This was the most boring, irritating, complete waste of time imaginable. The only reason I even bothered to look it up was because the movie suddenly ended without any explanation and without ever having a story. When I bought this DVD, I had no warning this was a TV pilot with a hanging ending which made no sense. I looked it up to see if I could get some kind of explanation as to what it was I had wasted all this time watching.I usually like Sci-Fi's. I had no idea this was a pilot for a series. The first time I tried to watch it, I turned it off as soon as they got to the rock star singing the 1960's Munsters TV theme song in Japanese. No Joke! I love Sci-Fi but I certainly didn't buy a space movie to watch civil war scenes and bad rock star concerts or a crew of immature, airhead, boring video game junkies or listen to their nonsensical ego-babbling into the video camera. These are not even decent actors. The females all slurred their words together.I finally tried to watch it a second time a couple years later; using the fast forward to get past those maddening irritations while I kept hoping that something sci-fi was going to show itself at some point when the plot became clear.Watching an entire crew of narcissistic morons who condescend and cast disparagement upon everything their fellow crew members say or experience is an X gen nightmare. Much of the show was more like watching a daily producers meeting behind the scenes at Fox. A network so bad, I deleted them from my TV menu 10 years ago.Even worse was the male crewmembers crass, insensitive, smarta$$ attitude toward 2 female crew members who had been viciously attacked during their virtual reality... especially when it was clear that someone on the ship was hacking the system to use it as a weapon to brutalize their fellow crew members yet they were so totally oblivious they refused to look into the issue or even take it seriously... nor did the males who were attacked bother to speak up to alert the others... instead they joined in the condescending and the total lack of compassion toward the females over this violent assault issue which was extremely disturbing for the viewers because this has been an IRL problem with victims of real attacks. No one wants to put up with a TV show which thinks it is OK to make a joke out of someone being violated. We were also forced to endure the psychological unfitness of this crew for space with their issues of dead children, lost pregnancies & doctors office visits; plus ego programs and how the male crew members actually got off on being killed in their virtual reality encounters which empowered them when off the VR system. Truly bad screen writing and dialogue. The worst casting imaginable. Then there was the mental melt down of the jerk of a captain who they mercifully did away with and then just stopped the show without any closure or sense... forcing us to look up this movie to find some sense out of this complete farce. Clearly not recommended for anyone with an IQ above 60. I suspect some of these "fans" are mostly under the age of 12 or associated with someone involved in the original project.Who would go into an airlock without being fully outfitted, even just to get a tool? Who would ever take a chance of any kind in an airlock? Also, what kind of person would think it was OK to make jokes and condescending comments while someone is trapped inside an airlock? Not to mention the fact that the writer and director seemed to be clueless that there is NO inertia or G force or hull stress or turbulence in weightless space once you are outside of the gravitational pull... not even with a rotating spaceship for internal artificial gravity. Not to mention a space crew depending on a clueless computer that cannot answer any questions about who was in your quarters or follow instructions such as "close" door? Nor did anyone seem interested in diagnosing the computer and virtual reality system for the cause of the failures. They were all too busy focusing on their own entertainment to be concerned. And why would anyone who was violently violated on a virtual reality go back in again? This wasn't a SPACE drama. It was a VIDEO GAME series.This is the one rare time that FOX actually did the right thing by not picking up this series. The true surprise is why anyone would waste money for the production of this pilot in the first place.

As anyone who has watched enough television would know, pilots are always a mixed bag. Some pilots are great, some are bad, and some are just plain odd. However, very few are as fascinating as Virtuality. Produced by Battlestar Gallatica showrunner Ronald D. Moore and directed by the sometimes great Peter Berg, Virtuality was made in 2009 as a potential series for the Fox Network. For reasons that are unknown, Fox made the decision to not pick the show up for a series but still aired what was done as a pilot movie. It was later released on DVD with no bonus features or any indication of what the future of the series held. Having watched the DVD for the first time tonight, I was amazed at just how well thought out and realized the production was for a pilot. Despite obvious loose ends, this is something that could have been re-worked as either a mini-series or television series. I don't know what the budget was for the pilot, but there was nothing about the pilot that looked cheap. The special effects, set design, and cinematography all looked as good, if not better, than most feature films released by major studios. This is clearly the best thing Peter Berg has ever directed, about on par with Very Bad Things. Although certainly not a dark comedy like Very Bad Things was, Virtuality also focuses on the dark side of human nature and does it well without seeming preachy or overly philosophical. In the beginning, the idea that entire ship is being recorded for a reality television show is pushed a bit too hard. The reality television set up could have been done in a minute instead of five to ten minutes, but the idea that reality television is exploitive and brings out the worst in people is handled with a lot more subtly than one might expect. If I had to guess, the commentary on reality television probably alienated Fox, the network that has aired some of the most notorious reality shows of all time which led to the decision not to produce Virtuality as a series. As it stands, Virtuality remains one of the best pilots of the past decade, a visually impressive and smart science fiction gem that will likely develop a small cult following one day. 8/10

The elements for an original approach for the series were in this pilot but the director chose to accentuate the clichés and the popular themes instead of grabbing onto the real value. Many series that have died have tried to stretch the interest of the viewer beyond the practical – in a series, wasting many episodes on mindless action outside the arc, here, in the pilot, wasting air time with over used old ideas or overused statements.The core of the idea is at the very end where, as a few commentators have brought out, the virtuality encompassing the ship itself, or whatever the deep secret that only the commander knew and wouldn't share (the "down the rabbit hole" is the allusion to it as well). This seems to have been augmented by the vision of the evil virtual player being seen in MD garb toward the end – as well as the meta observation of not setting up how kill off the main character in a pilot when clearly he's the only one with leadership capabilities in the bunch. This scenario fits well with the lack of credibility that the crew could have passed the tests for a 10 year mission.In any case, more substantial exploration of the above virtual set up would have given more of a tease and interest. Certainly more than the naive assertion that if you throw in a gay couple you'll get an interested audience, even given that they are cooks who can't even cook , an odious psychologist whose running a reality show, and a tiresome boring phony dramatic dialog (oh how dumb was the bantering there along the way) of "go/no go" when it's clear what the answer has to be.So I give it a four because I did watch it, but it is oh so sad to see a wasted 90 minutes.

Effects are quite good - they even chose Projet Orion for their drive. Good on them.But I'm pretty sure it's JG Ballards 13 to Centaurus. Hope they paid him for the use.It's a long duration experiment that they aren't aware they are in. The psych is the only one who is cognizant and he's playing games of his own in his own little human ship in a bottle. Mission control knows this but are afraid that if they interrupt the experiment they'll damage the crew.It's not to say that this can't be a good series. (a TEN year mission? yikes. That's like ten years of Weakest Link). There are only so many plots. Let's see what they make of it. Or has Fox, in it's infinite wisdom, already decided to cancel it?