"V", the 21st century re-do version.

[bizzybody]

Yup, Hollywood is fresh out of new ideas. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(2009_TV_series)[/url]

Pickup was announced in May, 2009 (apparently very quietly), post-pilot filming began August, 10, 2009.

The only reason I found this was I just watched all three VHS tapes of "V: The Final Battle" and then went to look it up on Wikipedia.

Crazy coincidence, "SyFy" was showing the original "V" miniseries Sunday at the same time I was watching the sequel.

[Yorick]

I've known about it for MONTHS.


so there.



this is actually because I was a really big fan of the show in the 80's (all the novels, all the comic books, copies on VHS and now DVD ... but I never did get the Visitor action figure). Hopefully less cheese this time around, but there darn well better be some distended jaws.

Plus, Inara from "Firefly" is Diana. (or whatever her character is being called this time around. The lead lizard.)

tho it's only on for a month, and then skips to MARCH. Grah.

[Ratzmandious]

Hate to say this... but there are even spoilers for it!
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"I'm not hostile! I'm just aggressively interactive!"

[bizzybody]

Visitors come, pretend to be friends, suck up our resources, do the "To Serve Man" thing...

Eventually the humans triumph, or the dopes at ABC will cancel it when it doesn't instantly stomp NCIS into the ratings dirt. (As if that'll happen!)

I trust ABC about as much as I trust FOX to not screw things up with a good SF series.

On the ABC killed list, Battlestar Galactica and Space Rangers*
On the FOX killed list, Space: Above and Beyond and Sliders**
CBS gave Otherworld an early boot and NBC couldn't figure out what to do with Salvage 1.***

I'm sure there's plenty of other good series the network suits just wouldn't give enough of a chance, but can't think of them right now.

*A textbook example of How to Kill a Series. Ordered only six episodes then only broadcast four of them, with the first episode broadcast last. Guaranteed to be a fast method of killing ratings.

**Which got a second chance on SciFi, but they quickly bungled it with stupid writing. (Pulsars are *not* little rocky objects that fly through space!) I dunno how Cleavant Derricks managed to stick it out to the end.

***Based on the TV movie "Salvage" starring Andy Griffith as a salvage yard owner with a dream of building a rocket to salvage the "junk" left on the moon. The movie was good, the series was... variable quality. Once you've been to the moon, there's not a great lot one can do with a rocket that runs on monohydrazine super-fuel.

[Yorick]

Otherworld deserved the early boot. Good concept but the production doesn't hold up to repeated viewing. When I saw it again as an adult I couldn't believe how awful it was.

[bizzybody]

A little review of "V" Mark 2009.

The FX are all nice and shiny for the most part. The plot so far appears to be engaging and the characters well written and acted.

Two of the major roles have been gender-flipped. In place of the Mike Donovan TV cameraman protagonist we have Erica Evans, FBI agent.

Instead of a female spineless suck-up collaborating TV journalist we're given a male TV journalist who initially shows a bit of spine and scruples but is fading fast towards being a Visitor bootlicker.

Instead of Daniel Bernstein it looks like the new show will have Erica Evans' son become the 'brown shirt'.

Whats not so good.

The Visitors are shown to be more homogenized socially. There's no hint yet of a military structure as was immediately evident in the original. The Visitors have no apparent logo or symbol and nothing about their clothing has any indication of rank on the Visitors wearing uniforms. The Dianna replacement Anna takes the stage wearing what looks like fairly conventional human style skirt and jacket ensemble while her aide/spokesman is wearing a slightly unconventionally designed business suit.

The "reveal" comes wayyyy too soon. In episode one they've shown that the Visitors are actually reptilian, are running a terrorist operation, have infiltrated government and law enforcement agencies and have their own resistance movement fighting against their nasty plans for Earth, and we're introduced to many of the main characters in rapid-fire fashion. *whew!*

The original "V" was two long episodes so everything had to be squeezed into that amount of time. The new show is supposed to be a regular series with a multi-episode run where all this could've been spread out a bit.

The new Visitors just aren't alien enough. They don't need sunglasses outdoors and they sound exactly like humans. There's not a thing about their appearance that stands out and says "Uh, hello. We *just arrived* and would like to have a chat over a bowl of fresh mice... er... rice.".

If some aliens showed up tomorrow and there was nothing about them to make me a bit nervous about them, that would make me *a whole lot* suspicious about them.

Best line so far: "Our congregation consists of one heroin addict and Roy!"

[vexxarr]

[Ratzmandious]

I remember I quite liked Space Rangers at the time it was on, and was most upset with the schedule and the cancellation.

Then I got to watch it again a few years later (when I was quite a bit older) on the British Sci-Fi channel.

I really can't remember what I liked so much about it the first time around. It was trite, badly written, derivative - the list goes on.

Oh well, there was a good reason it was canned. But on the other hand you have to wonder about the people who actually approved the making of it in the first place.
_________________
"I'm not hostile! I'm just aggressively interactive!"

[Yorick]

[Ratzmandious]

Hmm... I guess, that's right.

Hey... I'm almost out of that category (come next month), does that mean that I'll stop finding all of this television entertaining?!?

Oh wait...
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"I'm not hostile! I'm just aggressively interactive!"

[SpudGun]

Question:

Having somehow completely missed "V" the first time around (though I seem to remember watching an animated and seriously psychedelic film in my youth called "Super V" or some such) and with the new version, episode 1 now sat on my desktop waiting to be viewed...

Should I watch the original first? Or simply crack on with the new series?

Awaiting your response...
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[vexxarr]

Just watch the new series. Then go back and watch the original TV movie from the 80s. The original (which was not immediately picked up as a series) has a lot of nifty effects for its day but is packed to the brim with schlocky goodness. Bonus, Mark Singer, pre-fattectomy.
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World Conquest is easy… It’s conquering the inhabitants that gets sticky.

[bizzybody]

The original is also full of big 80's hair. ;) Another difference I've noticed is most of the the women in the original aren't as scrawny as has become the fashion (again) in recent years.

The original's FX were really good for mid 1980's television, including genuine computer graphics - as computer graphics, not FX. There's also some smoke and lasers used in Diana's 'conversion chamber'. Oooo, lasers. ;) (Hmmm, "V: Remastered" with all the models redone with good CGI...)

It also used a vocoder to add a vibrato to the Visitors' voices when they were a bit stressed. When calm and collected the vocoder FX were used very little. Back then a vocoder was a large, rack mounted and expensive hunk of gear. Now there's an unsupported freeware (used to be a commercial app) 18 channel analog vocoder simulator called Cylonix. The default settings sound exactly like an original BSG Cylon.

The original has a "Whatever happened to?" actress. "V: The Final Battle" was Jenny Beck's first role, wherein she had a total of about 5 words to say. She went on to a role in the TV Western series "Paradise", the original "V" TV series and two B movies (all with plenty of lines), then nothing since.

She's dropped off the map as completely as did Maren Jensen who played "Athena" in the original Battlestar Galactica.