Review: Original “V” Miniseries (1983)
As mentioned below, Sunday was the SyFy marathon of the original “V” miniseries and the follow-on “V: The Final Battle.” Juggling football, baseball and a family dinner, I managed to finish them up late at night. It was refreshingly awesome and set a very high bar for ABC to hit on Tuesday. [Ed Note: I apparently somehow only taped part 1 of V: The Final Battle... guess that's getting added to the Netflix queue now]
The general plot line of the series, which was created as a screenplay, involves the arrival of about 50 mother ships from outer space. Their appearance is pretty much totally ripped off by Independence Day, if you want a frame of reference. The aliens, who ask to be called “Visitors”, appear human and promise to cure humankind’s ails. But, of course, there is a sinister motivation to their arrival and a resistance quickly forms, led by TV journalist Mike Donovan (Marc Singer), MD Juliet Parrish (Faye Grant), and a cast that is suitably multicultural (in TV executive minds) to make the series seem to represent all of humankind.
Before going into great detail, it has to be remembered that this was shot in 1983 and the special effects, and even language used (e.g., “Selling reefer”) seems antiquated at this time. But this miniseries still rocks out. The mannequin used to show Visitor No. 2 Diana (Jane Badler) eating a gerbil is, quite frankly, so bad it is awesome. Making a mannequin look realistic wasn’t easy in ‘83, but they didn’t even remotely have the same skin tone. The Visitor ships also look only marginally better than Ed Wood’s saucers on a string.
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