Harsh Realm, Chris Carter's 1999 follow-up to his otherworldly television series' The X-Files and Millennium, was an engrossing (if short-lived) series about a soldier trapped in a virtual reality game. Scott Bairstow (Significant Others) stars as U.S. Army Lt. Tom Hobbes, whose heroism during a peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia earns the unwanted attention of a secret Pentagon project. A month before Hobbes is ready to marry and reenter civilian life, he finds himself tapped to test a simulated war game and ends up trapped mentally (while his body is cared for in an underground facility) in a post-apocalyptic scenario in which chaos prevails and a dictator named Santiago (Terry O'Quinn) controls the game's rules. Teaming up with another stranded soldier (D.B. Sweeney), Hobbes embarks on a journey to liberate himself and his fellow prisoners. Unfortunately, the Fox channel pulled the series after three episodes, and a mere six more showed up on the FX network before production ended. Needless to say, the complicated story, based on a comic book series, remains very unresolved. Still, the nine episodes in this boxed set are stimulating, imaginative, and startling in their sophisticated production values. Special features include commentary by Carter and director Daniel Sackheim on the pilot episode and a "making-of" featurette. Recommended. (T. Keogh)
Harsh Realm: The Complete Series
Fox, 3 discs, 387 min., not rated, DVD: $39.98 Volume 19, Issue 6
Harsh Realm: The Complete Series
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