Perhaps hoping to build upon some of the recycled-SF-series mojo of “Battlestar Galactica,” ABC yesterday launched a remake of the old series about lizard-like beings who show up pretending to be friends but in reality…aren’t so much.
From my understanding, this was originally intended as an ongoing series, but then ABC supposedly shut down production for the better part of a month for retooling because they weren’t thrilled with the series creatively. If this is the case, I figured this either meant that the show sucked beyond the telling, or it was so superb that the network simply couldn’t recognize greatness when they saw it.
After watching the pilot, I haven’t quite decided which case it is.
First of all, the show is a casting treasure trove for SF geeks. “Lost,” “Smallville,” and “Firefly” are all well-represented. All we need is David Duchovny for the alien conspiracy contingent and Marc Singer for the nostalgia contingent and we’re ready to go.
The series has, of course, a bit of a tough row to hoe because all the major plot twists that made the original series work (as much as it worked, I suppose; I wasn’t that huge a fan of it) are already well-known. You can’t do an “Oh my God, they’re actually lizards!” reveal and get any pop to it because it’s already well known. If Morena Baccarin’s Anna swallows a rat as Jane Badler’s Diana did in the original, it’s not shock value; it’s nostalgia. It’s not really a “reimagining” as BSG was because the arrival of Six in the opening moments of that series staked out new territory; here it’s pretty much the same dramatic beats as the original except they’ve crammed several episodes of story moments into the first hour. This is prompting some fans to complain that too much is happening too fast.
I don’t agree. Why play coy with stuff that people already know is coming? The producers are apparently motoring through the story that was already told in order to tell their own story.
What’s interesting is that there are all-new allegories. The original series was an easy metaphor for the rise of Nazism. But the new “V” draws its allegorical juice from current fears, ranging from terrorism to hidden agendas. The producers remarkably manage to position the aliens so as to engage the paranoid fantasies of all sides of the political spectrum. At one point we’re to infer that existing terrorist organizations are actually the work of already-seeded alien visitors. But the aliens also present a plan for medical coverage that is described so portentously as “universal health care” that all it needs is a “bum-bum-BUM” musical sting to underscore the notion that universal health care is likewise an alien notion…which of course draws a direct line to the concept that Barack Obama is an alien. Are the producers commenting on the absurdity of that notion, or are they hoping that certain viewers will nod and say, “I knew it! Obama’s swallowing vermin in the White House!” In short, how far will they go to get viewers?
Will I be sticking with it? Sure. It’s got Supergirl, it’s got Elizabeth Mitchell, Baccarin is stand-out creepy as the leader, and I don’t have a bowling league that night to conflict with it. But it’ll be interesting to see if implying that terrorism, health care and evil aliens are synonymous is a direction that the producers continue to take the series.
PAD
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Isn’t that reading an awful lot into it? They promised health care because they need to promise something people would want. They’re evil lizard aliens not stupid lizard aliens. If they promise a cure for cancer and new clean burning energy sources I would not take it as a commentary on cancer researchers and Prius owners. What are they supposed to do–show up and promise universal servitude a starring role in a best selling cookbook?
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Obama may have had some reasons to be upset at last night but I don’t think that V was one of them.
It’s not what they were promising, Bill, it was the word choice. Trust me, as a writer, I can tell you that you don’t produce a line like, “You’re talking about universal health care” without intending for viewers to connect certain dots.
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Understand, I’m not offended by it. I think it’s funny, if for no other reason than that it’s only slightly more outlandish than the various conspiracy theories put forward by birthers and their ilk. But I’ll bet others won’t be laughing.
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PAD
Yeah, it was very obvious that that was they were getting at, the way that line was hammered in there.
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I have mixed feelings about the show as a whole. It did make me nostalgiac for the gradual reveals of the original series (which I was a fan of… but then, I was 9, so I have no idea if I’d still enjoy it as an adult), and it’s clear that the producers just took the very basic premise and then crafted an entirely new show out of it (even the title has a different meaning this time around), but it kept me entertained and it was reasonably well made. My real problem with it is what I foresee coming down the line: a standard “us vs. everyone else” story, including interminable familial conflicts as the FBI agent tries to convince her son that the Visitors are evil while he naively continues to be devoted to them… I can’t say that’s a story line that has me thrilled, especially after three seasons of the teenage son on Nip/Tick blindly following whatever insidious female he falls in love with at any given time.
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I’ll watch one more episode before I decide for sure. But I’m already committed to one serialized ABC sci-fi show (FlashForward, which just gets better and better each episode), and I don’t know if I can handle another one.
Not to mention Lost.
