Scratch from your minds images of gaudy balloons throwing powdered red stuff into the clear blue skies of California. Cross out images of Robert Englund calling “Mouuusey! Where are you Mousey?” Forget those special effects that were not very special or effective. Welcome in ‘V’ – the re-imagining.
A “Re-imagining” is a comparative newcomer to the world of TV and I first heard the word being used in relation to Battlestar Galactica. It’s not a repeat and not a re-make. It contains the essence of the original series, usually the same framework which the same\similar characters hang from. Then once it has us hooked (or re-hooked), it takes us to places where the original did not go.
The opening of the much awaited pilot episode of V begins with a black screen that slowly lightens. “Where were you when JFK was assassinated?” “Where were you on 911?" “Where were you this morning?” they ask us.
So, they are engaging with me, “The Viewer”, directly. The tone is set, as is the importance of their show’s place in our, real, world - associating the forthcoming events with those of historical importance, lends gravitas to the show and the events we are about to witness.
There is a deep rumbling and clinking of glass and china tableware, we meet our heroine Erica Evans (played by Elizabeth Mitchell, and I know that here on Spoiler TV you will all know what else she has been in!). She is asleep, FBI badge lying open on the nightstand. Erica opens her eyes, the camera cuts to the international TV show sign for shaking earth – the glass of moving water.
Erica’s son Tyler is in hospital after staying out all night with his friend, Brandon. He is in big trouble.
Across town, Father Jack (Joel Gretsch) opens his church doors, greeting Roy, a wheel chair bound homeless man, on the steps outside.
Ryan Nichols, played by Morris Chestnut (top name!), is buying an engagement ring for his girlfriend Valerie Stevens (Lourdes Benedicto), who meanwhile, is at home, studying.
The newsreader, Chad Decker (Scott Wolf), is arriving at the studio.
Within the first three minutes, we have been introduced to all our main earthling characters - nice work.
Erica leaves to collect her son from the hospital when the shakes get much worse and things start falling. And by things, I mean symbolic symbols symbolising symbolism, in the form of a large wooden cross with a ceramic Jesus attached, which crashes down from high in the Father Jack’s church balcony, into smithereens on the floor. If you missed it, this is an omen, a portent of doom, it represents the downfall of Christianity that, with the mere concept of their existence, the Visitors, are about to bring with them. I thought this was a slightly heavy-handed metaphor.
A shadow falls across the land. Fighter planes fall from the sky. Despite his mum screaming at him to stay where he is - Tyler gets on his motorbike and turns from dweeb into Power Ranger. 
The Visitors are here. Everyone comes out to watch the ship glides overhead. This ship is an awesome, powerful hulking beast, slow and graceful, designed with smooth curves, and industrial grey in colour. It looks like a fat, armoured, manta ray, with no tail. And mounted guns. And communication masts. And twinkling lights.As the mother ship flies overhead, panic sets in. The Military Police are on the streets controlling the crowds, including Tyler- who has now got off his bike and reverted to lame teenager.
A news report tells us there are 29 ships hovering over the main cities in the world. Unfortunately, they only mention New York, LA for now - and I yearn for the immediate gratification that the sight of alien ships around the world, will bring. It seems they are making me wait. The news item also tells us the fighter planes that fell, experienced full electrical failure (remember this, I think we may need it in the future).
Erica searches frantically for Tyler on the streets below, and whilst the Military Police are distracted, she heads into the no–go area near the Visitor’s ship. Except it isn’t exactly a no-go area - there are hundreds of people milling around, under the armed watch of the Military police. Here, Erica is reunited with her son.
Then, segments of the manta ray open up, and areas of the ship’s shell slide back to reveal a light blue lights underneath. The moving pieces re-arrange themselves. The hull of the ship is a lattice of honeycomb-shaped plates of metal.
Across the underside of the ship, the industrial grey flips over to become field of small, powerfully bright white lights that together become a display for the image of the first Visitor to address the city below, Anna (Morena Baccarin). I have to question at this point, what do the aliens use this function for back home? Who was the alien that thought, this is what a spaceship needs? Anna’s benevolent (or is that malevolent) presence beams down on us and she reassures us, it is all good. As the ships hover over Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Cairo, Anna tells us that they need our water, and a mineral from us, in exchange for their advanced technology. They, of course, come in peace.
The screen goes blank, finally I get my, “alien ship over ‘Big Ben’ and the Thames, London” shot (I can rest easy), and oddly the crowds begin to clap and cheer. This reaction in itself is more unlikely than the presence of any aliens on earth in real life. But it indicates to the viewer that we are in the main, an accepting bunch of innocents who will gladly welcome onto our planet, any alien who says they have just moved here and will be nice and "Oh, and can we just borrow a glass of your water", without a second thought...like lambs to the slaughter. What this really does for the writers is to enable them to set our heroes up as lone cynical warriors in a minority to triumph over and rally against the masses who actually “quite like” the Visitors. Again, not particularly subtle, but I’m still going along for the ride.
Father Jack doesn’t trust the Visitors. He can’t equate the presence of them, with the scriptures. The congregation however has doubled, the Heathens!
FBI Agent Erica Evans doesn’t trust the Visitors. She is concerned that a terrorist cell is planning something whilst our attention is elsewhere.
Lame Tyler thinks it’s cool, but what does he know?
Anna visits the United Nations, and, sounding a touch stalker-ish, tells us she will cherish, nurture and never abandon our ‘friendship’. Tyler develops a worrying crush. As does Chad who flirts mercilessly with Anna as she leaves the UN building. Anna reciprocates, and Chad (heading straight for the Chief of Propaganda role in this New World Order) looks on adoringly. The notion of Alien-Human sex rears its ugly head, and gives me an initial feeling of unease, then curiosity, then doubt, then more curiosity....and then possibly some feelings of guilt and shame. But it’s going to happen. Anna has noticed him.
Within a few weeks, the Alien’s arrival has led to an economic boom. The Visitors can cure some of our ailments (65, no less). Around the world protests and demonstrations are occurring, so we know that not everyone is in favour of the Visitors.
At work, Evans discusses her terrorism case with her FBI partner Dale Maddox (the excellent Alan Tudyk). They take a trip to a silo site on Long Island on the trail of C4 explosives. Whilst searching a tool shack, Erica finds a large trap door in the floor.
The hatch takes Erica and Maddox to a long corridor, a steel tunnel underground. They head in the direction of a light and come to a bare room, in the centre of which is a dead man tied to a chair. The two check the rest of the room, which contains boxes of C4. They establish that their dead man was tortured, and they find high quality, forged documents for a man named Jeffrey Leclair.
Across town, Ryan takes a phone call from an old acquaintance, outside his office. A mysterious figure in a car, Georgie Sutton, asks for his help. Ryan has an interesting past, and there are hints that it is one where he was bad. Whatever it is, he wants his girlfriend\fiancée to know nothing about it.
Meanwhile Tyler and Brandon are caught up in the excitement of the aliens being here and have wangled tickets to see the inside of a Visitors spaceship. The interior space within the ship is large enough to be full of open space and yet densely packed with structures. There are buildings, parks and gardens. There are even trees, proving that trees get everywhere, they probably went into space before we did, are more accomplished space travellers than the aliens and ourselves combined.Tyler and Brandon are met by a pretty, young blond Visitor (Lisa) and Tyler immediately eyes her up. She tries to recruit them to the Peace Ambassador programme, by promising them a tight uniform and the possibility of sex!
Father Jack walks through his new congregation of believers, and finds them wanting. He cautions against trusting the Visitors blindly. Jack’s boss however, believes that the V’s (as they are being called) are part of God’s plan. But are people going to church because they are scared, as Jack believes, or is the fact that people are coming to church at all, evidence of the V’s potentially positive role within Christianity?
Father Jack further suggests that we as a planet are currently vulnerable and therefore open to the aliens taking advantage of us, and it may lead to worship and\or devotion. So he is worried, more so when Roy shows them that the Visitor's medicines have enabled him to walk.
But every show absorbs and emits the cultural predispositions of its time, and as far as re-imaginings go, this one is the most striking. In the original, the V sign was sprayed on a wall as a sign of resistance to the visitors. ‘V’, for victory in the resistance against them, and alluding to the parallels between the Alien invasion to Hitler’s reign in Germany and the Second World War. And that was what made the sign so important, and why it resonated with the audience. Whereas in this version, the first time we see the sign it is being tagged onto a wall by Tyler and Brandon who are laughing about how cool the aliens are “V’s Rule, man!”
