V the new and the old

[Aeolus]

Well I just rewatched the original V miniseries I had not seen it in over 20 years. I had forgotten just how good the original miniseries was. Sure the second miniseries and particularly the series were cheesy 80's TV but that original one was a lot smarter than I had remembered. Then again I was just a kid last time I saw it so quite a bit of it went over my head back then.

I am quite exited by the remake tonight. I hope it lives up to the reviews. I am going to have fun matching the characters from the old and the new. Clearly the FBI agents son will be the analogue to David Bernstein the Brownshirt from the original and Anna is the remakes Diane or John. Scott Wolf is the female reporter from the original. Any other guesses so far?

[Knife]

It is ok, watched it tonight. The acting was spotty on occasion, and some of the plot was rushed, the whole intro just sucked. The story is solid though, and I adore the original, so we'll see.

[dragon]

It is ok, watched it tonight. The acting was spotty on occasion, and some of the plot was rushed, the whole intro just sucked. The story is solid though, and I adore the original, so we'll see.

They still trying to steal the water, which was a serious plot hole in the first series. After all any civilization capable of building ships of those sive and sending them across interstellar space is more than capable of harvest ice from comets in the Ort cloud.

[UCBooties]

I prefer my political allegory a little less ham-fisted, thank you. Someone comes along just when you need them supported by the youth and the easily corrupted press promising hope and change! But they're not what they seem! What really cemented it for me was the scene where the Visitors are talking about expanding their medical facilities and the intrepid reporter goes OMG, UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE! Sorry, but your story isn't well-written enough for me to ignore this crap.

Also, they did a terrible job of establishing who each character was. FBI Lady I get, but who is the Black guy who was getting engaged? I mean literally, what is his job?

I was happy to see Alan Tudyik again but this was not a good start IMO.

[Yona]

Well, I guess I will have to watch it online. The local ABC affiliate in Green Bay, Wisconsin has , as usual, elected to pre-empt the time slot for one of their "local" programs. A local Football weekly that some jackass at the station has as a pet program. These jerks do this every new season for this "local" program.

People have complained to them and ABC. It does no good. They have decided to air "V" on Saturdays at 11 P.M. How fucking magnanimous of them.

I tried to get another ABC from Satellite, but the jerks won't sign off on the required waiver to allow it.

Fucking retards !

[TheLostVikings]

I prefer my political allegory a little less ham-fisted, thank you. Someone comes along just when you need them supported by the youth and the easily corrupted press promising hope and change! But they're not what they seem! What really cemented it for me was the scene where the Visitors are talking about expanding their medical facilities and the intrepid reporter goes OMG, UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE! Sorry, but your story isn't well-written enough for me to ignore this crap.

Agreed. Honestly I nearly stopped watching right then and there. Trying to make UHC look scary is exactly what we need right now...

Too bad Alan Tudyk had to bite the dust in the very first episode, he is an amazing actor, would've been nice to see him get a little more screen time.

[UCBooties]

Honestly I'm having a bit of trouble even remembering what exactly happened. The two FBI characters were tracking a potential terrorist cell, but by the end I couldn't figure out if they had been tracking V infiltrators or the resistance cell. I think it was supposed to be V infiltrators, but why would they need to stockpile C4?

[Koolaidkirby]

Honestly I'm having a bit of trouble even remembering what exactly happened. The two FBI characters were tracking a potential terrorist cell, but by the end I couldn't figure out if they had been tracking V infiltrators or the resistance cell. I think it was supposed to be V infiltrators, but why would they need to stockpile C4?

they were tracking the V infiltrators (but they kept giving them the slip by somehow knowing they were on the way, presumably because one of the fbi agents on the case was one such infiltrator). While doing this they found a dead body killed by the infiltrators and when they searched the mans house they found an invitation to the resistance cell meeting, and when they went to check it out, the human fbi agent lead the V straight to the resistance cell(because her partner was an infiltrator), where they attacked.

at least thats what I got from it.

[Coyote]

I like the set-up, the story, and the ideas for groundwork-- the V have actually been here for years, preparing things for the arrival, etc. The problem is, I felt the whole thing was rushed. It should have been a two-hour premier, maybe, and they should have done more to build the tension. Sure, that can be problematic if people already know what's going to happen from the original series, but still, some finesse in the build-up would have been appreciated. Let us get to know the characters, get comfy with them.

It seemed to me that they were in a hurry to get to the "juicy" stuff (look, tear their skin! Their lizards!) but by rushing things to that point, it is less juicy.

