CULT TV BLOGGING: V: "Pound of Flesh"

Well, I suspect this is going to be my final episode review of the new V series, unless it unexpectedly takes a dramatic upswing in quality.

I'll keep watching for a while longer, but I just don't know that I need to devote space on the blog here to a TV series that is pitched so bloody low. And, I don't see any point in slamming someone else's hard work every single week and wallowing in negativity. I'd rather write about TV shows and movies I actually do like.

But okay, for the record, "Pound of Flesh" involves, primarily, the development of the Fifth Column. Turns out that these renegade Visitors are mysteriously developing human emotions and more than that, learning to reject Anna's narcotic "bliss." Upset, Anna devises a test (using herself as a baseline) in which she can test the Vs for human emotions. Those that fail the test get skinned.

Meanwhile, Ryan needs phosphorous for his pregnant human girlfriend, and dovetails that personal necessity with a mission to embed a message of resistance ("John May Lives!") in Anna's live, global announcement of the new "Live Aboard" program. In an another subplot. Erica takes her son, Tyler, to go live with his father...Krycek! Actually, it's Nicholas Lea, looking like he hasn't aged a day since The X-Files last aired.

I tried hard to pay attention to all the narrative details of "Pound of Flesh" but I was constantly distracted and rendered aghast by the terrible green-screening and digital sets of the mother ship corridors and chambers. I mean, judging by this episode, V doesn't actually feature any standing sets for the Visitors' headquarters. I was mesmerized as Ryan boarded the Mother ship and obvious matte-lines surrounded him for minute after minute. At the very least, I suppose this approach saves money, but visually it's dreadful.

Last week I noted that Erica was beginning to annoy me, and this week I have to say the same for Ryan. Ryan (Morris Chestnut) is supposed to be one tough reptile. I mean, he's been living among the human race in secret for years, even developing a steady relationship with a human female. He must be one hell of an infiltrator, right? Well, not according to "Pound of Flesh," during which -- both times at the Visitor checkpoint; boarding and leaving the Mother ship -- he is recognized by Vs as appearing out-of-place. Go back and watch those scenes: for some reason Chestnut plays it like he's on the verge of chewing his fingernails off. He looks totally suspicious and out-of-place, when, as a long-standing undercover agent, he should be cool as a cucumber. It's an odd acting choice, and makes no sense given the character's history under "deep cover."

Then there's Georgie, who impulsively decides, because Ryan has been on the mother ship for a few hours, to mount a bloody rescue. So he boards the ship, stabs a Visitor in the back, and promptly gets apprehended by the Vs. Now, this opens up whole worlds of problems. First, and again, V plays the Resistance fighters as impulsive nutcases who threaten the very movement by their irrationality and quick-action. Does Georgie think, for a minute, that the Visitors won't be able to probe his mind, or torture him for information about his fellow rebels?

I shouldn't be too hard on Georgie. Given Ryan's inexplicably twitchy behavior on the Mother ship -- in what should have been an easy mission for a deep-cover agent -- I guess Georgie really did need to do some rescuing. But now, everyone needs to go back aboard the Mother ship to rescue him. D'oh!

I also have some difficulty with the utter lameness of the embedded message that sabotages Anna. "John May lives?" To the human masses, that mean absolutely nada. Other embedded messages that would have been more effective: "The Vs are lying." "The Vs are Reptiles." "Don't Trust Them!" or even "Anna is a Socialist." The Resistance members said it themselves: they had this one opportunity to surprise Anna and send a message to the people of the world. They chose to direct their message only at The Fifth Column Members (the only people who know who the heck John May is). But, it seems to me, if they had sent a message like one of the ones I suggested above, the Fifth Column would still know something was up, and the sound-byte would have had the added benefit of also arousing human suspicions.

But again, I have found that I can't watch V with an engaged mind, because nothing about the series stands up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny. Last week, in the comments section here, we all noted the show seemed geared toward ten year-olds. But I think that assessment is too generous by four or five years.

Sayonara, Anna...enjoy your invasion.

CULT TV BLOGGING: V: "Welcome to the War"

ABC's re-imagined V returned with a new episode on Tuesday, after an hiatus of several months. When last I wrote about V here, I felt it was showing some signs of improvement after a diffident start. Following last night's show, Scott Rosenbaum's "Welcome to the War," however, I'm not so sure anymore. In other words, the series -- for all its admittedly interesting moments -- is still packed with infuriating contrivances and logical fallacies that more careful writers would avoid like the plague.

"Welcome to the War" (directed by Yves Simoneau) opens with an assassination attempt on Erica's life by the Visitor who was guarding the warehouse she blew up in previous episode. Erica, a mere human, successfully beats the alien warrior in brutal one-on-one combat with knives. We see a flash of the guard's reptilian skin here too, but once more, Erica doesn't think about dragging the alien's ass to the FBI labs, where her superiors can see that the Visitors are reptilian liars. Does she really distrust her superiors -- fellow humans and fellow Americans -- this much? That she wouldn't at least try to bring them in to the resistance?

Erica also doesn't even stop to photograph the alien body (of reptilian nature) so she can keep a record of the alien physiology/nature for herself (as exculpatory evidence in the event she is framed). Nope. It seems Erica is all about planning for the future...except when it actually comes to planning for the future. How about taking the corpse to a physician she trusts in the FBI and having a full autopsy and biological analysis run? So she can have a better understanding of her enemy?

Erica is quickly becoming a character I deeply, vehemently dislike. In this episode Erica projects a lot of swagger, but not much by way of brains. Her son, Tyler, is aboard the alien ship, and has told her himself that he will be home by dinner. Yet Erica nonetheless spends the entire episode in a rage, shouting "She's [Anna] got my son!" and threatening to kill (in her words) "the bitch." Yes, Anna has her son...for the moment. But is this character really that impulsive, that stupid, that she thinks she can raid the mother ship -- by herself -- and free her son from the technologically-advanced aliens? If so, she's the wrong woman to be leading a secret resistance, that's for sure. I get that the series is forging a "Battle of the Mothers" between Anna and Erica, but do the writers need to make Erica so unrelentingly dumb?

The contrivances really stack up in "Welcome to the War." The Visitors frame a man named Kyle Hobbes for the bombing of their warehouse (where their R6 compound was destroyed). They do so by creating a computer-generated image of the warehouse before the explosion, right down to Hobbes' fingerprints on the explosive device. This is indeed amazing futuristic technology, but no one in the F.B.I. seems to remember that extra-terrestrial, unexplained technology is not exactly admissible in our American legal system. No matter, these agents just take the aliens' word -- using never-before-seen, unexplained alien technology as their evidence -- without a second thought. If these guys actually caught Hobbes, he'd walk out of jail in a day because the evidence against him is alien malarkey, or at the very least untested in the legal system.

Realizing that Hobbes could be a valuable ally, Erica then sets off to find the mercenary/terrorist before the F.B.I does. Now remember, this Hobbes guy is an absolute master, a culprit whose name is listed on multiple "ten most wanted lists" according to Erica herself, and the F.B.I. has never been able to catch him. Well, amazingly, Erica apprehends Hobbes herself the very afternoon the Visitors frame him for the warehouse crime.

Sure, she got Hobbes' address from her turncoat partner's secret files, but this is still a huge contrivance. First, that Hobbes would still be living at an old address (it's been at least a few days since her partner died; and likely weeks since he was "observing" Hobbes). And second, that Hobbes would actually be there at the exact moment Erica showed up. And third, that he would be so easily apprehended. I mean, he's there all by himself. Does he "build armies" all by his lonesome? Not a soul to watch his back?

And again, V does something stupid. In Hobbes' hideout, we see that he has all the exits and entrances to his sanctuary scoped out on security cameras. This means, lest we forget, all that footage is being recorded. Well, when Erica spirits Hobbes away, the F.B.I. agents are already entering the building, meaning that they would see Erica and Hobbes on the security cameras exiting the premises (they don't), and furthermore, if they bothered to watch the recorded footage, they'd see Erica and Hobbes fleeing the building together; not to mention conspiring. None of that happens. I don't understand why you would even introduce security cameras into this scene if you didn't intend to follow through with the notion that, uh, the devices actually have a function and use, and the F.B.I. agents are smart enough to figure that out.

Pinpointing the logical fallacies in V episodes is still like shooting fish in a barrel. When the show isn't just being brazenly stupid, it settles for recycling lines from Jurassic Park ("Nature finds a way") and old X-Files plot-lines (the aliens are actually tagging humans, just like the Syndicate/aliens in Carter's series).

The best aspects of "Welcome to the War" all involve the Visitors. We learn from Anna that the Visitors do not attach emotions to memories the way that humans do. This is because, in her words, the aliens have been "designed" to be "efficient." This brings up some fascinating ideas: Designed by whom? Do the Visitors practice eugenics? I like that, finally, we are getting some development of the aliens. I still want to know more about their society and history, though.

Even more fun is Anna's sex scene with a strapping Visitor "volunteer" in the episode's last scene. This moment recalls the high camp of the original series. There, Diana was always bedding her underlings, and often depicted in the afterglow of a sexual romp. One of my favorite lines occurred while Diana was in bed with one of her men. "Peel you another goldfish?" She asked, in all seriousness.

Well, in the new V, there's no time for such silly species-specific small talk. Anna has sex with the poor guy, lays her eggs, and then leaves her partner behind as "nourishment" for her young. It's a pretty awesome scene (even if it ends with terrible CGI). And it shows just how merciless Anna is. Or maybe it's her nature as a lizard...we'll see.

My reservations about the new V continue to linger. The series needs to be smarter. Don't give Erica a George W. Bush-type, cowboy swagger, when she should be a clever chess player. Don't make the F.B.I unrealistically gullible (gee, let's take this alien video at face value and arrest someone...even if it won't stand up in our court system), and don't introduce unnecessary complications into scenes (like a building' security camera perimeter) if you don't know what to do with them.

Welcome to the War, V. Is this all you got?

TV REVIEW: V: "It's Only The Beginning"

Last night, ABC's V actually remembered that it is supposed to be a science fiction series.

The episode, entitled "It's Only The Beginning," featured a tantalizing glimpse of a Visitor narcotic called "Bliss," a view of the mothership engine room and propulsion system, and then climaxed with galactic implications: a cosmic pull-back from Mother Earth. It was a CGI push away from our world, through the asteroid belt, to the fringe of the solar system itself -- a move designed to reveal a fleet of V ships...waiting for the order to colonize.

This final, impressive shot seemed like a spiritual heir (and homage...) to an iconic shot from the original 1980s series: a similar pull-back through orbital space that revealed a slew of Visitor saucers hidden behind our moon. It was a nice, ominous touch.

Contrarily, the episode last night opened with one of those hackneyed "Fourteen Hours Earlier" tricks that is tell-tale sign of post-production editing pickles. I know: I had to deploy the same tired gimmick myself in one episode of The House Between when fashioning a difficult third season episode almost out-of-whole-cloth. But once beyond that underwhelming beginning, this episode moved fast and revealed a lot; much more, in fact, than the previous three episodes combined.

For instance, we saw that the Visitors are equipped with suicide pills that disintegrate their bodies should they be captured or discovered. The suicide pill leaves nothing behind but ash, and is surely an homage to another alien invasion series, the brilliant 1960s endeavor The Invaders. As you may recall from that Roy Thinnes program, David Vincent could never prove his case about the aliens because the corpses of the invaders always went up in smoke and spontaneously combusted before authorities could arrive.

Also -- finally -- this new V acknowledged in "It's Only The Beginning" that "skinning" a Visitor could be the very thing to wake up our people from apparent mindless devotion to our new extra-terrestrial "friends." When this idea is brought up, however, Ryan goes ballistic and tells the Resistance fighters he better not ever hear them talking about such a thing again. The reason, ostensibly, is that the Visitors would retaliate with tremendous force and wipe everybody out. I don't know how believable Ryan's explanation is, but I'm happy to see that the issue was addressed. This was exactly what I was seeking; just a simple acknowledgment that skinning a Visitor on TV was a legitimate battle option.

Last night's show also revived the anti-Obama subtext of the pilot. Ryan -- a secret Visitor -- has a faked birth certificate showing he was born in "Hawaiian Gardens," California. As Orly Taitz will tell you, Obama's purportedly "fake" birth certificate names Hawaii as the state of (fake) birth. Coincidence?

Also, the episode's central plot -- a Visitor scheme to poison our seasonal flu shots with an alien substance called R6 -- clearly parallels the tea bagger furor and resistance over government-mandated flu vaccinations. Again, I don't agree with V's paranoid right-wing view of Obama (I'm still waiting for the FEMA concentration camps -- or at least our taxes to go up -- before I resist). But if you want a timely subtext or context, there it is, enunciated between the lines.

V clearly has a long way to go before it becomes "must see TV," but I do feel the series is clawing itself out of the deep ditch it dug in the first two awful weeks. Personally, I find Erica Mitchell's character, Agent Evans, difficult to warm up to as a lead character. She's more reptilian and cold than the Visitors, to tell you the truth. No wonder her son, Tyler is looking elsewhere for warmth.

Yet last night -- for the first time -- momentum was undeniably building. I actually found myself caring about finding what was going to happen next.

And, of course, that means we must now to wait till March 2010 for the next episode...

TV REVIEW: V: "A Bright New Day"

If you've been keeping up with this blog, you know I'm not the world's most devout fan of the new ABC version of V.

However, last night's episode, "A Bright New Day," was aptly-named by my reckoning. It seemed like the first installment of the series that was at all promising. In other words...a distinct improvement.

I feel this way because some of my gripes about the new series were actually addressed. For instance, instead of merely hearing about the general reaction of Americans to the Visitors, in last night's segment we actually witnessed some of that reaction.

Early in "A Bright New Day," we got a lightning-quick montage of various confused people in the confession booth at St. Josephine's. "Are the Visitors demons or angels?" "Is everything we believe a lie?" "Can they heal my sister's cancer?" They asked Father Jack. Again, this was a lightning-quick touch -- a token move, perhaps -- but it was nonetheless a start at constructing the larger global context that has largely been absent thus far.

We also met the wife of the U.S. Air Force pilot killed in the first episode, Mary Faulkner, and learned of her issues with the aliens. In the spirit of Diana, the tricky Anna co-opted this human leader and even (finally...) had a good scene (told in jump cuts...) during which she rehearsed the correct human emotions for dealing with grief. A very slippery lizard, this Anna.

"A Bright New Day" also afforded the series the first mention by name of the Visitor's Fifth Column, an important ingredient of the original series. And beyond that, we got more detailed glimpses of Visitor technology, Visitor written language...and Visitor's lady's underwear. These are all steps in the right direction and signs, I hope, that the show is making a much-needed course correction.

Most impressively, "A Bright New Day" featured at least two authentic, jaw-dropping surprises during the hour. I'm an old hand with genre TV, but I didn't see either of these shocks coming. Again, for perhaps the first time, I felt last night that V was actually making a concerted effort to entertain, rather than just kind of plodding around on automatic pilot.

My big concern with the series now is something that a clever reader brought to my attention last week. In the comments for the review of last week's episode, a reader named Pete noted "if the V traitor *really* wants to fight the V, why doesn't he just go on TV and expose himself as a reptile?"

As hard as I've tried to suspend disbelief since reading that comment...I just can't do it. This is the elephant (or reptile...) in the room.

The whole premise of V and a Visitor Fifth Column just crumbles when you consider this idea; that Ryan, the Fifth Columnist, could defeat the Visitors in one swift stroke by going on television and cutting open his human skin to reveal his scales before a live global audience. Last night, even Anna noted herself the importance of public opinion; and keeping public opinion in favor of the Visitors. Imagine how public opinion would swing against the aliens if Ryan went on TV and revealed to the world that the Visitors were a pack of liars? All the material in "A Bright New Day" about Ryan re-organizing the Fifth Column is a runaround; a time-waste., a cheat. If he wants to win in one fell swoop, Ryan would simply himself to the world.

Now two things. First, some people might say Ryan doesn't want his fiance to know he's a lizard. My answer: priorities, Ryan, priorities! How happy of a marriage can he hope to have if the Visitors are ruling the world? If their love is true, his girlfriend would forgive him his lizardly nature. Secondly, the series could get around this point simply by acknowledging it: by having a throwaway line from Ryan in which he says he can't reveal himself on TV because he's afraid of his girlfriend's reaction or something. It would still be stupid; but at least it would be acknowledged.

However, that's not the end of it. Here's my sinister, paranoid side coming out. There is one other way in which Ryan's unwillingness to reveal his lizard-nature makes narrative sense. What if the Fifth Column is not only anti-Visitor, but also anti-human? What if Ryan, as part of the Fifth Column, is actually carrying water for another malevolent force out to harm humanity, and thus can't reveal himself for that purpose? Remember, the original V miniseries ended with the Resistance sending a message to the Visitor's wartime enemy, another alien race. out there in space

So is V setting this subplot up with Ryan's refusal to strip for the camera? We'll see. I hope that I'm not being cleverer than the writers of the series here...

TV REVIEW: V: "There is No Normal Anymore"

Last week, I didn't have much complimentary to say about ABC's re-imagination of the 1980s classic V. The new series pilot was woefully flat; lacking in suspense, scares, visual distinction, and much by way of interesting characters.

The second episode, last night's "There Is No Normal Anymore," isn't much of an improvement. In fairness, the sophomore episode opens with a full-head of steam. We get signs that the Visitors are illicitly monitoring and intercepting earthbound 911 telephone calls, and also witness another Visitor seeker weapon in action (though it resembles a CGI version of the famous Phantasm ball...).

There was even one sequence last night that actually accelerated the heart-beat a bit. Specifically, the hunky, cussin' priest and Agent Evans were interrogated -- in separate settings -- about their individual encounters with the Visitors. The sharp cross-cutting here did a good job of building tension. At least until it was all bled away by the 20 minute mark...

But other than that aggressive start? The new V most decidedly lacks imagination and, perhaps more importantly, science fiction color. I wonder how long it will be before we get interviews with the producers declaring that V isn't supposed to be science fiction at all, because everything indicative of the genre is downplayed here to an alarming extent. For instance, there's been zero on-screen speculation about the Visitors' world of origin, their technology, or even the idea of parallel evolution, since the Vs apparently (on the surface...) so closely resemble human beings. Wouldn't someone on the 24 hour cable networks be talking about alien biology, alien ship design, anything?! How about civil defense matters in the case of a surprise attack?

Worse than this apparent oversight, our lead -- Agent Evans -- has apparently taken it entirely in stride that the Visitors are humanoid Lizards in men's clothing. She's very upset, you see, that her FBI partner of seven years is a traitor and possibly a terrorist. But she never expresses astonishment or horror that, gee, he's also a sentient reptile. In fact, nobody comments on that at all this week. It's almost like, behind-the-scenes, the makers of V are actually embarrassed by their very premise.

Damningly, the new V doesn't even seem to know what the Visitors are doing here on Earth yet, either. Perhaps the show is hedging its bets because of all the behind-the-scenes turmoil, but it means, in practice, that we get a lot of shots of High Commander Anna simply staring at underlings; possibly bemused; possibly sinister; possibly impatient. Your guess is as good as mine. But three or four of these shots an episode is just gilding the Lilly; at least until we have a better idea of what she's thinking.

