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“V”: How to fix ABC’s struggling alien invasion series

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:40:00 +0000

If you love genre TV, there's nothing more frustrating than finding a series that has everything it needs to be great, but somehow never gets there; a series that delivers a solid B+ episode week after week, and rarely missteps egregiously enough to make you want to bail out, but that neverthless remains tantalizing underdeveloped.

That's "V" (Tuesdays, 9 PM/8 central), ABC's big-budget remake of the same-named, strictly-from-hunger NBC show about humans battling an invasion by creatures that look just like us but are actually evil lizards. Developed by Scott Peters from the original miniseries-cum-series by Kenneth Johnson, the ABC version wants to be a serious sci-fi fan's reclamation of beloved childhood trash -- a remake/improvement along the lines of SyFy's meandering, fitfully brilliant "Battlestar Galactica," which turned a mostly braindead late-'70s ripoff of "Star Wars" into a meditation on war, terrorism, faith, cultural relativism, and whether so-called "human" qualities are unique to humankind. ABC's "V" flirts with those sorts of big questions -- notably in the scenes where the Visitors' leader, Anna (Morena Baccarin) devises new occupation tactics based on her understanding of human psychology. Unfortunately, the series never quite succumbs to the allure of pulp philosophizing -- perhaps because it rightly fears that doing so would alienate casual viewers who just want escapism. It skates along the surface of its premise, executing the occasional figure-8 or backwards jump, but never cracking the ice to see what marvels might lurk beneath.

Which “V” reigns supreme?

Tue, 18 May 2010 19:30:00 +0000

ABC's remake of "V," the science fiction TV classic that enthralled me as a kid in the 1980s, is about to wrap tonight (Tuesday, May 18). Both the original '80s versions -- "V: The Miniseries" and "V: The Final Battle" -- and the imaginative remake, which began in November of 2009, have their distinct charms. Here I've outlined some of the differences.

(Spoilers below for all, so please beware.)

Long story short. Aliens arrive on Earth, looking just like us, choosing names from Earth, calling themselves "Visitors," and offering us friendship and advanced technology in exchange for a few basic Earth materials. Sound good? It isn't. What follows doesn't bode well for the U.S. or the world. And the Visitors, we learn, are not what they appear to be, a point very strongly underscored by their eating habits. Humans band together as a resistance. Some dissenting Visitors form a Fifth Column.

How do some of these elements compare from original to remake? And before I start the discussion, let me say that ABC is commendably making this remake distinct from its predecessor. My point in the comparison is not to say that the current "V" should follow the previous one note for note. Quite the contrary: I very much admire the remake's refusal to reference the original.

Aliens invade, disguised as Larry David!

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:30:00 +0000

Aliens are so alienating. They're from planets in galaxies far, far away, for one thing. Most of us don't even like people from Nevada. And they're so smug about having figured out light-speed travel faster than we did. Who wants friends who make you feel bad about yourself all the time? I think poor, lonely George Clooney knows the answer to that one.

Besides, how rude is it to show up at someone's galactic doorstep without inviting them to your solar system first? Of course they say they're in desperate need of our valuable resources, because it sounds a lot better than admitting that once they mastered quantum physics and nanotechnology and the like, they got bored and decided to tool around the universe, looking for fun ways to fuck shit up.

In fact, their planet is actually a lot nicer and cleaner than ours, because they spent all their time making scientific and technological advances instead of poisoning their delicate ecosystem with carbon emissions and spray tans and "Two and a Half Men" reruns.