It seems this is by design (and there's a way you can change it).
The word >pShell launches a process, creates a pipe to that process, and sends all standard input to that process until it quits.
Try this: launch qiv with a list of images using a wildcard like *.jpg.
z" qiv ~/Pictures/*.jpg" >pShell
Then type <space>, <backspace>, q or any other commands from the qiv man page. Notice that they get piped to the program until it quits.
If you want to change this behavior, you could write your own version of >pShell or break it up into its parts. The code for >pShell is in VFXBase/Lin64/shell.fth on my system. Notice that it calls popen, caches the pipe's file handle on the return stack, and enters into a loop to send the standard input to the pipe. You could call popen, stash the file handle somewhere, continue working at the "ok" prompt, and close the pipe when you are done.
See the man page for popen for more info.