Things I would have changed--
Have the kid, Ryan, get sucked into the V thing a bit more slowly.

Have the reveal of the two "infiltrator" lizard characters come much later. The FBI agent in particular should have been "revealed" maybe partway through the season.

Make it more clear who the "unsurprised terrorist cell" really was-- it seemed to me that they were the anti-V resistance guys who've figured out the coming invasion years ago but were dismissed as conspiracy nutbags.

And I would not even have made the resistance group so obvious, organized, or prepared from the start. It's just too pat. Part of the tension in the original show was that, for awhile, there seemed to be no hope as the V rode into town on a wave of popularity and only a few people had uncertain feelings about them. Only later did the Resistance pick up. Now, we start with a well-trenched, well-prepared Resistance already networked. Tension dissolved. "Oh, these guys are on the case. Lost the first round, true, but they're ready."

And the final assault with V infiltrators crashing the resistance meeting... c'mon, folks, swords? The V can build spaceships but can't put suppressors on a few pistols? And they just charge in, no prepared positions or snipers? Sure, the probe droid went in first and took out a bunch of folks, but no follow-on 'bots to do a damage assesment before agents go in?

It's a pity, because like I said, the characters and situation and groundwork are, I think, solid and have a lot of potential. The producers were in just too much of a hurry to get to the "cool" part and get the plot going that they bull-rushed through a lot of potentially good tension and character building.

I'l keep watching, and hopeully they'll slow down and let things build at a bit more realistic pace as the season unfolds. Right now, it's like they tried to jam everything from the first miniseries into the one-hour premier, and it was too much, too fast.

[UCBooties]

Yeah, that makes sense; I'd forgotten that it was the victim that led them to the meeting. I'm still not clear on what the V need C4 for.

A separate thought brought on by the "futuristic vistas" thread. I thought the pan across the interior of the V ship was terrible. Really just ugly and jumbled. I'm sure it was supposed to be awe-inspiring but it just looked stupid.

[Coyote]

I prefer my political allegory a little less ham-fisted, thank you. Someone comes along just when you need them supported by the youth and the easily corrupted press promising hope and change! But they're not what they seem! What really cemented it for me was the scene where the Visitors are talking about expanding their medical facilities and the intrepid reporter goes OMG, UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE! Sorry, but your story isn't well-written enough for me to ignore this crap.

Agreed. Honestly I nearly stopped watching right then and there. Trying to make UHC look scary is exactly what we need right now...

I honestly did not see the political allegory until after the show, when I heard about it on the internet. I didn't see it that way at all; I mean, that was all the Visitors did in the original TV show back in the 1980's-- they showed up and brought cures for cancer, for example.

In this version, they used the existing groundwork of the global economic collapse to soften people up and make them open to Visitor intervention, which I think most people are aware started long before Obama came on the scene (Fox Noise nonetheless). I think they just took the current world situation and used it. Remember, the show was in production & writing probably around the time of the actual election, and maybe the script was being drafted even before Obama was a serious candidate.

Too bad Alan Tudyk had to bite the dust in the very first episode, he is an amazing actor, would've been nice to see him get a little more screen time.

But wait, there's more: did you see the next week's previews? He's back. I think he only got fucked up, not killed, and Visitor doctors can probably fix a lot if they can make the lame walk, etc. Again, maybe they should have made that more clear. I wasn't sure myself, I thought the woman couldn't bring herself to kill him because they clearly had a connection, but I was left unsure until the preview.

[Coyote]

Yeah, that makes sense; I'd forgotten that it was the victim that led them to the meeting. I'm still not clear on what the V need C4 for.

It was something else they should have cleared up. I'm not sure myself on that. Was it the resistance that was stockpiling the C4 to use against the V or their Earth stooges? Or was it the V infiltrators who'd been on Earth for years that were stockpiling C4 because that was all they had (use local resources, and "sci-fi explosives" would have drawn attention.

I've gone back and forth, thinking it was the Resistance stockpiling explosives to use sgainst the V, or it was the V stockpile to be used to stage terrorist attacks and justify a crackdown.

A separate thought brought on by the "futuristic vistas" thread. I thought the pan across the interior of the V ship was terrible. Really just ugly and jumbled. I'm sure it was supposed to be awe-inspiring but it just looked stupid.

