Ascension vs Virtuality

425.costerwaldau.virtuality.062609I’m kind’a sort’a following the new slate of SyFy shows due out over the next few months, the first one is Ascension. The official description of the show is:

In 1963, the U.S. government launched a covert space mission sending hundreds of men, women and children on a century-long voyage aboard the starship Ascension to populate a new world. Nearly 50 years into the journey, as they approach the point of no return, a mysterious murder of a young woman causes the ship’s population to question the true nature of their mission.

Which sounded similar to something I’d seen before that I couldn’t quite place. Then I remembered, the busted series that aired as a Fox movie of the week Virtuality back in 2009.

In Virtuality, it’s a ten year mission to a far-off star when they’re just past at the point of no return when a computer glitch ala Hal from 2001 has one crew member raped in a virtual reality simulation and ends up really murdering the mission commander (a pre-Game of Thrones Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.)

Honestly I don’t think the new Ascension will be anything like Virtuality but it’s interesting to see how each are replying on the same basic premise to try and build a series around. Which seemed rather limiting for a series like Virtuality since there there was only a dozen or so characters to build a whole show around. I suppose more characters could be introduced in the virtual environments aboard the ship, but still it was hard to see how a premise like Virtuality would last as a series. Ascension has more characters and thus would be less limiting, but I guess only time will tell.

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