V: the series

[Christopher]

^If they wanted to take water, there are much easier places to get it from than the bottom of Earth's considerable gravity well. They had a whole fleet hiding behind the Moon; they could've easily sent some ships to mine Ceres or Enceladus for ice. There's believed to be more fresh water on Ceres than on the entire planet Earth (most of our water is salty).

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Like I said, though, the Visitors were already on Earth. If their primary mission was to take US, then perhaps they figured they'd grab the water on their way out.

And how do we know they *didn't* take the water from those other places as well?

[Samuel Walters]

The plausibility of the Vs in the original miniseries is certainly in question. But its best parts are, as Christopher said, the elements of allegory. Along with the "rise of Nazism" portion of the story, there was the explicit homage "To the heroism of the Resistance Fighters — past, present, and future." It wasn't just the hows and whys of a people allowing themselves to become oppressed, but it was the fundamental TRUTH in resisting oppression, regardless of how it presented itself. So while parts of the premise may have been questionable, the story itself was so good that the motivations of the Vs weren't as important as how their efforts spoke to some fundamental human truths.

Sadly, the Final Battle and Weekly Series all but abandoned those truths in favor of action and plot (which made the fundamental plausibility become much more prominent factor).

[Nerys Myk]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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Maybe the Visitors were really interested in humans first (both as a food source and as cannon fodder) and they figured they'd take the water while they were at it?

Human, its what's for dinner.

[superstring01]

Christopher wrote:

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Yeah, the whole "they're here to steal our water" thing never made sense. There's millions of times more water (in the form of ice) in the Jovian moons, Kuiper Belt, scattered disk, and Oort Cloud than there is on Earth, and it's a lot easier to get to without the need to fight the gravity of both Earth and Sol. Not to mention all the ice that could be found in every other system between here and Sirius.

How about the fact that in the horrid "re-sequel" books written by the original script writer (Kenneth Johnson) he tells how after a few generations, HALF of the Earth's water has been taken by the Visitors!

I wrote a book review on Amazon:

There is roughly 326 million cubic miles (1.34 billion cubic km) of water on the Earth. The original aliens brought 50 motherships that were about 1 mile in diameter each. Individual ships could hold, at maximum, 1/20th of a cubic mile of water (assuming space needed for cargo holds, shuttle bays, engines, quarters and whatnot). Even if the aliens sent an extra MILLION ships (and that's a HUGE exaggeration) to the Earth after the original first series, they would ONLY have taken 50,000 cubic miles of water on that visit alone. While this is, indeed, a lot of water and would have caused notable climate shifts, it would not be more than a drop in the bucket in comparison to the rest of the oceans.

Even with the number of motherships I allow for, the Sirians (Visitors) would need 6,520 trips to haul ALL of it back to their star system. At a 17 year round trip (Sirius and back), it would take 55,400 years just to take HALF of the water on Earth. Then one would have to consider: how could the visitors do without so many ships while at war? Presumably a million ships, with--say--a crew of 20,000 each (total of 20 billion people) would be quite useful in their war against the "bug" aliens.

~String

[diankra]

superstring01 wrote:

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I wrote a book review on Amazon:
There is roughly 326 million cubic miles (1.34 billion cubic km) of water on the Earth. The original aliens brought 50 motherships that were about 1 mile in diameter each. Individual ships could hold, at maximum, 1/20th of a cubic mile of water (assuming space needed for cargo holds, shuttle bays, engines, quarters and whatnot). Even if the aliens sent an extra MILLION ships (and that's a HUGE exaggeration) to the Earth after the original first series, they would ONLY have taken 50,000 cubic miles of water on that visit alone. While this is, indeed, a lot of water and would have caused notable climate shifts, it would not be more than a drop in the bucket in comparison to the rest of the oceans.
[SNIP - LIMITING THE QUOTE]
~String

Thank you for that - while on the daily commute, I tried to work out some 'back of the envelope' figures for how improbable the water thing was when this came up here a few months ago, but gave up as I didn't have the necessary figures. Thanks for working it out, as it really brings the point home: the Visitors could steal enough of our water to damage our eco-system, but they couldn't possibly steal enough to save their own eco-system.

[Christopher]

Not to mention that there are five star systems closer to Sirius than our own is, including Epsilon Eridani, which has a much denser debris disk than Sol and would thus probably have considerably more water ice. The total amount of water contained in such a disk would be millions of times more than a single inhabited Earthlike planet could possibly need.