And a piss-poor use of internal volume, too. They'd have to have a social aesthetics reason for it; it seems to me that they are setting the V up to be spacegoing nomads, stripping planets as they go, rather than an armada from a far-away government. Anna said they'd "go on their way, leaving you hopefully better than when we found you". So the interior of the V ship may have been the V trying to replicate an open-air city and feel less confining. But that probably should have been explained.

[TheLostVikings]

Agreed. Honestly I nearly stopped watching right then and there. Trying to make UHC look scary is exactly what we need right now...

I honestly did not see the political allegory until after the show, when I heard about it on the internet. I didn't see it that way at all; I mean, that was all the Visitors did in the original TV show back in the 1980's-- they showed up and brought cures for cancer, for example.

Well you are probably right on that, and most likely the writers didn't make that connection at all. It's just that after the recent round of hysteria about "death panels" and "killing granny", namedropping UHC as one of the sinister schemes of the visitors kinda pushed my buttons.

Too bad Alan Tudyk had to bite the dust in the very first episode, he is an amazing actor, would've been nice to see him get a little more screen time.

But wait, there's more: did you see the next week's previews? He's back. I think he only got fucked up, not killed, and Visitor doctors can probably fix a lot if they can make the lame walk, etc. Again, maybe they should have made that more clear. I wasn't sure myself, I thought the woman couldn't bring herself to kill him because they clearly had a connection, but I was left unsure until the preview.

Ohh, that is terrific, I usually don't watch previews so I didn't catch that. That leads to all kinds of interesting scenarios since his partner knows about him being a reptile, and he knows she knows, and she knows he knows that she knows, etc, etc. It will be interesting how that plays out.

[charlemagne]

Ohh, that is terrific, I usually don't watch previews so I didn't catch that. That leads to all kinds of interesting scenarios since his partner knows about him being a reptile, and he knows she knows, and she knows he knows that she knows, etc, etc. It will be interesting how that plays out.

IIRC the visitors clone those human "hulls", so it's also possible that for some stupid reason they just clone another "Tudyk-hull". Also, if he's not dead, why don't they give him another human form after his current one got "outed"?

And yeah, the inside of the spaceship was lame. They should've stayed with 'generic slick iPod look" instead of showing that city-thing, those two aesthetics didn't mix very well.

Anyways, here's hoping it improves and that this pilot was just clunky and feeling rushed by mistake. Some of the scenes showing turmoil with the spaceships arriving were cool, like the jet crashing downtown - some more disaster porn wouldn't have been a bad thing I also wouldn't have minded to actually witness some "first contact" procedure instead of just jumping forward a couple of weeks. Maybe include some loonies raving against how they talk to the UN instead of the POTUS They really should've done a two-part pilot.

I'll keep watching, I suppose, although I hate Elizabeth Mitchell, that's an actress I just cannot sympathize with. (I also don't get why Alan Tudyk seems to be booked on bad guys now.)

[charlemagne]

ghetto edit:

Re: the healthcare thing. Is it possible this was meant as a joke? Maybe reporter dude mentioned it knowing that by answering "yes" the visitors will unknowingly portray themselves as space communists to a big number of US citizens, thus getting back at them for only letting him ask "good" questions.

And by the way, what was he even supposed to ask that would portray the visitors in a bad light? If he asked "are you here to stripmine earth and annihilate humanity", would they have been forced to answer "yes"?

[Knife]

If I recall correctly, the V infiltrators were stockpiling the C4 because their mission was to destabilize Earth before the V mainships arrived. I'm thinking they played terrorists so that strongmen could get elected (probably V infiltrators too) and destabilize politics and economy.

They still trying to steal the water, which was a serious plot hole in the first series. After all any civilization capable of building ships of those sive and sending them across interstellar space is more than capable of harvest ice from comets in the Ort cloud.

They briefly mentioned a 'rare mineral' as the reason they were here, and were wanting to trade humanity tech and stuff in exchange for the mineral and help getting it. I don't think they've specified past that.

[Junghalli]

They still trying to steal the water, which was a serious plot hole in the first series. After all any civilization capable of building ships of those sive and sending them across interstellar space is more than capable of harvest ice from comets in the Ort cloud.

Yeah, I hope they give them a more believable real reason for wanting Earth this time around. If they just wanted water you'd think they'd just take it from Europa or the Kuiper Belt, where they'd have a much shallower to practically nonexistant gravity well, no atmosphere, and no natives* to deal with.

