Pilot (V)
Encyclopedia
"Pilot" is the series premiere of the 2009 reimagining
of the 1983 miniseries V created by Kenneth Johnson. The episode's teleplay was written by Scott Peters
, with story credit going to Johnson and Peters. Yves Simoneau
directed the episode, which originally aired in the United States on ABC
on November 3, 2009. The episode sees spaceships appear over 29 of the world's major cities. Though the alien "Visitors
" claim to come in peace, it transpires that they have been infiltrating the planet for decades, and are planning on enslaving the human species.
Parallels have been drawn between the Visitors and US Presidents George W. Bush
and Barack Obama
, though Peters and co-producer Jeffrey Bell
refute that they were intentional. Bell feels that while the original series was more of a military show with a clear enemy, the reimagining focuses more on the paranoia of not knowing who can be trusted. The episode incorporates aspects of the original series, including the Visitors' giant spaceships, but is quick to reveal the Visitors' true motivations, as Peters felt awareness of the original story was already high.
The episode was watched by 14.3 million US viewers, and received generally positive reviews. USA Today
Robert Bianco praised it for "quickly establishing its own identity" independent of the original series, while E! Online named it the best pilot episode in "forever". In contrast, The New York Times
Mike Hale called the episode "slapdash and formulaic", while David Hinckley of the Daily News deemed it "an elaborately costumed popcorn flick".
) offers to trade technology and cures for many diseases with mankind, in return for water and minerals. She invites TV journalist Chad Decker (Scott Wolf
) to interview her, on the condition he only portray the Visitors in a positive light.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
counterterrorism agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell
) disapproves that her teenage son Tyler (Logan Huffman
) is so enamoured by the aliens, being recruited for the V Peace Ambassador Program by the beautiful Visitor Lisa (Laura Vandervoort
). Erica and her partner Dale Maddox (Alan Tudyk
) investigate a group of terrorists whose activity spiked during the Visitors' initial appearance. They discover an abandoned hideout containing explosives, fake IDs and a deceased man who was tortured prior to his death. His cellphone contains details of a sleeper cell meeting, which Erica attends.
Elsewhere, Catholic
priest Jack Landry (Joel Gretsch
) is suspicious of the Visitors, and warns his parishioners to be wary of them. He doubts his stance when a previously wheelchair-bound parishioner is able to walk again, but has his suspicions confirmed when a mortally wounded man arrives at the church, telling Jack he knows the real reason behind the Visitors' appearance on Earth, handing him a dossier on the aliens and details of a secret meeting.
Businessman Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut
) is contacted repeatedly throughout the day by his old acquaintance Georgie (David Richmond-Peck), but refuses to go along with what Georgie wants from him, as he is planning on asking his girlfriend Valerie (Lourdes Benedicto
) to marry him. It transpires that Georgie is running the meeting which both Erica and Jack attend. He demands that all new attendants have an incision made in their skin to prove they are human, as the Visitors are actually reptiles with cloned human flesh hiding their reptilian appearance. He claims that the Visitors have been infiltrating Earth for years, and have installed agents in high positions of society with the ultimate intention of enslaving the human species. Jack shows Georgie the dossier, which contains photographs of the visitors in disguise, one of whom Erica recognizes from the fake passports seized during the earlier raid.
The group are suddenly attacked by a group of human-disguised Visitors, including Erica's partner Dale. She is able to overpower him, while Ryan arrives and defends Georgie. They escape from the building, and Ryan reveals that he is actually a Visitor, but opposes their plans. He returns home with the intention of breaking up with his girlfriend to protect her, but in his absence she has discovered the engagement ring he purchased for her. Erica and Jack discuss beginning a resistance movement against the Visitors.
later confirmed that the new series would incorporate memorable elements of the original, including "the huge ships [and] the red uniforms" seen in the pilot, as: "we are well aware of those moments and looking to put our own little spin on them to tip our hat to the old audience." Asked about the 1983 reveal of the Visitors' reptilian appearance beneath their human disguise, Peters noted of the reimagining: "We tried to put our own [spin on it]. We're ... a little bit different than their execution of it. It wasn't so much latex mask as it is real flesh and blood."
