LittleBigPicture: The return of V

On our LittleBluePlanet, we are concerned with one thing more than any other. Not curing disease, or feeding children. No, as a species, we worry that big scary aliens might probe us in our bottoms.

So far, they've limited themselves to bothering farmers from Bumfuck USA, but that doesn't stop us from harbouring this fear that one day they will travel millions of light years just to knock us about a bit. Says a lot more about human mentality than it does the poor nosey aliens.

In 1983, a two-part mini series aired on NBC which was watched by over 40 million Americans and is generally regarded to be one of the greatest sci-fi TV events of all time. This two-parter, V, spawned a sequel in 1984, a television series in 1984-85 and a plethora of comics, books and video games (all to be reviewed soon here on Movies, Games & Videos!).

In a rather convoluted series of events, the powers that be have decided to forgo the adaptation of any of these pre-existing mediums and sought to "re-imagine" this classic story. And thus, we have...

V (SyFy, Tuesdays 10pm)



In this reworking, the series opens with the Visitors (or "Vs" for short) driving their big gas-guzzling spaceships over 29 cities across the globe and forcing every aircraft in their area out of the sky. And I mean 'forcing'. As in, 'crashing them into the ground'. The terror is quickly abated when ridiculously beautiful Leader Anna (Morena Baccarin) appears on the underside of the ships to announce that "[They] are of peace".

This, coupled with Universal Healthcare which will wipe out all human diseases, and promises of Hope and Change, easily seduces mankind to bow to the kind and uniformly beautiful, visitors. After all, no pretty person could be evil!

The cover story the Vs present is that they would like a cup of our lovely lovely water, which we have so very much of, whereas in actuality, they're here for a top-secret mineral that can't be obtained anywhere else in the Universe thank you kindly. Hey, if it's Unobtanium they’re after, I know just the place for them.

What the wider globe isn't informed of is the fact that Vs have been walking amongst them for countless years, in preparation for this most hostile of takeovers. They are doctors, cops, government officials, hairdressers – they're everywhere, which goes someway to explaining why, in our suspicious and grumpy world, no one really questions why these beings would help us in exchange for a mineral that can be freely extracted from… well, space. And why they look just like us, only super pretty.

The series concentrates mostly on a Resistance group of humans and renegade Vs, and their attempts to uncover the evil at the heart of the invasion. It goes a little further than annihilation, you see. The recruitment of young, fanatical, humans to the Peace Ambassador Programme – essentially a network of spies - is designed to report unfriendly actions to the Visitors so they can be stopped. Oh, there's everything in this show; fascism, Catholicism, weird super-gestation. Something for everyone.

Visually, V is as appealing and seductive as the eponymous aliens. There are some high-end special effects at work here, and the prosthetics and make-up work on the Vs themselves is astonishing. There is no need for the suspension of disbelief here – those guys are aliens.

Fans of sci-fi will recognise much of the cast from previous cult classics; Firefly (Baccarin), Lost (Elizabeth Mitchell) and, er, Party Of Five (Scott Wolf). An excellent ensemble cast, they do very well with what is at times a fairly ridiculous screenplay which throws modern technological logic right out the window in favour of glorious CG on-ship vistas and convenient plot twists.

There have been some commentators pointing out the similarity of the Visitors' campaign to that of President Obama's, insinuating that there is something insidious at work in the White House, though such claims have been widely disregarded by cast and crew. But who knows what they’re hiding, man? Roswell ’47!