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Interesting take, but I didn’t see it that way either. That particular carrot has been dangled by a lot of alien visitors in a lot of stories before now. I think that it basically falls into the category of having the Visitors offering us things (technology, information, medical advances, etc) that we want in order to be seen as the altruistic wonders they feel they have to masquerade as to do to us in a long, slow, drawn out matter what they could do to us in about an hour if they bothered to use all that advanced technology against us.
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Not even sure that the term “Universal Health Care” was all that carefully chosen. Maybe a good writer would do that, but I wasn’t impressed by the writing as a whole and I’m really not sure that the writers deserve the credit for carefully thinking that out. If anything, since the Visitor didn’t use the term, I just took it as the reporter putting the Visitor proposal into a commonly used term of the day.
I took the “universal health care” simply as a lame joke. Aliens from somewhere out there in the universe offering healthcare… I dunno. Maybe that’s a reflection of how relatively blah I thought the show was as a whole.
Although, I can seewhere the writer might think “aliens” “universal”…that’ll be funny. It’s not like Universal Healthcare is a new phrase in the American Lexicon, it was used far more frequesntly back in the early 90’s than Obama has used it. He’s actively avoided the phrase.
On the other hand, the comment about un-necessary wars was clearly implying the previous administration were V’s.
One of the producers pointed out that the show was conceived under the Bush Administration and filmed under the Obama administration. He also stated the show was meant to “read” to viewers in a variety of ways. They liked the idea of people of all ideologies being able to walk away with a different perspective on the show.
I like the idea that they were “seeding” the planet though, which is a switch from the original. I felt that it could have used a two hour pilot, if just to give some breathing room, but yeah, postponing the reveal that they are lizards…well, just get to it.
I keep asking myself how I miss these things, like I’m too far out of the loop of my areas of interest. And then I realize its because I’m over here in Belfast where I don’t talk to my friends day to day.
Glad you mentioned it though because I remember being a kid when V first aired and I was just at that age where my mom would let me watch it on the condition that I went to bed without incident. But far from scare me, V probably got me into the idea of there being Sci Fi out there that doesn’t have to fit the Star Wars mold.
I shall have to find a legal copy of this show for which to view it and form my opinion.
the aliens also present a plan for medical coverage that is described so portentously as “universal health care” that all it needs is a “bum-bum-BUM” musical sting to underscore the notion that universal health care is likewise an alien notion…which of course draws a direct line to the concept that Barack Obama is an alien.
I’ve been sort of thinking that David Icke (of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion is true, it’s just that it’s about reptilian aliens and not Jews” fame) was instrumental in designing the new series…
Wasn’t that impressed with it. As PAD notes, a lot of what’s happening is already known (evil lizards in disguise!) so kudos to the producers if their trying to motor thru that part.
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But given that we know what’s coming, either from the original series or the many, many commercials showing Anna’s face smiling down from the mother ship the ddrraawwnn oouutt reveal of the ship over NYC seemed a desperate attempt to wring suspense from something not suspenseful.
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The speech at the secret resistance meeting also seemed amateurish. They’re trying to build to a reveal that Visitors have been here a while and already walk among us. I get that. But “I’ve got something I’m not telling you right away that will shock and surprise you” was fairly well telegraphed so that there really wasn’t much surprise.
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(And as a final nit about the overall quality of the writing, during the opening sequences ášš everyone experiences the tremors, did anyone notice that during the FBI lady’s call to her son, which apparently lasted just long enough for her to pull on some pants and walk downstairs, was actually long enough for the reporter to finish his shower, get dressed, arrive at work and already have a conversation with his producer?)
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And while folks might (might) be inclined to view aliens in the skies more as Vulcans than Predators, when their arrival is accompanied by tremors, falling bookcases and military jets falling from the skies I really don’t see any message being greeted with spontaneous joyful applause.
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Overall, under impressed. I’ll give it at least another episode to see if it’s really heading in any interesting direction. Maybe stick it out for the four their going to show before it goes on hiatus for a couple months (does anyone understand the thinkings of TV executives??) but not holding out a lot of hope.
“And while folks might (might) be inclined to view aliens in the skies more as Vulcans than Predators, when their arrival is accompanied by tremors, falling bookcases and military jets falling from the skies I really don’t see any message being greeted with spontaneous joyful applause.”
That was actually the one part that worked really well for me, and which rang true to me. A hot alien chick shows up in a flying saucer with a message of peace and prosperity? Ðámņ right people are going to be cheering. It’s only the most important moment in human history.
Not disputing the import of an honest-to-god first contact with aliens. But HUGE flying saucers appear over the major cities of the world while knocking down and military aircraft sent to investigate and shaking your house hard enough to trash your furniture?
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Megan Fox could show up in all her glory promising endless nights of passion and the folks in New York City (who know something of damage caused by flying craft) would NOT all start clapping like a global kumbaya had been declared.
I think you’re placing too much importance on the falling aircraft and shaking houses and overlooking the huge flying saucers part. People wouldn’t care if their pictures fell off the walls or some military hardware fell out of the sky if a freakin’ spaceship appeared in the sky and offered to be friends. They wouldn’t care about ANYTHING else if that happened. Even ignoring the potential benefit to mankind, this is Close Encounters come true. If anything, I think they downplayed the reaction.
Agree to disagree then. I think there would have been some suspicion in the crowd, caution at least. Certainly not universal acceptance. Especially for jaded New Yorkers.
[I]t’s pretty much the same dramatic beats as the original except they’ve crammed several episodes of story moments into the first hour. This is prompting some fans to complain that too much is happening too fast.
I don’t agree. Why play coy with stuff that people already know is coming? The producers are apparently motoring through the story that was already told in order to tell their own story.
Well, there’s motoring, and there’s breaking the narrative speed limit while losing parts of the vehicle. Wolf’s line about “are any of you ugly?” would make more sense if we’d seen more than one Vistor up to that point. I don’t think we even see the other main Vistor (male) until after that shot. (Although it’s a fascinating point about where TV news is now that you can have an anchor worried that people don’t take him seriously as a journalist — and a male one, at that. That trope’s more common with women.) It seemed rushed to that extent at several other points as well.
I liked how the wheelchair guy — who I bet had more of an arc in the original 2-hour version of this pilot that I’m sure exists, if only on paper — became able to walk at the health clinic, then dragged his wheelchair back to the church and up the steps and inside, so that he could sit back down in it and call out and THEN stand up. You don’t often see such commitment in a minor character.
Also — when the machine gun went spinning across the floor in the sleeper-cell sequence, how could we not get a moment when “Father Jack” goes for it and we realize that before he became a priest he was a fightin’ man with a tragic past?
Wolf’s line about “are any of you ugly?” would make more sense if we’d seen more than one Vistor up to that point.
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I think there were a couple of other visitors along with Anna when that line was said; the direction was kind of sloppy in that scene.
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PAD
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Yeah, there were at least two others with her, but you barely saw them. They did cut to one of the male visitors with her when he followed that line up by saying that all the Visitors were what we would normally consider very attractive, but they really hadn’t done anything to establish who that guy was. If you blinked you would have missed it and if you didn’t blink you may have thought he was just another press guy.
I enjoyed it. more to the point, my wife, who’s 10 years my junior and knows nothing of the original, enjoyed it, and found the twists and reveals pretty intriguing. As a big fan of the original, I like how some things are the same, some things are different, and that it’s a retelling, not a remake. I don’t have to spend time figuring out who’s who between the old and the new. At the same time, I can appreciate how the young teen gets caught up with the young V story is being told this time around.
It’s got promise. The cast alone can carry it for several weeks. But the writing and pace have to improve. This felt very rushed, both in terms of events within the show and from a production standpoint.
Universal health care is something that is taken for granted in europe, or at the very least in Greece.
As for this series, i’ve seen some clips and i couldn’t help but remembering Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict. Sure, the original V came long before that but i had never heard of that show untill a few days ago, when i also heard about this new series. If it’s good, i hope it is shown here too eventually, though it sounds like a bad replica of E:FC. I don’t mind rip-offs of other shows when they are well done (take Stargate Universe and BSG for example) but the clips i saw, left a bad taste in my mouh
Good, not great. As far as updated remakes of cheesy old 70’s/80’s genre shows go, I’d put it above Night Stalker & Bionic Woman, but way behind Galactica. I wonder if this had been on Sci-Fi (Excuse me… Syfy) instead of a network, would it have been better.
I’m a fan of the original. Back in the ’80’s I had Ann Crispin autograph a Visitor patch at my first Philcon. Had most of the novels, most of the comics. Just watched the whole miniseries and a smattering of the series episodes on Syfy. All that said, I had two thoughts at the end of the episode–
1.Everything seemed a little too quick.
2. The entire episode seemed to be exposition, all set up with no payoff.
I was also thankful that there was no Tyler’s Deli with teir famous Ham sandwiches.
Yeah, it did seem very expository, that was my other problem with it. They reveal that the Visitors are really lizard people by… telling us? And then it’s like, okay, here’s the problem, now we’re the Resistance, let’s go! Whoa, there, one thing at a time.
I’m in wait and see mode. The new series looks real pretty, but it just didn’t impress me in the least. And I’m one of the ones who felt it rushed through the storytelling part of the equation and came off a little weak because of that.
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I’ll give it four or five more episodes to hook me, but after that, if it doesn’t, I’ll likely not stick with it.
No, you’ll give it 3 more episodes, because that’s all they’ve got. 🙂
(Until March 2010 or something.)
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I know this run only has a set number of episodes. I’m giving it some extra time into the actual series because of the news I had heard about the mini and from past experience.