The Visitors' spaceship was entirely computer generated, and all scenes which took place aboard it were filmed in front of a green screen
. The internal design of the Visitor ship appears to be based on Santiago Calatrava's
futurist
style of architecture as the hallways appear to be based on the Milwaukee Art Museum
hallways and the white L'Hemisfèric building from the City of the Arts and the Sciences
in Valencia can be seen in the middle of the Visitor city, both of which were designed by Calatrava. Calatrava's designs have made their way into numerous science-fiction productions such as the Star Trek: The Next Generation
movies and the Alliance
worlds in the movie Serenity
.
Peters, who wrote the pilot episode with his mentor Sam Egan
, felt that it was important to reveal the Visitors' secret quickly, as: "There is this huge awareness of the original. The story is already known and out there, so we want to leap forward quickly, so we don't build and build and build to something people already know." Co-producer Jeffrey Bell, commenting on differences between the original and reimagining, stated:
While similarities between the Visitors and the Obama
and Bush administrations have been discussed in the media, Peters refuted that they were intentional. He has stated that the theme of the show is "blind devotion", with no political or religious agenda. Peters commented: "Watching any television show is a subjective experience. If you're looking for something in a show, you can find it, whether you're on one side of the political spectrum or the other. The central theme of this show is blind devotion, and you can look at that in two different ways. It's our job, as storytellers, to put some provocative things out there and leave some things open to interpretation." Bell added: "We're talking about metaphors and allegories here. On a certain level, I just want to remind people it's a show about spaceships."
, Firefly
and Smallville
. Peters has stated that the casting of so many actors from a science-fiction background was coincidental, explaining: "Obviously, we went for the best actors we could possibly find. It's a nice bonus that a lot of these folks have appeared in genre shows in the past, but it was not designed that way. We also wanted to make sure that as we moved forward, we honoured and respected the characters and the themes that the (original) show envisioned, while introducing brand new characters and brand new themes that make sense in a post-9/11 world." Mitchell was a fan of the original series as a child, recalling: "I liked the escape of it; I liked the entertainment of it. It was a fun night for me. I was allowed to watch an hour of television with my parents, and we made a kind of celebration of it. I hope that other teenagers will do that with their parents with this show." Mitchell's role in V sees her play an FBI agent with traits traditionally assigned to males. She commented: "I like playing a traditional hero. I don't think I've ever done it before. Sigourney Weaver
said she always chooses male roles because they are meatier." Mitchell characterizes Erica as having "a little bit of a hero complex", but "her joy and her love and her true affection is with her son, and the fact that he is in imminent danger (makes it) fun to play."
Fifty to sixty actresses auditioned for the role of Anna. Baccarin was initially rejected following her audition, as Peters did not believe she had the right look for the role. He reconsidered, however, and believes that Baccarin brings a seriousness and "commanding presence" to the part. Baccarin has said of her role: "being, I guess, the face of what people want to see... I think there's an aspect of politicians: You need to embody what everybody wants to see, and at the same time you have your own agenda." Laura Vandervoort
plays the Visitor Lisa. Vandervoort is unaware of Lisa's ultimate agenda, which she believes makes the creative process more exciting. She explained: "My direction is to play her as honestly as possible, so I'm playing her as a human with a secret. I'm playing a young 17-year-old who is possibly in love."
Scott Wolf
spoke of his role as journalist Chad Decker: "Part of the fun will be that relationship between his ambition and his journalistic integrity." David Richmond-Peck who plays Georgie has deemed his character: "A really dark, multi-layered complex character with a past. It's an extremely demanding role because of the weight this character carries. Even just doing a scene in an office, at the end of the day your neck is cramped up — to maintain that intensity in the performance is an extreme amount of mental and physical work even while standing still. You’ve got to have that on you at all times." Joel Gretsch
was cast as Catholic priest Jack Landry. The character was originally scripted as being much younger, in his late twenties to early thirties. When the production team cast Mitchell as Erica, they began to consider making Jack "a little bit more man's man", and cast Gretsch in the role when he coincidentally contacted Peters immediately after this alteration had been made. Peters characterized Jack's motivation in the pilot episode as attempting to reconcile the reality of arriving spaceships with his religious beliefs, finding his faith shaken.
to create giant 'V's above twenty-six US landmarks from October 23, 2009, until the premiere on November 3, 2009. The campaign would have targeted 15 cities across the US. Lisa de Moraes for The Washington Post
criticized the idea, noting that ABC's parent company Disney had previously announced its intention to cut carbon emissions from fuels by half by 2012 as part of its commitment to environmental affairs. Aviation authorities estimated that ABC's marketing stunt would use around 400 gallons of fuel, containing 800 grams of lead, releasing three tons of CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Following de Moraes' complaint, the skywriting plans were subsequently cancelled, with an ABC representative commenting that the network had decided to spend its money on alternate initiatives.