I discount Sirius itself because it could in fact be a very arid, waterless system due to the great heat of the A star and the fact that the B star has already gone through its death throes, which probably seared the system of any volatiles. Which of course renders it pretty much impossible that it could have a native intelligent species, but there's an off chance that the Visitors aren't native to the system but terraformed one of its planets for some reason, bringing in their own water to hydrate it. Perhaps if they're still in the process of terraforming, they'd need a source of extra water; but there would still be far more convenient and practical sources for it than Earth's oceans.

[Lookingglassman]

I dont understand why the Vs dont take what they want. What is the point of being nice just to gain our favor? If I was an evil alien race and wanted something from a planet that can't defeat me I will just take it and not waste the time getting to know them.

[DEWLine]

I can't see the Visitors having told the truth to anyone on Earth about whether or not they hailed from any planet orbiting either component of Sirius - or anywhere else - to begin with. Does that make sense from any perspective?

[superstring01]

diankra wrote:

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Thank you for that - while on the daily commute, I tried to work out some 'back of the envelope' figures for how improbable the water thing was when this came up here a few months ago, but gave up as I didn't have the necessary figures. Thanks for working it out, as it really brings the point home: the Visitors could steal enough of our water to damage our eco-system, but they couldn't possibly steal enough to save their own eco-system.

You are welcome.

More to the point, hydrogen is the single most common element in the universe (making up something like 90% of normal matter) and Oxygen is the third (making up about 5%). Presumably an alien race with the technology to build ships that can bend gravity to their free will, will have the ability to simply sit in front of their frakking star and collect the stuff. Then they perform the simplest and oldest technological feat of any intelligent species: make fire. The gas given off will be water. It'll be closer. Easier. Quicker. No need to mess with us pesky humans.

Christopher wrote:

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Not to mention that there are five star systems closer to Sirius than our own is, including Epsilon Eridani, which has a much denser debris disk than Sol and would thus probably have considerably more water ice. The total amount of water contained in such a disk would be millions of times more than a single inhabited Earthlike planet could possibly need.

THANK YOU!

Christopher wrote:

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I discount Sirius itself because it could in fact be a very arid, waterless system due to the great heat of the A star and the fact that the B star has already gone through its death throes, which probably seared the system of any volatiles. Which of course renders it pretty much impossible that it could have a native intelligent species, but there's an off chance that the Visitors aren't native to the system but terraformed one of its planets for some reason, bringing in their own water to hydrate it. Perhaps if they're still in the process of terraforming, they'd need a source of extra water; but there would still be far more convenient and practical sources for it than Earth's oceans.

More to the point, it is not at all unreasonable to consider the fact that technological advancement eventually hits a parabolic arc where, within a short span of time, organic life will have--at its disposal--the ability to transcend flesh. Even if choosing to remain flesh, such life would more than likely use their uber-advanced technology to build gigantic space stations with perfect, climate controlled environments, tailor made to their specifications. Presumably, the ability to engineer giant space ships in one area grants one the ability to build bigger ones in others (it would probably start wit the very small: nanobots self-replicating and literally "growing" the ship from basic elements; such engineering would eliminate mistakes and small errors). The existence of space ships in the thousand-kilometer range would be preferable to, say, tectonic activity of a tenuous world.

DEWLine wrote:

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I can't see the Visitors having told the truth to anyone on Earth about whether or not they hailed from any planet orbiting either component of Sirius - or anywhere else - to begin with. Does that make sense from any perspective?

Sure. Humans have no ability to go there.

But, in either case, it doesn't matter. Many quintillions of times more useful materials await the V's, far closer to home!

~String

[Christopher]

Lookingglassman wrote:

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I dont understand why the Vs dont take what they want. What is the point of being nice just to gain our favor? If I was an evil alien race and wanted something from a planet that can't defeat me I will just take it and not waste the time getting to know them.

Tell that to the British in India. Sure, you can use brute force to take what you want, but it's easier and less expensive if you can win over the local authorities and get them to do it for you. The Visitors were suffering from shortages of food and water, so it made sense that they would need to conserve their resources and rely on indigenous labor and authority structures.

superstring01 wrote:

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More to the point, it is not at all unreasonable to consider the fact that technological advancement eventually hits a parabolic arc where, within a short span of time, organic life will have--at its disposal--the ability to transcend flesh.

I profoundly doubt that. If you're talking about posthumanism, everybody uploading their brains into computers, that's not very believable. Here's an excellent discussion of the subject:

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai...er-live-matrix

A human is not born as a tabula rasa, but with a brain that’s already wired and functioning as a mind. Furthermore, the brain forms as the embryo develops. It cannot be inserted after the fact, like an engine in a car chassis or software programs in an empty computer box.
...
Large portions of the brain process and interpret signals from the body and the environment. Without a body, these functions will flail around and can result in the brain... well, losing its mind. Without corrective “pingbacks” from the environment that are filtered by the body, the brain can easily misjudge to the point of hallucination, as seen in phenomena like phantom limb pain or fibromyalgia. Additionally, processing at light speed will probably result in madness, as everything will appear to happen simultaneously or will change order arbitrarily.

