I’ve watched “V” a few times, but just can’t really get into it. I agree with Jonah about all the annoying things about it, but to me the most egregious sin is that it achieves the amazing feat of making Morena Baccarin not all that attractive. And not just because (or even because — that can actually be kind of hot) of the evil thing. Oh, and on his Flash Forward comments (I’ve never seen the show, so can’t miss it), is it a job requirement of Hollywood writers that they be historical ignorami?
22 thoughts on “To V, Or Not To V”
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As egregious a sin as that is, the fact that it’s pure cargo cult sci-fi make it fail automatically. The original mini was original, metaphorical and relevant to its time (complete with old Jewish man listening to klesmer while V stormtroopers bust in, just in case you needed a 2×4 across the head to “get it”.)
The new aliens are just suckering humans with the promise of free universal health care…oh wait…
Anywho, I’m following it on Hulu not because it’s good, but only to “know what’s in it.” It’s sterile by-the-numbers plot is thoroughly un-engaging.
I watch every episode, but I can’t stand it.
They make Baccarin look horrible. In those outfits with the short hair it makes her head look far too small for her body.
A female friend said about Anna: she looks like a lizard.
( She said this not knowing they were lizards underneath the skin.)
I think the reptilian look/attitude is deliberate, but you’d think genre-savvy aliens would know better. I mean, even Obama at least tries, and that’s a big f@#*ing deal!
N**e of t*e m****e l****rs m****r. We r**d t*e f***t a*d l**t o**y.
I have watched about 3 or 4 episodes of “V” and thought Anna was a computer-generated character, like the ones in Avatar. It was later that I found out that Anna is played by a real actress.
The pictures that come up from a google search of Baccarin show an attractive and totally different looking lady than what she looks like in “V”. She looks downright freaky in “V”.
In “V”, she has those dead-pan eyes that remind me of Sean Young in Bladerunner.
It’s sterile by-the-numbers plot is thoroughly un-engaging.
That’s my problem with it. As you say, the original was, um, original. This new version is a newer veneer on the original story, except the flow is shallow and rapid. Heck, if you put locks on the mothership, that might slow the plot. The original seemed to give more time to allow you to feel a little sympathy for the Visitors. You might even think, in the original, the resistance were acting a bit xenophobic.
she looks like a lizard.
I always thought that was the point of her appearance, thus it never bothered. I thought the daughter was fine enough eye candy.
Yeah, supergirl is hot, and the cheezy excuse they gave her to shed her jumpsuit is reminiscent of the “decontamination” scene (complete with warming body lotion) in Enterprise with T’Pol. I stopped watching then, and I think that was like their first episode.
Well, some of us are old enough to remember the 1980’s version of this show, and, like the original Battlestar Galactica vs the new version, there has definitely been an improvement in the “reboot”.
I agree Baccarin is intended to look like an unemotional sociopathic lizard in human skin. Tonites episode she got her freak on tho and expressed emotions when the 5th column killed off the entire nest of eggs of her soldier children. Even her security chief remarked that she “must have experienced her first…. human.. emotion” (V’s who have emotions are 5th column recruits/members, one of whom is Anna’s daughter).
Personally I think people who hate this show generally do so because they are really lizard people themselves and are pissed at the idea of the secret getting out .
From what I’ve seen of the old BSG, I take it as then-contemporary metaphor of Bonanza, USA versus the Evil USSR of Cylons! Pew Pew Pew! Fair enough. The new BSG, in the parts where it was good, was metaphorical of Jihadi Cylons are blowing-up Caprica, New York and infiltrating the fleet through terrorist cells.
The big improvement of the newer version was EJO playing the role of an aging baby-boomer/battleship who drinks like a fish. That was almost dwarfed by the sheer letdown of literal “deus ex machina” at the end of the final season.
Jonah’s criticisms are mostly valid but were you to incorporate every change he lists and take them to their logical conclusion the show would not have lasted past it’s first episode, as the “V’s” would have conquered earth in about 5 minutes.