Erica finds out about the tagging and in a showdown with her son about it, we find out that Tyler is a disaffected youth, just ripe for indoctrination.
At work, Erica and her partner search the home of the victim they found at the silos, and from his phone, pick up a message about a meeting due to take place. Erica, though Maddox is reluctant, attends.
A severely wounded parishioner finds Father Jack at the church. He tells Jack that the V’s are going to obliterate us and that they injured him on his way to the church. Before he dies, the man gives Jack a package, and sends him on a mission to deliver it.
At the meeting, Erica, leaving Maddox in the car, strides past an armed guard that looks uncannily like Gil Grissom, to find that Father Jack is also there. The leader of the meeting is none other than Ryan’s friend, Georgie Sutton.
Anna gets Chad to interview her, but tells him not to ask questions that may put her in a bad light. Chad initially refuses, but Anna, honing in on Chad’s career ambitions, threatens to cancel the interview with only a few seconds before airtime. So Chad accedes to her demands, and takes the first step to becoming complicit in the alien schemes. Anna (and Morena Baccarin does an excellent job of looking gorgeous and creepy at the same time) gets her chance to expand on what the aliens want to give us, Universal Healthcare.
It has been pointed out in the US media, that this show is a political vehicle, but the subtleties or otherwise of this, may be lost on a non-US audience, or where Obamania is not at high levels. My only current thought on this is that the political elements of the programme were there the first time round too, and if anything were more prevalent, dominant even. And the medium of TV fiction is regularly used as a crucible for tackling political concepts and it is a regular occurrence in the Science Fiction genre, overall. It’s not a bad thing, or ideologically subversive and many shows can be interpreted, obversely, as a critique of the dominant hegemony, too.
But anyway, spliced with excerpts of Anna (whose voice occasionally has an ever-so-slight echo reverberating underneath it) espousing her love of humanity and how good and peaceful the aliens are, Georgie reveals to the meeting that the Vs have been here for years, plotting and planning and positioning themselves into strategic roles within our society. All this to enable a plan that will mean every last one of us is eliminated. (But why?)
Erica listens to Georgie, and demands proof that the aliens are among us, and Father Jack intervenes. The package he was delivering shows Erica’s terrorist suspect Leclair liaising with Marcus, one of Anna’s “diplomats’. With horror, Erica realises that the terrorist cell that she is after is an alien sleeper cell.
So the AA (Anti-Alien!) meeting is over, and like any good meeting it is time for the attendees to mingle and chat, have a cup of tea and a biscuit. Erica and Jack start to talk.
As they do so, a sphere flies into the room and positions itself at head height. Georgie notices its presence and shouts for everyone to duck. All hell breaks loose as the sphere shoots projectiles off in every direction. Figures with knives, axes and automatic weapons, burst into the room, the meeting is under attack! NO! Erica’s partner Maddox is in the room, he attacks her. They fight, but Erica soon wins, with the help of a nearby steel re-bar.
Leaning over Maddox, Erica looks at the wound she has caused, and Tudyk gets the honour of having the first open skin flap shot. Pulling more skin off to reveal the dark green scales underneath, Erica realises that yes, Maddox is a V. They fight one final time, and Maddox is killed. Jack comes over to Erica and pulls her away.Georgie meanwhile is fighting, but all of a sudden, Ryan is there! He came, after all. With some Gong-Fu skills he disables all the attackers, and helps Georgie escape what has become a massacre.
Georgie doesn't understand how the Visitors found out about the meeting. Ryan tries to persuade Georgie that not all Vs are bad, take for example...himself! Yes Ryan is a V too.
Ryan decides to go home to Valerie with the plan of leaving, as it is not safe for her. But Val has found the engagement ring. Rather than leave, Ryan tells her how much he loves her - it’s just a guess, but I don’t think him hiding his real nature is this the ideal basis for a strong, long- lasting relationship. But we shall see.
Jack and Erica continue to chat. Erica decides that the way forward is to build the resistance and recruit more members. Little does she know that at that very moment, her own son is being seduced by the Visitors and has been inaugurated into the Peace Ambassadors...
Overall, yes, I loved it - particularly the strong, well acted, female leads. They have just rushed through the entirety of season one of the original V in one go, but I look forward to the next episode as they start to veer away from our pre-conceptions.
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