Battlestar Gallactica fan shockingly enjoys new V reboot

Battlestar Gallactica fan shockingly enjoys new V reboot

The new reboot of the 1983 mini-series (and subsequent failed weekly series) V has been fraught with problems in development. Show runners have left, scripts have been tossed, it has gone on production hiatus twice, and now ABC plans to run 4 episodes in November, wait 3 months, and then show another 4 in March. Ostensibly this is to avoid the American Idol Juggernaut of Crap and the Winter Olympics. But really it has more to do with the fact that ABC hasn’t been able to successfully keep a science-fiction show afloat since they premiered LOST 6 years ago. Quality shows like Pushing Daisies and Invasion have come and gone despite being critically acclaimed. And who can forget (or even remember) Daybreak, The Nine, and the likely soon to join them FlashForward?

 

Let’s face it. LOST was an anomaly. A lighting-in-a-bottle mix of intriguing premise, good cast, and beautiful location. For anyone that has never seen LOST on an HD set I feel sorry for you. The show is easily one of the most beautiful and lush ever put on television and I’m sure more than a few viewers tunes in for the beautiful people and island setting as much as the twisting storylines.

 

All this brings me to last night’s premiere of V. With so much negative publicity swirling around the show, I was surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did. Full disclosure, I was a HUGE fan of V when it came out in 1983. I don’t think you can show me a 10 year old boy (or girl for those sci-fi inclined) that wasn’t. The mix of drama and adventure was fun, and it wasn’t until years later I learned it was all an allegory for Nazi occupied Eastern Europe. For me, it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen on television. I have revisited it a few times over the years, most recently on Sunday when SyFy ran the entire mini-series. I caught about 3 hours of it and was struck by a couple of things:

 

1)       The show looks surprisingly good for being 26 years old.

2)       There was some atrocious acting on display.

3)       Marc Singer didn’t own any shirts that buttoned to his neck.

4)       Michael Ironside remains freaking awesome.

 

Yes, as an adult viewer the allegorical aspects are a bit heavy handed. And there are actors that are just truly, awfully, horrible at acting. But it had its share of great scenes and was a lot smarter than most network fare, especially in the sci-fi realm.

 

So the new series has some big shoes to fill, and I was curious what would be jettisoned from the old series. Short answer: pretty much everything. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

 

The pilot starts as the Visitors (shortened to V almost immediately, reflecting our culture’s desire to shorten everything into bite sized easily digestible nuggets of information) first arrive in 36 massive ships and hover over the largest cities on Earth. The action focuses in New York City as people gather in the streets to stare in awe at the spaceships. The bottom of the crafts morph and become a gigantic screen, revealing the face of Anna (Morena Baccarin), the Visitor’s Supreme Leader. She simulcasts worldwide that the

aliens come in peace and wish to trade our resources for their medical technology and scientific advances. The New York crowd breaks into applause and Anna says there will be meetings with world leaders and further announcements coming.

 

At that point the show jumps forward 3 weeks and the show goes into overdrive as we begin following a few different plot threads. The main one concerns FBI Agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) as she tries to track a terrorist cell that has gone very active since the Visitors arrived. She is somewhat suspicious of the V’s motives, and is very concerned when her son becomes obsessed with V culture and starts tagging walls with the V symbol, supposedly being urged on by pro-V websites. Meanwhile, Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut) is trying to bury his shady past and live quietly with his girlfriend, only to be hounded back into service by a conspiracy theorist. Scott Wolf plays Chad Decker, an ambitious anchorman that is drafted into service to become the V mouthpiece for the world. Then there is the doubting priest (Joel Gretsch), who does not share his superior’s enthusiasm for the aliens’ arrival.

 

All of this is exposition, and it moves very quickly and makes for a very swift pilot. The episode feels rushed, but I can understand the choices made to get to the meat of the show as quickly as possible. There are very few science fiction fans that don’t know the premise of the original V. What the reboot does well is blow past what we already know will be eventually revealed – namely that the Visitors are actually reptilian, they wear human disguises, and are here for a much darker purpose – and start dropping bombshells quickly. It turns out that the Visitors have been here for quite some time, quietly manipulating world events from the top of the ladder, and all of your conspiracy theories are true. In essence, balloon boy’s dad was right on.

 

The dialogue and situations are rote, but the acting is solid. Of special note, Elizabeth Mitchell makes the most of her clichéd scenes and shows the dramatic chops that have always simmered below the surface on LOST. Morena Baccarin pulls a 180 from the warm Inara Serra on Firefly to the cold and otherworldly Anna. Her watchful impassiveness in a couple of scenes truly do bring to mind the cold stare of a reptile.

 

Some critics have faulted the show for its possible allegorical significance to the Obama administration. One part in particular is when Anna says that the V intend to grant universal healthcare to all of humanity. Chad meets this line with some incredulity and the Left have immediately pounced on this as evidence of a Far Right agenda against the Obama healthcare tax, I mean plan. After watching the show I think being told by an alien race that they are going to take care of all of your healthcare needs SHOULD be met with some skepticism and astonishment.

 

Further, the public begins trusting the Visitors almost immediately, another point critics are finding fault with. Let’s be blunt, the world is in total shit crisis right now. If an alien race showed up, had a leader as hot as Anna, and promised to cure all of our problems I don’t think there would be a big resistance to that. The series takes place right now, in our world, in the middle of a recession and the climate crisis, terrorism, etc. Is it really so hard to make the leap that another species arriving and immediately making claims of saving us would be met with anything other than adoration? Is this a dig at the cult of personality around President Obama? Perhaps. Either way, it’s a valid observation to make.

 

When the episode is over, the true nature of the Visitors is starting to be revealed to our core cast. Some of which we learn our Visitors themselves. This idea of “the enemy looks like us” is nothing new. Battlestar Galactica mined that turf for years. But no one really watched that show outside of a hard core group so maybe it will be fresh again for the masses that tune in. I’m looking forward to seeing where the series is going, and hoping against hope ABC, and an increasingly dunderheaded reality-show-obsessed audience, sticks with it.

Battlestar Gallactica fan shockingly enjoys new V reboot