Surfergeeks

So the past couple weeks I’ve been working my way through the original “V” shows that aired on NBC back in the 80′s. The visitors didn’t wear rose coloured glasses while on Earth but I guess I sure was when thinking back nostalgically about the show. Okay, I’ll give it this much – for being a SciFi TV show back then, the special effects were okay. Now? My kid does better special effects on his VTech Kidi Art Studio! I used to LOVE this show. Of course, back then I was 11ish. I didn’t possess the same level of expectation as I do now I guess. What I can’t figure out for the life of me is how this show even lasted a season back then. Let’s take a little more in-depth look shall we?

Before we get too far, I need to clarify – I watched both miniseries and the TV series, pretty much back-to-back. This may not have been such as good idea as I’ll explain below.

Special Effects: We’ll kick it off with SFX as I’ve already touched on them above. For 1984, I guess some of them were okay. Others would have been considered bad for 1974, possible even 1964. When talking about this show, there’s really only 3 SFX to look at: spaceships, lasers, and aliens. The lasers themselves were not too bad. Nice little bursts of blue (or red) energy. One thing I questioned when watching this – why do laser guns make a high pitched sound? This isn’t just an issue with show but I think EVERY show/movie that has ever existed? The obvious answer is that it wouldn’t be as exciting if it was just a silent blast. Some of the more powerful lasers in the show were NOTHING short of ridiculous though. These lasers, even though just a thin beam, would completely vaporize anything/anyone that came into contact with it – yes I’m looking at you Pumping Station Tube laser. But the laser guns were pretty cool. As an aside, I noticed today at Walmart that the Wii Zapper (the one that comes with Link’s Crossbow Training) bears a striking resemblance to the V sidearm. Next up are the spaceships. The design was awesome! The implementation was laughable, literally. When the shuttle craft first lands in the first mini-series I thought I was going to piss myself. I was really surprised I didn’t see strings, or, even better, a hand moving a cardboard cut-out. The flying scenes were amusing as well. I guess they figured that people really enjoyed them though as they kept popping up. Over and over and over again. The same ones. Exactly. Now for the piece de resistance, the lizards in all their…hehe…glory. Even if you COMPLETELY ignore that there is no way a “human” mask would fit over the natural facial shape they were still ridiculous! For the scenes in the TV show where they had non-”skinned” aliens, the mouths would barely move when they talked. And the alien babies? OMG! I almost fell off the couch laughing when that little dude crawled out of Robin’s belly. So, on a scale of 10 I’m going to give them a 4. Even for 1984 tech, they could have done WAY better.

Writing: Oooh boy. I honestly have NO idea where to begin on this section. I guess the first thing to do would be to split the writing into two categories: The miniseries and the regular series. The miniseries wasn’t too bad. Like any good work it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Yes, there were plot holes but for the *most part* it wasn’t too bad. The regular series was…ummm…not good. Actually, it was a train wreck. There were more plot holes than consistency. The story started off pretty good and seemed to have a week-to-week arc happening. Then, along about episode 13 or 14 something happened. Maybe it happened sooner and I just didn’t realize it but the show became incredibly episodic in nature. Each week was a few of the main characters helping some poor schmuck out to save his/her farm/town/daughter/etc. from the aliens and/or collaborators. It was like watching The A-Team or Knight Rider. Nothing flowed from one week to the next. Even more annoying was CONSTANT little references to things that were never shown that seemed pretty damn important. One thing annoyed me to all to hell in both the miniseries and the regular series though. Why in god’s name did the resistance fighters NEVER pick up the fucking lasers from the aliens they knocked out, killed, etc.? They could have armed an entire battalion with the number of aliens they picked off. Then they wouldn’t need to worry about the proper ammo. It’s interesting to note that there was never any mention of special teflon coated ammo in the regular series. The red dust was also quickly explained and then conveniently eliminated from further use. As far as any continuity was concerned, the only thing continuous about this series was that it continually reused footage from the first two miniseries. I saw the same horseback chase twice. The same skyfighter dogfight at least 4 times. Hell, they even re-used the same scene, INCLUDING dialog, of a group of aliens lead by James in two episodes that may have been back-to-back! (At most it was three episodes apart). Each episode was 45 minutes long. I would be willing to bet that at least 5 minutes of each episode was re-used footage. Another odd thing was that the opening changed between Eps 14 and 15. It increased from 1:30 to 2:00 and seemed to include a bit of the backstory. Ironic considering it was those final five episodes which had the absolute worst continuity, writing, lack of anything to do with the backstory. Well, okay, maybe the final episode dealt with the backstory. One thing I won’t hold against the writers is the lack of a finale. They probably didn’t know they wouldn’t get renewed at that point. After all, they obviously suffered from some type of delusions thinking that what they were writing was quality TV. I could probably write for days about how bad the writing was.

Acting: It was 1980′s television. ‘Nuff said.

Overall, it was an amusing, nostalgic trip back to my youth. ABC’s remake of Kenneth Johnson’s original, with four episodes under its belt, is shaping up to be a much more…consistent effort. Perhaps the viewing public is just more demanding now?