SyFy to air the original V this Sunday!

[Vendikarr]

Argus Skyhawk wrote:

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From what I remember, I would recommend the original two-hour miniseries, but don't bother with The Final Battle or the regular series.

The Final Battle is pretty good up to the

birth of the starchild

[Bad Bishop]

Mistral wrote:

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Hmm, I may have to watch this again. *checks supply of Jack Daniels and Valium* Yeah, I think I have what I need to get through Marc Singer's acting.

Is he going to borrow a page from Richard Hatch and try to guest on nuV?

[gastrof]

Argus Skyhawk wrote:

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From what I remember, I would recommend the original two-hour miniseries...

The original mini was far longer than two hours.

I seem to recall it being six and later being edited down to the current four and a half in later showings. (That memory may be faulty.) The sequel was six and stayed that way.

[Mr Light]

I got the original mini on a VHS tape and it was on two tapes it was 4-6 hours.

[Argus Skyhawk]

Mr Light wrote:

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I got the original mini on a VHS tape and it was on two tapes it was 4-6 hours.

I checked Wikipedia, which says it was 200 minutes, so I'm guessing that with commercials it was four hours. I remembered that it was a two-part miniseries, but I guess the parts were two hours each, not just one.

[Candlelight]

In New Zealand they aired V and V: The Final Battle back to back monday to friday, and it was - from memory, it's the 80s we're talking about here - two hours each with commercials. So we had a five part screening.

Which rocked.

The series was good but should've been 13 episodes, not 19. Character attrition was high but they didn't really replace them with anyone else decent.

I always found it funny that Kyle (Trek actor Jeff Yeager) had two introductory episodes as the network didn't like the first attempt. So he sort of gets introduced twice.

[gastrof]

Candlefright wrote:

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...The series was good but should've been 13 episodes, not 19. Character attrition was high but they didn't really replace them with anyone else decent.

I always found it funny that Kyle (Trek actor Jeff Yeager) had two introductory episodes as the network didn't like the first attempt. So he sort of gets introduced twice.

The weekly series was just that, and in step with American TV of the time, 13 episodes would have been laughable. Even now 22 is the norm. Back then, far more.

As it is 19 episodes was un-heard of, and it only ended at that point because the show was dying. It'd been shifted in timeslot repeatedly (or put on hiatus repeatedly...memory of the time's foggy), and then there was the matter of the Kyle intro episodes you mention, one of which didn't get shown until VERY late in the game (so no, originally there was no weird continuity glitch).

Gotta thank you for mentioning that. I'll be recording the SyFy replays, and will have to figure out what to do with that extra episode.

[KB24]

V is in such a peculiar spot in that it gets worse as it goes on. The first mini spectacular, the next, good, the series, a bad guilty pleasure. V is perhaps the best example of what television sf is capable of-but it's also the best example of how studio interference can ruin a show.

[Dayton Ward]

The original mini-series was four hours, split in half over two nights. The Final Battle was six hours, and split 2 hours each over three nights.

I've blocked out the memories of the television series.

I've not yet read Kenneth Johnson's V: The Second Generation, which is a followup to the original mini-series, and doesn't take into account anything from TFB or the weekly series.

If you're prepping for the new version and have never seen any of the 80s stuff, I think you could get by just watching the original 4 hours.

[Kegg]

So I've recently seen the original miniseries to prepare myself for the new series whenever it shows here, and I guess I've got a couple of thoughts (anyone mind if I hijack the thread rather than create another? Hypothetical 'No?' Hooray!), and since the new series is trying to tone down any connection the story might have to modern American politics, I tried to tease a couple of possibilites one could raise using the original miniseries.

* There's an offhand comment by the black worker that he's already competing for jobs with whites and Mexicans, never mind these aliens. In that context the aliens would work well as an analogy for illegal immigration, though doubtless an arch-conservative one since they're literally out for world domination and are up to no good!

* An alien suggests that they got a bad leader because he was very charismatic and persuasive, which is basically a key component for any successful democratic leader (it's not like he was a general who just turned his guns on the Visitor civilian government, though he may have also done so). This tack could easily be expanded into a critique of any democratic government, particularly whichever one is in power.