Costs must be out of control on the new series too, judging by the dearth of effects shots and interesting sets in last night's show. In the original V, we saw more laser blasts, more alien make-up, more ship take-offs and landings, more mother-ship interiors in a single hour than we have seen in the first two episodes here. Again, there's just nothing in this re-imagination that remotely suggests "event" television or a sense of scope commiserate with the idea that aliens have arrived on Earth for the first time. Agent Evans declares "there is no normal anymore," but the problem with the new V is that, pretty much, everything is exactly as it was before. People still go to work; people still send their kids to school; everyone still watches 24 hour news and worries about TV ratings. The alien problem ranks about as high as illegal immigration, health care, or the winner of the next American Idol, it seems.

Honestly, if aliens hovered over our cities and wanted to open diplomatic relations, claiming to be "at peace, always," wouldn't our government (or the Chinese Government, or the Russian government...) respond: okay, space brothers, but in the meantime, how about vacating our sovereign airspace and backing the fuck off? If I were President, my answer would be: I would be happy to consider diplomatic relations with your people. Till I decide, all your ships and personnel are to remain in orbit around the moon. But the new V can't even imagine that the premise of the show is real, and thus the show itself doesn't feel like a thoughtful meditation on an alien arrival.

My gut instinct about the new V is that it is attempting for a fast, earthbound 24-vibe -- with aliens as terrorists -- but at the expense of the intelligent, science fiction allegory of the original.

Virtually by definition, that seems like dumbing down.

CULT TV REVIEW: V: "Pilot" (2009)

Turnabout is fair play, I suppose.

During the Bush years (2000-2008), a right-wing science fiction TV series from the late-1970s, Battlestar Galactica, was re-imagined as a liberal enterprise that commented on the bungling of the Iraq War and critiqued our government following the 9/11 attacks.

Individual episodes of the new Galactica series involved illegal torture, a West/Middle East-type religious-type schism and other trademarks of the 21st century's turbulent first decade.

Last night, a leftist science fiction TV series from the late 1980s -- and one that took dead aim at the Reagan Era -- was re-imagined as a paranoid, right-wing, anti-Obama production.

Yep, the evil aliens of the re-imagined V arrive on Earth offering three things: "hope," "change" and "universal health care." These reptilian invaders apparently don't appreciate "fair and balanced" news broadcasts, either.

Heightening the parallel to our President, these conquering aliens "spread the word" of their good deeds by "tagging" locations across the globe with one valedictory alphabet letter. No, not the ubiquitous "O" of 2008's Obamamania, but rather the "V" of the Visitors. The pilot episode culminates with a warning against seeking "saviors" anywhere but in a Christian Heaven; another thinly-veiled barb at our Muslim, Socialist Commander-in-Chief.

So basically, Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here has been transformed into The Glenn Beck Show.

If you read my blog with any regularity you know I'm unabashedly, proudly liberal, but you also know, I hope, that I don't always tow the party line. I was not the world's biggest fan of the new Battlestar Galactica, for instance, because I felt that even though it matched my ideological and political bent, it was lacking in imagination, crushingly obvious, and it became the tiresome equivalent of Clue in Outer Space. (The fifth and final Cylon was Colonel Mustard on the Galactica...). I think my opinion was ultimately vindicated by the dopey, disappointing way the series ended (basically an insulting wave of a magic wand that said "God Moves in Mysterious Ways.")

Thus far, I feel the same way about the re-imagined V as I did about BSG starting out, but only in this case I get the added bonus of disliking the show's politics too. Not because I believe Obama is above criticism (and I've already criticized him here on the blog for not pursuing a torture investigation...) but because it has only been eleven months since he took office and he hasn't actually done anything yet to merit the high level of hatred and wacky rhetoric we see coming from Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck and the Tea Baggers.

I mean, have we found the FEMA Camps yet? Are our children being forced into re-education camps and someone forgot to tell me? Hell, our taxes haven't even gone up...

At least when the new BSG took on the Bush Years, Bush had been in office for awhile and had actually done something egregiously stupid like, I don't know...invading the wrong country. Obama hasn't had that kind of Senior Moment yet, so the new V feels like a wacky pre-emptive strike from Sarah Palin. It's not responding to anything substantive in the culture...just hysteria and fear; the very fear and hysteria that NY-23 rejected last night.

Leaving aside the politics, the new V doesn't work for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it fails to engage the emotions; the heart. There's no build-up to the arrival of the alien ships, and therefore no suspense in the delivering of Anna's (Morena Baccarin's) message.

Worse, a resistance group (already formed, apparently to save the show's dull-as-dishwater characters the trouble of starting from scratch...), already knows that the Visitors are reptilian, which means we don't even get a good jolt moment out of the revelation here. True, fans of the original series know that the Visitors are reptilian aliens, so the surprise is ruined anyway. But that doesn't mean the new show shouldn't attempt to mine a little drama over the fact that LIZARD NAZIS ARE TAKING OVER OUR PLANET!!!! Why remake V if you aren't going to make it a little bit scary?

And -- come on! -- no gerbils were even harmed during the pilot episode of the new V. I'll never forget watching the original mini-series back in 1983, and mid-way through the show Diana's jawbone unexpectedly elongated and she swallowed that poor rodent whole. My heart practically beat through my throat for the rest of the show. The next day at school, it was all anybody was talking about. Did you see that?!

Again, you can't pull the same surprise twice, but it would have been nice if V had attempted to thrill in us in some little way; if it had turned expectations upside down, or staged a really wicked, macabre moment about the alien nature. Here, even the revelation of the green lizard skin is almost a throw-away; with no real impact.

The teleplay was pretty weak. On at least two occasions, protests against the Visitors are mentioned. What are people protesting? Why are they protesting? The episode never tells us. Is it because they are illegal immigrants, spreading leprosy? In the original mini-series, the scientists protested the Visitors because scientific evidence proved that the aliens were hiding things about their technology, about their biology. The Visitors then scapegoated the scientists, equating them with terrorists.

But in the new show...there's just "protests." Like almost everything else in the show, this feels like a throwaway plot device that we're supposed to forget about in five minutes anyway. Another example of inconsistent writing: the aliens arrive and pulp a U.S. military plane (we see the pilot land on the street, dead...), but moments later the people of the Big Apple (who just witnessed his death) are cheering because the Visitors "say" they come in peace. Huh?

If all this isn't bad enough, we get a little Twilight-lite in a subplot involving a horny teen kid and a hot Visitor "peace ambassador." Again, the original V involved a complex (and worthwhile plot) about a teenage girl who befriended and ultimately slept with a Visitor soldier. But there, the relationship functioned as a component of an Anne Frank allegory about a scientist's family seeking a place to hide; about collaboration and resistance. Here the teen angle plays like just a ratings grab with CW pin-ups.

So the new V is bad politics and bad drama. If I have to I'll live with the bad politics, but I'd like to see the show get smarter and scarier. The world has been invaded by evil aliens...and I wish the new V made me care just a little bit about that fact.

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 77: V: The Series: "The Rescue"

You are cordially invited to the wedding of the century...

Or something like that.

On July 29, 1981, Prince Charles and Diana wed at St. Paul's Cathedral in London before a global TV audience of one billion people.

On February 1, 1985, however, the real fireworks commenced when Diana (Jane Badler) married Visitor royalty, Charles (Duncan Regehr), on V: The Series, in an episode entitled "The Rescue."

It was a match made in science fiction heaven. The groom wore black. The bride wore...scales.

The ceremony was officiated by a hissing lizard-man in a Cardinal hat, and the wedding banquet consisted of spiders, gerbils, rats and other small animals. (And the banquet table was decorated with a statue of Godzilla spray-painted white!).

Forget the traditional wedding cake, Diana and Charles instead shared their "ceremonial mouse," though Diana rather indelicately bit the poor creature's head off before Charles could get a good taste of the delicacy. Such bad taste, really...

