I’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.