Robert Bianco put V on his list of the top ten new shows of the TV season, stating that the remake is well-made and "quickly establishes its own identity." Comparing it to the original series, Bianco noted that the remake could easily have been a failure, yet managed to "contemporize the story without drowning it in paranoia." Maureen Ryan for the Chicago Tribune
noted that the "character drama" in the pilot episode was "clunky" but overall found the episode "solidly entertaining and suitably suspenseful." Ken Tucker for Entertainment Weekly
graded the episode 'B+' calling it "excellently acted" and noting that Mitchell is "fast becoming TV's go-to gal for strong, brainy women of action". Variety's
Brian Lowry opined that the episode "busily races through too much business, but it dangles a tantalizing array of plots, and features a knockout performance (in more ways than one) by Morena Baccarin as the cool, beguiling alien leader." He called Baccarin the "real breakout" star of the episode, deeming Anna "TV's coolest alien since the invention of the Vulcan
nerve pinch."
Mary McNamara for the Los Angeles Times
commented on parallels drawn between the Visitors and President Barack Obama
, insofar as: "The instant adoration, the attractiveness and rhetorical skills of Anna, the idea that the Visitors will woo us with universal healthcare and then destroy us all seem a right-wingish take on the president's ascendancy." She continued: "Perhaps that is the creators' intent, but most successful science fiction contains an element of, if not outright humor, then the absurd. That the human race will be enslaved not through brainwashing or firepower but adequate healthcare is pretty hilarious in a dark and almost possible way. And Anna and her crew seem to embody more of a Wall Street
deregulated/Bernie Madoff mentality—big returns for minimum investment. And we all know how that turns out." Linda Stasi for The New York Post conversely compared the Visitors to extremist Muslim
s. Though in the original series the aliens were a metaphor for Nazis, Stasi commented: "TV shows no longer have to rely on Nazis, because now we have the hated extremist Muslims to make all bad-guy metaphors with", adding on the Visitors' appearance: "Once you peel back the outer, good-looking shell, you've got your standard outer-space Nazi/Taliban lizard person lurking beneath."
Matt Roush for TV Guide
compared the V pilot to science-fiction shows Lost
and FlashForward
, noting that V is "undeniably more simplistic [...] in its us-vs.-them setup", but commenting that he was "instantly seduced and hooked by its lavish production values, the immediately gripping storyline and a strong cast", concluding: V may not initially dig as deep as FlashForward, but there's a juicy urgency to all of the interpersonal and intergalactic melodrama, with plenty of action and surprising reveals." King Features' entertainment reporter Cindy Elavsky
called V: "the best new show on television, by far. The special effects are feature-film quality; the writing is intelligent and time-relevant; and the acting is first-rate. The first five minutes alone will hook you for the entire season."
In contrast, Mike Hale for The New York Times
commented: "The ideas in V, about alien encounters and mass delusion and media manipulation, are enticing. It's too bad that they're floating around in a show that at this early stage, is so slapdash and formulaic in its storytelling." Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com
commented that plot points such as the Visitors attempting to create worldwide instability by printing fake IDs were unbelievable, and that talk of launching a resistance movement was "tiresome and pointless". She posed the question: "Isn't there a new way to handle the alien invasion story? Isn't there something a little more subtle and hauntingly evil out there than sneaky reptiles with really good publicists?" David Hinckley for the Daily News called the episode "an elaborately costumed popcorn flick", opining that whilst the original series "probed the subtleties of human psychology in the face of ominous uncertainty that threatened to become mortal danger", the reimagining is "about as subtle as a Donald Trump
boardroom firing
."