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The news on the mini was that it went through some changes while it was being made and that not everyone involved with it was happy with the final product. Also, I missed most of BSG’s first season because the mini, at least for me, pretty much sucked. When I later came into the end of season 1 I was surprised by how good the series was VS the mini. So I’ll give the thing the rest of the run of the mini plus a couple more to see if the series is better executed than the mini.
The one thing that didn’t make sense to me was the end of the episode. They HAVE to create a resistance because the Vs are planted everywhere and could stop truth from coming out? Why not take the dead V body to a news station and show them during the live nightly broadcast? It seems to be a large leap to believe that all the news stations are completely manned by Vs. Is there no youtube in this dimension? They have Facebook! It seems more plausible that viral video would expose them overnight. You’d have to take the series directly into war, but then resistance cells would make more sense.
Here’s a moment I wonder if anyone else caught.
during the tremors and shaking scenes, there was a cut inside the church where the young preacher sees that the crucifix is about to fall on wheelchair guy.
as he is pushing him out of the way of the falling cross the sound of the familiar “wilhielm scream” is heard.
Since the camera is still centered on the cross, it looked to me as if it was supposed to be Christ who gave out the scream.
I couldn’t stop laughing for the next 10 minutes!
and here’s your cultural shift. In the original series, reporters were seen as the good guys, now they’re among the villians.
Not all of them. Kristine Walsh was a TV reporter, no? She became the human face of the Visitors on the television. (Supplanted by Mike Donovan’s mother, when Kristine was finally killed.)
I like this comment, from over on an NPR site:
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“ Chris Harlan (CJH) wrote:
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Okay, let me get this straight. Lat season, Juliet–while lost in time–gets sucked down the hole of the drilling site by some sort of amazingly strong magnetic field. She is able to detonate a hydrogen bomb that alters the world’s future and her own past. Meanwhile, in the old future, Ben kills Jacob, who–before he dies–warns that “they” are coming. This season, Juliet awakes in a new life as an FBI agent. She has no memory of the island, nor any idea of the distortions to her life that the explosion has caused. At the same time, “they” are arriving as predicted by Jacob. Is that right? I’m surprised they spent so much time on Juliet and none of the other cast members. I wanted to see at least a little Hurley.
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The also got the title wrong. This is season VI, not season V.”
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🙂
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That’s actually pretty dámņëd funny.
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PAD: “here it’s pretty much the same dramatic beats as the original except they’ve crammed several episodes of story moments into the first hour. This is prompting some fans to complain that too much is happening too fast.
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I don’t agree. Why play coy with stuff that people already know is coming? The producers are apparently motoring through the story that was already told in order to tell their own story.”
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I might agree with you to a degree if the writing had been better and done a better job of introducing the new characters, but it just wasn’t written all that well. I would completely disagree that there was any need to motor through the story though.
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Supposedly there will be some differences in the new series (such as the Visitors having been here for a while in sleeper cells and infiltrating key organizations to create chaos) and the series is making critics of and analogies to different things than the original series did. Taking a little more time to set up this world and set the stage for the things this series wants to do could have gone a long way in regards to this coming off as a really good series that a lot of us are looking forward to VS being a series that a lot of us are on the fence about.
Agreed. The writers should have proceeded as if we’ve never seen the original series. Regardless of what we expect to happen, it’s just good storytelling to take your time and actually TELL THE STORY.
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“The writers should have proceeded as if we’ve never seen the original series.”
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A statement made even more true given the fact that, as odd as it may seem in the minds of geeks everywhere, there really are a lot of people out there who might watch the new series who have never seen the original series.
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Now, some of those people may know a bit about what the original V was about in general, but many likely wouldn’t be sitting there complaining that the series was taking too long telling a good story in the build up because they want the new series to hurry up and get to the new stuff.
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That is of course meant to be critiques and not critics up there.
I thought the pilot was ok – not bad, a little rushed, but all in all I’m willing to give it a few more weeks. The whole “sleeper cell” thing kinda threw me, as did the cloned human skin part (what if one of the sleepers needed to take a blood test? Or give a urine sample?)
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But here’s the twist I came up with (I’m NOT saying this is in the show, just a neat twist that turns the whole thing on its ear) – What if the Vs REALLY ARE the good guys here? Just because the sleeper cell aliens are lizards doesn’t mean the Vs are. Suppose they came to Earth tracking down the bad guys? What are they going to do, say, “Yes, we know we’ve just arrived in these gigantic ships but, oh, by the way, you’ve been invaded for decades and we’re here to help”?
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It also explains why they’re doing all the health care and outreach stuff – how else are they going to find the lizards??
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(PAD – feel free to use the idea if you like. You can just put it down as, “From an idea by …” :))
I thought it was sloppy writing.
