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

[cbspock]

This reboot of V has been a totally lost opportunity. The original mini-series and the original visitors were much more interesting. One thing I really liked from the original which the new one has ignored was that the visitors were slightly different than us even in their human disguises. They have to wear sunglasses to protect their eyes from the sun, their voices were different because they had to speak through a translator, birds would get all jittery around them, they wouldn't eat cooked food, etc.

They managed to set the humans against one another, by setting up the scientists who would be the first ones to figure out what the visitors were.

One main problem I have had with the new series is that the set up basically blew through some plot elements in the first hour, and then for the rest of the season they forgot to keep it going. We still don't know what the visitors are up to, we still don't know what the fifth column is or why it was formed before the visitors even showed up.

The visual effects are also crap, especially the digital sets, the characters don't even look like they are in the rooms.

-Chris

 

[Christopher]

^Actually I think the voice treatment in the original miniseries was meant to be the natural sound of the Visitors/Sirians' vocal apparatus, not the result of speaking through a translator. After all, it stands to reason that alien beings with different internal anatomy would have different-sounding voices, just as a bassoon sounds different from an oboe.

However, the alien voice treatment was abandoned without explanation in the weekly series from '84, presumably as a money-saving move, although it also allowed them to do stories about Visitors passing as humans (something that couldn't be done in the original mini).

 

[Snick27]

Might be only me but i want to see a cross over with V and Stargate.

But yeah this episode was pretty good. Though sucks i have to wait what 7 months to see what the red sky is about. Heard the show is going to be retweaked again so hope part of that is they improve the paceing of the show and start explaining things for it be canceled and we never know what the V's wanted.

Imagen if this was the last episode.

 

[Christopher]

Imagen if this was the last episode.

A pleasant fantasy...

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I'm glad V was renewed. They would have replaced it with a dumbass cop/doc/lawyer show. We wouldn't have come out remotely ahead. ABC picked up the two or so pilots that sounded interesting so whatever they would have used that slot for would have been a total waste.

 

[Trent Roman]

Saw it, and I think it was largely a blowout. Beginning starts off nicely, Fifth Column on an active footing for a change, and gradually most of the characters wind up on the ship, ready for a climatic series of encounters... and then the plot falls apart. Ryan does nothing all episode; Anna switches intentions for no reason; Val is just killed off (this character seemed to have existed merely to suffer; why establish that she was Tyler's shrink if it was never going to come up again?); they keep teasing the baby but ultimately don't show it, which feels cowardly; and there's an attempt to re-blissify Ryan that instantly fails judging by his reaction to the baby, which Anna couldn't but have seen. Erica's plotline is absurdly disjointed, the way people are just strolling in and out of the supreme commander's quarters and hatchery; Erica leaves with everybody else then just walks in again; there's apparently no security to speak of, whether 'human' or electronic--this after it's been established that the Vs are into mass surveillance; Joshua stages a 'distraction' that amounts to just shooting at others, but apparently is so skilled at doing so that he alone keeps a ship full of security at bay long enough for those same security folks to evacuate the diners, Erica sneak back in somehow, get to and set off the bomb in the hatchery, generically outrun the explosion, find out where Joshua is and reach him, then agonize about whether to shoot him. Honestly, they're not even trying. Meanwhile, there are all kinds of dangling threads; the wasted potential of having all the characters aboard the ship yet never connect; and to paraphrase Chekov, if you put a bomb in a purse in the first act, it needs to go off before your story is over--or at least be relevant somehow. And the ending is just bunk. I think the odd CGI of the show works aboard the ship to give them that otherwordly aspect, but the red sky here did nothing but look terrible. I don't know what the point of it, why I should be concerned, and whether it marks an actual turning point or if they're just going to have Anna explain it to a gullible world at the beginning of the next season, considering the lengths they went to preserve the status quo for the Fifth Columists. Speaking of which, however pointed out how idiotic that speech in the church was, and that Erica and Hobbes stood up for it, I entirely agree. Start making concrete accusations instead of spouting rhetoric that sounds like it was cribbed from StormFront's website--the Fifth Column is it's own worse enemy.