V (2009 TV series)
V is an American science fiction television series that ran for two seasons on ABC, from November 3, 2009 to March 15, 2011. A remake of the 1983 miniseries created by Kenneth Johnson, the new series chronicles the arrival on Earth of a technologically advanced alien species which ostensibly comes...
of the 1983 miniseries V created by Kenneth Johnson. The episode's teleplay was written by Scott Peters
Scott Peters (writer)
Scott Peters is a Canadian television producer, television director and screenwriter, most probably known for his involvement in writing, co-creating and producing for the science fiction television series The 4400. He is also the head writer of the 2009 sci-fi series V, a remake of the 1980s...
, with story credit going to Johnson and Peters. Yves Simoneau
Yves Simoneau
Yves Simoneau is a Canadian film and television director.-Recognition:His acclaimed 1987 crime drama Pouvoir intime garnered multiple Genie Awards nominations including best direction at the 8th Genie Awards...
directed the episode, which originally aired in the United States on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
on November 3, 2009. The episode sees spaceships appear over 29 of the world's major cities. Though the alien "Visitors
Visitors (V TV series)
The Visitors are a fictional invading alien race from the V science fiction franchise. The "Visitors" are reptilian humanoids who disguise themselves to look human but prefer to eat live prey, such as mice. In the 1983 and 1984 miniseries, but not the 1984 TV series, the disguised Visitors can be...
" claim to come in peace, it transpires that they have been infiltrating the planet for decades, and are planning on enslaving the human species.
Parallels have been drawn between the Visitors and US Presidents George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
and Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, though Peters and co-producer Jeffrey Bell
Jeffrey Jackson Bell
Jeffrey Bell is a writer/producer best known for his work on television. He began his career writing for The X-Files, where he stayed for three seasons, then became a writer/director/producer on Angel, becoming its showrunner for the final two seasons.He served as executive producer on the pilot...
refute that they were intentional. Bell feels that while the original series was more of a military show with a clear enemy, the reimagining focuses more on the paranoia of not knowing who can be trusted. The episode incorporates aspects of the original series, including the Visitors' giant spaceships, but is quick to reveal the Visitors' true motivations, as Peters felt awareness of the original story was already high.
The episode was watched by 14.3 million US viewers, and received generally positive reviews. USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
Robert Bianco praised it for "quickly establishing its own identity" independent of the original series, while E! Online named it the best pilot episode in "forever". In contrast, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
Mike Hale called the episode "slapdash and formulaic", while David Hinckley of the Daily News deemed it "an elaborately costumed popcorn flick".
Plot
When spaceships appear over 29 of the world's major cities, the alien "Visitors" claim to come in peace. Their leader Anna (Morena BaccarinMorena Baccarin
Morena Baccarin is a Brazilian-born American actress most widely known for roles in several American science fiction television shows: as Inara Serra in the series Firefly; as Adria in the series Stargate SG-1; and as Anna in the 2009 version of the series V...
) offers to trade technology and cures for many diseases with mankind, in return for water and minerals. She invites TV journalist Chad Decker (Scott Wolf
Scott Wolf
Scott Richard Wolf is an American actor, known for his roles on the television series Party of Five as Bailey Salinger and on Everwood as Dr. Jake Hartman. Since 2009, he has appeared in the Sci-Fi series V as the morally ambiguous journalist, Chad Decker.-Early life:Wolf was born in Boston,...
) to interview her, on the condition he only portray the Visitors in a positive light.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
counterterrorism agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell
Elizabeth Mitchell
Elizabeth Mitchell , is an American actress/modelwho is known for her roles as Dr. Juliet Burke on ABC's TV series Lost and as FBI agent Erica Evans on V. She has starred in such films as The Santa Clause 2, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, and Gia.-Early life:Mitchell was born Elizabeth...
) disapproves that her teenage son Tyler (Logan Huffman
Logan Huffman
Logan Huffman is a television actor featured in a major role as the son of the protagonist in the 2009 remake of V. His character is named Tyler Evans.-Personal:...
) is so enamoured by the aliens, being recruited for the V Peace Ambassador Program by the beautiful Visitor Lisa (Laura Vandervoort
Laura Vandervoort
Laura Dianne Vandervoort is a Canadian actress known for her roles as Kara Zor-El in the television series Smallville, Sadie Harrison in the television series Instant Star and Lisa in the television series V....
