In 1983, the NBC network aired a scifi-thriller miniseries called "V", which I really enjoyed watching as a youngster.

The premise of the original show was about aliens calling themselves "Visitors", coming to Earth in the name of friendship and promising to help society progress, bringing great gifts of advanced technology and cures for medical diseases. They immediately form friendship associations, and even a youth movement, and soon even begin integrating themselves into governments around the world - all to better expedite the new era of progress, they claim. Some soon discover that the Visitors have a more secret, darker agenda.

Now the ABC network plans to air a re-make of it in January:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQoSCEMzJYE

Here is a clip which re-caps the original series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1QjZiTvhdE

And here is the intro for the old series, with its menacing theme:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcckn...x=0&playnext=1

More info on the new series can be found here:

http://www.visitorsite.net/vcast.htm

It's cookbook! a cookbook!

__________________
Aim high (but don't blow yourself up)!- Homer Hickam

In Soviet Russia, UFO report you!- Phil Plait

Carl Sagan may have seen a pale blue dot, but I see a sapphire.- Doug Phillips, Discovering Alabama.

Clear skies Maksutov.

it might be worth watching just to see Morena Baccarin..

__________________
"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

looks like the BA agrees with me about Morena Baccarin..

__________________
"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Do does every other man alive on this planet.

I always hoped in the original that Robert Englund's character would go Freddy Krueger on their alien behinds.

__________________
"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

LOL, Freddy Krueger didn't even exist until after V was made.
Anyway, it should be an interesting reimagining of a scifi-thriller classic.

Regarding BA's comments, one has to remember that this was made before its airing in 1983 - not that long after Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, when spaceships were whooshing noisily through space.

I expect that they'll clean up such plotholes in the re-make, keeping in mind the technical literacy of contemporary audiences, especially jaded scifi fans who aren't easily fooled or impressed.

Regarding aliens not being able to digest us, that's a bit presumptuous. It's possible that pan-spermia might mean that they do have biology comparable to ours, although granted a successful interspecies mating would be extraordinarily unlikely (but hey, it happens in Star Trek all the time). Hopefully that will spare us a hokey deus ex machina of the hybrid starchild with miraculous powers. I did like everything in the original show right upto that part. I liked how the aliens were going to use their mothership's fusion reactor to blow up the Earth - very climactic.

Maybe in the new series the aliens will be trying to "terraform" the Earth to meet their needs for colonization. After all, if habitable planets are rare enough, then if you come across another one you might want to hang onto it, even if it's already inhabited.
To be frank, I think mankind might even be inclined to do the same thing, if we came across some preciously rare habitable planet with lower lifeforms on it, and if our own Earth was in dire straits.

Remember, this re-make is a re-imagining of the original, and so the plans and the motivations of the Visitors could be significantly different from the original.
I'm willing to bet that the new show will avoid the pitfalls of the previous one.

just like in that Charlie Sheen masterpiece from the mid 90's called "The Arrival".
us stupid and arrogant humans have wrecked our planet, so the aliens are going to come and cleanse the planet of the scourge of humanity by pumping ginormous amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to raise the temperatures high enough to kill us off- which just happens to be the perfect temperature for them.

__________________
"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

I can agree on that.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

http://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/

I think the miniseries pre-dates but the series post-dates A Nightmare on Elm Street.

__________________
"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Serious remake is serious.

Sorry for the meme, and while I think this has potential, I think we're starting to see a meme of sorts develop with the recent science fiction remakes.

Turn original premise on head, slap on familiar packaging, what's old is new.

BSG turned pure camp to raw drama.

Star Trek turned morality plays into pure action.

Now we have Nazi allegory going Conquistador allegory. (I'm sure is blisteringly obvious, considering that the new "Donovan" character appears to be a priest and the hammering of the buzzword "devotion" to their plot).

I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing in the short term, but then again, there's nothing that says these new concepts wouldn't work just as well in something new, rather than slapping an old rubber mask on a new script.

__________________
The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Close, but not quite. A Nightmare on Elm Street was released about a month after V:The Series premiered.

The weekly "V" series ran from October of '84 to May '85 and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" was released in November of '84. They were pretty much contemporaneous.

(The original "V" miniseries aired in May of '83).

EDIT: WHarris beat me to it.

__________________
SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Given the differences in filming schedule, I'm pretty sure Nightmare wrapped months before the first episode of the TV series filmed (probably written, too).

__________________
The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

i like how you are all talking as if Freddy Krueger is a part of the same "universe" as the V series..
it would make for a rather neat crossover. Freddy invades the dreams of the invaders to get them to leave his hunting ground...

__________________
"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Just bumping this thread to remind anyone who's interested that the first episode of the new "V" series is on tonight...

__________________
SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

And most of the geek girls, too.

__________________
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."

I find it interesting how much short hair and paler lipstick changed her, I actually didn't recognize her as an actress I'd ever seen before.

Which was funny because I did recognize Elizabeth Mitchell from Gia. I see from IMDB that she was also in Lost, but I haven't see that.

__________________
‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

They've got her picture on the cover of the local TV listings section from the Sunday paper. When I made a comment about her being from "Firefly," my wife looked at the picture and said, "Playing who?"

I said, "She was the prostitute."

My wife said, "No, she wasn't. That's not her."

After placing a hand over the top of the picture's head so she could see the face without that short hair-do, she realized it was her.

__________________
SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

I sure how so.

__________________
"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

So far, looks good, all the old pieces are in place, slightly re-arranged.

__________________
The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

I watched it. I'm not sure what to think so far, but I like me some eye-candy.

__________________
"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau