V

[Burkex]

First off I am a huge fan of the old V and after seeing last night's episode I was pretty disappointed, once again it felt like hollywood was taking something cool from my childhood and turning it into crap (Karate Kid is prob next). How is it even possible that I thought the special effects in 1984 were better than the special effects in 2009? The alien mothership and smaller craft that the V's had looked terrible. The original crafts looked 1000x better and had way better sound effects too. And the current day mothership didn't even look that big. I was even disappointed with the look inside of the mothership--the 1984 version looked cold and scary with its metal labrynth hallways and sliding doors. And the V's were fighting with knives and metal poles....WTF! Where are the sweet laser guns...that was very very disappointing. They did have some type of orb that had a camera and shot out spikes or something but that seemed pretty meh.

Looking at the actual story there were some good parts and some bad parts. The main issue was that they rushed things way too much. They even skipped ahead by 3 weeks at one point. By doing so they took away most of the suspense which made the show so great. The suspensful things in the original happened right after the visitiors arrived. People started disappearing, scientists were being schunned, they slowly started taking over, and so on. We see the impact of the Visitors and slowly learn their plans and most people are unaware of their true plans. The resistance is slowly set up over time. But last night it was in fast forward mode and the resistance is set up in 30 minutes.

They were selling tickets to fly up to the mothership...like it was a Disney ride...seriously WTF was that?!?!?! I did like the idea that they were already here on Earth because that is logical, plant the seeds ahead of time and prepair for the arrival.

Sadly it seems that the theme of this series will be aimed at the politics of the last decade...the Iraq war, terrorism, universal health care, religion, etc, and that is crap compared to a holocaust/freedom fighter type of theme for the old series. Oh well...

Anyways I give the pilot a disappointing D-

[Bizanich]

Originally Posted by Burkex

And the V's were fighting with knives and metal poles....WTF! Where are the sweet laser guns...that was very very disappointing. They did have some type of orb that had a camera and shot out spikes or something but that seemed pretty meh.
-[/b]

I think that was my biggest gripe. The orb comes in, needles like half the room (fine), then the V's appear out of nowhere fighting with steel poles and knives and leaping all over the place?

What's the cover story going to be, all these suburbanites were found in a warehouse and got caught up in a gang fight?

[Burkex]

Originally Posted by Bizanich

I think that was my biggest gripe. The orb comes in, needles like half the room (fine), then the V's appear out of nowhere fighting with steel poles and knives and leaping all over the place?

Well I actually gave this scene some thought because it was SOOOOO bad and I came to the conclusion that they used these types of weapons and not their sweet laser guns was because they didn't want their technology to be discovered or fall into the wrong hands. If they kept saying they were here for peace and never thought about war and then someone showed a Visitor laser gun on TV it would ruin them, because why would peaceful people need a gun? And that is the same reason they use C4 because they want to make it look like humans on Earth were responsible and not the visitors. But it was still pretty bad. IMO no laser guns in V is like no lightsabers in Star Wars.

[Sharmai]

I liked the original series to but I've grown a lot since then and I've got to say what the V's do doesn't make a lot of sense.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

So they want to make us their food and strip our planet of its resources then turn us into zombies to fight their other enemies right? Then why not orbitally bombard our largest cities and military centers then come down and herd the rest of us into large containment centers and farm us like cattle? What could we do? Why spend decades if not more learning the multitude of languages from all over the world and enough of the various cultures to send in agents to take important positions? That takes mass amounts of time and even the risk of exposure due to accident at the very least! Plus then come down acting peaceful giving us advanced technology or atleast showing it to us in action so now we know and exists and will obviously go after it with a passion?

I mean seriously they could just show up like an Independence Day except without the bullshit hack into their computers and there wouldn't be a goddamn thing we could do. We would be royally fucked on every level. Like ants fighting against humans.

[kcxiv]

I thought it was decent. I am not one to pick apart every little detail and what not. For me, its just a TV show and i enjoy it for being a TV show. I will watch a few more episodes to see where they are going with it.

Did damned well in the overnight ratiings thats for sure.

13.7 million viewers and 4.9 18 to 49 which was tops.

TV Ratings: Overnight Nielsen Ratings for Tuesday, November 3, 2009; So You Think You Can Dance ratings, 90210 ratings, Melrose Place ratings, V ratings, Dancing With the Stars ratings, the forgotten ratings, The Biggest Loser ratings, Jay Leno Show

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

I mean seriously they could just show up like an Independence Day except without the bullshit hack into their computers and there wouldn't be a goddamn thing we could do. We would be royally fucked on every level. Like ants fighting against humans.

Not a fan of science fiction, then?

[Sharmai]

Oh I am a great fan of GOOD science fiction. This is science bullshit. For one thing once this planet becomes really aware that sentient lifeforms exist on other planets and ones that a more powerful then us there would be an massive new scientific and technological race to space like never before seen.

Second if the V's came down offering cures we would gladly say "ok How do we do X?" and if the said they can't show us but they can do it for us then military generals EVERYWHERE would go automatically into skeptics mode. Assuming of course they weren't already which they would have been.

Third how they fuck do they look like us? Seriously? I'd bet my life at at roulette before I'd bet an alien race would show up looking like us unless there's something very seriously wrong. Obviously that would mean they have the technology to either fake human shells to hold inside...something..., make robot looking humans, or actually morph their biology into humanoid forms. Any of which are HUGE statements.


I mean seriously those are just 3 basic considerations any idiot can think up in two seconds there are a thousand more that can be made as quickly that any science fiction novel based on this kind of first contact would have cover to be remotely believable.