* An invading force masks its intents with airs of benevolence as the superior civilized society, but really all they want to do is to take a vital and much needed supply from this land. Water, oil, easy-to-write geopolitics seminar America is Bad 101. Etc.

That's all I got. The miniseries itself? Well, I liked it. The first half was a lot better than the second half, though - the sheer scope of the initial appearance of the aliens and how that slowly morphed into something far more menacing was nicely played. The second half is dependent on being a story where our rag-tag group of fresh-faced suburbanites pull of a number of implausible stunts to win the day and suffers therefore a little more in the icredibility department (though given the very first scene with a reporter staring down a helicopter I probably shouldn't complain) but it's a very solid part too, ending fairly conclusively but establishing some nice plot points

such as a very strong hint about a human-alien pregnancy... and while they hold their own against the aliens this is still far less than actually winning a decesive victory, which the ending implies will need the aid of a rival interstellar power. I'm down with that.

A nice touch were references to real world personalities and science fiction - the idea that Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke (R.I.P., old genius you) would be on TV bloviating about alien life is one of the most realistic things about this miniseries, and the idea a marching band would strike up a rendition of John William's Star Wars music was similarly natural.

Oddly, I really disliked the idea the aliens were really reptilian, because the more I heard about it the less sense it made. I could understand them wanting to appear human to the humans, but why do they keep up the charade in private, talking to each other? You'd at least think they'd let the proverbial hair down and take off the damn contacts or something. It seems partly out of a desire to make the Visitors more alien (but still cost-effective) and give us a 'Big Reveal', but the idea that people should be more repelled by them because they're less human than implied - as the elderly lady articulated - does strike me as vaguely disgusting (especially since dialogue in the second part establishes their humanity - that collaborator explaining how his people got duped by a charismatic leader is every bit as reptilian and monstrous the icky Diana).

Also I've had a look at the trailer for the new series, and in that version the reptilians actually lived among us prior to arriving on the planet (which, in fairness, the original V may have pulled in subsequent incarnations - did it?), and this turns my half-hearted view of the reptilian thing as an analogy to lizardmen conspiracy theories to... well, basically a TV version of the lizardmen conspiracy theories. This makes me honestly quite uncomfortable, but well, we'll see.

Well, it'll be interesting to see how much of this if any makes its way to the new show. I hear the new show is calling the Visitors 'V', which is completely missing the point of the use of the letter in this miniseries and rather unfortunate, to be honest.

[Chris3123]

I just finished watching the miniseries. It was pretty good. I really liked it. I'm going to wait a bit before watching The Final Battle. I don't want to get V burn out.

[Temis the Vorta]

bigdaddy wrote:

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Sci-fi Channel should have picked up V The Remake, would last longer than on ABC.

Skiffy is studiously avoiding showing anything remotely good. Why should they change strategies now?

[Tom]

Boy, its been along time since the saw both Mini-series. Never realized how this story is really just Nazis in America, People (food) processing plants are jewish concentration camps, the visiters have there own 5th colulm rebels, etc..

Of course if you wanted to go that route I'm surprised there has not been a series about Germany getting nukes first and America being then forced to surrender to them (or face ammagedden) and having the Nazis take over America and we follow resitance groups through the 40's etc.. Could be interesting!

[Star Wolf]

FleetLord wrote:

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Boy, its been along time since the saw both Mini-series. Never realized how this story is really just Nazis in America, People (food) processing plants are jewish concentration camps, the visiters have there own 5th colulm rebels, etc..

Of course if you wanted to go that route I'm surprised there has not been a series about Germany getting nukes first and America being then forced to surrender to them (or face ammagedden) and having the Nazis take over America and we follow resitance groups through the 40's etc.. Could be interesting!

If I remember the commentaries of the time there was mention that the "good guys" were basically stand ins for the Sandinista's and the Salvadorian rebels. From the opening scene to the doctors reply in the mountain camp battle in the original.

What the Final Battle does have going for it was Michael Ironside getting locked into his typecast.

[Meredith]

Hey I got an idea let's steal the water of earth, not that we didn't pass a certain moon of Jupiter that had three times as much water and wasn't at the bottom of a really frickin huge gravity well like the earth is, oh well let's steal the water from earth like a bunch of chumps because we are dump stupid reptilian overlords.....