). Erica and her partner Dale Maddox (Alan Tudyk
Alan Tudyk
Alan Wray Tudyk is an American actor known for his roles as Simon in the British comedy Death at a Funeral, as Steve the Pirate in DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, as Sonny in the science fiction drama I, Robot, as Doc Potter in 3:10 to Yuma, as Tucker in the Tucker & Dale vs Evil and as Hoban...
) investigate a group of terrorists whose activity spiked during the Visitors' initial appearance. They discover an abandoned hideout containing explosives, fake IDs and a deceased man who was tortured prior to his death. His cellphone contains details of a sleeper cell meeting, which Erica attends.
Elsewhere, Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
priest Jack Landry (Joel Gretsch
Joel Gretsch
Joel James Gretsch is an American actor. His roles include Tom Baldwin on the USA Network series The 4400, the monstruous Capt./Maj./Col. Owen Crawford in the Steven Spielberg produced 2002 sci-fi miniseries Taken and Father Jack Landry on V.-Early life:Gretsch was born in St...
) is suspicious of the Visitors, and warns his parishioners to be wary of them. He doubts his stance when a previously wheelchair-bound parishioner is able to walk again, but has his suspicions confirmed when a mortally wounded man arrives at the church, telling Jack he knows the real reason behind the Visitors' appearance on Earth, handing him a dossier on the aliens and details of a secret meeting.
Businessman Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut
Morris Chestnut
Morris L. Chestnut is an American film and television actor. He is known for his roles as teenage father Ricky Baker in the 1991 film Boyz n the Hood, groom-to-be Lance Sullivan in the 1999 film The Best Man, as Tracy Reynolds, NBA star in the 2002 film Like Mike, and as the Visitor Ryan in the...
) is contacted repeatedly throughout the day by his old acquaintance Georgie (David Richmond-Peck), but refuses to go along with what Georgie wants from him, as he is planning on asking his girlfriend Valerie (Lourdes Benedicto
Lourdes Benedicto
Lourdes Benedicto is an American actress of Filipino/Dominican descent. She is most well known for her starring role as Eva Rios on The Nine, and for her role as Alicia Lawson on the short-lived series Cashmere Mafia. She is primarily known as a television actress, but has been in a few...
) to marry him. It transpires that Georgie is running the meeting which both Erica and Jack attend. He demands that all new attendants have an incision made in their skin to prove they are human, as the Visitors are actually reptiles with cloned human flesh hiding their reptilian appearance. He claims that the Visitors have been infiltrating Earth for years, and have installed agents in high positions of society with the ultimate intention of enslaving the human species. Jack shows Georgie the dossier, which contains photographs of the visitors in disguise, one of whom Erica recognizes from the fake passports seized during the earlier raid.
The group are suddenly attacked by a group of human-disguised Visitors, including Erica's partner Dale. She is able to overpower him, while Ryan arrives and defends Georgie. They escape from the building, and Ryan reveals that he is actually a Visitor, but opposes their plans. He returns home with the intention of breaking up with his girlfriend to protect her, but in his absence she has discovered the engagement ring he purchased for her. Erica and Jack discuss beginning a resistance movement against the Visitors.
Production
It was announced in May 2009 that a reimagining of the 1983 miniseries V created by Kenneth Johnson, had been picked up by ABC. Cast member Mitchell noted that the show would do service to the most iconic moments from the original franchise. Executive producer Scott PetersScott Peters (writer)
Scott Peters is a Canadian television producer, television director and screenwriter, most probably known for his involvement in writing, co-creating and producing for the science fiction television series The 4400. He is also the head writer of the 2009 sci-fi series V, a remake of the 1980s...
later confirmed that the new series would incorporate memorable elements of the original, including "the huge ships [and] the red uniforms" seen in the pilot, as: "we are well aware of those moments and looking to put our own little spin on them to tip our hat to the old audience." Asked about the 1983 reveal of the Visitors' reptilian appearance beneath their human disguise, Peters noted of the reimagining: "We tried to put our own [spin on it]. We're ... a little bit different than their execution of it. It wasn't so much latex mask as it is real flesh and blood."
The Visitors' spaceship was entirely computer generated, and all scenes which took place aboard it were filmed in front of a green screen
Chroma key
Chroma key compositing is a technique for compositing two images together. A color range in the top layer is made transparent, revealing another image behind. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production...
