Quick thoughts on V

The minute George Lucas’ body is cold, someone will be re-making Star Wars. (Aside from George himself, that is. He’s been remaking the originals for years now…) Until then, the entertainment industry has to content itself with remaking all the other Sci-Fi properties out there. This time around, it’s V.

I haven’t actually scheduled time to watch a television show in its natural time slot since 2004. When Angel went off the air, I canceled cable and stopped watching broadcast TV. (Not in protest — just because Angel was the last show I bothered to watch “live.”) I haven’t gone cold turkey on TV, I just started time-shifting. I watch pretty much all “new” TV via DVD. I have basic cable as part of the package with my townhome, but I don’t usually bother to watch it.

But I wanted to see V as it aired for a couple of reasons: It was a huge show for me when I was a kid. It features at least two actors I enjoy (Alan Tudyk and Morena Baccarin, better known as Wash and Inara from Firefly and Serenity), and I just had to know whether the “re-imagining” would be anywhere near as successful as Battlestar Galactica.

Warning! There may be spoilers (and rambling…) beyond this point. You have been warned!

Some elements of this series are relatively non-fungible. The visitors will be aliens that claim they come in peace and offer goodies for a cooperative human race. The aliens will have bad intentions. There will be a human resistance. The visitors won’t really be what they appear to be.

All of that was present in the first episode.

But the Visitors have changed with the times. When the first series aired in 1983, the big threat was the Soviet Union. The V’s seemed to be stand-ins for the “red menace.” It also was preaching that we could find allies even within our enemies.

I’m wondering how much emphasis there will be on that last point in the new series. The new series has already made a connection between the V’s and terrorists. Instead of the V’s being completely new on the planet when the ships arrive, the V’s are seen to have terrorist cells active on the planet before the ships arrive (or at least are publicly known).

And the big threat voiced not-too-subtly several times is “devotion” to the enemy. Being mislead by the press. Corruption of youth. (Note that some of those elements were present in the first series as well — but emphasized differently.)

It’s also somewhat amusing to me that they quickly showed the visitors using “ambassadors” and social media to persuade the populace. I was waiting for the V’s to produce their own Linux distro, but that never quite appeared.

The most interesting thing about these re-creations of popular stories is how they reflect the current state of our culture and the changes that have taken place in a relatively short time. Look at the “re-imaginings” of V, Battlestar Galactica, Superman, Star Trek, King Kong, Batman, and so on — you’ll see an increased emphasis on more subtle evil, darker heroes, more ambiguous villains (mostly), and how these stories are metaphors for our current and past cultural questions.

If you look at the V of today vs. the V of the 80′s, it’s pretty clear we’re thinking about vastly different challenges. Even a mention of health care in the current V, where there was no corresponding scenario in the original.

Also, amusingly, a dig at “Independence Day,” when one of the characters says something to the effect of “there were other alien menace shows before Independence Day!” (Because Independence Day obviously borrowed somewhat from V…) The show isn’t large on humor.

Even if the series sucked, I’d be tempted to keep watching just to see how it plays out and how the writers and creators deal with the problems of the 2000′s compared to the problems of the 1980s.

But it doesn’t suck, at least so far. Even though the first episode was relatively predictable, it held my attention. I think Baccarin is doing a good job as the lead alien. Tudyk should be a lot of fun as a V, he plays a pretty good bad guy. The rest of the cast is pretty good as well.

The special effects are, obviously, far better. Especially when compared to the full series, when the per-episode effects budget was lower than the mini-series.

Final verdict: It’s not a slam dunk, but for fans of the original, or if you like good B-grade Sci-Fi, it’s worth a watch. I’ll be catching it again next week.