They look like us. And they have a plan…No, it’s not Cylons this time, it’s the V’s.With everything old being new again it’s hard to surprise. Easy to disappoint: there are plans for a Battlestar Galactica movie, but it won’t be based on the reimagined TV series; it’ll be based on the original series. (Yeah, I said “What the frak?” too.) So when ABC deiced to revive the old NBC series V (Tuesdays, 8 PM ET) they did something pretty smart. They didn’t pretend the original series, and everything that happened between then and now, never happened.“What were you doing when JFK was assassinated?” they ask those old enough to remember the 1983 series. “What were you doing on 9/11?” they ask those born sometime after either preceding event. Then they arrive, in ships that make the ground shake like when the aliens drove over the Moon in Independence Day (which a bystander references). Huge spaceships appear over major cities around the world and a bright, perky, stylish alien apologizes for any difficulties their arrival may have caused; they were just passing through the neighborhood and stopped by to borrow something we just happen to have lying around that they need. They’ll be happy to trade some of their technology for it.
Most of the planet is excited, entranced, by the Visitors (the V’s, as they come to be called), but not everyone shares this enthusiasm, like a priest wonders just how they fit into God’s plan and an FBI agent who notices that activity among terrorist groups around the world stop—except for one group…So, we know from the original series the Visitors are really reptiles who want to eat us—and we discover that in the first hour. We also learn they’re like those fire spotters who set blazes just to report them: they’ve been here for a long time and are responsible for just about everything bad that’s happened to us. And they have a plan…So other than explaining the previous White House administration, the new V (V 2.0?) is a rather clever, subtle mash up of The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (they could be anyone, anywhere!), any number of cop shows, and the original series. The pilot is promising, but long term success will depend on how long the V’s continue to surprise the other V’s: their Victims, and the Viewers.
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