. The internal design of the Visitor ship appears to be based on Santiago Calatrava's
Santiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer whose principal office is in Zürich, Switzerland. Classed now among the elite designers of the world, he has offices in Zürich, Paris, Valencia, and New York City....
futurist
Futurist architecture
Futurist architecture is an early-20th century form of architecture characterized by anti-historicism and long horizontal lines suggesting speed, motion and urgency. Technology and even violence were among the themes of the Futurists. The movement was founded by the poet Filippo Tommaso...
style of architecture as the hallways appear to be based on the Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee Art Museum
The Milwaukee Art Museum is located on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Beginning around 1872, multiple organizations were founded in order to bring an art gallery to Milwaukee, as the city was still a growing port town with little or no facilities to hold major art exhibitions...
hallways and the white L'Hemisfèric building from the City of the Arts and the Sciences
Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències
The City of Arts and Sciences is an entertainment-based cultural and architectural complex in the city of Valencia, Spain. It is the most important modern tourist destination in the city of Valencia....
in Valencia can be seen in the middle of the Visitor city, both of which were designed by Calatrava. Calatrava's designs have made their way into numerous science-fiction productions such as the Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production...
movies and the Alliance
Alliance (Firefly)
The Alliance is a fictional supra-governmental entity in the Serenity franchise, a powerful authoritarian government and law-enforcement organization that controls the majority of territory within the known universe...
worlds in the movie Serenity
Serenity (film)
Serenity is a 2005 space western film written and directed by Joss Whedon. It is a continuation of the short-lived 2002 Fox science fiction television series Firefly, taking place after the events of the final episode. Set in 2518, Serenity is the story of the captain and crew of a cargo ship...
.
Peters, who wrote the pilot episode with his mentor Sam Egan
Sam Egan
Sam Egan is a journalist, and a writer/producer for television.His credits include writing and producing for such shows as: Quincy, M.E., The Incredible Hulk, The Fall Guy, Northern Exposure, The Outer Limits, Sanctuary and Jeremiah...
, felt that it was important to reveal the Visitors' secret quickly, as: "There is this huge awareness of the original. The story is already known and out there, so we want to leap forward quickly, so we don't build and build and build to something people already know." Co-producer Jeffrey Bell, commenting on differences between the original and reimagining, stated:
While similarities between the Visitors and the Obama
Presidency of Barack Obama
The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009 when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election...
and Bush administrations have been discussed in the media, Peters refuted that they were intentional. He has stated that the theme of the show is "blind devotion", with no political or religious agenda. Peters commented: "Watching any television show is a subjective experience. If you're looking for something in a show, you can find it, whether you're on one side of the political spectrum or the other. The central theme of this show is blind devotion, and you can look at that in two different ways. It's our job, as storytellers, to put some provocative things out there and leave some things open to interpretation." Bell added: "We're talking about metaphors and allegories here. On a certain level, I just want to remind people it's a show about spaceships."
Casting
The cast of V features a number of actors from other science-fiction series, including LostLost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
, Firefly
Firefly (TV series)
Firefly is an American space western television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon, under his Mutant Enemy Productions label. Whedon served as executive producer, along with Tim Minear....
and Smallville
Smallville
Smallville is the hometown of Superman in comic books published by DC Comics. While growing up in Smallville, the young Clark Kent attended Smallville High with best friends Lana Lang, Chloe Sullivan and Pete Ross...
. Peters has stated that the casting of so many actors from a science-fiction background was coincidental, explaining: "Obviously, we went for the best actors we could possibly find. It's a nice bonus that a lot of these folks have appeared in genre shows in the past, but it was not designed that way. We also wanted to make sure that as we moved forward, we honoured and respected the characters and the themes that the (original) show envisioned, while introducing brand new characters and brand new themes that make sense in a post-9/11 world." Mitchell was a fan of the original series as a child, recalling: "I liked the escape of it; I liked the entertainment of it. It was a fun night for me. I was allowed to watch an hour of television with my parents, and we made a kind of celebration of it. I hope that other teenagers will do that with their parents with this show." Mitchell's role in V sees her play an FBI agent with traits traditionally assigned to males. She commented: "I like playing a traditional hero. I don't think I've ever done it before. Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver is an American actress. She is best known for her critically acclaimed role of Ellen Ripley in the four Alien films: Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, for which she has received worldwide recognition .Other notable roles include Dana...
said she always chooses male roles because they are meatier." Mitchell characterizes Erica as having "a little bit of a hero complex", but "her joy and her love and her true affection is with her son, and the fact that he is in imminent danger (makes it) fun to play."
