season 1 - Latest News & Reviews

SummaryCreated by the military, Harsh Realm explores a virtual reality world where anything is possible. After seeing the horrors of war in Sarajevo, Lt. Thomas Hobbes is finally ready to settle down with his fiance but the military has one last assignment for him. He must test out the newest in military combat training, a top secret computer simulatio... Read More

Created By:Chris Carter

❮ Harsh Realm

Season 1

Season Premiere:

Oct 8, 1999

Metascore

Mixed or Average

Based on 25 Critic Reviews

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Available after 4 ratings

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Episode 1 • Oct 8, 1999 • 60 m

Pilot

Lt. Hobbes is sent by the military into their virtual reality world of "Harsh Realm" to assassinate rogue-soldier-turned-game's-dictator Omar Santiago, but Hobbes' rogue predecessor, Mike Pinocchio, warns Hobbes that the game is a trap.

Episode 2 • Oct 15, 1999

Leviathan

Bounty hunters capture Hobbes and Pinocchio. Sophie searches for the truth after being told Hobbes is dead.

Episode 3 • Oct 22, 1999

Inga Fossa

Hobbes and Pinocchio seek out an ID chip forger in hopes of accessing a portal used to bridge both worlds.

Episode 4 • Apr 14, 2000

Kein Ausgang

Hobbes and Pinocchio find themselves trapped in a looping World War II battle simulation, where the German and the US units are forever fighting over a small bridge in the Ardennes. They soon meet another real player stuck there.

Episode 5 • Apr 21, 2000

Reunion

As his real mother dies of cancer, Hobbes meets and nurses her dying counterpart in one of Santiago's forced labor camps in Harsh Realm. Pinocchio tries to come up with an escape plan.

Episode 6 • Apr 28, 2000

Three Percenters

Pursued by Santiago's Republican Guard, Hobbes and his friends encounter a strange pacifist group of deserters from Santiago's army whose compound is located near a beautiful lake that harbors a horrifying secret.

Episode 7 • May 5, 2000

Manus Domini

Hobbes finds himself trapped in a minefield with one of Santiago's soldiers. A holy order of female healers cares for Pinocchio after he loses his leg and becomes suicidal. Florence is captured by a bounty hunter who's after the healers.

Episode 8 • May 12, 2000

Cincinnati

Hobbes and Pinocchio attempt to stop Santiago as he attempts to kill the leader of the Native American uprising.

Episode 9 • May 19, 2000

Camera Obscura

Hobbes and Pinocchio get involved with a priest and two families feuding over a treasure of buried gold.

Critic Reviews

View All

Metascore

Mixed or Average

Based on 25 Critic Reviews

28% Positive
7 Reviews

48% Mixed
12 Reviews

24% Negative
6 Reviews

Jun 9, 2015

One of the season's most promising new series.

Jun 10, 2015

The early prognosis: bizarre, unsettling, perplexing, captivating. [6 Oct 1999, p.10]

Jun 27, 2013

Harsh Realm looks to be capably acted and artfully creepy, but I'm not sure I care to get involved in another dark, paranoid drama from Chris Carter.

Jun 9, 2015

Chris Carter wants to hijack your brain. Again. And after shuddering through tonight's premiere of Harsh Realm on Fox, you may be ready to surrender.

Jun 9, 2015

Unfortunately, the pilot doesn't flesh out the premise, making the episode little more than an average "Outer Limits." With all the special-effects possibilities of a virtual realm, "Santiago City" looks like the set of "Combat" with a high-tech fence around it. [8 Oct 1999, p.S34]

Jun 9, 2015

What's missing is a soul, a reason to care what happens to the characters. Carter also fails to give viewers enough critical insights to fully understand the complex premise.[8 Oct 1999, p.1E]

Jun 9, 2015

An off-putting exercise in mayhem that might get by on its computer-generated looks as a TV movie. But as a series, it defies us to understand anything about it, much less care about it or anyone in it who moves on less than four legs.