* Well, there might just be some sapient creatures living in Europa's ocean for all we know, but living in an environment where fire is impossible they probably wouldn't have the tech to be anywhere near the potential nuisance that we could be. Actually that would be an interesting story: if you had a similar scenario but instead of taking water from Earth the aliens suck dry Europa, trading us "trinkets" like high-tech clean power plants and cures for cancer and AIDS as gestures of goodwill. Everything goes well until one of the aliens leaks to some reporter (or something like that) that there are in fact primitive but sapient fish-people living in Europa's ocean and the aliens are genociding them by taking all of Europa's water. It would be interesting to see how humanity would react to something like that.

[Samuel]

I don't think we could stop them so our reaction would probably be completely irrelevant to them. It might be interesting to do such a story from the visitors point of view.

As for things to get... is there anything Earth has that is significantly harder to get else where? The only thing I can think of is refined metals, plastics and the like. I'm pretty sure you can even get a ton of hydrocarbons from Titan so that can't be a problem.

[LadyTevar]

Silly humans.. they want Sentient Food Source!

[Junghalli]

Silly humans.. they want Sentient Food Source!

It would probably make more sense just to get some DNA samples from people and clone them. The freightage savings would be enormous.

[Yona]

Silly humans.. they want Sentient Food Source!

It would probably make more sense just to get some DNA samples from people and clone them. The freightage savings would be enormous.

Then what would you have for a TV show,...... cloned food,.... boring !

Question to all.

Is the new commander (Morena) as menacing and nasty as the old Commander (Jane) ? Jane Badler was really nasty in that original role.

[Junghalli]

Then what would you have for a TV show

Something that didn't involve them coming here for our water or to eat us.

[The Yosemite Bear]

cloned food was actually a good classic sci-fi short story, where the aliens gave us medical technology and support against AI alien enemies, in exchange for some ova and sperm to grow a large stock of food.... I think the title had something about having "Good Taste"

[Samuel]

Then what would you have for a TV show

Something that didn't involve them coming here for our water or to eat us.

To help us of course. Unfortunately their version of "help" is drastically different from our own.

[Junghalli]

To help us of course. Unfortunately their version of "help" is drastically different from our own.

I was thinking of saying something along the same lines myself. Really, in a realistic universe the most plausible reason for space aliens to invade is probably going to be ideology. Or at any rate it's at least tied with "they want to eliminate us as a potential threat but are too soft-hearted to just kill us all". And for a realistically advanced interstellar civilization it's actually a pretty damn plausible reason. Practically any time the idea of an effective postscarcity society is brought up you get people whining about how in such a society people would have nothing to do and no higher purpose beyond enjoying themselves. Well, in such a society if you want something to do and a higher purpose one obvious thing you can try is to go out into the black and see if you can't find some primitive aliens and bring the benefit of your technology and possibly your "enlightened" social system to them. And the technology level we're talking about basically eliminates the blood and treasure considerations that might restrain a lower tech civilization from truly "altruistic" conquest: conquering a planet consists of letting your Von Neumann constructor loose in the local asteroid belt and then descending on the place with your newly constructed robot legions. Hell, individual adventurers could do it on their own! This is a little off-topic, but I can pretty easily imagine a civilization with millions of individuals disappearing into the black each year on their own personal singleships carrying a subservient superintelligent AI and a Von Neumann constructor apiece to find some planet full of savages and bring civilization to them. Atomic Rockets actually addresses something like this point, but in different terms.

Dr. Robert A. Freitas Jr. points out that it isn't just Type III civilizations that are dangerous, it is also Type III individuals. As civilizations technologically advance, members of that civilization have access to increasing amounts of energy. For example, your average medieval peasant could never hope to own something as destructive as an AK-47 automatic rifle or a few drums of fuel oil mixed with ammonium nitrate.

Imagine a family picnic. Some ants show up. Little Billy gets annoyed, tracks the ants back to their nest, dumps a cup of kerosene onto it and lights a match. The ant nest is annihilated. Billy gets called back to the picnic for ice cream.

Imagine a gathering of Type III entities. Some human starships show up. Little Beta-Lambda gets annoyed, tracks the starships back to Earth, and seeds it with five gigatons of neutronium antimatter. Earth is annihilated. Beta-Lambda gets called back to the gathering for euphoronic frequencies.

Emphasis mine. The thought is more than a little scary when you see how crazy individual humans can get. One would hope that such an advanced civilization would keep such capabilities out of the hands of anyone too crazy ... but then, their standards of what is and is not crazy may be very different from ours.