Some redeeming features: Joshua's resurrection has potential to revise what we think has been happening this season. Has he been a plant all along? Is he working for Marcus (whom I'm convinced has his own agenda)? I hope it won't just be the boring, we revived you for information/torture--particularly since Joshua, of all people, should have known where to tell Erica to shot. Anna's scream was also cool, as was the reactions of Marcus and Lisa. I find it a bit odd that Anna, Marcus and Lisa are the most compelling characters of this show--non-humans, and mostly villainous, but our 'real' people are just so boring.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Christopher]

Val is just killed off (this character seemed to have existed merely to suffer; why establish that she was Tyler's shrink if it was never going to come up again?)

No doubt because the replacement showrunners didn't bother to pursue what the original showrunners set up. And really, that's one of the few good decisions they made. Having Val be Tyler's therapist was way too Dickensian. There were already too many coincidences with Erica and Tyler and Anna and Lisa without bringing that totally gratuitous connection into it.

and there's an attempt to re-blissify Ryan that instantly fails judging by his reaction to the baby, which Anna couldn't but have seen.

I didn't get the impression that Anna intended it to be an instantaneous conversion. On the contrary, the whole reason she killed Val and kept the baby alive was as part of her effort to win Ryan back over gradually -- severing his tie to humanity and using his baby as, well, bait to draw him back into her influence.

 

[Chris_Johnston]

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!

Yep, I was asking myself the very same thing: If the V's can embed cameras in the pocket flaps of everybody's uniforms, why the Hell is there NO camera coverage ON the actual ship? Nobody should be able to skulk around anywhere.
It took about 10 minutes of screen time for anybody to find out what happened in the Egg Room!
Seemed there was a pretty loud Boom! as Erica was diving through the closing doors. Somebody had to have heard that or felt some vibration!

 

[Tulin]

Like I said, it's that old trope - something exists until the story needs it NOT to.

 

[Greg Cox]

Much to my surprise, I'm giving this an excellent.

One thing - my memory may be failing me, but have we seen any other female V's other than Anna and Lisa ?

There's Val's obstetrician, played by Lexa Doig, and the undercover V in the FBI office, played by that actress from BSG whose name I can't recall . . . .

Plus, there have been miscellaneous female V extras seen in the Bliss and interrogation sequences.

 

[Hermiod]

^You replied before I realised my theory was completely wrong and deleted the post.

 

[Christopher]

There's Val's obstetrician, played by Lexa Doig, and the undercover V in the FBI office, played by that actress from BSG whose name I can't recall . . . .

The actress is Rekha Sharma; the character, I believe, is Agent Malik.

And note that both Malik and John May (Michael Trucco) are played by actors whose characters were members of the "Final Five" Cylons, another group of nonhumans that passed as human. For that matter, Lexa Doig is known for playing the human-appearing android Rommie on Andromeda. And Laura Vandervoort played a Kryptonian passing as human in Smallville. Typecasting much? (I didn't count Morena Baccarin since Adria on Stargate SG-1 was, I think, genetically human despite her Ori abilities.)

Of course, these are supposed to be reptilian aliens wearing human disguises, so who's to say the female Vs actually are female? Or that the male ones are actually male?

 

[stj]

Start making concrete accusations instead of spouting rhetoric that sounds like it was cribbed from StormFront's website--the Fifth Column is it's own worse enemy.

Bemused at what in the world people are still discussing this tripe (yes, I haven't watched in weeks, but I still know its tripe,) I skim the thread and see this.

Isn't it competely appropriate that a Fifth Column sound like it was cribbing from the StormFront website? Most all of the mystery about this show disappears if one thinks of it as Tea Party scifi. The disconnect between what the Vs do and their nefarious intentions. The difficulty the Fifth Column have in articulating their real reasons. The way that the Fifth Column walks around as if they weren't actually in a police state, despite their self pity at being outnumbered.

On a meta level, so to speak, why it's intellectual shortcomings are so gingerly criticized. And why it's selected by the mass media.

Think about it.

 

[flux_29]

Much to my surprise, I'm giving this an excellent.

One thing - my memory may be failing me, but have we seen any other female V's other than Anna and Lisa ?

There's Val's obstetrician, played by Lexa Doig, and the undercover V in the FBI office, played by that actress from BSG whose name I can't recall . . . .

Plus, there have been miscellaneous female V extras seen in the Bliss and interrogation sequences.

wasn't the tompson wife a V - it looked like she had green scales on her forearm after being knifed by the V soldier.

anyone clarify this?