Sep 01, 2004 00:20
So there was this TV show, right? A pretty blonde California girl has special powers. Her father has departed before the series starts, but her mother’s still around. And a sister who unexpectedly turns up later. Mostly she gets by with the help of her goofy male friend, who’s too brother-like to be a romantic interest, and an older mentor character, played by Anthony Stewart Head (he’s actually her second mentor, after the first got killed), with links to a secretive order of some kind.
VR-5 ran for nine episodes on broadcast TV back in 1995. There were a few more made that didn’t get shown till the Sci-Fi Channel ran it, but I somehow missed that. The pilot sucked, so I didn’t bother to watch the first episode, but I caught the second because I was bored and nothing else interesting was on, and damn! If you pretended that the technology was all magic (because it was totally implausible otherwise) it was really good. Lots of clever twists and playing against viewer expectations.
It came up in conversation with one of my coworkers today. A quick Amazon check turns up a DVD edition, four years out of print. I can’t even find out if it’s got all 13 episodes, or only the originally broadcast nine. There’s one copy going on eBay for like $50. Feh.
sf,
television