The Emperor’s Lizard’s New Clothes are pretty slick.

The world has changed a lot in 27 years. In 1983, Ronald Reagan was in his first term as President of the United States, the Iron Curtain was closed, and Jabba the Hutt was still only in Return of the Jedi. That year also saw the debut of V, a mini-series created by Kenneth Johnson that was purportedly inspired by Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here, a story of a fascist regime coming to power in the United States. Lewis’ novel was a cautionary tale for a pre-World War II America that watched as fascist governments came to power around the world with alarming success in the mid-1930s. V contained many fascistic tropes, including jackbooted stormtroopers, but coming as it did in the waning years of the Cold War, it seemed targeted more at Communism than Fascism and was somewhat less relevant as a result. Nearly three decades later, V is back and retooled with updated technology under the hood and a new-found relevance that allegorizes the dangers of a cozy and self-serving relationship between government and media.

As in the original mini-series, things in the new V get moving quickly. The pilot episode begins with a brief establishing scene of each of the main characters in their daily lives moments before the arrival of the Visitors, then the huge alien motherships roll in and park above all the major cities of Earth. Also in keeping with the original, the Vees (as they come to be called) immediately declare their peaceful and magnanimous intentions to offer humanity the gifts of their technology in exchange for friendship and place to hang for awhile during their journey. If it all sounds too good to be true, I won’t keep you in suspense — it is. And here the new series understandably breaks with the old: since anyone familiar with the original knows that the Vees are predatory reptiles disguised beneath human skin, producer Scott Peters and his writers wasted no time on the reveal. The Fifth Column, a resistance movement comprised of in-the-know humans and turncoat Vees, gets going right away, whereas in the mini-series this group doesn’t form until much later in the story. Beyond the pilot, the show evolves into a steady mix of Machiavellian back-and-forth between the Visitors, and their high commander Anna (Moreena Baccarin, Firefly), and the Fifth Column, led by FBI counter-terrorism special agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell, Lost).

V has a number of things going for it. For one, it has an established pedigree. Despite the weak-sauce reputation of the single season of episodes that spawned from the original mini-series, the canon as a whole is well-regarded in sci-fi circles, which provided a built-in audience curious to see the makeover. For another, they did some solid casting. Elizabeth Mitchell is a spot-on choice to play the Earth Mother archetype fighting for both her son and her planet against another great selection in Moreena Baccarin as the Goddess Mother of the Visitors. The dynamic struggle between these two women is titanic and easily the most indelible quality of the first season.

Morris Chestnut also impresses as Ryan Nichols, a Vee sleeper agent in love with a human woman for whose sake he turns against Anna and vows to combat her plot against Earth as a member of the Fifth Column. His story arc provides some of the most interesting moments of the series and his fate is a major hook for a second season. More interesting still is Scott Wolf’s Faustian news reporter Chad Decker, who walks almost as fine a line between good and evil as Battlestar Galactica’s Baltar. In Decker, and his relationship with Anna, we find the show’s most significant relevance, illustrating the perils and pitfalls of “embedded” journalism, drinking the Kool-Aid, and the price of access for the sake of access.

The visual effects also deserve a mention. Science fiction on television has always been constrained by budget, waiting for technology to evolve to the point where compelling imagery can be created at a bargain price. V visual effects house Zoic made extensive use of green screen and Avatar-like virtual sets to render the interiors of the motherships and the results are reasonably good. While the “uncanny valley” principle occasionally creeps in — most notably a strange fore-shortening effect on some sets — the prospects for this technology cannot be overstated. If Zoic is given the time and the budget to refine their techniques on V, there is potentially no ceiling to what can be effectively produced and a long-imprisoned genre will finally be liberated from it’s shackles.

That’s not to say there is nothing wrong in the land of V. While the moment-to-moment writing is good, episodes suffer from myopic long-term story planning. Beyond the core group of characters, secondary roles are mercilessly culled to keep the number of recurring roles low. The cumulative effect is to constrain the overarching story so much that you get the feeling that the show’s writers and producers are playing a zero sum game. If peripheral Fifth Column characters rarely survive the episode they appear in, how is the audience supposed to believe they will ever be anything more than a nuisance to Anna’s long-term plans for conquest? In the first season, the Fifth Column’s efforts are incredibly anemic, resulting in most cases in simply getting a lot of friendlies killed. It certainly undermines any expressions of dread from Anna when fretting over the potentially deleterious effect of the resistance on her strategy. The incredibly ominous season climax has set the stage for a potentially grim yet interesting second season. It remains to be seen if the show can get some iron in it’s diet and develop a more compelling narrative going forward.

The Blu-ray package is a minimum-effort affair. There are twelve episodes on two discs (three are erroneously shown in picture above) with a small selection of extra features appended to the end of each disc, as outlined below.

• 1080p Hi-Def 16×9 1.78:1
• 5.1 Dolby Digital
• Breaking Story: The World of V. Taking a Fresh Perspective on the V Mythology
• The Actor’s Journey from Human to V. Cast Members on the Techniques, Challenges and Rewards of Re-imagining a Classic Tale for a New Generation
• An Alien in Human Skin: The Makeup FX of V. Revealing the Face of Special Effects Makeup Application and Execution
• The Visual Effects of V. A Primer on the Series’ Jaw-Dropping Visuals Includes a Fascinating Tour of FX Powerhouse ZOIC Studios
• Executive Producer Commentary on Episode 11, Fruition
• Unaired Scenes

You would think I would have learned not to automatically dismiss franchise reboots after making the erroneous assumption Syfy’s Battlestar Galactica was going to suck. Like with BSG, I’ve once again been caught off-guard by an honest and valiant, if flawed, effort to breathe fresh oxygen into a stale relic of yesteryear. Elizabeth Mitchell is equal to the task leading an impressive ensemble cast. The show’s writers are on the right track but need to shake off the episodic mantle and demonstrate they have a long-term vision for the course of the series or risk falling into a predictable cadence that will turn off viewers and doom its chances. V: The Complete First Season is a promising show offered here as a modest package at a modest price and worth checking out.

ComicsOnline gives V: The Complete First Season 3 1/2 motherships out of 5.

Want to check it out? Buy V: The Complete First Season from Amazon.com!

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