“Chuck” writer/producer Scott Rosenbaum has joined “V” as its new showrunner.
Variety indicated back in June that “Angel” vet Jeff Bell would serve as post-pilot “V” showrunner, but stories posted today indicate that "The 4400" creator Scott Peters, who wrote the “V” pilot airing tonight, is the one Rosenbaum is replacing as showrunner.
“V” ceased production after its fourth episode, and all four completed episodes will air during November sweeps. If post-pilot ratings are not disastrous (it airs against blockbusters “NCIS” and “The Biggest Loser”), ABC intends to put it back in production and air new episodes beginning in March.
The first eight minutes:
My review of tonight's pilot:
An ABC remake of NBC’s 1983 alien-invasion series, the new “V” pilot was scripted by Scott Peters (creator of “The 4400”) and stars Morena Baccarin (“Firefly”) as an extraterrestrial leader, Elizabeth Mitchell (“Lost”) as an obligatory hot FBI lady, Scott Wolf (“Everwood”) as an ambitious TV journalist, Joel Gretsch (“The 4400”) as a wary clergyman and Laura Vandervoort (Supergirl on “Smallville”) as a lizard girl in a hot human teen costume.
ABC has completed four episodes of the series, all of which will air during November sweeps. If ratings are not disastrous, production will resume in the coming months and the series will return with more episodes in March.
Mitchell and Morena, both excellent actresses, make the most of their roles. (And with her new haircut and huge eyes, Baccarin looks appropriately alien.) The production design is superb and the alien ships look spectacular.
But here’s what I found disagreeable about the new “V” pilot (spoilers ahead):
* New Yorkers applaud and cheer the “we come in peace” arrival speech from the giant spaceship blotting out the sun over Manhattan -- the same spaceship that just knocked the flowerpots off everybody’s shelves and smashed the picture frames that once hung on everybody’s walls. The spaceship that just sent a jet screaming into a fireball on a New York street. (The aliens’ arrival even topples a sculpture of Jesus Christ from its lofty perch, sending it shattering on the pews below!) Have these applauders not seen “To Serve Man”? In the world I live in, no one, let alone savvy city dwellers, would be so quick to take these disruptive aliens at their word. (A single schizophrenic homeless man should have cheered and applauded the aliens as his fellow New Yorkers gave him the stink-eye. That’s the scene I’d buy.)
* The FBI agent, out to find her teen son, tries to get from one part of the spaceship-shadowed city to another, but finds herself blocked by U.S. military. What are they doing there? And why are they trying to stop people from moving from one place beneath the giant spaceship to another place beneath the giant spaceship?
* The promos feature a scene involving Wolf’s character, Chad Decker, being told he cannot ask questions that would paint the visitors in an negative light. This struck me as a big sack of “So what?” The TV-viewing public has seen plenty of “Larry King Live,” “Inside The Actors Studio,” “The Jay Leno Show,” “Entertainment Tonight” and the Barbara Walters specials. They have endured decades of interviewers who don’t ask tough questions. The viewers who care about real answers simply dismiss these interviewers as compromised or poor journalists, and wait until somebody like Mike Wallace or Martin Bashir or Howard Stern gets a crack. If Decker inexplicably skipped some key questions during an exclusive opportunity, his bosses and his rivals in the media and an email-happy public would never let him hear the end of it – and the controversy he set off would inevitably spill over onto his alien masters. If the extraterrestrials are trying to win over humans, this strategy can only ultimately engender distrust. But, then again, what else would you expect from a bunch of dirty lizards?
* All this begs the bigger question: Why are these aliens so concerned about how they’re portrayed to humanity? If they can build city-size galaxy-crossing starships and manufacture human flesh so efficiently, isn’t it almost a given that they have hugely superior weaponry as well? What purpose is served by this clumsy public relations scheme?
* And where did Decker get his journalistic training? Early in the pilot, while his colleagues try to ask Baccarin’s character to explain how the aliens can look so much like humans, Decker tells them to simmer down so he ask why the aliens are all so attractive! The scene plays like a sketch out of a bad Comedy Central show; in this context it’s groan-inducing.
* Gretsch’s priest character, Father Jack, is another character who tries one’s patience. “I’m at a loss to explain how God and aliens exist in the same world,” he confides to a fellow priest, but he never gets into why he thinks the two concepts can’t co-exist. God created the heavens but couldn’t populate them? Where is that written?
* One of the sillier threads of the story deals with humans looking upon the visitors as objects of devotion – because those visitors have more advanced and effective means of healing the sick. Do we worship as gods the human doctors who use advanced technology to heal our ills? I say not so much! (I might – might! – reconsider if we learn the aliens heal E.T.-slash-Jesus-style, with the laying on of hands.)
* The subplot about the teen seduced into a questionable organization by a charismatic teen of the opposite sex feels very, very tired. And the lead human teens, like too many human characters in this reconstituted “V,” come off like ridiculously overenthusiastic dorks.
* Take this line, please: “Which was a rip-off of any number of alien-invasion predecessors!” I can say with some expertise that this is not the way real film geeks talk. Bad. Writing.
A similar story, albeit one without disguised lizards, was told perhaps more adroitly during the first season of the syndicated series “Earth: Final Conflict.” I quite enjoyed Peters’ “The 4400” (which I regard as a sharper, better-focused version of “Heroes”), so I’m disappointed with what he’s come up with here.
… 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. … as the most astounding event in human history is unfolding largely off screen, we watch a mother racing across town to find her son; a man buying an engagement ring; detectives squabbling; a priest (Joel Gretsch of “The 4400”) having a crisis of faith. We could just as well be watching a show about a hurricane or a serial killer. …
… The pilot for this drama is good. I have a few quibbles with it -- some of the character drama is a bit clunky -- but overall, I found the first hour of the show to be solidly entertaining and suitably suspenseful. …
… Judging by the first episode, "V" seems like a solid adaptation. But it doesn't have the mysterious spark it needs to make it compulsory viewing, the way "Lost" lured us in. The problem with a remake is that we already know what lurks beneath the aliens' faux flesh. …
… There's hardly a hint of political allegory in this re-imagining -- save for a snarky comment about the aliens providing universal health care. There's also little surprise or action in this alien invasion, and public reaction to such a monumental event seems rather tepid in the pilot episode. …
… Mitchell has never had a part so rich, one that allows her to play smart, sarcastic, tough and vulnerable. With her perpetually gleaming eyes, Baccarin is wonderfully otherworldly and suggests a streak of malevolence. … Tonight’s pilot is a good effort …
… no gold mine of symbolism is worth a damn when the show itself doesn’t have good old storytelling mojo behind it. And, based on the premiere, “V’’ has enough narrative drive and character definition to pull viewers into the creepy suspense of its dystopian world. …
… A shrewd take on both sci-fi and the media, V is an excellently acted what-if-aliens- landed show … works as both escapism and a critique of society. …
… It could be complicated, but Peters' tightly written teleplay makes it easy to follow. In addition, the pilot raises provocative issues without getting didactic. That, combined with mythology less dense than, say, ABC's "Lost," should make this an attractive viewing option.
… The pilot 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. …
