It's been a couple of days now since the premiere of V over on ABC. We know the ratings were great, but if you've been trolling around the internet like I have ... well, then you need to get a life, like I do. But you'll also notice that there is a lot of grumbling about the pilot episode.
The biggest complaint I'm seeing is that in one short hour, they revealed so much about what's really going on and that, like FlashForward, everybody seemed to return to their regular daily lives almost immediately. This despite 29 massive alien ships hovering over the world's major cities.
I was on board with everything about the premiere, but these comments got me wondering. Did they drop their payload a little quicker than necessary? I think they could have utilized their unique scheduling situation to much better affect (we're getting four episodes now and then a long break until the series resumes in March). We know that the meat of the story will be about the Resistance battling the Visitors as the invaders slowly take more and more control.
But they had an opportunity to really build suspense with these first four episodes. Why not make the fourth episode where they reveal that the aliens are lizard-people, or that they're been lying to us all this time. Let them consolidate power over the planet for a bit, and sucker people into believing their benevolence.
I know why they did it, though. The assumption was that everybody already knew these things from the original mini-series so they'll just get irritated if we put off revealing it. So let's get past all of that and get into the meat of our story right away. But, I think they're wrong about that on two fronts.
First, the mini-series was 26 years ago. It was 24 years ago that the horrible V: The Series was mercifully canceled. And it hasn't been a staple in reruns in decades, so why the assumption that everyone will already know? Yes, a lot of people will know simply because it is a part of our pop culture, but there are a lot of younger people out there who will have no idea the plot points of the original.
Second, whether or not we know where it's going, the reason we're watching is to see how the story is reinterpreted for modern audiences, with smarter special effects and hopefully superior writing and acting. We have higher expectations these days, and part of that is a believability. So we expect there to be a lengthy aftermath to the Visitor's arrival.
I was thrilled that their ships breaking into our atmosphere caused such havoc on the streets, but a quick apology by Anna about that and nothing more is said? Other than people showing up in church, where is the fear? In the original series, we got a lot of initial reactions from a lot of people, and everybody was impacted by the arrival. Not so much, here?
Another good point brought up online has been why Erica would choose to join the resistance with the knowledge of the Visitor's reptilian truth when she works for the FBI. In fact, that revelation is a part of her actual investigation. If the series had taken some time to allow the Visitors to consolidate some power in the government, including possible Visitor overseers to the various governmental branches, then perhaps it would be understandable.
Rushing the plot is leaving logical holes that they'll either now have to patch, or we'll just have to ignore. They can always explain it away by saying that there are likely already sleeper agents at all levels of government, if they've been here long enough, so there's the matter of who you can trust, like the tissue test the Resistance did. But, Eric could perform the test on whomever she was bringing into the fold within the FBI and then reveal what she's learned.
Four episodes on the arrival would have been prefect. Let the Visitors spread their word of peace and love and infiltrate our society. Have Erica discover the existence of sleeper cells, and perhaps reveal slowly to the viewing audience what they've been doing to prep our world. You could even have Erica learn the secret, and then through Visitor machinations somehow get discredited, and even disgraced by the FBI.
Don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of potential in where they're going now, though there are some questions that I'd like to see answered. Maybe the fact that such a small group of people know the truth will matter, because we'll see how quickly the Visitors begin to suppress the press, but in the era of information it's going to be much harder to control. It'll be interesting to see how they progress from here, and how many of those 14 million viewers stick around to find out ... and more importantly, come back in March 2010.
