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Coo, VR.5 is a weird bunny. All striking visual imagery, and splintered storylines. It's beautifully put together, although at times it doesn't quite work. Teething troubles, probably. It's a high concept idea, with beautiful foreshadowing of storylines to come - but of course those storylines never got to happen. The show was cancelled after thirteen episodes, and none of those ideas or concepts ever got to lead anywhere. It was one of many victims of a particularly unpleasant and unimaginative cutting knife back in the nineties. I was quite distraught at the time, though I suppose I should be glad in retrospect. If VR.5 had continued, Tony Head wouldn't have been available to play Giles. I wonder who we'd have ended up with instead?!
I've watched the first three episodes now. Technically, that's episodes five, six and seven, as I don't have one to four. But that's not missing out a great deal, I don't think. Syd finding out what she can do with VR, Frank Morgan contacting her, explaining the basics of the Committee, and then rather impolitely getting himself murdered just as she was starting to fall for him. Most of the sub-plots in the show don't get started until it's all several episodes along, anyway, so the early episodes aren't the zappiest ever. By the time that Tony Head takes over from Will Patton, though, it's starting to pick up nicely. It's increasingly obvious that Syd's childhood memories have been tampered with, and increasingly obvious that her father was deeply mixed up with the Committee. Fabulously shadowy, are the Committee. A secret society that seem at least in part official, with tendrils everywhere. Nothing seems out of their reach; and if one of your parents was a member, so are you, like it or not. They're obviously not concerned with national borders, either, since they clearly have both American and British members. And whatever nationality Turhan Bey is. There are references from time to time to espionage missions in East Germany and the like, and it's easy to see the Committee as something like the CIA. What they really are, though, we never find out.
What we do find out is that there are very few members of the Committee who are in any way trustworthy. Frank Morgan appeared to be, and Oliver Sampson is, though poor Oliver is so tangled up in the various layers of the Committee (he calls them concentric circles), that he's hardly the free agent he likes to think he is. It's a lovely performance from Tony Head, with some amusing echoes of what was to come in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. After all, here he is assigned to guard a beautiful young blonde woman with a particularly useful special talent - and, just like Buffy, Sydney comes with a friend who always wants in on the action. Oliver's scenes with Duncan are highly reminiscent at times of his early relationship with Willow and Xander. It makes the show look something like an audition for him. Maybe it was.
Good grief, though, it's all over the place. I suspect that it would have been tightened up had there been a second series. Many's the show, after all, that's not been quite as good as it might have been in its earlier episodes. To an extent, though, the unevenness is planned. Certainly the disjointedness is, as the whole show has an air of unreality to it. None of that is more obvious than in episode six, "Escape". Syd has disappeared, and Duncan tries to find out where she is. His voyages into VR to help his search take the form of playful TV spoofs - a black and white detective show, and a play on The Avengers. Then suddenly he takes a different tack, and drags Oliver in with him. The playfulness is gone, and he uses the VR environment to torture Oliver. Bit of a surprise coming from the usually gentle Duncan. It helps to emphasise Oliver's role as Syd's guardian, though, and the way that he and Duncan clash in their self-appointed roles as her protector. It also underlines Oliver's own position within the Committee - helpless against the party machinery. He can save Sydney from murderers, but he can't save her from his own employers. "There is no escape," and "There is no truth" are both VR.5 catchphrases, and both are very fitting. I can't help wondering what we'd have seen of the Committee in season two. But that's jumping the gun. There's a lot of season one still to go. The next episode, "Simon's Choice", I remember as being particularly affecting. I wonder if I still will.
In the meantime - pretty pictures. Hooray!
From the rather wonderfully batty title sequence.
The flashy blue tunnel of virtual reality.
Oliver and Duncan, unknowingly echoing future scenes inside the library at Sunnydale High.
Duncan's psyche tries to help him investigate Syd's disappearance.
By turning him into Steed, and Syd into a leather cat-suited Emma Peel clone.