First I was disappointed that it was only an hour premier as opposed to a two-hour premier. The lack of a second hour was driven home even more with the pacing because they crammed in so much stuff within that hour that it all felt exceptionally rushed.
I was kind of hoping maybe they would spring a surprise in the series and not actually have the visitors be reptiles. I know that probably would have ticked off a lot of people who were expecting the reptilian origins, but it would have been interesting had they tried a different kind of life form. But no big loss that they didn’t do it.
My biggest beef really goes to the pacing. There was really no way to determine the amount of time that passed. So much stuff happened so quickly that it didn’t seem realistic unless you’re talking about those events covering several weeks or even months.
First, if aliens did arrive in the manner they did and was going to meet the U.N. council, I’m fairly certain there would have been significantly tighter security (I don’t see the press being allowed to line the path and ask questions as the Visitors come through. In fact, such a meeting probably wouldn’t even take place at the actual U.N. building but some other more secure secretive site.
The next thing was the Visitors taking people up to their ship. That seems the sort of thing that wouldn’t be approved by the governments for many weeks. There was no way to know how much time passed between their arrival and meeting with the U.N. council to the point where they starting bringing humans up and giving them their pitch. Just the way the show was going, it only seemed like a few days, but that just doesn’t work.
The same goes for their setting up health centers where people can get treatment. The guy in the wheelchair seems like he would be well down the list of people to get any sort of treatment. So again, you have to question how long exactly it was between the arrival and that point.
Their manipulation of Scott Wolf’s character was just so badly obvious that even he couldn’t have helped but have known they were completely pulling his strings. I can understand him selling out to move his career forward, but geez, you’d think they might try to be a little more subtle with their words to him.
The biggest farce was the response by Elizabeth Merrill’s character to the priest when he asked what they were going to do next. Granted, she just saw proof that the Visitor’s have infiltrated things at various levels. But instead of saying she was going to bring this situation to the FBI and pursue it from there (given the resources they have and that it would be the quickest way to expedite the seriousness of the threat), instead she says they’ll keep fighting as an underground resistance of sorts. That was just plain stupid sloppy writing.
I really expected a lot better of this show. I hope the next episode improves significantly, otherwise I’m going to have to kick this one to the curb.
The next thing was the Visitors taking people up to their ship. That seems the sort of thing that wouldn’t be approved by the governments for many weeks. There was no way to know how much time passed between their arrival and meeting with the U.N. council to the point where they starting bringing humans up and giving them their pitch. Just the way the show was going, it only seemed like a few days, but that just doesn’t work.
Especially considering the “three weeks later” graphic, eh?
Didn’t catch that. Might have been when I was throwing some clothes in the dryer.
Three weeks though — that still doesn’t seem reasonable (especially on the scale they were taking people up).
I didn’t watch it. I really hated the original.
I was wondering what they changed and what they didn’t, though. I do remember that in the original, the shocking discovery that they were all lizard people seemed to be the thing that led the heroes to realise these aliens were bad guys. From the comments on here, it seems that may be the case again.
That bothered me then and it bothers me now.
How does being a lizard automatically make someone a bad guy? What kind of racism is that? I’m not so knee-jerk politically correct that I object to lizards being the villains, but I don’t think reptilian morphology should be portrayed as proof of villainy.
So has this version explained their motive for coming here yet? If I recall the original correctly, their sole reasons for coming seemed to be to steal our water and to eat people, which I thought were laughably ridiculous the first time. Water is one of the most common molecules in the Universe. They could just pick it up in the outer Solar System (and mostly likely other solar systems as well). And then they wouldn’t have to pull it out of our deep gravity well, they could avoid any potential conflicts on Earth, and it would already be in the form of ice, which is better for transport.
And are humans really so delicious that they’d be willing to infiltrate our society and take over everything, just to sneak people away in small enough numbers as to avoid any mass uprising. If they’re that low on meat, they could just buy some of our cattle. I know a lot of farmers would be willing to sell, especially for some of that universal health care.
So I really hope the people behind this new version can think of some better reasons for the invasion. (The aliens can still eat people if they want. Just don’t make it the point of the whole operation.)
I do remember that in the original, the shocking discovery that they were all lizard people seemed to be the thing that led the heroes to realise these aliens were bad guys.
Having seen part of the original mini-series on Siffy Sunday, immediately prior to making the discovery that the Visitors were lizards, Mike Donovan snuck aboard the LA mothership and overheard comments about the “vital chemicals” being useless and vented once transported to the ship, and a conversation between Diana and Steven discussing elements of the invasion.
So, it wasn’t just that they were lizards.
