V: "Red Sky" 5/18/10 - Grading & Discussion

Spoiler: 1x12: "Red Sky"

Chad discovers something devastating whilst Erica and Tyler get an invitation from Anna. Also, Val's baby is on the way.

 

"Hey, what's this cookbook called? To... Serve... Uh-oh."

 

I'm surprised they're not eating CGI.

 

Hey Tom Paris directed this episode.

 

So what is the red sky about. god i hate how they never tell you anything and did not even show the V baby, how cheap.

 

The CGI....er ship assault was embarrassing.

 

Flashing some nice leg in that scene.

 

My wife was wondering why they didn't have any security cameras in the Egg room?

My response: Anna's a very bad parent. She physically abuses her elder daughter (Lisa), so it shouldn't surprise us that she doesn't have a baby monitor!

 

Any monitor could be intercepted by the 5th column, this is why she chose no monitor, so no one could look it up.

 

I don't think they have any monitors anywhere on any ship. Why would they need them when according to Anna all is "bliss"......

Otherwise Joshua would have been caught a long time ago.

And it looks like Anna just kicked up global warming a notch or two.

I'm glad this season is out of the way. It's fighting time now.

And her scream at the end. Yikes!! Marcus was a brave lizard to tell her she was feeling emotions. He's lucky she didn't rip his head off and eat it.

 

So, Erica manages to destroy the egg chamber, Chad gets into the experimentation room apparently unnoticed, Lisa helps Joshua escape from the medical bay... man, security on the V ship must be really crappy!

 

Since it's a reboot, there aren't any red shirts to kill off. So they go for incompetence instead.

 

I really liked this episode, it had everything the rest of the season didn't, and a lot of stuff happened, no filler here, good stuff, i wish every ep could be this good.

 

I assume Anna is disrupting all photosynthesis on the planet (or, at the very least, the planet's average temperature). It could be some sort of terraforming. Though, the word "terraform" doesn't really fit exactly (as they're not making a planet more Earth/Terra-like). They could also just be trying to mess up the planet for humans (as a means for eradication or just control--becoming the only source of life-sustaining techniques).

Question: Didn't Anna have some sort of video recording of a V blowing up part of a ship? Or was that just a misleading scene? I'm obviously asking because the lack of cameras (in medical bay and, as mentioned, the incubating chamber) is a little weird (given the paranoia about the fifth column).

 

I agree. It was a rare winner for the V writers. Though, I think the pastor's speech was a bit uncomfortably worded and timed.

Also, we're back to being even more confused over Anna and V emotions (at least, I am).

 

Un-****-ing believable. They PRE-EMPTED THE LAST FIVE MINUTES OF THE SHOW to show that Arlen Specter lost. They didn't delay it they just cut it right out. So the last thing I saw was Anna re-converting whathisname... then newscast... then an ending about all the skies in the world being red. What the hell happened? What happened with the invasion fleet? Why are the skies red? Sigh.

 

Hulu has the answers you seek ...

 

I'm on dial-up internet

 

Lack of cameras is the least of their security failures. How could the Visitors not find out for hours that a huge explosion had gone off in the most sensitive location on the whole damn ship??? Also, how could Anna be so stupid not to realize that if the only feasible access to the eggs was through her private chambers, that made Erica, who was out of her sight for a considerable amount of time, the prime suspect?

The whole episode was incoherent, like most of the series has been. After last week's halfway entertaining episode, I hoped the show was finally getting its act together, but this was as unengaging and annoying as ever. The chance for another strong confrontation between Erica and Anna was wasted in favor of a couple of minutes of homilies over dinner. Tyler, who's supposed to be the linchpin figure that Anna has great plans for, was reduced to little more than a prop. Some stuff happened, including some big changes, but it all feels kind of arbitrary because we still have no answers, no explanations, no real motivation for anything the Visitors do. Indeed, the writers seem to be making up Anna's motivations as they go. A few weeks ago, Anna was determined to kill the hybrid baby as a threat, yet now she's determined to keep it alive, without any explanation? Okay, maybe it's part of her plan to win Ryan back -- kill the human wife, use the baby as his one remaining thing to connect to and associate the baby with Anna -- but what about the danger she was so up in arms about before?