Organic intelligences can't be anything other than organic. Our minds are inseparably intertwined with the meat of our brains and bodies. A mind capable of functioning entirely within a technological substrate would be something very alien. A race of "posthuman" AIs would not be us or our descendants, just our replacements.

superstring01 wrote:

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But, in either case, it doesn't matter. Many quintillions of times more useful materials await the V's, far closer to home!

Point of order: Since this thread is about the original series, not the remake, the nickname "Vs" doesn't apply. The aliens from the original miniseries/show are the Visitors or the Sirians, never "the Vs." In the original, the letter V symbolized the resistance -- it was the iconic "V for Victory" of the WWII era. Even the theme music of the original series had a portion whose rhythm was based on the Morse Code symbol for V, which is also a reference to WWII symbology. So the new series' use of the letter V to represent the aliens is a complete reversal of the original's intent.

[superstring01]

Christopher wrote:

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I profoundly doubt that. If you're talking about posthumanism, everybody uploading their brains into computers, that's not very believable. Here's an excellent discussion of the subject:

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai...er-live-matrix

Organic intelligences can't be anything other than organic. Our minds are inseparably intertwined with the meat of our brains and bodies. A mind capable of functioning entirely within a technological substrate would be something very alien. A race of "posthuman" AIs would not be us or our descendants, just our replacements.

I respect the information you provide (and am aware of it), but disagree on the point that we have no idea what abilities will be opened up by nano-technology. While I doubt that it wouldn't take effect the first generation. With each progressive generation, the inclusion of inorganic parts and significantly improved genetics could allow for such integration.

To wit, none of us knows for sure. But what we DO know is that any species that can transcend the stars would have to employ an energy source that is--in many orders of magnitude--greater than anything we can even imagine. Coupled with numerous other technologies, it's doubtful that there would ever be anything on this rock they'd be interested in, much less need.

Christopher wrote:

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Point of order: Since this thread is about the original series, not the remake, the nickname "Vs" doesn't apply. The aliens from the original miniseries/show are the Visitors or the Sirians, never "the Vs." In the original, the letter V symbolized the resistance -- it was the iconic "V for Victory" of the WWII era. Even the theme music of the original series had a portion whose rhythm was based on the Morse Code symbol for V, which is also a reference to WWII symbology. So the new series' use of the letter V to represent the aliens is a complete reversal of the original's intent.

You are correct. Going forward I will endeavor to separate the "Sirians" from the "V's".

Though, the point I made stands: In the case of either alien species, the need would not exist.

~String

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

Samuel Walters wrote:

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The plausibility of the Vs in the original miniseries is certainly in question. But its best parts are, as Christopher said, the elements of allegory. Along with the "rise of Nazism" portion of the story, there was the explicit homage "To the heroism of the Resistance Fighters — past, present, and future." It wasn't just the hows and whys of a people allowing themselves to become oppressed, but it was the fundamental TRUTH in resisting oppression, regardless of how it presented itself. So while parts of the premise may have been questionable, the story itself was so good that the motivations of the Vs weren't as important as how their efforts spoke to some fundamental human truths.

Thanks for posting this. It's a good reminder that when watching a film or TV show, we should always keep the larger picture in mind. We should never get so hung up on inconsequential details or arcane facts and figures that we completely miss the essential point of the show/movie or lose sight of what the writers really wanted to say.

Unfortunately, that's not what we do around here.

[Christopher]

superstring01 wrote:

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Though, the point I made stands: In the case of either alien species, the need would not exist.

Except that in the new series, we don't yet know why the aliens are at Earth (though the promo for next week's episode claims their purpose will be revealed -- but promos aren't always trustworthy). Despite their cover story, it might have nothing to do with the acquisition of resources. In fact, I have a hypothesis about what their real purpose is, but this isn't the place to discuss it.

[superstring01]

Christopher wrote:

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Except that in the new series, we don't yet know why the aliens are at Earth (though the promo for next week's episode claims their purpose will be revealed -- but promos aren't always trustworthy). Despite their cover story, it might have nothing to do with the acquisition of resources. In fact, I have a hypothesis about what their real purpose is, but this isn't the place to discuss it.

True.

We already know that the V's (at least, not the spies) are all addicts to some "Bliss" that integrates them all.

I think they are fleeing. . . something.

~String