V - remake of the original 1983 TV series

Did anyone check this remake out last night? While I don't remember the story in detail because this was on TV when I was a young 11 year old dinosaur, I really like what I saw so far last night.

While the pilot episode was very fast and exciting it did seem a little bit rushed because they gave you so much information about the V-isitors that originally took many episodes to reveal in the 1983 series.

Also I really wish they had left the main V-isitor's name intact. While Anna sounds good and looks good too. I really missed the name Diana. Also WTF is up with the blue uniforms? They should have left them red.

There were so many good and bad things going on last night that I don't want to rush my judgment of the show, but if they can keep things fast and exciting like they did last night then I think I found my new TV for this season. I really want to see what this new Sleeper Cell thing develops into.

For those who saw it for the first time or those who remember the story and watched it last night... what are your thoughts so far?

 

I watched the new premiere. Yeah they really pushed it too fast with the secret. I'll keep watching and hope it gets better.

I was fond of the original. The original series is being replayed on SyFy channel I believe. Mostly because Diana was such a bitch you wanted to see what she would do next.

 

Wow V, from 25 years ago,

I was writing my first video games back then,
one for the Timex Sinclair 1000, the other for the Vic 20.

I believe the hairstyles in the original V was inspiration for one of the games. I just can't remember which

 

There are so many plot holes it was embarrassing to watch. And the fact that humans are so dumb to readily accept these aliens is incredulous. And I love how almost no one questions that the visitors look human even though they hail from light years away.

A far more acceptable approach to an alien invasion is the recent District 9. The human race didn't waste a second trying to enslave and control the 'prawns'. Why? For our survival, our species, our planet.

And people are attracted to the aliens? Please. OK so Anna and the young blond are hot but they are aliens...how stupid would someone be to be sexually attracted to them?

The series is also programmed poorly. They are showing four episodes this month, then putting the show on long term hiatus for the Winter Olympic Games, then returning to finish the series. My prediction is that the series will start to pick up steam but the interruption will take the wind out of the sails and the remake will finish with a whimper. Splitting seasons is always a buzz kill.

To be honest I'm more into intelligent science fiction, with the emphasis on hard science or psychology. Films like The Man From Earth, The Thing, Dark City, Blade Runner, or even The Matrix are far more cerebral than the pilot of this series was. I can't watch shows that cater to such a casual crowd.

Calling this series science fiction is also a disgrace to science. This is watered down Hollywood nonsense. There is very little science to this science fiction story.

No explanation for why the ships didn't show up on radar even though people could hear, see, and feel the ships vibrations that caused earthquakes. Just lazy writing. How does a ship that is easily visible and makes a ton of noise evade sophisticated electronic detection?

The original V was made in the 80s. The plot was that the visitors came to Earth to steal the planet's water and enslave all of mankind. Of course now, through actual science and space exploration, we know that water is incredibly abundant throughout our solar system (in the form of ice comets for example). So the visitors can travel across the galaxy...but can't figure out how to harvest water from ice comets?

Another plot hole is that somehow the visitors are able to infiltrate terrorist cells, science facilities, and the FBI, but they are unable to infiltrate the media. The visitors, if they are so advanced, should have had a member of their race embedded in the media to conduct the interviews. Instead they have to recruit some random journalist into doing the interviews. Bad writing.

The pilot was shallow. I'll watch the show, but compared to masterpieces of the mind like The Man From Earth or The Thing, this series will most likely fail to impress me.

The film The Man Who Fell to Earth is a far superior version of 'V' that avoids the outlandish developments that occur later in the series. In The Man Who Fell to Earth, an alien crash lands on Earth, disguises himself as human, with the intention of creating a device that can transfer water to his home planet.

The alien creates all sorts of 'new' technology on Earth and becomes rich from his inventions. When he starts building his device that can teleport water however, the government moves in on him, and reveals that they know what he is and have been monitoring. Realizing he has failed his mission, he lives his life as a human, becoming an alcoholic. Just like in District 9 he is tortured and interrogated by the government.

 

Awesome post man... this is the kind of feedback I was looking for. While I don't know all of the old shows that you mentioned I agree with everything you have said so far, but like yourself I will keep watching to see how it all unfolds.

I didn't know about the Olympic break though, so yeah that's going to suck big time for this show.

Some of the old TV shows you mentioned sounds good especially that Man who fell to earth thing so I think I may have to check that out. Thanks bro!

 

The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Man From Earth

The Man Who Fell is an above average movie for sure, and certainly worth the watch. But The Man From Earth is one of the best stories ever told and is a true masterpiece. It took 35 years to write to ensure that absolutely no plot holes were present.

We get four episodes this month and then it stops for a while. Then the series resumes in March of 2010 where it will go until it is over. Fortunately for me I used to work for ABC Television so I'll probably be able to get advanced copies of the show.

 

Damn you... you watch while we wait! gggrrrr! Well if you do get your hands on some early episodes please feel free to post your thoughts. You might want to give a spoiler alert, but I'm not one of those people where spoilers can ruin a movie for them. I still watch some old movies to this day and it's still like watching it for the first time for me.

