V: the series

[avalonmistmoon]

Christopher wrote:

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And how much luck has the US military had stopping small bands of guerrilla fighters in Iraq or Afghanistan? There's nothing remotely unrealistic about this. The whole reason guerrilla warfare does work is because its forces are small and mobile and can easily disappear, provided they have the support of the general populace. It's why terrorism is so hard to fight, and why guerrilla warfare is so often successful.

Remember that the original V miniseries was an allegory for the rise of Nazism in Europe. Everything in it had a historical equivalent, including the resistance.

Well, that was one thing that worked about the original miniseries -- the emphasis on ordinary people and how they were affected by all this. Implicitly, the government had fallen under the Visitors' thrall. That's what smart occupiers do; they co-opt the local authority structures to serve their agendas.

As for the second mini and the series, there it's just conceptual sloppiness.

Don't forget that there was a Fifth Column with the "V" that helped us. I remembered because I had a crush on Martin. A blond, handsome and a hulk of an alien. "sigh"

The miniseries was great and remember it fondly.

[diankra]

The more you think it through, the more you have to conclude that - as hinted in passing in the original mini-series, or at least the novelisation, it's not really the water that makes Earth useful, it's an intelligent-ish population of 6 billion who can be kidnapped, brainwashed, and used as conscripts in The Leader's wars against The Enemy (which is about as deep as it got about who they actually were :-)).
That would have been an interesting angle to take: perhaps, just as the chemicals the Visitors supposedly wanted turned out to be irrelevant, taking the water was only a means to an end: by causing crop failures the Visitors could force Humanity into refugee camps where they could be controlled? When you look at a lot of history, most recently the recruitment of child soldiers from refugee camps along the Rwandan/Burandan borders, it makes a nasty sort of sense.

An after thought: Possibly, trying to think about the Visitors' plan in terms of scientific credibility is missing the point (waits for someone to point out that trying to think V through seriously is definitely missing the point).
As Christopher points out, you have to see V as an allegory: if you take it as read that, as hinted more in the book than onscreen, that The Leader came to power through a populist movement in a failing democracy where ordinary people are having a hard time becasue of some recent defeat, akin to Weimar Germany, then his plans only have to make sense politically, in the mind of a dictator clinging to power.
It doesn't matter that saving Sirius by stealing water from other planets won't work, what matters is that it shows The Leader has a Great Plan to save the planet, one which requires sacrifice and service from the people (under his control, of course). And as a bonus it even gives the nastier among these ordinary people a chance to lord it over 'lesser peoples' on other worlds.

[darkwing_duck1]

Christopher wrote:

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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.

There's also the fact, mentioned by Martin in the first mini, that the Visitors have been (and are) at war with other races and/or factions. John's "little fleet" may have been all the Leader could spare for the project.

[23skidoo]

Some general thoughts about the V series. I was and remain quite fond of it. I don't accept the "bad SFX" argument, though, because frankly there was no such thing as good SFX on American (or British) television until CGI got cheap enough to be used for TV. So in my opinion "good SFX" didn't arrive till only about 15 years ago. Even DS9's effects, in retrospect, don't hold up as well as we thought they might back in 1994.

V the series was hurt by the fact that, in 1984, the only US shows that did arc storytelling were soap operas like Dallas and Dynasty. Therefore that was the only model they had to go on, which is why we started to see "soap opera" elements (as if those are somehow a bad thing) emerging in V. By soap opera, in the SF context that would appear to mean plotlines involving personal relationships over SF concepts ... the type of stuff Roddenberry wanted to do with Trek. But I digress.

SF otherwise was expected to be delivered in bite-size stand-alone pieces that could be watched in any order -- which was a prime factor in Star Trek TOS being so successful in syndication (only since the 80s have broadcasters bothered to show that program in its original order). And that's why Doctor Who failed as a mainstream syndicated show (an attempt was made with Pertwee and Baker), but was accepted on PBS where serialized storytelling from the UK was commonplace.

What that all means from my perspective is the writers at the time couldn't keep the momentum going, and you could tell they were starting to "toss everything in but the kitchen sink", such as bringing in Duncan Regher's character and introducing a love triangle between him, Diana, and Lydia. We also started to see characters brought back from the dead like Martin.

The show also made a big mistake out of the gate by not having Michael Ironside's character Ham Tyler from the get-go. He was the best thing about the 2nd mini-series, and he was really missed when the weekly series began. By the time he came back, it was too late.

I never had a problem with the casting on V. Faye Grant and Marc Singer were great, as was the pre-Freddy Robert Englund. Jane Badler and June Chadwick remain two of the sexiest gals to ever grace 1980s TV, and Jennifer Cooke probably would have gone on to be a big star if she hadn't retired from acting a year later to run the Celestial Seasonings tea company (no joke).

From a long-term view, the show's reputation was also harmed by the ending of the first season (which I won't spoil), which hasn't held up well.

I agree I don't understand the hatred for the V series (or the second mini), unless you buy into the "it's old therefore it's bad" mentality that seems to be plaguing our society. There's plenty to criticize in V, to be sure, and it probably didn't deserve to last more than a season, but I find it no better, no worse than the average American-produced network science fiction of the day.

Alex

[Christopher]

23skidoo wrote:

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The show also made a big mistake out of the gate by not having Michael Ironside's character Ham Tyler from the get-go. He was the best thing about the 2nd mini-series, and he was really missed when the weekly series began. By the time he came back, it was too late.

