"You know a classified project known as 'Harsh Realm," Lieutenant? It's a simulated war game. A virtual reality game used to teach situation war strategy. The Pentagon developed it.we're looking for a cracker soldier who can beat our high scorer." - Lance Henriksen as a military officer to Thomas Hobbes (Scott Bairstow)
Harsh Realm DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Fridays at 9PM. Throughout the 1990s, this timeslot on Fox was synonymous with one person: creator/producer Chris Carter. Beginning in 1993, The X-Files started its rise to becoming a cultural phenomenon in this slot. In the fall of 1996, the show moved to Sunday nights after three seasons, clearing the way for Millennium to become a more modest hit in the same slot. When Millennium was cancelled after its third year, the nine o'clock hour was again filled with a Carter production - the virtual reality themed Harsh Realm.
Scott Bairstow (Significant Others) stars as Lieutenant Thomas Hobbes, a soldier we first meet in a flashback to war torn Sarajevo of 1994 as he saves the life of his friend Lt. Mel Waters (Maxmillian Martini). Back at Fort Dix, NJ, five years later, Hobbes is busily making wedding plans with his fiancée Sophie (Pump Up the Volume's Samantha Mathis). Although he is on the verge of retiring from military life, Hobbes accepts a seemingly innocuous top secret assignment. Several years ago, the military developed a virtual reality simulated war game called "Harsh Realm" as a means of training soldiers. Employing census information and satellite imagery, the game is a near-perfect duplicate of our world, down to every man, woman, and child. Hobbes will simply have to beat the game's high scorer, decorated Vietnam War vet General Omar Santiago (Lost's Terry O'Quinn).
The task seems simple enough, so Hobbes agrees to give it a try. It soon becomes evident that winning this game will not be as easy as trying to best the high scorer on Pac-Man down at the arcade. This game is life or death, and once Hobbes is plugged into the system, he finds himself trapped in a post-apocalyptic world with Santiago as its dictator. It seems that the general has hijacked the game with the intention of setting up Harsh Realm as a totalitarian state before destroying our own world, thus making virtual reality actual reality. The U.S. government knows this and has been sending ill-prepared, misled soldiers by the thousands on the futile mission to "win" the game. The only way for Hobbes to return to our world and to his beloved Sophie (who has been told that her fiancée is dead) is to defeat Santiago with the help of jaded soldier Mike Pinocchio (D.B. Sweeney) and mute warrior/healer Florence (Rachel Hayward). Hobbes' foes include Waters (the man Hobbes once saved), who was also sent to defeat Santiago but joined the dictator as a means of survival, and Inga Fossa (Sarah-Jane Redmond), a mysterious double agent.
The X-Files and Millennium both kept their Friday at 9 timeslot for three seasons. Harsh Realm had a considerably shorter run - three weeks in the fall of 1999. When the series was pulled, nine episodes had been filmed. The six episodes that were not broadcast on Fox premiered the following spring on FX. All nine episodes are now arriving on DVD. Is it worth checking out, or did audiences avoid the series for good reason?
Audiences may have shied away from the series because its overall concept is not an easy one to grasp. The X-Files dealt with the paranormal and Millennium with the hunt for grotesque killers. With its computer-created alternate world, Harsh Realm may have been a bit too esoteric for wide audiences. Although uneven, these nine episodes still contain an appealing mixture of smart thrills, offbeat comedy, and goofy sci fi that should prove fun for those who enjoyed watching its predecessors. Harsh Realm possesses all the themes of earlier Chris Carter shows, including complex government plots, hidden worlds, and the fight of the individual against pervasive evil. He once again combines cinematic production values and an interesting cast with another paranoia-fueled series concept. (Watching his shows, viewers may find themselves wondering how long it will be until he stockpiles weapons and holes up in a Montana cabin.)
Fans of The X-Files will remember that the series' episodes could generally be divided into two types: episodes that delved into the mythology of the series and episodes that centered on monsters of the week. For me, the mythology episodes were always the weakest. With their killer bees, shape-shifting aliens, and other nonsensical "clues," these episodes almost seemed as if the creators were making up the show's back story as they went along. The monster episodes, however, were often focused and taut, providing viewers with thrills and chills that are often missing from TV.
Harsh Realm has a similar division in its episodes, but with the opposite effect. Several of the episodes (the pilot, "Leviathan," "Inga Fossa") center on the show's mythology, setting up the world of Harsh Realm and laying the groundwork for future plots (most of which we will never see). These episodes are the show's strongest, presenting us with much information, but withholding enough to keep us interested in what will happen in future episodes. Some of the episodes, like "Kein Ausgang" (Hobbes and Pinocchio become trapped in the military's original war game, an endlessly repeating recreation of a WWII battle) and "Three Percenters" (Hobbes, Florence, and Pinocchio encounter a programming glitch that drains humans of life and replaces them with computer files) are stand-alones, while others, like "Reunion" (Hobbes encounters his virtual mother who is dying of cancer in a prison camp) and "Manus Domini" (detailing Florence's split from the Sisters, a peace-loving group of mute healers), mix mythology with stand-alone elements. The strongest of these, such as "Kein Ausgang," employ crackerjack story telling techniques, but the weakest come across as rejected scripts from either Quantum Leap or the Planet of the Apes TV series.
It really is too bad the producers did not decide to make Harsh Realm into a miniseries rather than a weekly series. The story of Harsh Realm (the place) and Hobbes' attempt to get home is a compelling one, but does not seem suited for a weekly series - it just isn't expansive enough to sustain an entire series. The series' virtual setting allows the producers to explore almost any plotline and shooting location they can imagine, but such episodes only serve to slow down the show's overall storytelling arc. The world that Carter and company have created is so intricate and (at times) exciting that viewers will wish that its story had been told with the concise running time and definite beginning, middle, and end that a miniseries would have allowed.
In the extras included with this set, the creative team discusses how difficult it is to produce a series of this scope using the same amount of money budgeted to much less visually complicated shows (cop dramas, for example). This makes Harsh Realm's production values all the more impressive. The series makes great use of its Vancouver locations in creating the look and feel of Harsh Realm. None of what they have done is overly complicated, but the series' design elements show great imagination. Barcode-like "access chips" that track residents of Harsh Realm, "zip file" virtual wrestlers, and even Pinocchio's metal-covered car (which looks like a tongue-in-cheek throwback to both Mad Max and Logan's Run) add to the series' visual style and its appeal.
The show is also well-cast. Bairstow is sometimes a bit too earnest as Hobbes (the hokey letters home that he is constantly forced to read contribute to this), but is incredibly easy on the eyes. Sweeney gives Pinocchio a subtle mix of swagger and vulnerability, resulting in a character that Carter accurately compares to Han Solo. As Florence, Hayward displays a deep sense of emotion and toughness without the aid of a single line of dialogue. Not many actors would be up to the challenge of creating a recurring series character who is memorable and expressive while also mute. Even Hobbes' dog, Dexter, is perfectly cast.
The nine episodes that make up Harsh Realm are divided onto three discs. The discs are housed in clear, slim plastic cases. The front covers of the cases include the show's logo and stills from the series. The backs list the episode titles and airdates, the writer and director information, and brief synopses of the episodes. The interiors also contain stills from the series. The three cases slide into a cardboard outer sleeve.
Upon being placed in the player, the DVDs begin with a brief full-motion intro featuring the series' theme song. A static menu (with stills from the series) allows viewers to choose between individual episodes. There is no "play all" option. Upon choosing an episode, viewers can play the episode view the scene selections, or change the language selections.
