V

Last night I happened to catch the premiere of ABC’s new series V. The series is a remake of the sci-fi miniseries from the 80’s (which is my favorite decade that I have been alive for but do not remember at all.) The premise of the series is that a group of “Visitors” visit our planet. These visitors are scary scaly reptiles, but to mitigate the fear of such a different appearance, these aliens wear cloned human skin over themselves so that they can appear super attractive. The visitors arrive in vast spaceships that hover over the world’s largest cities while they wait to replenish their ships’ supplies and at the same time share their advanced technology with us. However, as we find out in the pilot, they are not as trustworthy as they might appear.

The main protagonist at this point appears to be none other than Juliet from LOST!!! She plays FBI counter-terrorist agent Erica Evans. My bet is that she will be leading the investigation into the Vs a-la Fringe or FlashForward. She has a son who is stupid and attracted to all the Vs so he buys into their bs manipulative spiel. You can compare his character perfectly with the son from the 4400. Speaking of the 4400, this show is made by the same guy and features Joel Gretsch but as a priest not an FBI agent.

We also have the main antagonist played by Adria from Stargate/Inara from Firefly. Her character, Anna, is the supreme leader of the aliens who lives aboard the main mothership which, incidentally, is above New York. She manipulates people and looks good while doing it. She’s pretty cool.

Anyway, the show seems to be hitting all the right buttons in terms of current sci-fi popularity as well as making it easy for the creators by being a remake. It is hugely similar to LOST, Fringe and Flashforward going so far as to steal the pupil dilation opening from LOST. However, this is not made by JJ Abrahms. Despite this, it has to potential to be confusing as the narration skips back and forth to different times. This is not to say that the characters are time traveling, but rather we see the present and then some things that happen in the future. This works pretty well, especially as it satisfies the viewer’s desire for answers while still preserving the plot lines.

It seems to have a ton of potential and I really liked the first episode, however, I am biased because I like the ridiculous amount of recognizable sci-fi actors.