Fifty to sixty actresses auditioned for the role of Anna. Baccarin was initially rejected following her audition, as Peters did not believe she had the right look for the role. He reconsidered, however, and believes that Baccarin brings a seriousness and "commanding presence" to the part. Baccarin has said of her role: "being, I guess, the face of what people want to see... I think there's an aspect of politicians: You need to embody what everybody wants to see, and at the same time you have your own agenda." Laura Vandervoort
Laura Vandervoort
Laura Dianne Vandervoort is a Canadian actress known for her roles as Kara Zor-El in the television series Smallville, Sadie Harrison in the television series Instant Star and Lisa in the television series V....
plays the Visitor Lisa. Vandervoort is unaware of Lisa's ultimate agenda, which she believes makes the creative process more exciting. She explained: "My direction is to play her as honestly as possible, so I'm playing her as a human with a secret. I'm playing a young 17-year-old who is possibly in love."
Scott Wolf
Scott Wolf
Scott Richard Wolf is an American actor, known for his roles on the television series Party of Five as Bailey Salinger and on Everwood as Dr. Jake Hartman. Since 2009, he has appeared in the Sci-Fi series V as the morally ambiguous journalist, Chad Decker.-Early life:Wolf was born in Boston,...
spoke of his role as journalist Chad Decker: "Part of the fun will be that relationship between his ambition and his journalistic integrity." David Richmond-Peck who plays Georgie has deemed his character: "A really dark, multi-layered complex character with a past. It's an extremely demanding role because of the weight this character carries. Even just doing a scene in an office, at the end of the day your neck is cramped up — to maintain that intensity in the performance is an extreme amount of mental and physical work even while standing still. You’ve got to have that on you at all times." Joel Gretsch
Joel Gretsch
Joel James Gretsch is an American actor. His roles include Tom Baldwin on the USA Network series The 4400, the monstruous Capt./Maj./Col. Owen Crawford in the Steven Spielberg produced 2002 sci-fi miniseries Taken and Father Jack Landry on V.-Early life:Gretsch was born in St...
was cast as Catholic priest Jack Landry. The character was originally scripted as being much younger, in his late twenties to early thirties. When the production team cast Mitchell as Erica, they began to consider making Jack "a little bit more man's man", and cast Gretsch in the role when he coincidentally contacted Peters immediately after this alteration had been made. Peters characterized Jack's motivation in the pilot episode as attempting to reconcile the reality of arriving spaceships with his religious beliefs, finding his faith shaken.
Promotion
ABC executives intended to promote the episode's broadcast by hiring skywritersSkywriting
Skywriting is the process of using a small aircraft, able to expel special smoke during flight, to fly in certain patterns to create writing readable by someone on the ground...
to create giant 'V's above twenty-six US landmarks from October 23, 2009, until the premiere on November 3, 2009. The campaign would have targeted 15 cities across the US. Lisa de Moraes for The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
criticized the idea, noting that ABC's parent company Disney had previously announced its intention to cut carbon emissions from fuels by half by 2012 as part of its commitment to environmental affairs. Aviation authorities estimated that ABC's marketing stunt would use around 400 gallons of fuel, containing 800 grams of lead, releasing three tons of CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Following de Moraes' complaint, the skywriting plans were subsequently cancelled, with an ABC representative commenting that the network had decided to spend its money on alternate initiatives.