And what was supposed to be the big scary ending was just a big fizzle. So Anna's horrible vengeance for the mass murder of her babies is... to make the whole planet's sky look like a pretty sunset? Okay, it's a bit ominous, but how does this constitute vengeance? It's certainly the most passive-aggressive act of retaliation I've ever seen directed against Earth by an alien warfleet. Without any payoff, any clear-cut threat, it's just a big meh.

And how stupid was it for Erica, who's just managed to convince Anna she's a loyal ally, to appear in a public church sitting next to a wanted terrorist and stand in solidarity with an anti-Visitor sermon? Suddenly the resistance's motivations are as incoherent and mercurial as the Visitors'.

As usual, Morena Baccarin was the one impressive thing about this show. Her outburst of grief at the loss of the soldier eggs was intense and wrenching. I've always found her a rather understated performer before, not really as adept at conveying intense emotion as she was at playing a more reserved role like Anna, but once again she exceeded my expectations and really rose to the occasion. But unfortunately, it was a fine performance in service of an idiotic script. "Your first human emotion?" Why does it have to be human emotion? If it's her own instinctive grief at losing her babies, doesn't that make it a Visitor emotion? And if feeling emotion isn't natural for their kind, why would she suddenly gain the ability to respond that way, and moreover become completely enslaved to her need for an emotional response to the point that she jeopardizes all her calculating (and undefined) plans for humanity?

So now our heroine has blown up several hundred unborn babies, our priest hero has just gone public with a racist sermon, and our villain has shown the profound grief of a bereaved mother. Whose side are we supposed to be on again?

One thing's for sure -- I'm not on the same side as the writers. They killed off Val, who was one of the less disagreeable regulars, and kept Ryan, who's probably the one I would've most liked to see killed off so I wouldn't have to put up with his one-note, mumbling delivery anymore. Well, no, probably I would've rather seen Chad killed off, since I'm tired of seeing his face locked into that constant sneer no matter what emotion he's trying to convey. But instead we're now supposed to accept this supremely creepy and unpleasant guy as one of the heroes?

Something just occurred to me. The contrivance of having the lead figure in the anti-alien resistance also be the most trusted defender of the aliens is one I've seen before, with William Boone in Earth: Final Conflict. It struck me as a bit too convenient then, but it was well enough handled that I could accept it. Come to think of it, I guess a lot of spies are highly placed, at least in fiction, because they're the most valuable agents. Here, though, it just feels like small-universe syndrome and excessive coincidence. And it's a bit much to have Erica start to become a trusted member of Anna's inner circle when she can barely muster enough resistance allies to form a square.

I don't know if I'm going to bother to watch this next season. In fact, I'm somewhat offended on aesthetic grounds that they'd even give this embarrassment a second season. In any case, I have no burning desire to know what the cloudy red skies are going to do, since they didn't do a very good job of conveying the sense that they're anything actually dangerous. (Although my first reaction upon seeing the sky turn fiery red was, "Oh no, does that mean Galactus is on his way?")

 

I was going to say Blue Energy didn't make an explosion since it seems to be some weird thing but then I remembered that Erica launched herself through the cheesiest CGI door/scene I've seen on the show yet.

I'm thinking that Erica just did that to be "cool" because when Anna is in the egg chamber the chamber itself looks to be in good condition.

Tyler needs to die by Anna's hand and Lisa needs to defect to the resistance and become "like a daughter" to Erica. He's that annoying.

They've never been to smart. They've got Ryan and yet not once has anyone asked him anything about what the V's are really up to. No one has asked him for any intel on V society or V technology. I mean look at it now! They've lost their only known 5th column member. That's a major blow to the resistance because now they have no knowledge base to use.

I realize that because it's a TV show they want to keep us the viewers in suspense as long as possible about what Anna intends to do to Earth and humanity but come on.....at least ask the question.

I think Chad is going to tell the world he was wrong and what he saw and then he's going to have that aneurysm. Anna did through implication threaten him during the episode when he walked up after Erica shot Joshua.