Thoughts on “V” (The Original Series)

For the purposes of the article, V The Original Series (V-OS) includes V The Final Battle (V-TFB). The two were not a separate series even though they are sold separately–there are no drastic changes in characters or the plot between them.

V was biggest television event of my childhood. This week I watched V-OS & V-TFB for the first time since they originally aired & I still loved them. Surprisingly, most of the special effects held up pretty well; they were not fantastic by today’s standards, but they did not ruin the movie. I only laughed about the effects once; that was when the lizard baby popped its head out of the human mother’s stomach.

VOS was two, about 2-hour episodes. VTFB was three, about 2-hour episodes. The series starts strong & continues strong for the first two episodes of V-TFB. However, any viewer can tell that something happened in the course of V-TFB–something changed. The source of the change was the mid-production V-TFB departure of the V-OS director Kenneth Johnson. My perception was that without Johnson, the people who took the reigns hurried the series to a conclusion.

An abbreviated synopsis of the series: Aliens (called Visitors) show up–50 motherships hover over major cities around the world. Our fighter jets cannot approach them & their missiles are simply lead astray when the motherships are fired upon. The Visitors make contact, they look just like humans & their supreme commander (who calls himself John because their alien names are too hard to pronounce) addresses the world from the top of the UN building in New York. They have come in peace & even invite a few lucky journalists aboard a mothership. While aboard the mothership, a journalist named Mike Donavon discovers the Visitors are reptilians in disguise. On a different covert trip to a mothership, Mike discovers that the Visitors are going to suck the Earth dry; they want our water & store humans for food. Some humans will be used as janissaries for the Visitor’s war against another alien race.

The Visitors gradually turn to totalitarian rule of humans (with the help of the human establishment)–first they gain control of all media. A human female is impregnated by a Visitor before she was aware they were reptilians. She has twins (kind of)–one human baby with a forked lizard tongue & a full lizard baby. The full lizard baby only lives a few days. The human resistance discovers that the lizard baby was killed by a new form of bacteria which is not harmful to humans. The humans harvest the bacteria & spread it by hot air balloons throughout the atmosphere. Soon the whole planet will be poison to the Visitors & they leave. BTW, if the Visitors destroy the hot air balloons, the bacteria spreads anyway from the explosion. There are a few other elements to the series that I will cover later in the article.

The beginning of the show is fantastic. The arrival of the Visitors is presented more like a news documentary & several of our main characters are in front of their television sets as it plays out. John has a second in command named Diana. She is a scientist & amongst other things is in charge of Visitor psyops. Due to the growing resistance, she slips from second-in-command because the priority becomes security & that is not her expertise.

Diana

Diana was a very strong character & was critical to the show’s success. As the series progresses, we find out the alien leadership is just as (if not more) petty & treacherous than humans despite being more technological advanced. She was a great casting choice as a reptilian from the start due to her striking real human beauty.  If the viewer suspends his disbelief; her beauty is a conflict–she is hot, but actually a reptile. Diana appoints a human news reporter named Kristine to be the Visitor’s media mouthpiece. Diana is sensual towards Kristine as in touchy-feely–it is an inference. Diana makes the most of her false human beauty & can manipulate both men & women. When the resistance wreaks more havoc, the Visitors send a security commander & the power-hungry Diana is relegated back to a science-only role. Enter Pamela:

Pamela 

Pamela is outwardly sexy Visitor security commander & has a British (maybe Aussie) accent. The tension between Pamela & Diana is resolved too quickly (Diana shoots her). Another two hour episode would have produced what should have been a further expanding tension. Although I love that aspect of the series, that was also where it went awry. At this point in the series, the human story lines were neglected or hurried in favour of the Visitor’s internal conflicts.

The Visitors essentially enacted the United Nations globalization plan we know today. Instead of Co-exist posters, they promote ‘Friendship is Universal’ propaganda. There are a plethora of human race traitors & they comprise a majority of the establishment. This is just like people who betray their own country, kinsman & culture for the no-borders agenda.

The Kenneth Johnson direction of the series, from my estimation, uses the Visitors as an allegory for the UN. The series initially had a darker tone & the primary focus was on the compromised media & the Visitor’s (The UN’s) use of propaganda. For instance, in the first episode of V-TBF the resistance infiltrates a Visitor-media event & they tear off John’s fake human face on national TV.

The Visitors immediately attempt to have their human mouthpiece Kristine announce that the whole thing was fraud/conspiracy conducted by terrorists. She does not go along with it & is dispatched with. John’s human disguise is repaired & the Visitor’s traitor human media (at gunpoint) reshoots his speech along with the claim that it was the original footage. That is the last of the propaganda angle in the series. The Visitor’s went through the trouble of reshooting the sequence; therefore, the angle should not have been abandoned. In the above screenshot, we see the co-star of the series–Juliet:

Juliet 

Juliet (pictured in the background per a reflection) was captured and suffered through Diana’s conversion therapy. The Visitors brainwash human resistors. Juliet was the leader of the resistance & Mike Donavon’s girlfriend. After she was rescued, once again an angle that should have produced more tension & conflict was resolved too quickly. Mike Donavon instantly declared that she was okay. The only struggle indicated was that she was right handed, but after the therapy she wanted to use her left hand.

At the end of V-TBF, the resistance along with the Fifth Column (aliens who betrayed the aliens) take over the Los Angeles mothership control room. Diana used telepathy acquired via the conversion therapy to command Juliet to freeze, which allowed Diana to escape the control room. Juliet could have had a greater psychotic struggle throughout. Diana could have used the telepathy earlier, Juliet could have flat out betrayed the resistance at one point & became a uniformed lackey of Diana for a period of time. Instead of developing that angle, the depth & focus was directed only at the Visitor’s internal struggles.

There are several other great angles to the series; Donavon’s mother is high ranking human race traitor, there is another human race traitor that mirrors the Hitler youth, there is a misguided Catholic priest & the aforementioned gal with the alien babies. The series is still well-worth watching, but this is my primary warning:

The exposition & rising action, to include several rib plots, are fantastic. Unfortunately, the falling action & resolution are like a sudden stock market crash. Kenneth Johnson leaving mid-production of V-TFB probably caused a few rib plots to be introduced too late in the hour in respect to the spine plot. The change of directors disrupted the continuity of the series. The spine plot & a few earlier rib plots had reached their climax when a few more interesting rib plots were introduced that could have been expanded upon. The fresh rib-plots were prematurely terminated as a result of the spine plot’s progress.

Despite the early decapitation of some rising action involving fresher rib-plots, there was only one truly disappointing element in the series. The lizard-tongue human baby grew at an exponential rate & was brought into the custody of Diana via the Catholic Priest. By delivering the hybrid child, the priest was hoping to convince her that eating humans was cannibalism (another quickly terminated angle). The hybrid-baby was used as a cop-out for part of the resolution. What the hybrid-baby did to save the day introduced a completely different tone than that of the rest of the series. It was as if a completely different movie invaded V for that sequence. Perhaps the UN forced the network in that direction–who else could have thought the scene was a good idea?

So V changing directors mid-stream was a mistake. So V was hurried to a conclusion despite its huge popularity; another mistake. Even so, these items are not so much as drawbacks as they are a testament to how great the series was & further more, what it could have been.