'X' CREATOR'S NEXT SERIES

04/05/1999 at 12:00 AM EDT

Chris Carter, creator of "The X-Files," has set the cast for his new Fox series "Harsh Realm," an action-adventure drama about a virtual reality computer program used by the military. Variety reports that Scott Bairstow ("Party of Five") will play Hobbes, a soldier sent into the war-simulation game program to assassinate a supposedly evil man who created a utopian society. D.B. Sweeney ("Spawn") will play Mike, a soldier sent five years earlier to do the same thing, who now lives underground in the virtual reality world. Terry O'Quinn ("The X-Files" movie) will play the supposedly evil bad guy. Also starring in the pilot, if not necessarily the series, will be Samantha Mathis ("Broken Arrow"), Max Martini ("Saving Private Ryan"), Rachel Hayward ("Millennium") and Sarah Jane Redmond ("Millennium"). The series has a 13-episode commitment.