 

Having watched the second episode the first thing I noticed was that they lowered the volume of the show by a few dBs. Why? To make you turn up the volume so that the commercials are even louder. I recorded the first two broadcasts and I'm certain they adjusted the levels on purpose.

Some more flaws in the writing were revealed with the introduction of the automobile mechanic visitor who is a traitor to his species' cause. He knows that the visitors are going to infiltrate society and enslave the human race and wipe out Earth's resources. He knows that if he pretends to be a human he'll be killed eventually by the visitors. But if they, the visitors, discover he is a traitor, they'll most likely torture him to death.

Now, knowing all of this, how does he spend his free time? Masquerading as a car mechanic, repairing human automobiles, and making minimum wage. Why isn't he making alien technology and giving it to human resistance fighters? Why isn't he securing hard physical proof that the visitors are deceptive and have been on Earth for twenty years planning everything? Why doesn't he try to steal one of the spaceships back and use it as a weapon against the other visitors or at least attempt to escape (like District 9)?

Another piece of bad writing. The visitors are able to infiltrate the FBI enough to be able to thwart any internal governmental attempt to expose or at least damage their covert terrorist cell. They are embedded deep within the FBI. Yet the visitors are unable to position themselves within the DEA to stop a title three wiretap on some payphones? Wiretaps that need court orders and are filed so that the FBI has access to those records. They are somehow able to tap into the 911 emergency response system yet they don't recognize nor detect that that payphone is being monitored via external devices?

They've also been revealing who is and isn't a visitor far too early. One of the deepest elements of moves like Alien or Blade Runner or The Thing was that it took an extremely sophisticated viewer to realize who was and wasn't human. In Alien, a major plot twist is that Ash is a cyborg, not human even though he's been disguised as one. In Blade Runner, the main character is actually a replicant, not human, and it's never explicitly stated in the film. In The Thing the viewer is told almost nothing about anything in the film directly (the IMDB FAQ for The Thing is legendarily massive). With 'V' they are catering and pandering to such a shallow and casual viewer. Even someone peripherally viewing the series can tell who is and isn't human.

They should have waited until much later to reveal that visitors had been to earth for the past few decades. It would have been a much bigger shock if down the road someone like Elizabeth Mitchell's character turns out to be a visitor instead of a natural human.

And again with the sexual attraction to the aliens. It's laughable at this point. I don't care if spitting images of the Olson twins step naked out of a flying saucer...I won't be going anywhere near them. Why? Because they came out of a flying saucer and they aren't human. The manipulation of humans by the visitors, using the power of seduction, is terrible writing.

Why do the visitors need to seduce high school aged kids to recruit young members? They said that they have the technology to cure HIV-AIDS, cancer, regenerate flesh and brain tissue. Those medical advancements aren't enough to generate a large following of the human race? We have to reduce the writing down to such a basic level?

In 'District 9', sex with the aliens is considered barbaric and disgusting, and is used as a political weapon to discredit the main character in the media. The main character in D9 gets accused publicly of having sex with an alien. The news turns him into the biggest outcast, the lowest rung of society, filth. In 'V' it's perfectly alright to bang our extraterrestrial planetary house guests.

Another plot hole. Why have no scientists attempted to X-Ray, dissect, MRI scan, or biologically or chemically analyze the visitors. When we discover a new species in the wild what is the first thing we do? We analyze the organism in every way that we can. We classify its every aspect. Does it have nictitating membranes, sexual organs, ampullae of Lorenzini, bipedal movement, fins? We would have every top scientist pouring over information about the visitors.

Even a cursory evaluation of the visitors would reveal that they have seemingly reptilian flesh and are only appearing to be human.

How is it that the visitors can travel across the galaxy, learn everything about human technology, history, culture, language, and even replicate our skin and appearance perfectly...yet they cannot design a robotic floating orb that takes clear pictures that aren't blurry?

They have a floating mechanism, that doubles as a weapon, and a communication device capable of video and still imaging, yet the pictures that it takes are so blurry that the visitors can't even recognize a face.

The visitors tapped the payphone outside of the warehouse. They know that the main character is an FBI agent who is paired with an undercover visitor. They've probably recorded her voice hundreds if not thousands of times. But they can't recognize her over the wire from the payphone? They should have the most sophisticated voice recognition software on the planet.

Also that floating orb, how does it break so easily? Realistically it should be made out of the same material as the visitors' spaceships are. Those ships are capable of orbital reentry, interstellar travel speeds, and (if based on the original V series) capable of withstanding heavy impact artillery from other militant alien races. But that floating orb device wasn't capable of withstanding a weak swing of a hunk of metal? My cell phone could have survived that swing.

Anyways, I'll always be loyal to ABC, so I hope this series makes a lot of money for the company and the local news ratings go up everywhere. But down the road this won't be a series that anyone will refer to as a classic nor even above average in my opinion.

 

I checked the 1st ep and it's pretty cool~