ieutenant Thomas Hobbes (Bairstow) distinguishes himself for his heroism rescuing fellow soldier Mel Waters (Martini) from an air strike during the American police action in Sarajevo. With his hitch almost over, he returns home to his fiancee, Sophie (Samantha Mathis), content to live the rest of a peaceful, stress-free existence, probably in California. But then he is summoned for one last mission, and briefed over dinner with superior Lance Henriksen, in a scene deliberately evocative of a classic similar scene from the film Apocalypse Now. It seems that the military has created a virtual-reality war game called "Harsh Realm," identical to the real
world, which it uses to test its top people against real-time terrorist scenarios. Hobbes has been
assigned to beat the game's top score, achieved by one Omar Santiago (O'Quinn).
Entering the world of Harsh Realm, Hobbes soon discovers that he hasn't been told the whole truth. The game is based on the real world, but it is possible to be killed there; you just fade out in a burst of static rather than leave a visible body. Any player who dies in Harsh Realm dies in the real world as well. Santiago has not only achieved top score in the game but has conquered vast regions of the simulated Earth. The population there is composed not just of virtual reality characters, but also of previous real-world recruits, who were also sent in to stop Santiago but who found out once they arrived that they would not be allowed out until they found and took down the tyrant themselves.
Many previous players, seeing no other alternative, have joined Santiago's
fascist army, among them Mel Waters, who has added insult to injury by marrying the virtual-reality Sophie. The worst news is that even if Hobbes does find a way to get back to the real world, where his body lies comatose among hundreds of previous betrayed players, it will do him no good; Santiago, whose own earthly form lies in a protected, unknown location, has plans to exterminate all life in the real world to make sure that his own dreams of conquest proceed unimpeded in Harsh Realm.
The trapped Hobbes becomes a freedom fighter in Harsh Realm, beside his embittered fellow game player Michael Pinocchio (Sweeney), the silent but dangerous Florence (Rachel Hayward) and the virtual-reality analog to his real-life dog, Dexter, who is the subject of far more solicitous concern than any video-game dog in the history of the universe. Meanwhile, in the real world, Sophie, who has just begun to mourn his supposed death in combat, finds herself approached by
the mysterious Inga Fossa (Sarah Jane Redmond), who tells the young mother-to-be that Hobbes is still alive.
Better than its reputation
When it comes to DVD collections, the phrase "complete series" usually sounds more grandiose than it actually is. It usually denotes series that had a very truncated run. In the case of Harsh Realm, the series suffered withering reviews and minimal viewer interest, and it was canceled by the Fox network after only three episodes, before the ninth had even completed filming. Reviews at the time called the show murky and impossible to understand, with critics unable to follow a set of parallel storylines that contrasted events in the show's "real world" to the
show's dystopian "realm." Of the few viewers who caught the first few episodes, most also reported confusion, or distaste at its relentlessly grim tone. The show might have accumulated a dedicated audience over time, but its ratings were so low it wasn't given a chance. Although the entire run was eventually aired on FX, the series remains a little-known cult item, remembered by most as a flop of little actual interest.
Collected on DVD, it turns out to be considerably better than its reputation. Yes, it is demanding. But science-fiction fans, who are well acquainted with the concept of virtual and/or parallel worlds, are better equipped to understand its basic premise than those outside the field more used to ideas that can be summarized in a sentence; and, besides, the idea of a war fought in the real world and in virtual reality simultaneously did not exactly harm The Matrix, released earlier the same year.
Yes, it is unrelentingly grim. Aside from Santiago, who actually prefers a world he can bestride like a tin-plated dictator (and who reveals, at one point, that he actually believes that founding fathers John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would have nothing but admiration for what he's doing), the show is about human beings who, via no fault of their own, have been trapped in a brutal technological version of hell. But the show didn't last long enough for the protagonists to mount any effective counterattack. And yes, the characters are not exactly charming: Hobbes is just a determined hero of no obvious depth, and Pinocchio, who does at least have a more compelling backstory, is also a sullen, embittered wreck who actively despises Hobbes for his idealism. But the show also possesses its own fleeting glimmers of light, even if they're so few and far between, in the only three episodes that Fox bothered to air, that it's difficult to harbor unkind thoughts about the viewers who decided that they didn't want to wait around that long.
Discounting all that, and seen in a compilation that's as close as we'll ever get to a completed
series, Harsh Realm does turn out to have an undeniable narrative power. The performances are good, the production values are high, and the scripts actually do play the glitches in a virtual-reality universe for all they're worth. It hooked this reviewer for good with the final revelation at the end of episode three, a stunning explanation for Pinocchio's bitterness and refusal of an opportunity to return to the real world. Of course, that aired at the exact same time the suits decided to pull the plug. So it's just as well that so many of us are getting our first look at it now.
On the other hand, maybe Pinocchio, named after a real person of that name in Chris Carter's past, should have been named after someone else. Every time someone cries out his name, certain other distracting associations intrude. It would break the spell completely in any scene where somebody accused him of lying.
DVD extras include episode commentaries by Chris Carter and others, production featurettes and TV spots.