It wasn’t just that they were lizards. Though that was a part, because it meant they were lying about their nature. While Mike was sneaking through the ship, he learned:
1) They were lying about the chemical
2) They were lying about their physical appearance
3) They ate live animals
When he tries to take the video of what he discovered to the news station, the Vistors shut down all the TV stations and satellites and announce that Mike Donovan is a traitor, has killed a few visitors and is to be considered armed and dangerous. Then the vistors attack the studio, looking for him.
So it isn’t quite as you made out.
PAD,
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Universal health care is the only thing you mentioned? Come on! After hearing some empty garbage about “hope” being blathered about by Obama in the last campaign, health care was just the icing on the cake!
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That said, you are right that they somehow, at least in the pilot, managed to play off of fears from both sides of the spectrum. Yet it was not in your face. It was not subtle, per se, but it was not just trying to push an agenda. They let you read into it what you wanted to see (in a good way).
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I liked it. I am intrigued. I fear they won’t be able to maintain a tight story, but I hope they do. I liked the priest character (already forgot his name) who is not willing to just jump in and accept the Visitors. Nice to see a religious person written with some depth while still being clearly religious. (And yes, PAD has done this too in X-Factor.)
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While the pacing did seem a touch rushed, I liked getting into the story. It felt like it was the third or fourth episode, not the first.
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In all seriousness, I think this show has a chance because it is not just an attack on Bush or Obama or religion or on those who don’t believe in religion. While it was not as inventive as Battlestar Galactica in how it was reimagined, it does seem to touch on some core human characteristics. It is dealing with issues, not just trying to make a political statement. That is what made Babylon 5 such a great show. JMS and I are worlds apart in what we believe, but his show dealt with questions without ramming his view down my throat. This show has potential. I hope it succeeds. Doubt it will be another B5, but it could still be pretty interesting.
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Iowa Jim
I really enjoyed it. I’m glad that they didn’t try to play off V as something new and understood that the old twists weren’t gonna have any real impact. I thought it was cute when a kid said it was like Independence Day and his friend quickly corrected him that that movie was a rip off of other sci-fi movies including V. There were little moments like this that I liked. The fast pace I liked and I hope that things continue on a similar pace if anything till they find the writers find their own niche away from the orginal. I worry that this show can’t keep the momento and wonder if shows like this and Flashforward wouldn’t be better served as a series of mini-series. The 13 episode seasons I’ve started to prefer over the twenty-odd episode seasons with the stream lined seasons to tell a complete stories.
The “First Contact” scene was very clever for many reasons. We find out later that they were on earth already, which makes a lot of sense considering their language prowess and the human-like appearance. This means that they intentionally “ripped-off” other sci-fi movies to instill fear in the humans just before they greet them with “peace.” Now the humans have a natural fear of the the V’s technology.
I was pleased with the fast pace of the show. I especially like Alan Tudyk’s Jekyll/Hyde acting abilities. My biggest problem with the show was that I got NY and LA confused a lot.
PAD: “Lost,” “Smallville,” and “Firefly” are all well-represented.
And 4400. Not just by an actor, but by an address for the big meeting at the end.
And poor Alan Tudyk got stabbed through the chest. Again. I think there are some serious sci-fi fan shout-outs going on here.
I enjoyed it. In fact, it’s the first new sci-fi show I’ve seen in a few years that I enjoyed without reservation. Defying Gravity and Fringe were both very lazy with the science and sometimes with the drama. Dollhouse only kinda-sorta works, despite good people being involved. Flashfoward is okay, but it has the rising stink of Goyer’s brand of “stuff that sound impressive but don’t make sense”, so I’m pretty worried that I’ll like it less as it goes on.
The premiere of V was enjoyable from beginning to end. I really liked that they got to the scales quickly, I liked the FBI agent finding out about a V terrorist cell, I liked that the mother and son felt believable, and I liked Laura Vandervoort in that outfit.
I hope the behind the scenes stuff doesn’t sink it, because I thought it got off to a great start.
I thought it was too quick as well. Secrets and sinister motives usually require slower pacing to establish the mood. They were obviously not concern about it, though. My guess is that they wanted to get all of the known elements out of the way quickly so they could go ahead with their version of the story. The way they went about it just reinforced to me that they were borrowing the framework for the built-in audience.
I agree with a lot of these critiques – halfway through the episode, my main thought was “Man, this really needed to be two hours long,” though isn’t that true of almost any genre series?
as someone who was all of two years old when the last episode of the original V aired, and as someone who had never even heard of the franchise a month ago, some of these surprises worked really well for me. I had no idea that the V’s were supposed to be reptilian, and watching the side of Alan Tudyk’s face get pulled away frankly creeped me the hëll out. I realize that a lot of this series is going to be old hat for many of you, but it’s new to me, and if they can keep executing their old material as effectively as they did in this episode, I’ll definitely be back.
