----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'm afraid I'll sound like I'm typing out of both sides of my keyboard, having endorsed the call for more international discussion and now requesting discourse on an American TV product, but so it goes. I'm curious if anyone caught the opening show of the VR5, the new Fox SF show. My apologies to international correspondents who may not have access yet. The show, I noticed, is produced by John Sacret Young, "auteur" of CHINA BEACH, and it seems to have some of the wit and high production values I associated with that show, interesting in a non-Big 3 network production. As you may know, the premise is that a young woman electronics/ computer person has managed to switch modems on her virtual reality program and thus get sucked into it, connecting with others that her modem connects to. (I 'm afraid I'm not explaining this too well, but it's all pseudo-science anyway.) This kind of thing has been explored or exploited in a number of films and tv shows before, from TRON to VR RANGERS, but this show is distinguished by its sly corss-referencing of other films and tv shows and its wit. For example, the woman's obnoxious neighbor is played by obnoxious gonzo magician Penn Jillette. Her mother, who can be accessed by her program, but who otherwise exists in a vegetative (Alzheimers? lobotomy?) state is ex-Big Nurse Louise Fletcher. This VR heroine seeks advice from a researcher whose work is closer to present-day Virtual Reality than hers-- he is played by CHINA BEACH vet Robert Picardo, who currently also plays the Holographic Doctor on STAR TREK: VOYAGER. And so on. The most mysterious character is another VR researcher who turns out to be linked to something called the Committee, which may or may not have had something to do with the deaths of the heroine's father and sister 17 years earlier. This researcher is first described as being a "really old guy" and when she enters his office, she glimpses a white-haired man behind a curtain, but "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" because he's really just a therapist and the "old guy" is really a young-middle-aged man. But his character's name is "Frank Morgan," the name, you'll recall, of the actor who played the Wizard of Oz. There's also a remarkable Steadicam tracking shot of the two walking through a seemingly endless corridor of file cabinets, reminscent of two scenes in Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL. Maybe I'm over-reading this show, but I'll be very curious to see how it develops. It's on (locally at least) just before THE X-FILES and looks like a better show to my virtual eyes. Other reactions? --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN