Watching the pilot episode of V is a little bit like viewing one of Lost’s midseason summary clip shows without any prior knowledge of the show. V’s premiere is full of revelations and plot turns, enough to fill more than a few whole hours with satisfying reveals, but without all of the necessary development to make these points resonate. The show never stops to explore the repercussions of its major events, rather rushing off to deliver the next one. I love slower, deliberately paced shows – though that doesn’t mean I like filler – if the time is spent on developing its concepts and characters. When it comes to V, the setup of its scenario occurs so quickly it’s impossible to get a grasp of the world or even individual characters’ reactions, even though it’s absolutely pivotal to the show’s themes.
One day, two and a half dozen alien motherships appear over the world’s biggest cities, causing minor destruction and potentially major panic in the populace. The leader of these Visitors, Anna, quickly delivers a message to humanity by way of what’s essentially a giant screen on the ship’s underbellies declaring their presence to be peaceful. They claim to be surprised and glad to meet another intelligent race in the universe and want only to stop by for a while to restock on some necessary provisions and to open up many of their advanced technologies to humanity. The fear quickly dissolves into a crowd of clapping New Yorkers, in a scene that easily recalls such unrealistic portrayals of humanity as the bridge scene at the end of Spider-Man. I don’t care what the human-appearing aliens are promising, they have a giant supremely advanced ship over your city, and again, they’re aliens! No population representative of reality embraces that so quickly. Unfortunately, reality is devoid from nearly the entire enterprise. Within hours Anna is on Earth casually talking to reporters, as if no government agency had even shown up on the scene, let alone considered any of the likely considerations, like a quarantine, secrecy, major policy discussions, etc. Almost immediately we jump forward three weeks’ time and I’m thinking I’d have loved to see the show’s first 15 minutes fleshed out to an hour or even two.
It’s not really a spoiler to say that we quickly learn that there’s more to the Visitors than they’re letting on. It’s been two decades since the original show aired and the revelation that the aliens are in fact reptilian underneath human skins is part of pop culture, albeit to a smaller degree than Soylent Green being made of people. All of this is revealed by episode’s end anyway, and doesn’t cover the bigger two twists that were apparently not part of the original show, so I’ll save those for a later, designated section. The point is, knowing that the Visitors are not altruistic in their desires to help Earth is exactly why the lack of development in reactions to their presence hurts the show so much. If a big aspect of the series is going to deal with those who come to know the Visitors are evil or are at least suspicious or skeptical and those who fully embrace them if not devote their lives to the aliens, then it’d be to the show’s benefit to actually see how those two sides would arrive at their positions. Instead it simply happens. Again, go back to the New Yorkers clapping an image in the sky for promising to cure a variety of diseases and physical ailments. Sure, that’s pretty sweet, but how quickly are real people going to give their bodies over to alien medicine? Show me the Visitors doing their public relations game. Show me a scared, cynical public slowly seduced by these alien gifts.
We see brief evidence that the Visitors do indeed have great medical knowledge, but the character the show follows to explore the seduction side is a terrible choice. We’re given over to a 17 year-old named Tyler, who’s written as if he’s 13. He’s vaguely rebellious against his single mother, Erica, which means part of his attraction to acquainting himself with the Visitors and their PR program Peace Ambassadors, is simply because it’s different and his mom might not approve. It has nothing to do with the bigger issues they represent and offer. The other more significant reason for his attraction to the aliens is more literal-minded. He’s a stupidly horny kid and he becomes instantly infatuated with one of the Vs, Lisa (Laura Vandervoort). Never mind that again, he’s sexually attracted to an alien. I know males can be pretty dumb in letting their genitals do their thinking for them, but this is on a whole different level. This, alongside an early comment by the journalist/news anchor played by Scott Wolf about Anna and the other Visitors being attractive, is what the episode spends its time on with regard to the Visitors’ efforts to ease interspecies relations. Basically, they’re hot, so why wouldn’t you trust them with your bodies, let alone your planet? Side note: I find it hilarious that Tyler’s crush looks a hell of a lot like a younger version of his mother. This kid’s got serious issues.
The lead character is the aforementioned Erica (Elizabeth Mitchell) and the closest thing we have to a government perspective, which seems like a missed opportunity. Anyway, she’s an FBI agent dealing with counter terrorism issues and pays little attention to the Visitors. In one of her scenes the latest news about the Visitors is quite literally background noise. She’s too busy trying to get to the bottom of an outlier terrorist sleeper cell, the only one on her radar whose activities spiked with the Visitors’ arrival. Meanwhile, Father Jack (Joel Gretsch) is a local priest who finds himself more skeptical of the Visitors, or at least unwilling to take the Vatican’s party line that the Visitors must be part of God’s plan and shouldn’t be distrusted. This character’s position actually has the potential for some interesting explorations of faith, religion and self-interest as he’s also afraid that the Visitors could essentially take the place of God and be the new power to which the masses devote themselves. He’s not a religious fanatic, but he’s also not a super progressive priest-in-name-only. This is the character who is most interestingly challenged by the disruption of normalcy when the Visitors arrive.
*Begin spoilers*
It’s time for the major spoilers, so back out now if you care. Erica finds information about the sleeper cell’s meeting location and heads to check it out. At the same time, Jack is approached by a severely bleeding man claiming that the Visitors are evil reptiles and not benevolent guests. He gives Jack a package and asks that it be taken to a location that is, yes, where the sleeper cell is convening. Both arrive and it becomes quickly apparent that neither knows what this is about. It’s certainly not a traditional terrorist cell. In an incredibly quick and unrealistic manner, the undercover Erica asks direct, skeptical questions about the cell’s purpose, forcing the leader to give a monologue about the whole conspiracy. The Visitors aren’t exactly new arrivals. No, they’ve been disguised as humans for a long time, moving into positions of power, orchestrating the world’s turmoil and preparing for the coming of the main fleet. (Apparently the world’s current conflicts are the result of V manipulations. Funny how humans didn’t need their help in past centuries.)
Erica and some of the others are incredulous, but Jack brings forth the package which contains pictures, including one of the Visitors’ second-in-command with an unidentifiable man whom Erica had stumbled upon in researching the cell. Inexplicable to me, this so-called evidence confirms the whole story for our characters. The cell is then attacked by Visitors, including Erica’s until-then FBI partner (played by guest star Alan Tudyk), leaving most of the humans dead while our protagonists escape. The FBI partner, however, is cut open and we get a confirming look at the actual scales and even an eye beneath his human skin. So that’s the one twist, the Visitors have been among humans for some time now.
The second twist involves another character, Ryan (Morris Chestnut), who is being hounded by the cell leader to rejoin the group. He’s concerned about the safety of his soon-to-be fiance (Lourdes Benedicto) but eventually concedes and is present for the battle at the end. He receives a knife wound which reveals that he is also a Visitor, although apparently a traitor and was working against his own species. We’re given no reason why, but he claims there are more just like him. That’s a whole lot of major revelations for a pilot episode of any show. It all occurs in a huge rush. The show can’t wait to get to the final moments when Erica and Jack talk about how they have to form a resistance movement in order to protect mankind from the Visitors. This is, in the universe’s time, just minutes after they’ve learned about the whole conspiracy in the first place. It’s even stranger when Erica didn’t even really give the Visitors a second thought after their initial appearance. Again, everything happens so quickly that it’s impossible to figure out what you should think about each revelation, let alone for the show to give you any clue what the characters themselves are thinking. Things are just happening at a breakneck speed.
I can easily envision how this would have made a better four episodes. Start with one focused just on the Visitors arriving, maybe throwing only the audience a hint that they’re actually reptilian since everyone knows it anyway, but keep the characters in the dark for the time being. Let them grapple with just the alien presence for a bit. Another episode could delve into the Visitors ingratiating themselves with mankind with their medical treatments and other demonstrations of their good faith while continuing to get to know the characters and seeing how all of this impacts them. Introduce the conspiracy in the third episode and reveal the traitors in the fourth. Bam, you can deliver on all of those twists fairly quickly while showing, rather than quickly telling, us the impact of the Visitors on Earth and the main cast. Let’s see how they react and how the parts of the populace are seduced by their offers. Make it credible so that the Visitors are seen as truly dangerous when we learn about their secrets. Basically, approach the Visitors like they’re Brother Justin in Carnivàle. Now there’s a great example of a series showing us an antagonist’s secret evil ways and his magnetic and charismatic public side.
*End spoilers*
It’s a shame about this pilot because I think there’s a great story in there somewhere, if only the writers/producers and/or ABC had wanted to spend some time on it. Instead they’re in a mad rush to get to the juicy stuff, but you can’t have effective climaxes if you don’t have the developing actions. In a crude way, I think of this pilot as being like Lost if its pilot had ended with them opening the hatch. Sure, Lost had a fair share of filler, but it also had some interesting world building and character development, which enabled the big reveals to really spring to life and mean something. It also enables some suspense and mystery, when the reveals keep coming there’s not much time to consider what they mean in order for those conditions to form. Perhaps the show will improve, especially since as of this writing it’s already undergone two changes in showrunners. I’ll likely watch the next couple and see what happens. Lots of pilots are rocky. I just hope it slows down and gives the characters, world and plot twists some breathing room.
Great review, Dan – I ended up being a bit more positive about the show, but I definitely think it both tries to do too much and struggles to demonstrate some of its main points effectively.
However, I’m glad it MADE these points, regardless of whether it made them well. The scattershot nature of the pilot may have tried to do a few too many things, but it at least shows that the show is intrigued with some of the same things I am (if not always to the same degree).
The pilot seems symptomatic of the notion that you need to thrill before you actually stop and present any sort of subtle or gradual ramping up of tension, and the result is something that really could have been a good four episode opening to get people excited about the show. However, the “slow pace” (speaking in terms of how the network would respond more than I) would have perhaps kept people from watching, and if this pilot was another to hook people in (in the way the FlashForward pilot did) then it’s at least a chance for a piece of science fiction to start big and then readjust to something legitimately great once things settle down.