I’ve written enough stuff to know that it’s easy to set something up that looks like something completely in the opposite direction of what it is(for example, this sentence started OUT being completely reasonable and easy to understand…) I’m hoping this is all a big misdirection thing.
I found it irritating to have everybody referring to “the V’s” like no one has made any effort to ask them where they’re from? It would be like a WW2 movie with the American forces going to fight “the N’s”
When Alan Tudyk’s character actually said, “This is stupid..” I thought he was summarizing the show. But I’ll still record and watch the rest of the episodes while NCIS kicks its butt.
JJ,
Anna, said that their race was calling themselves “visitors” so calling them “V’s” would be acceptable slang.
I read on another board that the most unlikely thing about the pilot would be that the resistance (resistance to WHAT? The visitors haven’t imposed anything)wouldn’t have posted a video of the unmasking on you tube
You mentioned that the casting includes actors from all sorts of previous SF shows, and that should appeal to the geek audience. (Or something like that.) I just remembered that the original show had Robert Englund, who has since made a pretty respectable career doing nothing but Science Fiction and Horror. (At least, I can’t remember him ever doing anything else.) Has there been any talk of him making an appearance in this version? At least a cameo? I would think that would be a great casting choice to make, and it should go over well with all sorts of fans.
(My memory is kind of hazy, but didn’t he play the one alien on the good guys’ side? It could be a good idea for him to play a good alien again, since people are so used to him playing villains. [I do realise he has played other good guys at times.] But if all the aliens have to be good-looking, that would disqualify him from playing one this time.) (No offense to Robert Englund. He’s a pretty good actor, but I’m sure even he knows his looks are not his strong point.)
I think that bush and clinton should have a debate.
And it should be announced 1 hour in advance for just whoever happens to be in the area in washington or wherever.
The place will be packed anyway, the debate can be recorded and the aired if its any good.
I think there should be rules to say that elected presidents should at least have one debate with a former president where they can discuss their presidencies, clear the air a bit, answer a few questions now that speaking their minds will harm their party less.
And since the debate would be between two former presidents they’d both have enough skeletons in their closets to tread somewhat carefully.
But Bush will stay out of the limelight for the rest of his life, he can’t do his party any good stumpling through interviews now.
You’d have to wait 50 years to see the results of Clinton’s and Bush’s legacy.
Conor,
Your post is probably in the wrong thread,
4 o’clock this morning, I needed to take a break from everything that was breaking at work, so I looked up V on IMDB. There was a, well, an arguement going on on the message board about how the universal health care line was surprising in the Obama nation because Obama wouldn’t allow talk like that. It’s like a train wreck that has a singularity at it’s center–you can’t look away and it keeps pulling you in.
Some people can see politics they disagree with anywhere.
Yeah, I’ve slowly been getting farther and farther away form any board on IMDB these days. There were always some out there posters, but it’s become a haven for the absolute worst posters these days.
Just finished watching this (what would I do without Hulu?) and I rather got a kick out of it. I enjoyed the original mini-series, though the actual TV series was pretty darn bad.
As for the new version, I think the faster pace works pretty well. I’d match up this one hour episode to about the first two hours of the mini-series, so it isn’t like they were trying to squeeze half of the 10 hour event into a single hour … just two to one. I can handle that level of compression.
I was rather sad to see our journalist selling out so quickly, but he is definitely not happy about it, so he’ll probably be the one to eventually reveal things and get killed for it. Kristine is male, this time around.
Didn’t see the swerve with our being introduced to one of the fifth columnists in the first minute or two of the show, nor did I see the traitor in the FBI until about five minutes before he was revealed.
Probably not the best stuff that has ever been written or broadcast (at least I don’t -think- this story took place in the B5 universe), but certainly worth further viewing at this point.
This is not about “V”. It is rather directed at you, Peter, as a very perceptive and eclectic author and reviewer of superhero stories in many mediums. I would like to bring something to your attention, in hopes that you might find it enjoyable and might mention it to your audience so they could find it too.
I was a great fan of “Who Wants to Be a Super-Hero”, especially season 1, and especially the season 1 winner, Feedback (Matthew Atherton). I kept checking websites to see whether there would be additional seasons (did you know there was a third season, for kids, run in the UK?) and any future projects with the characters. Somewhere along the way, I found that original audio plays were being produced for “Feedback: A Hero’s Calling” at http://www.brokensea.com.
Atherton as an individual has all the passion and positive energy we associate with the golden age of Marvel Comics, and I think those who have met him at conventions have all had the same reaction. A fan group calling itself “Tech Support” developed a website for chatting — it still exists and mostly celebrates each others’ birthdays and such — and also began creating fan fiction. At some point, a fellow named Alan White pulled many of these folks together and began working with Matt Atherton (and his wife, Sarah Blevins, who turns out to be an actress in her own right and a co-developer of the Feedback character concept) to produce stories.