Think about it.. political? Virus potential? Why did they make first contact in 51 ships that are obviously built for more then just pure warfare or diplomatic first contact reasons... Religions? The obvious fact they they are already integrated within our society?

[Ham n Cheese]

Yeah they've been working on this 'undercover' reptilian thing but never did any of them get into a car accident or something? Then someone does the autopsy and is like uh guys WHAT THE FUCK!? I mean clearly the black guy had been living like that for some time, I'm sure he wasn't the only one living outside of the sleeper cell

[Sharmai]

And lets discuss something that bad science fiction authors everywhere constantly fuck up. Humanoid shaped aliens. Why? I mean sure it's possible but even on the planet earth how common is the humanoid shape among all the species?

Not very fucking common at all. Think about that for a minute. What really made humans become so dominant? I would guess our brains as we obviously fail at being individual killing machines in the animal kingdom. What other species could you put our brain into and suddenly have a very powerful species? Imagine octopus developing with our mental capabilities.


It makes sense that an alien would have legs and even a form of eyes as those are fairly common and give instant survival advantages but how many creatures have only two eyes? and how many of them have those eyes placed the on the front of the head and not the side?

[Ham n Cheese]

This is really just a prequel to

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

[AladainAF]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

So they want to make us their food and strip our planet of its resources then turn us into zombies to fight their other enemies right? Then why not orbitally bombard our largest cities and military centers then come down and herd the rest of us into large containment centers and farm us like cattle? What could we do? Why spend decades if not more learning the multitude of languages from all over the world and enough of the various cultures to send in agents to take important positions? That takes mass amounts of time and even the risk of exposure due to accident at the very least! Plus then come down acting peaceful giving us advanced technology or atleast showing it to us in action so now we know and exists and will obviously go after it with a passion?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Because its a television show. It's not supposed to make any sense.

[Regime]

We just need this motherfucker to show up.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

[

[Sharmai]

Originally Posted by AladainAF

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Because its a television show. It's not supposed to make any sense.

My wife says the same thing when I start bitching about something that she told me about in one of those weird shows she watches. Like general hospital, tyra banks, anything on lifetime.


Drives me nuts.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Read this tidbit on another forum discussing if aliens would be humanoid

"if intelligent life is fairly extensive- then it is likely that many of these species have at least evolved into upright bicameral bipeds- the evolution of life on Earth has shown us that this sort of environment favors just a few body-plans and structures- things like eyes/ legs/ wings/ heads/ torsos/skin/ skeletons/ etc occur independently across all the categories of animals-"


Which seems to be what science fiction authors go on except they forget that life most likely first originated in the sea. And many of those features are not in sea based animals. In fact I'd go so far as to so more alien races are likely to be water based creatures or water/land hybrids then pure land based creatures. And that kind of evolutionary development is much different then humanoid shapes.

[OneofOne]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

Oh I am a great fan of GOOD science fiction. This is science bullshit. For one thing once this planet becomes really aware that sentient lifeforms exist on other planets and ones that a more powerful then us there would be an massive new scientific and technological race to space like never before seen.

Second if the V's came down offering cures we would gladly say "ok How do we do X?" and if the said they can't show us but they can do it for us then military generals EVERYWHERE would go automatically into skeptics mode. Assuming of course they weren't already which they would have been.

Third how they fuck do they look like us? Seriously? I'd bet my life at at roulette before I'd bet an alien race would show up looking like us unless there's something very seriously wrong. Obviously that would mean they have the technology to either fake human shells to hold inside...something..., make robot looking humans, or actually morph their biology into humanoid forms. Any of which are HUGE statements.


I mean seriously those are just 3 basic considerations any idiot can think up in two seconds there are a thousand more that can be made as quickly that any science fiction novel based on this kind of first contact would have cover to be remotely believable.

Think about it.. political? Virus potential? Why did they make first contact in 51 ships that are obviously built for more then just pure warfare or diplomatic first contact reasons... Religions? The obvious fact they they are already integrated within our society?

You've just described why the original was much better thought out than this series. It covered all the questions you've asked. There was a reason the scientists were the first to start disappearing and a reason the fake conspiracy among world-wide scientists was started. Especially those going "hey wait why do they look like us?" A reason they brainwashed people and started taking over the military and police organizations from the inside. A reason why the propaganda was so important (if the anti-V terrorists stop attacking us we can use our resources to start spreading our great tech instead of having to defend ourselves).

As far as why do they look humanoid? Here you have to take a step back and consider two things: 1) special effects budgets 2) the original intent of the first draft (the idea fascists take over America, but studio said er people are dumb, add aliens) which means you need that insidiousness of a takeover, not blobs with laser beams saying "Our world now bitches!" And you need something viewers can identify with and understand. Hard to empathize with a 5-legged pink crystalline entity, or have the fear of "they are among us and we can't see them".

On the bright side, Kenneth Johnson still retains the movie rights to V and has stated several times that he'd like to make a movie based on his original storyline, and if V gets the attention it likely will, we'll see a movie. He already said the major studios have expressed interest with large dollar amounts attached, but he would prefer to do it on his own.

[Sharmai]

What you say is true except for one thing. Why didn't they just orbitally bombard the biggest threats and just cattle us up later? There is no military standpoint that makes sense to show yourselves and completely lose the advantage of surprise then try to trick us into slowly letting you infiltrate us openly over a long ass period of time to do the same thing.

I suppose they could be complete idiots at military strategy though. Instead of spending a few decades farming us and stripping the planet they instead had to spend decades infiltrating us beforehand then maybe another several decades or centuries infiltrating us openly as we watch and continue to have the freedom to develop our technology, find out the truth, and figure out ways to fight.


Retardation on every level.