V remake episodes 1 and 2

Hollywood's obsession with creating nostalgia-fuelled movies around things people watched/played with during their childhood and teenage years has spread to TV. Be afraid.

Or not. While the craze for movies based on old properties has produced such drivel as the Transformers and GI Joe movies, and seems to have reached it's psychotic apex in the form of the planned Viewmaster movie (no, really), in TV land people are producing remakes that actually make sense, such as an upcoming miniseries based on British mindscrew classic The Prisoner and a modernisation of V, the quality of which will be judged below the jump.



My familiarity with the original consists of knowing that it's about aliens and involves a woman eating a cat, so I won't be comparing this to it's older countrpart.

Episode 01 starts off with your standard "aliens are here" scenario- glasses of water shaking, stuff falling over (why the spaceships cause vibrations strong enough to knock statues from their bases is never explained), shadows falling over buildings, people crowding the streets to watch in awed silence, that sort of thing.The only element missing is some military guy watching a blinking light on a radar screen and expositing about how big the mothership is. The sequence is cliched and predicatable, but damn are the special effects good for a TV series. It's shallow but entertaining, and that's the best way I can think of to describe V as a whole.

The "visitors" as they call themselves come bearing a message of peace and love, explaining via their charismatic leader Anna that they want water and a certain mineral that's abundant on Earth, and that in return they'll share some of their advanced technology with us, such as the ability to cure paralysis and 65 other serious illnesses.

However our protagonist duo, both of whose names I have forgotten, discover that the aliens are actually reptilian monsters planning to destroy humanity. They set off to build up a resistance even as the population of Earth grow increasingly more devoted to the Visitors.

The first 15 minutes or so of V are honestly a bit dissapointing. The arrival of the Visitors feels rushed and seemingly important details are glossed over. Why does no one wonder wonder why they look human? What about the fighter jet they accidentally destroyed- shouldn't that have triggered a counter attack? Anna has a meeting with the UN- how does that go down? Generally I like to keep stories away from presidents and military leaders, and V does an admirable job of focusng on ordinary people (take note disaster movie writers), but some insight into the interaction between the Vs and world leaders would have been good.

Once the real intentions of the Visitors become known things kick into high gear, with our protagonists being rudely awakened to reality in the most direct way possible. The fallout from this, with Female FBI Agent and Priest Who Looks Like Becker suddenly knowing that they can't trust anyone, is effective at raising a sense of tension and hopelessness, as the Visitors are everywhere and their plans seem impossible to stop.

By far the best of the interweving plotlines (thankfully kept to a small number at this point) concerns a well known news presenter/ talk show host who is chosen by the Visitors to be their representative. However upon interviewing Anna it turns out they really want him to be their mouthpiece, never asking questions that could "cast them in a negative light". Forced to choose between his journalistic ethics and his career, he's obviously heading towards being an unwitting pawn in the takeover of Earth. At the same time, he clearly knows there's something wrong and seems to be trying to engage in a battle of wits with Anna. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this plot line pans out.

The Visitors themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. I like that there's none of the cliched "what is this rock and roll you speak of" portrayal of the aliens as clueless space tourists- Anna shows herself to be pretty well versed in human culture, even more so than one of her direct underlings. And Tylor, FBI Agent's son, meets up with a beautiful female Visitor who has no trouble grasping how to use an iPhone camera, as you would expect of an advanced technological species.

Unfortunately, while the aliens may be refreshingly smart, the humans in this show are pretty idiotic. I mentioned earlier that no one stops to point out that the Visitor's human visages couldn't possibly be their real appearences or to wonder why they're hiding themselves like that, but it goes deeper. Apart from a brief sequence of reporters shouting questions at Anna, no one ever asks the Visitors anything about themselves, their culture or their technology, nor do they speculate on any of those subjects with their friends and family. I'm fairly certain I could easily come up with 100 questions, at least, I'd have for an intelligent alien, yet even when Mr. News Presenter Guy has the chance to ask Anna anything that won't make them look bad, all he can think of are bland questions about what her home planet is like. Not, say "isn't it a bit of coincidence that you can breathe in our atmosphere? What's your genetic code made of? What's your native language? How the hell do you look human?"

I'm sorry if I seem to be fixating on that one, but come on.

Two other somewhat dissapointing aspects are the alien's appearence and the setting. Underneath their human disguises the Visitors look like humanoid reptiles. Isn't that a little..... shallow? Wouldn't it be more interesting if the actually did look beautiful, or at least not repulsive, in their true forms? Why do the evil aliens always have to be ugly (see: every goddamn FPS ever. More on this later).

As for the setting, the Visitors have a mothership over every major city in the world, but all of the characters live in Manhatten- apart from some brief snippets of Anna communicating with other countries there's little indication of the global scale of events. I can understand why this was done- the series must have been expensive enough without shooting in multiple countries- but I really hope the resistance isn't based entirely in America.