When I was growing up in the ‘80s, NBC ran a mini-series called “V”, about aliens coming to earth in peace, then slaughtering the humans as food. It was so successful that there was a second mini-series called “V: The final Battle” and a regular weekly series followed.
At the time, “V” (in all of it’s incarnations) was bizarrely intriguing. It was a modern-day telling of Germany under the Third Reich, but on a global scale. Instead of Nazis there were aliens, and the Hitler of the Aliens was Diana, ruler and destroyer of the planet. And I was a fan.
A BIG fan! I never missed a single second of either mini-series or the weekly series. It was the be-all-end-all of television shows for me.
Watching the Resistance battle the Aliens, watching as Robin Maxwell gave birth to twins, one of which was a green alien baby that crawled out of the womb on its own, watching the plots and conspiracies as they unfolded, watching the evil Diana foil the Resistance, it all just seemed so fantastic to me.
But what can I say, I was a kid when “V” aired and I was easily impressed.
In the 2+ decades since “V” was shown, technology has changed and so with it the expectations of what science fiction should be and look like. Watching the ‘80s version of “V” today is like watching the original Flash Gordon of the ‘30s after seeing the original release of “Star Wars.”
The special effects, which I remembered being so cool when I was a kid, now look cheesy compared to what we are used to seeing in today’s world. The acting, which was so serious in my youth, is now campy beyond imagination. While the story itself holds water, watching it now I can come up with 100 ways of doing it better than the approach taken back then.
And it seems I am not alone in thinking that way.
ABC has decided that it is time to take the “V” story and remodel it for a more modern world, and watching the preview video, I have to say I am once again seriously impressed!
The mother ships have a new design. No longer are they just round discs hanging in the air. There is an Art Deco/geometric/organic design about the ABC version. And the shuttles no longer have the lightweight white plastic look box look of the ‘80s. Now they are grey metal, and look much larger and more substantial on screen.
And while the original story dealt with scientists who discover the truth about the aliens, it seems that in this new series religion and the FBI play a much larger role. I am getting that impression from the preview clip alone, so I will have to wait until it arrives to find out exactly what really happens.
Watching the preview I did have one small complaint: the arrival.
The opening scenes of the preview are those of the unseen arrival of the aliens, and it looked as if it were copied directly from the movie Independence Day: from the shaking houses/rooms, to the people running into the street to see what’s going on, to the shadow moving across an aerial shot of a city, to the news reporter on a TV saying there is no clue what’s really happening. While it was well done, it still smacked of rip-off.
I wanted to embed the video into this post so you could see it, but the embed code that ABC provides does not work properly, so click this link to watch it in a new window.
While ABC does not reveal exactly when “V” is going to be aired (just says it’s a mid-season show), IMDB.com is claiming that it will start airing in February 2010. Which means in approximately 8 months from now. Can’t wait to see how good, or bad, this re-visioning of a classic ends up being.
UPDATE
After posting I was able to get the embedded video to work. You can see it below.
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