Reception
The episode was watched by 14.3 million US viewers, and attained a 5.2/14 in the 18-49 demographic. It was watched by 2.16 million Canadian viewers, making it the first debut of the 2009 Canadian TV season to attain over 2 million viewers. The episode received generally favorable reviews, with E! Online rating it 11/10 and calling it "the best pilot we've seen in, well, forever." USA TodayUSA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
Robert Bianco put V on his list of the top ten new shows of the TV season, stating that the remake is well-made and "quickly establishes its own identity." Comparing it to the original series, Bianco noted that the remake could easily have been a failure, yet managed to "contemporize the story without drowning it in paranoia." Maureen Ryan for the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
noted that the "character drama" in the pilot episode was "clunky" but overall found the episode "solidly entertaining and suitably suspenseful." Ken Tucker for Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
graded the episode 'B+' calling it "excellently acted" and noting that Mitchell is "fast becoming TV's go-to gal for strong, brainy women of action". Variety's
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
Brian Lowry opined that the episode "busily races through too much business, but it dangles a tantalizing array of plots, and features a knockout performance (in more ways than one) by Morena Baccarin as the cool, beguiling alien leader." He called Baccarin the "real breakout" star of the episode, deeming Anna "TV's coolest alien since the invention of the Vulcan
Vulcan (Star Trek)
Vulcans, or sometimes Vulcanians, are an extraterrestrial humanoid species in the Star Trek universe who evolved on the planet Vulcan, and are noted for their attempt to live by reason and logic with no interference from emotion. They were the first extraterrestrial species in the Star Trek...
nerve pinch."
Mary McNamara for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
commented on parallels drawn between the Visitors and President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, insofar as: "The instant adoration, the attractiveness and rhetorical skills of Anna, the idea that the Visitors will woo us with universal healthcare and then destroy us all seem a right-wingish take on the president's ascendancy." She continued: "Perhaps that is the creators' intent, but most successful science fiction contains an element of, if not outright humor, then the absurd. That the human race will be enslaved not through brainwashing or firepower but adequate healthcare is pretty hilarious in a dark and almost possible way. And Anna and her crew seem to embody more of a Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
deregulated/Bernie Madoff mentality—big returns for minimum investment. And we all know how that turns out." Linda Stasi for The New York Post conversely compared the Visitors to extremist Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s. Though in the original series the aliens were a metaphor for Nazis, Stasi commented: "TV shows no longer have to rely on Nazis, because now we have the hated extremist Muslims to make all bad-guy metaphors with", adding on the Visitors' appearance: "Once you peel back the outer, good-looking shell, you've got your standard outer-space Nazi/Taliban lizard person lurking beneath."
Matt Roush for TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
compared the V pilot to science-fiction shows Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
and FlashForward
Flashforward
A flashforward is an interjected scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television and other media. Flashforwards are often used to represent events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future...
, noting that V is "undeniably more simplistic [...] in its us-vs.-them setup", but commenting that he was "instantly seduced and hooked by its lavish production values, the immediately gripping storyline and a strong cast", concluding: V may not initially dig as deep as FlashForward, but there's a juicy urgency to all of the interpersonal and intergalactic melodrama, with plenty of action and surprising reveals." King Features' entertainment reporter Cindy Elavsky
Cindy Elavsky
Cindy Elavsky authors Celebrity Extra, a syndicated column distributed by King Features Weekly Services, a division of North American Syndicate of the Hearst Corporation holdings, which has a subscribership of approximately 175-200 weekly newspapers in the U.S. . Celebrity Extra has a weekly...
called V: "the best new show on television, by far. The special effects are feature-film quality; the writing is intelligent and time-relevant; and the acting is first-rate. The first five minutes alone will hook you for the entire season."
In contrast, Mike Hale for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
commented: "The ideas in V, about alien encounters and mass delusion and media manipulation, are enticing. It's too bad that they're floating around in a show that at this early stage, is so slapdash and formulaic in its storytelling." Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
commented that plot points such as the Visitors attempting to create worldwide instability by printing fake IDs were unbelievable, and that talk of launching a resistance movement was "tiresome and pointless". She posed the question: "Isn't there a new way to handle the alien invasion story? Isn't there something a little more subtle and hauntingly evil out there than sneaky reptiles with really good publicists?" David Hinckley for the Daily News called the episode "an elaborately costumed popcorn flick", opining that whilst the original series "probed the subtleties of human psychology in the face of ominous uncertainty that threatened to become mortal danger", the reimagining is "about as subtle as a Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump, Sr. is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have...
boardroom firing
The Apprentice (U.S. TV series)
The Apprentice is an American reality television show hosted by real estate magnate, businessman and television personality Donald Trump, created by Mark Burnett and broadcast on NBC...
."