But I do have a couple of issues with the show to add: why do V’s refer to themselves as V’s? Why don’t V’s in some part of the inner workings of the ship go about their day without a human suit, why don’t we ever see them “au naturel”?
Even with it’s obvious shortcomings I do manage to enjoy the show via a method others should try, “suspension of disbelief”.
If I’m recalling this right, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle write of working on the original script for the original V. Most of their ideas were rejected immediately and their work on V ended long before the final version was produced. Niven later commented that the entire premise made no sense: Aliens looking for water fly past the Kuiper belt, past Saturn’s rings, past the entire outer solar system, and then drop down into an inconvenient gravity well…..
“Aliens looking for water fly past the Kuiper belt, past Saturn’s rings, past the entire outer solar system, and then drop down into an inconvenient gravity well…..”
Well at least they weren’t as stupid as the aliens in “Signs”, who though allergic to water, decided that invading a planet 2/3rds covered with the stuff was a REALLY GREAT IDEA.
It makes at least as much sense as robots in The Matrix using humans as a power source in defiance of all thermodynamics.
Heh, I thought you were talking about V for Vendetta for a while there, and was wondering what you were on about.
Titus, no-one ever said the machines were smart. I figured they were morons from the fact that they never got off this backwards planet and left the humans to their folly.
They never left this backward planet because the machines read a blog somewhere that said leaving earth wasn’t economical and believed it.
“Aliens looking for water fly past the Kuiper belt, past Saturn’s rings, past the entire outer solar system, and then drop down into an inconvenient gravity well…..”
The way I see that is that for a species with the spaceflight technology of the V’s the additional effort of passing up all the outlying portions of our solar system and dropping into earths gravity well is the equivalent of humans deciding to walk to the opposite side of the salad bar to fill their plate rather than grabbing what is close/easy.
Cecil, I hate to provide you with a spoiler here, but they eat humans.
zing!
It’s a cookbook!?
Not a spoiler Trent, I’m old enough to have seen the original V series “back in the day”.
I found the reference. The following is from Playgrounds of the Mind by Larry Niven. I believe the following brief excerpt is ok under fair use laws.
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“We got involved in V, too, but just barely. It was a TV series at the time, and already doomed, probably. We weren’t told that. Jerry and I were invited to the office of a guy who had only just been in charge of V.
You’ll remember V. That’s aliens who come from interstellar space to steal Earth’s water, cruising past all the moons of Saturn, where water comes prepackaged and nobody is shooting at them.
The problem with V (as the new producer saw it) was that they never had an alien. They had costumes, they had makeup, they had special effects, but nobody ever set forth to describe a life form (a remarkable insight, placing him far above average for a producer of a television series).
The studios has already discarded the matter of the water. The question remained: with several worlds under their control, what *do* the Visitors want from Earth?
I took the position that they are dinosaurs.
Assume an intelligent species of dinosaur. When the Dinosaur Killer asteroid was sighted, some of them escaped. Their descendants don’t remember this. They only know that Earth feels good. The day is the right length, the air smells right, the taste of the water has character.
Picture the episode in which archaelogists find traces of Visitor bones in the Cretaceous clay. What a publicity coup for the Visitors! Now they can claim the Earth not by force of arms but by prior right! They’ll turn it into a major publicity push…
And they will not instantly understand why their human audience is giggling. But dinosaurs are big, stupid creatures with brains the size of walnuts.
And nobody ever called us back.
It’s a cookbook!? …with title: “To serve man.” [cue twilight zone music]
No surprise that Niven’s idea is actually much better. That would actually require American viewers to think, and that might hurt ratings and revenue.
Reminds me of an old article Asimov wrote named, “Why I Can’t Write for TV,” in which he totally pulverizes the TV show “Alf” with a dry sarcastic sledgehammer. Classic.