Right before all sorts of tables get turned, and things get nasty in VR for Oliver.
Duncan and Oliver take a walk in the eccentrically-coloured world of VR.5.
Where you never know quite what you're going to see.
It's a funny old world, inside the telephone lines.
But always an arresting one.
Where imagery is all over the place.
And colours do strange things.
Cool. :)
I've watched the first three episodes now. Technically, that's episodes five, six and seven, as I don't have one to four. But that's not missing out a great deal, I don't think. Syd finding out what she can do with VR, Frank Morgan contacting her, explaining the basics of the Committee, and then rather impolitely getting himself murdered just as she was starting to fall for him. Most of the sub-plots in the show don't get started until it's all several episodes along, anyway, so the early episodes aren't the zappiest ever. By the time that Tony Head takes over from Will Patton, though, it's starting to pick up nicely. It's increasingly obvious that Syd's childhood memories have been tampered with, and increasingly obvious that her father was deeply mixed up with the Committee. Fabulously shadowy, are the Committee. A secret society that seem at least in part official, with tendrils everywhere. Nothing seems out of their reach; and if one of your parents was a member, so are you, like it or not. They're obviously not concerned with national borders, either, since they clearly have both American and British members. And whatever nationality Turhan Bey is. There are references from time to time to espionage missions in East Germany and the like, and it's easy to see the Committee as something like the CIA. What they really are, though, we never find out.
What we do find out is that there are very few members of the Committee who are in any way trustworthy. Frank Morgan appeared to be, and Oliver Sampson is, though poor Oliver is so tangled up in the various layers of the Committee (he calls them concentric circles), that he's hardly the free agent he likes to think he is. It's a lovely performance from Tony Head, with some amusing echoes of what was to come in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. After all, here he is assigned to guard a beautiful young blonde woman with a particularly useful special talent - and, just like Buffy, Sydney comes with a friend who always wants in on the action. Oliver's scenes with Duncan are highly reminiscent at times of his early relationship with Willow and Xander. It makes the show look something like an audition for him. Maybe it was.
Good grief, though, it's all over the place. I suspect that it would have been tightened up had there been a second series. Many's the show, after all, that's not been quite as good as it might have been in its earlier episodes. To an extent, though, the unevenness is planned. Certainly the disjointedness is, as the whole show has an air of unreality to it. None of that is more obvious than in episode six, "Escape". Syd has disappeared, and Duncan tries to find out where she is. His voyages into VR to help his search take the form of playful TV spoofs - a black and white detective show, and a play on The Avengers. Then suddenly he takes a different tack, and drags Oliver in with him. The playfulness is gone, and he uses the VR environment to torture Oliver. Bit of a surprise coming from the usually gentle Duncan. It helps to emphasise Oliver's role as Syd's guardian, though, and the way that he and Duncan clash in their self-appointed roles as her protector. It also underlines Oliver's own position within the Committee - helpless against the party machinery. He can save Sydney from murderers, but he can't save her from his own employers. "There is no escape," and "There is no truth" are both VR.5 catchphrases, and both are very fitting. I can't help wondering what we'd have seen of the Committee in season two. But that's jumping the gun. There's a lot of season one still to go. The next episode, "Simon's Choice", I remember as being particularly affecting. I wonder if I still will.
In the meantime - pretty pictures. Hooray!
From the rather wonderfully batty title sequence.
The flashy blue tunnel of virtual reality.
Oliver and Duncan, unknowingly echoing future scenes inside the library at Sunnydale High.
Duncan's psyche tries to help him investigate Syd's disappearance.
By turning him into Steed, and Syd into a leather cat-suited Emma Peel clone.
Right before all sorts of tables get turned, and things get nasty in VR for Oliver.
Duncan and Oliver take a walk in the eccentrically-coloured world of VR.5.
Where you never know quite what you're going to see.
It's a funny old world, inside the telephone lines.
But always an arresting one.
Where imagery is all over the place.
And colours do strange things.
Cool. :)
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