DEFYING GRAVITY is not a VIRTUALITY rip-off, star insists

Next month, ABC will unveil a sci-fi series in which a large, attractive, squabbling crew is trapped together for years aboard a spaceship speeding away from Earth. They must contend with their own frayed tempers and romantic longings, a crew member who is shooting footage for a documentary back home... And a sinister force lurking aboard the ship.

So, Ron Moore's Virtuality got picked up, after all? Sadly, no. That's actually the premise for Defying Gravity, a new show that leading lady Christina Cox insists is nothing like Virtuality at all, really.

"I want to put this out there: I read both of these scripts, and I don't understand why people are making the parallels between these two shows," Cox tells SCI FI Wire. "They could not be more different. Virtuality, the footage was beamed home for a reality show, but they also had their ghost-in-the-machine thing going on. They had a virus in their holodeck, and it was killing them off. Virtuality was a great concept. Peter Berg is a crazy-great director. Great cast. But there are going to be different kinds of interactions if [as seen on Virtuality] your characters are going into a holodeck and having their experiences singularly and reacting to things in a holosphere environment than if [as on Defying Gravity] they are grounded in real day-to-day relationships with their co-workers and there is no escape."



We'll see for ourselves how much Defying Gravity isn't Virtuality-lite when the show premieres Aug. 2.


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