You have it backward. Ironside was a regular in the first dozen episodes of the series. He was then dropped from the final seven episodes, along with Blair Tefkin, Lane Smith, and Michael Wright, as a result of budget cuts.

I agree I don't understand the hatred for the V series (or the second mini), unless you buy into the "it's old therefore it's bad" mentality that seems to be plaguing our society.

Nope, it was regarded as pretty bad even back when it was new -- which is part of why it only had 19 episodes. Maybe opinions of it are lower now than they were at the time, but that's because we've had more time to compare it to the original mini, to learn about how the sequels were taken away from Kenneth Johnson and retooled, and to see how much better and more sophisticated SF television can be.

There's plenty to criticize in V, to be sure, and it probably didn't deserve to last more than a season, but I find it no better, no worse than the average American-produced network science fiction of the day.

And that's part of the problem, considering how much better than that the original miniseries was. If V had been intended as nothing but mindless fluff from the get-go, it might be nostalgically appreciated as such, like Knight Rider is. But it started out as something so much smarter and more meaningful and then got aggressively retooled and dumbed down. It's a classic case of how network meddling can take something special and ruthlessly homogenize it.

[Deckerd]

I've just realised now reading this that the significance V has been changed from the original. How utterly asinine. There is no hope for this show since it cannot even grasp the meaning of the letter V.

[Temis the Vorta]

Deckerd wrote:

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I've just realised now reading this that the significance V has been changed from the original. How utterly asinine. There is no hope for this show since it cannot even grasp the meaning of the letter V.

It still means V for Victory. The aliens' Victory.

[Samuel Walters]

Christopher wrote:

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And that's part of the problem, considering how much better than that the original miniseries was. If V had been intended as nothing but mindless fluff from the get-go, it might be nostalgically appreciated as such, like Knight Rider is. But it started out as something so much smarter and more meaningful and then got aggressively retooled and dumbed down. It's a classic case of how network meddling can take something special and ruthlessly homogenize it.

Even the final act of the original miniseries eschewed character development for a plot-based narrative. And when you do that, you open your story to questions about the plausibility of the plot.

Even so, the original mini-series was a story about something important. But once the inevitable sequel arrive in The Final Battle, the network chose to capitalize on the concept with plenty of action and melodrama (Donovan taking advantage of Julie, for example) -- at the expense of real character development or exploration. It's a shame. But the fact that the new V didn't learn the lessons from The Final Battle or the weekly series is inexplicable.

[Morpheus 02]

Some quick thoughts on the original TV show...

Good

The idea of multiple sides in the war. Vistors & Resistance, but Nathan Bates playing both sides

Julie pretending to be on Nathan's side/not Resistance

Bad

Every episode, Mike & the gang having to introduce themselves to people. Wouldn't Mike Donovan be he most recognizable man on the planet?

The "love Triangle" between a guy , a just former teenager, and her 2 (two!) year old daughter

The wrong characters being cut

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I only had two real problems with the series:

- The cool echoing effect was gone from the Visitors' voices.

- Martin/Philip. Unless the look of a Visitor's human disguise is somehow 'tied' to his/her actual reptilian appearance (which is not a bad idea, really), there is no way that anyone could immediately recognize Philip as Martin's twin brother. Any Visitor could be the one under that mask.

I will say this, though. Something that really creeped me out about the series: When the Visitor 'Marta' is framed for Charles' death, and her sentence is to spend the rest of her life...floating through space, locked inside the pod with Charles' corpse.

[Christopher]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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I only had two real problems with the series:

- The cool echoing effect was gone from the Visitors' voices.

Which was a symptom of the lower budget of the series as opposed to the miniseries. Though it also created the story opportunity for having Visitors pass for human on occasion.

- Martin/Philip. Unless the look of a Visitor's human disguise is somehow 'tied' to his/her actual reptilian appearance (which is not a bad idea, really), there is no way that anyone could immediately recognize Philip as Martin's twin brother. Any Visitor could be the one under that mask.

Ahh, but only a twin would have the same voice, right?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Christopher wrote:

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Ahh, but only a twin would have the same voice, right?

AFAIK, Diana immediately recognizes Philip before he even says a word.

And the (few) sets of twins I have seen, have had much the same voices. Anyone remember the Sklar brothers (comedy) or the Laurances (acting)?

[Christopher]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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AFAIK, Diana immediately recognizes Philip before he even says a word.

Nobody ever said the series was intelligently written. But then, maybe she recognized him by his scent or electrical field or something else that Sirian senses are attuned to.

[blockaderunner]

After buying and watching the original mini a while back, what upset me most about the The Final Battle and the series was the fact that one of the Visitor resistance members in the original mini mentioned a force that was against Diana and the Visitors and that at the end of the mini, the blonde scientist had some SETI type array set up to try to find that foe in the deep reaches of space and once TFB aired, there was no mention of that foe at all. I guess if the new series used that, fans would be making comparisons to SG1's Tok'ra. But it still would have been nice to know who that foe was and if they would have helped against the visitors.

[Samuel Walters]

It's true that the Final Battle and weekly series essentially ignored this point in favor of more action-driven fare. Plus, I suspect the cost of integrating a decidedly alien-looking race into the show would have been prohibitive. If you're wondering where V creator Kenneth Johnson was heading with the idea, there's always the book: V: The Second Generation, in which he introduces the Zedti -- a human-looking-but-insectoid race who are mortal enemies with the Vs. Be warned, though -- the book isn't very good and its essential plot is almost entirely a mirror of The Final Battle.