Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!
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.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.....
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.....
All of the original V is scientifically implausible. I mean, why would the Visitors use human disguises that were so easily ripped away? All it would take is one Visitor falling down and skinning his knees, and whoops, there goes the whole invasion.
The whole concept of the series was to show what would happen if a fascist regime occupied America in this day and age... and it was dressed up as sci-fi to get the NBC execs interested. If you're watching it looking for scientific accuracy you're completely missing the point.
The whole concept of the series was to show what would happen if a fascist regime occupied America in this day and age... and it was dressed up as sci-fi to get the NBC execs interested. If you're watching it looking for scientific accuracy you're completely missing the point.
For those of you who are watching the regular series episodes on syfy Monday and Tuesday, I was wondering a couple things. Are the episodes uncut or do they have cuts made for more commercials. And are they aired in letterbox? I don't have the DVD set but remember seeing the box once. Are the episodes on the DVD in letterbox or just 4:3?
The DVD released on 7/3/2001 is in 1.85:1 aspect ratio & enhanced for anamorphic screens.
The details are on this DVD review:
"V" is presented for the first time ever in anamorphic widescreen with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. To say that this transfer came as a surprise would be an understatement as "V" has always been seen in the standard 4:3 television format. But Kenneth Johnson had anticipated a potential foreign theatrical release for the program and decided to film it with a widescreen framing in mind. In comparing the full screen and letterbox versions it's clear that the widescreen transfer omits a bit of top and bottom image for the sake of the wider view but at no time do these shots look forced or out of place. This is the way the director intended the show to look and he personally supervised the transfer process so I'm satisfied that this is indeed the way that "V" was meant to be presented.
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.....
Maybe they just liked to dominate and control a species, perhaps they get satisfaction from what they do to alien races... it wasn't all just about the water