Written by Garner Simmons, "The Rescue" occurs in V continuity after the death of Los Angeles' avaricious human leader, Nathan Bates. The formerly "open" city has descended into all-out war, but there's some controversy because Diana ordered the attack without the blessing of Charles,the man now in command of the Visitor fleet.

Lydia and Charles realize that Diana is a loose cannon, but that it will be immensely difficult to remove her from Visitor Command since her attack has been successful. Before long, a plotting Charles devises a devious way to get rid of Diana: Section 48 of the Code of Raman.

As Visitor royalty, he can select any Visitor woman as his bride by law, without fear of the woman's refusal. Then, because Diana's primary job will be child-bearing, his bride can be shipped back home to the Visitor home planet...out-of-commission on the front line.

When Charles proposes to Diana, she realizes she has been (temporarily) out-maneuvered. Charles intends to send her far away once she is "married...with lizard."

However, this clever strategy goes awry when Charles catches a glimpse of the fetching Diana luxuriating in a glowing-green Visitor tub during a pre-nuptial ceremony. As Diana swims in the nude alongside ceremonial eels ("may the venom give you strength, and make your body fertile..."), Charles realizes he isn't so keen to send the sexy Diana away after all. At least not before he has enjoyed his honeymoon.

To that end, Charles has already "installed the most comfortable bed in the fleet."

Lydia (June Chadwick) -- who dresses up like a 1970s glam rocker for the wedding ceremony -- realizes that she has been outwitted by Diana yet again, and acquires some "cat poison" to rid herself of her competitor once and for all. But on her wedding night, Diana detects what Lydia has done, and makes certain that Charles drinks the poison. He expires quickly, never even getting to enjoy his bride...

Well, better to have loved (a reptile...) and lost (a reptile...), than never to have loved at all...

Kenneth Johnson's V started out life as a science fiction It Can't Happen Here (1935), a clever warning about the rise of fascism in America. By the time of "The Rescue" (mid-TV series...), however, the series had become a rather unique genre version of its stiffest Friday night competition: CBS's powerhouse prime-time soap, Dallas. In some senses this shift worked: whenever June Chadwick and Jane Badler share the staged on V: The Series, playing their catty, manipulative, deceptive alien characters, the show absolutely sparkled with delicious wit and a (malevolent) sense of joie de vivre. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't turn away from it. You can tell this is where the writers hearts were too: on the power-grabs, reverses and victories of the duelling Visitor women.

On the down-side, the writers also had to handle the human resistance fighters on Earth, and by the time of "The Rescue," the writers appeared to be running out of good stories to showcase the show's "heroes." The machinations on the Visitor mother ship in "The Rescue" are interrupted frequently by a cliched story about a human woman giving birth in the Los Angeles war zone. The husband (Terence Knox) is an old friend of Julie's (Faye Grant) and seeks her help during the inconvenient delivery. The entire story just reeks of "off-the-shelf" plotting, and some of the acting here is absolutely atrocious. Shockingly atrocious, actually.

But whenever "The Rescue" returns to Charles and Diana, viewers may find themselves smiling in spite of themselves. Badler, Regehr, and Chadwick keep (forked) tongues in cheek throughout, and are clearly having the time of their lives. The material, though silly on one level, also achieves a relevance in 1980s America, particularly about the role of women in Visitor society. Even a female who has risen so high in a military power structure as Diana is ultimately undone by her society's expectations of her as a female. Accordingly, everything -- from that very command structure to the dictates of her religion - subverts her desire to "achieve" in what seems a "man's" world. Even though Diana is unequivocally evil, you cheer when she defeats Charles' thoroughly unfair plan for dispatching her. You've come a long way, lizard...

Yes, it's utterly ridiculous. And I doubt we'll see anything quite as outrageous as "The Rescue" on ABC's new version of V. Still, I certainly hope that the new series will find room for Badler and Chadwick in guest or recurring capacities. It certainly would be great to see both women back in action, especially given the fact that V has endured so long (twenty-five years), in part, on memories of their go-for-the-gusto performances.