Working Out the VR Reality of 'Virtuality' with Ronald D. Moore by Troy Rogers
After
closing up series shop on Battlestar Galactica,
creator Ronald D. Moore has been busy on a number
of projects. Having completely revamped Galactica
for a new generation in ways that now rank him
among the very best creative minds in science
fiction, Moore partnered with Fox to bring to
life the new TV movie, Virtuality, a groundbreaking
Kubrick-type sci fi story starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
about a starship crew of 12 astronauts on the
verge of embarking on a 10-year journey vital
to the survival of life on Earth.
In an effort to keep the crew stimulated, each is equipped with pre-mission decided virtual reality modules that allow crewmembers to take on avatar-like identities as they explore self-created worlds and scenarios. Think a space mission with the ability to explore Everquest like worlds to fight boredom. All is perfect until a virus is discovered in the system.
Also working with Michael Taylor (Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: Voyager) and director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, Hancock) to give fans a breakthrough science-fiction thriller set in two very different universes: outer space and a seemingly limitless virtual reality, Ronald D. Moore is looking good with Virtuality, which we can't wait to check out.
With Virtuality about to make its two-hour premiere on Fox on Friday, June 26 at 8pm, we caught up with creator Ronald D. Moore on a recent conference call to learn more about the VR entertainment with the sci fi entertainment, how he and his Virtuality staff were able to work out the story and science logistics, the time in space, and the Avatar look of the characters.
THE DEADBOLT: When did you come up with the idea of blending a sci-fi thriller with a reality show element to it?
RONALD
D. MOORE: It was sort of in stages. When
we first started talking about the concept it
was about a long-range space mission, which
I was intrigued with. Like I said before, I
was interested in the idea of what do you do
with 12 people in a metal tube for that long.
I thought there were interesting dramatic possibilities
right there and, okay, what would they realistically
need to do. What would NASA or the space confederation
do at that point to keep them from going crazy?
They’d probably have a really advanced virtual
reality program to help them while away the
hours and there’s interaction between those
two worlds.
Somewhere in those discussions we started talking about when they would be broadcasting pieces back to earth, obviously, like astronauts do today, and hey, what if they made a reality show out of that? Then it all kind of started to come together. You had these three layers of storytelling going on in the show where you had what was happening in the real world on the ship, what was happening in the virtual space and then what was the reality show that was seen back on earth.
Were the needs of the reality show starting to impact what was happening on the spacecraft? Were people being manipulated in order to make better drama for the reality show? The astronauts themselves would start to wonder about are they telling us the truth about what’s happening back on earth or is that something to just get us to be upset for the cameras. It did sort of become this really interesting sort of psychological crucible that they would all be put in.
THE DEADBOLT: It sounds like there’s a lot going on, because you have the mission to save earth. You have the virtual reality module. You have the virus. Then you have the streaming reality show. When you were writing it, were there any major hurdles or blind alleys? Did it get confusing?
MOORE:
Yes. I mean, it was a tough thing to juggle.
It’s a very ambitious piece and I think that
was the reaction on the part of Fox when they
saw it. It’s a very challenging, very complicated
piece of work and there are a lot of moving
parts. We knew that sort of going in and writing
the script wasn’t easy. There was a lot of sort
of trying to decide how much time you spend
in any one of these three categories and at
what point do you shift from the audience’s
point of view from one to the other.
What’s the language for that? Where are we going to introduce certain characters? How often do you go to the first person confessionals and the reality show, etc., etc.? So there were a lot of just complicated questions. Then those same questions were there in the editing process. When do you go to which piece of material? I think it was a really interesting challenge.
THE DEADBOLT: Is all of the VR avatar style [type] characters, or is it real looking people?
MOORE: The actors play themselves in
the virtual space. What we did in production
was all of the virtual reality scenes are shot
in green screen and all of the sets are green-scene
sets. So, for instance, the piece opens with
an extended sort of piece in a virtual space
of the Civil War for the lead character. None
of that was shot on location. None of it was
a set that we built. It was all done in the
computer on a green screen stage. We kept that
language for all of the virtual pieces to sort
of give all of the virtual reality a sense of
continuity so that you always sort of intuitively
felt that you were in a virtual space even if
the background looked photo reeled. So all of
that is done against green.
THE DEADBOLT: I was reading somewhere that you don’t really reveal the year or what the actual emergency to the earth is. Was that done intentionally?
MOORE:
Actually, that changed over time. Initially
we didn’t really specify those things. We wanted
to keep it looser and kind of vague because
I just thought it was more interesting than
nailing down the specifics on all of that, but
as we went through the process we started to
nail those things down. We just started to feel
like we had to answer certain questions. I think
we did - I know you’re going to ask me what
year it is and I’m not going to know off the
top of my head, so don’t ask - but I think we
do refer to the year and we definitely talked
more about the nature of the emergency.
THE DEADBOLT: Yes. There was something written, a piece of dialogue, where it said, 'Dry land is really expensive now,' so I ...
MOORE: Yes. We expanded on that idea a little bit more.
THE DEADBOLT: Okay, so there are just like hints?
MOORE: It’s kind of explicit. I mean,
there is a commercial for the reality show within
the show. Within that commercial it kind of
lays out some of the broader parameters of the
mission, about what’s happening on earth and
why the mission has taken on a new urgency.
The mission started out as just one of exploration
and then something going terribly wrong back
home in terms of climate change, in terms of
the environment, or so the astronauts are told.
That’s kind of where we are.
THE DEADBOLT: Did you look to any other properties for inspiration, like Sunshine or 2001?
MOORE: Not specifically. I mean, I think we were aware of Sunshine and
we sort of wanted to try to not go into it.
We had seen it and we were like aware that there
were certain similarities to some of it. We
then kind of wanted to go out of our way to
make sure that ours was different, so we were
kind of like in that place.
After
closing up series shop on Battlestar Galactica,
creator Ronald D. Moore has been busy on a number
of projects. Having completely revamped Galactica
for a new generation in ways that now rank him
among the very best creative minds in science
fiction, Moore partnered with Fox to bring to
life the new TV movie, Virtuality, a groundbreaking
Kubrick-type sci fi story starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
about a starship crew of 12 astronauts on the
verge of embarking on a 10-year journey vital
to the survival of life on Earth.
RONALD
D. MOORE: It was sort of in stages. When
we first started talking about the concept it
was about a long-range space mission, which
I was intrigued with. Like I said before, I
was interested in the idea of what do you do
with 12 people in a metal tube for that long.
I thought there were interesting dramatic possibilities
right there and, okay, what would they realistically
need to do. What would NASA or the space confederation
do at that point to keep them from going crazy?
They’d probably have a really advanced virtual
reality program to help them while away the
hours and there’s interaction between those
two worlds.
MOORE:
Yes. I mean, it was a tough thing to juggle.
It’s a very ambitious piece and I think that
was the reaction on the part of Fox when they
saw it. It’s a very challenging, very complicated
piece of work and there are a lot of moving
parts. We knew that sort of going in and writing
the script wasn’t easy. There was a lot of sort
of trying to decide how much time you spend
in any one of these three categories and at
what point do you shift from the audience’s
point of view from one to the other.
MOORE:
Actually, that changed over time. Initially
we didn’t really specify those things. We wanted
to keep it looser and kind of vague because
I just thought it was more interesting than
nailing down the specifics on all of that, but
as we went through the process we started to
nail those things down. We just started to feel
like we had to answer certain questions. I think
we did - I know you’re going to ask me what
year it is and I’m not going to know off the
top of my head, so don’t ask - but I think we
do refer to the year and we definitely talked
more about the nature of the emergency. 
