VR with mysterious motives, kinda like the angels in BSG, and when people die in VR they just wake up in the real world, kinda like how people downloaded in BSG. And of course someone feels arbitrarily suicidal and then has an arbitrary religious experience. Thankfully he gets airlocked, but then he's managed to upload himself into the VR system... exactly like how people downloaded in BSG. I just really think you should only go the quasi-mysticism route in sci-fi if you can pull it off, and clearly from BSG we know that Ron Moore can't.

And, okay, so the mission starts off as a reality show so the mission can be sponsored, but then it turns into them looking for a new home for the Earthlings (kinda like... can't put my finger on it) when it looks like Earth is getting flooded. So... why do they keep the reality show going? Wouldn't the first thing you do be to get rid of the distraction? I realize they're going for meta-commentary on sponsors and network notes and blah blah blah, but really, if the captain is dead, who is sitting down to talk about how they feel about it on camera? I just don't think reality TV had to be parodied that bad and if it did, they just should've made it a more low-stakes mission so you can buy that people would bother to, or feel compelled to, go along with the reality show angle.

The ship's psych officer is the show's producer! Why would you keep that conflict of interest going one minute?

And of course the holodeck starts malfunctioning with this mysterious assassin who kills some people and messes up other people's surfing and rapes one person, but only a woman and not any of the guys, because those evil computer viruses, they ain't fags. And it seems like Ron Moore is trying to open up a dialogue on rape, but it ends up with this horrid Lifetime movie of the week scene where all the guys in the crew conclude that, since someone used the term sexual assault instead of rape as justification for shutting down the only form of recreation for ten years, surely it must just be a polygonal feel-copping. Now, come off it. I mean, it's a series of holodeck episodes! If the show went to air, how many seasons would they continue to use the VR while it fucked with them? I don't care if you invent some sort of Rose McGowan Machine, if it rapes an eighth of the users, I'm sticking with my Playstation.

They don't have a database of books and movies for when someone isn't in the mood for VR? They don't have hard copies of the software in case it crashes? I have a CD with WordPerfect 5.0 lying around, I'm not even using it to save the world.

And of course it ends up that Clea DuVall, who was also raped in the backstory, is sympathetic to the raped woman and they come up with this brilliant plan to deal with it which is to go back into the virtual world and hunt the rapist down and shoot him. Which is the kind of thing I would've expected back in the 90s, but we're coming up on the Tens. He's lines of code! Just press delete! You don't need to dramatize it as running around with machine-guns, that's just silly.

And, obviously, I don't find Clea DuVall so abhorrent that you need to make all the other characters misogynistic pricks just to point out that she can act human.

Oh, and there's also these two guys who are possibly gay, possibly Italian. I couldn't tell. I think if they were Italian, they would've kissed more.

All in all, it feels like a combination of the deep-space mission genre, which I've seen before and on better budgets, with the virtual reality genre, which I don't think needs to be revisited in this format. Dire.

Comments

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

Earth 2 might be the show you're thinking of.

From what I read in the Washington Post's review the mission/show was set up before the environmental disaster that made them getting where they're going necessary to save everyone.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Yes, but after the disaster, why not stop producing the show? What happens if the ratings plummet, will the authorities just say "screw saving the planet, you're not entertaining us, DIAF!"

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

they have the equipment to air it, they have told people it's being aired. Why not air it? The modern space program continued even after they stopped broadcasting every little thing.

[prozacpark.livejournal.com]

Well, Kara is kind of based on a character Clea Duvall played on ANOTHER Ron show before BSG, so, it's kind of an unending cycle now, isn't it?

I need to watch this. At some point in my life.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I know how this works. Eventually Clea Duvall goes back in time and meets Ron Moore as a child, right?

And are we still doing the Excalibur rewatch?

[trancer21.livejournal.com]

Ugh! I finally sat down to watch this and.. people are petitioning FOX to make this a series? Boring, plodding, predictable and about a decade too late in regards to meta-commentary of reality shows. Although, I do have to give them credit for killing off their lead.. only to resurrect him later.

They don't have a database of books and movies for when someone isn't in the mood for VR?

Worse, it felt like these weren't actually people on a long-term space mission but place markers for whatever meta-commentary Moore was trying to make. Aside from no books or other non-virtual reality entertainment, the crew didn't interact with each other as people in close quarters would. Of course, had they been talking to each other like real people would, they would have discovered the glitch in the VR long before someone was raped.

And of course it ends up that Clea DuVall, who was also raped in the backstory, is sympathetic to the raped woman and they come up with this brilliant plan to deal with it which is to go back into the virtual world and hunt the rapist down and shoot him.

Lol, I was soo stunned by the awfulness of this storyline I couldn't be bothered to be offended. The only sl Moore could think of for the female host was 'rape victims bond by tracking down rapist'? Really Ron, REALLY!?!

Oh, and shouldn't the first order of business after finding out the Doctor had Parkinson's been finding someone to train as his replacement?

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Worse, it felt like these weren't actually people on a long-term space mission but place markers for whatever meta-commentary Moore was trying to make. Aside from no books or other non-virtual reality entertainment, the crew didn't interact with each other as people in close quarters would.

I will say this, every bad fiction I encounter gives me an idea for good fiction, so this gave me the idea for a deep-space mission where the crew has a writing group, with a different crewmember telling an installment of his or her story every day of the week. On Monday the funny one has a comedy, on Tuesday the lovelorn one has a romance, on Wednesday the bruiser has an adventure...

Could make a fun anthology series or just a cute scene to establish character in a more traditional space opera.

[trancer21.livejournal.com]

Lol, then there's the scene where the crew's groaning because it's Thursday. Which means it's another installment of Janet's epic Supernatural/Merlin crossover genderswap/wings!fic AU.

And somehow this became about Firefly

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

That's the downside of having River on the crew. Although Jayne's self-insert fic is nothing to not-sneer at.

Wash is totally doing the 24th and a 1/2 century version of "I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC" toy crackfic.