Many of the Tech Support fans appear as the characters they created, and there are other key characters performed by people like Mark Kalita, who turn out to also be actors in many other broken-sea and other outlets for original audio plays, many of them based on comic book and other science fiction or fantasy properties.
Feedback: A Hero’s Calling is now well into its second season. It has continuing and recurring characters, as well as a stable of recurring villains. Several other WWTBASH contestants have also appeared — Creature, Defuser, Major Victory, Nitro G, and the Dark Enforcer (the only one not voiced by his creator, Steel Chambers) — and in every case, FAHC managed to add some depth and interest to the character over what we had seen in the show, often in a single scene or two. It has had stories with action, stories with humor, stories with sadness, and currently, stories with mystery. The acting is amateur/fan quality, the writing (by my lights) considerably better, and they have a theme song that is terrific. There has been a spin-off series, “Beta Flight”, that has its own charms.
My reason for writing, apart from the reasons I cited in the opening, is that I see FAHC falling between two natural audiences, neither of which will find it and have a chance to enjoy it. The fans of these kinds of audio plays are likely to miss FAHC because there is so much other new material to choose from — look at the broken-sea website and you will see what I mean, with new postings every week — and most of the other material is based on more familiar properties, therefore more likely to be sampled and more likely to fill up the listener’s schedule.
The fans of Who Wants to Be a Super-Hero have no place to go and so are unlikely to know the plays are there. The fans of 60s and 70s Marvel comics who might really take to these works are even less likely to find them. That’s where I hope you might come in.
Currently, I have posted a couple comments at the broken-sea website, attached to particular season 2 episodes, with my musings on what is going on in particular ongoing plotlines and what other stories could be done with these characters. Two of the show’s creators have responded in a very positive manner, but I’m really hoping to provide a dialogue chain so that others who find FAHC can have a fannish dialogue about stories worthy of such attention and in so doing deepen their enjoyment and perhaps attract others.
Try it; you’ll like it! And thanks for your consideration and attention.
I was hoping for a totally different approach. Since the original series showed the visitors arriving and everything that happened next, I was hoping that THIS series would start with Earth already invaded or enslaved and it would show our resistance. I imagined the first images from the first episode showing a wartorn landscape indicating that Earth already used it’s military effort to try to get rid of the aliens (and THAT didn’t work) and then we’d see resistance fighters and meet some of them. THEN the writers could tell us the backstory of the arrival and enslavement in bits and pieces like “Lost” does so that you don’t know what’s going on and who to trust. Characters could have whole episodes devoted to them and you’d think that they were the good guys but they’d turn out to be evil in the flashbacks.
The series as presented on TV just seems too predictable.
I have to agree with an earlier poster…are humans really that yummy?
I mean, most of our meat animals breed and mature faster than humans, and would be easier to eat whole for a creature the size of the Visitors. (okay…cattle are pretty big)
Also, I never understood the whole ‘conspiricy’ angle to alien invasions. your tech is SO MUCH BETTER than ours…why bother tricking us? Are you afraid humans will just nuke ourselves, ruin the planet for you? (which would be a valid concern, unless you could just shut down the nukes with your superior tech)
That’s honestly what I was thinking during the ORIGINAL series….that, and how do the aliens hide those HUGE heads under those little human masks?
The Original ‘V’ was about US imperialism in Central America, not the rise of the Nazis. The show opens with with the rebels in El Salvador fighting US supported death squad government while Marc Singer’s character does a story.
Later in the miniseries, he and his cameraman run about getting information, hiding from the cops and the Visitors, and the cameraman comments, “Just like El Salvador.”
You can’t get more transparent.
The original Visitors were the US and the Earth was Central America, and rather than the water the US sucked out hundreds of millions of dollars while it taught troops how to torture and had death squads kill human rights activists and union leaders.
Interestingly, the Visitor leaders and US leader Ronald Reagan both consumed human flesh for sustenance.
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On the flip side…
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Much like the Nazi party found its strongest support after the 1930’s election from business leasers who saw financial opportunity; the business leaders in V supported the Visitors after their arrival for much the same reason.
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The family that they centered the most storyline troubles around (child in Visitor Youth turning on his family, hiding a refugee family from the Visitors, etc) was Jewish and referenced the Holocaust and Nazi Germany in no uncertain terms.
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The Visitors recruited human youths who worked for them and even reported their own family.
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The Storm Trooper like “red shirt” nature of the Visitor’s uniforms.
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The humans who joined the Visitor Youth group wore brown uniforms.
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The resistance is modeled to some degree on the French Maquis.
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The symbol that adorned the Visitor flags, ships and uniforms was a stylized swastika.
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The Visitor propaganda posters modeled after some of the Nazi propaganda posters.
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Kenneth Johnson says so.