V
One thing needs to be made clear because I still see it confused whenever people talk about V.
They are not the same thing.
First came the original 1983 V miniseries.
Then V: The Final Battle.
And only after that came this: the 1984 weekly series.
Nineteen episodes.
A different stage.
A different tone.
And, if we are being honest, a different level of quality.
It is considerably worse than the two miniseries.
And for me it is still a 10.
I have no problem saying both things at once.
Most of the powerful political construction of the original V is gone. The allegory about fascism, propaganda and collaboration moves far into the background. The sense of a huge concluding event from The Final Battle is gone too.
Now V has to survive from week to week.
And you can feel it.
Diana has another plan.
The Resistance responds.
Betrayals.
Romance.
Captures.
Escapes.
New Visitors.
New humans.
And an increasing slide toward an eighties soap opera that occasionally makes the whole thing feel almost like Dynasty with lizards and laser guns.
But I was in.
Completely.
Nathan Bates and Science Frontiers, for example, never particularly worked for me.
The whole idea of this corporation positioning itself between humans and Visitors, controlling technology and becoming another major power always seemed rather silly.
It was an obvious way of creating a new conflict after The Final Battle had practically finished the war.
But it gives us Kyle.
And Kyle matters to me.
Jeff Yagher brings the young, impulsive rebel energy this new stage needed. His relationship with Elizabeth also became one of the things I remember most clearly from the entire series.
Elizabeth changes enormously too.
The Star Child gradually stops being the strange, almost mystical element from the miniseries and becomes a character with a life of her own.
That takes the series firmly into different territory.
More romantic.
More fantastic.
More ridiculous too.
But incredibly addictive for me.
Then there are Diana and Lydia.
That is basically an alien soap opera.
Two lizard women trying to destroy each other while theoretically being busy conquering Earth.
Is it sophisticated?
No.
Do I love it?
Yes.
Jane Badler remains irreplaceable. Diana can be trapped inside a ridiculous storyline and Badler still makes me watch.
June Chadwick's Lydia gives her exactly the rival she needs to multiply the conspiracies among the Visitors themselves.
Donovan, Julie, Willie and Ham Tyler are still there too.
Michael Ironside remains one of the best things that ever happened to V. Ham always seems to belong to a tougher series than everybody else, and his presence immediately changes the energy.
Robert Englund keeps Willie lovable.
And Marc Singer will always be Mike Donovan to me.
That is not negotiable.
The special effects get worse.
So do some of the sets.
Shots are reused.
The ships no longer have quite the same impact.
Some episodes clearly have less money and imagination behind them.
And several plots now look spectacularly naive.
I know.
I can see all of it.
I do not need to pretend otherwise to keep loving the show.
Because something matters much more:
I remember it.
Kyle.
Elizabeth.
Diana.
Lydia.
Donovan.
The ships.
The shifting alliances.
And I still remember reaching those final moments and what happened with Elizabeth and Kyle.
More than forty years later.
That means something.
The series also ended while there was clearly still story left to tell. Its conclusion has that peculiar mixture of ending and continuation, the result of a show unable to develop everything it was setting up.
For years, that stayed in my head.
Maybe that is the strongest evidence of how deeply V became part of me.
Because I can analyze it now and see every weakness.
Cheaper.
More repetitive.
More absurd.
Far less intelligent than the original.
Some genuinely silly storylines.
And it loses much of what made the first V special.
But it was still V.
Every week that universe returned.
Those ships.
Those characters.
That music.
Those uniforms.
The lizards.
The Resistance.
And I wanted to know what happened next.
That is why I do not confuse the three stages.
The 1983 miniseries is the great work.
The Final Battle is the culmination.
The weekly series is something else.
Smaller.
More televisual.
More soap-like.
More uneven.
But it belongs just as completely to my history with V.
And if after all these years I can still remember exactly how Kyle ended up where he was not supposed to be...
what can I say?
For me, it is still a 10.
They are not the same thing.
First came the original 1983 V miniseries.
Then V: The Final Battle.
And only after that came this: the 1984 weekly series.
Nineteen episodes.
A different stage.
A different tone.
And, if we are being honest, a different level of quality.
It is considerably worse than the two miniseries.
And for me it is still a 10.
I have no problem saying both things at once.
Most of the powerful political construction of the original V is gone. The allegory about fascism, propaganda and collaboration moves far into the background. The sense of a huge concluding event from The Final Battle is gone too.
Now V has to survive from week to week.
And you can feel it.
Diana has another plan.
The Resistance responds.
Betrayals.
Romance.
Captures.
Escapes.
New Visitors.
New humans.
And an increasing slide toward an eighties soap opera that occasionally makes the whole thing feel almost like Dynasty with lizards and laser guns.
But I was in.
Completely.
Nathan Bates and Science Frontiers, for example, never particularly worked for me.
The whole idea of this corporation positioning itself between humans and Visitors, controlling technology and becoming another major power always seemed rather silly.
It was an obvious way of creating a new conflict after The Final Battle had practically finished the war.
But it gives us Kyle.
And Kyle matters to me.
Jeff Yagher brings the young, impulsive rebel energy this new stage needed. His relationship with Elizabeth also became one of the things I remember most clearly from the entire series.
Elizabeth changes enormously too.
The Star Child gradually stops being the strange, almost mystical element from the miniseries and becomes a character with a life of her own.
That takes the series firmly into different territory.
More romantic.
More fantastic.
More ridiculous too.
But incredibly addictive for me.
Then there are Diana and Lydia.
That is basically an alien soap opera.
Two lizard women trying to destroy each other while theoretically being busy conquering Earth.
Is it sophisticated?
No.
Do I love it?
Yes.
Jane Badler remains irreplaceable. Diana can be trapped inside a ridiculous storyline and Badler still makes me watch.
June Chadwick's Lydia gives her exactly the rival she needs to multiply the conspiracies among the Visitors themselves.
Donovan, Julie, Willie and Ham Tyler are still there too.
Michael Ironside remains one of the best things that ever happened to V. Ham always seems to belong to a tougher series than everybody else, and his presence immediately changes the energy.
Robert Englund keeps Willie lovable.
And Marc Singer will always be Mike Donovan to me.
That is not negotiable.
The special effects get worse.
So do some of the sets.
Shots are reused.
The ships no longer have quite the same impact.
Some episodes clearly have less money and imagination behind them.
And several plots now look spectacularly naive.
I know.
I can see all of it.
I do not need to pretend otherwise to keep loving the show.
Because something matters much more:
I remember it.
Kyle.
Elizabeth.
Diana.
Lydia.
Donovan.
The ships.
The shifting alliances.
And I still remember reaching those final moments and what happened with Elizabeth and Kyle.
More than forty years later.
That means something.
The series also ended while there was clearly still story left to tell. Its conclusion has that peculiar mixture of ending and continuation, the result of a show unable to develop everything it was setting up.
For years, that stayed in my head.
Maybe that is the strongest evidence of how deeply V became part of me.
Because I can analyze it now and see every weakness.
Cheaper.
More repetitive.
More absurd.
Far less intelligent than the original.
Some genuinely silly storylines.
And it loses much of what made the first V special.
But it was still V.
Every week that universe returned.
Those ships.
Those characters.
That music.
Those uniforms.
The lizards.
The Resistance.
And I wanted to know what happened next.
That is why I do not confuse the three stages.
The 1983 miniseries is the great work.
The Final Battle is the culmination.
The weekly series is something else.
Smaller.
More televisual.
More soap-like.
More uneven.
But it belongs just as completely to my history with V.
And if after all these years I can still remember exactly how Kyle ended up where he was not supposed to be...
what can I say?
For me, it is still a 10.
Mini Review: One thing needs to be made clear because I still see it confused whenever people talk about V. They are not the same thing. First came the original 1983 V miniseries. Then V: The Final Battle. And only after that came this: the 1984 weekly series. Nineteen episodes. A different stage. A different tone. And, if we are being honest, a different level of quality. It is considerably worse than the two miniseries. And for me it is still a 10. I have...