V is for Victory my friends, apart from when its not. Which is actually now, as it stands for ‘Visitors’. I remember being ridiculously excited about every episode of this. Its now looked back on as a bit of a ‘Cheesefest’.
Try telling that to my far-too-young-to-be-watching-it self. It had everything I wanted: Big spaceships, mysterious aliens, laser guns and a main character called ‘Ham’.
For those of you reading this that haven’t watched it, V in a nutshell is about a group of seemingly friendly Aliens turning up on Earth and pretending to be friendly, but really they have have lizard heads, like to eat rodents and want our water supply. They’re a little bit naughty. I’ve re-watched both the mini series and V: The Final Battle a few times since, and its still fantastically good fun.
The series was intended as a literal retelling of the Nazi takeover of various countries, and the resistance movement against them. However, because of the popularity of the Star Wars saga and other science fiction hits, as well as the belief among network executives that U.S. citizens would not believe a fascist takeover, the network executives had the producers change it to a science fiction miniseries.
Even the Visitors’ symbol is actually a modified swastika. Don’t say I never teach you anything
In a massive media campaign before the V (1983) series aired, posters with the line “The Visitors Are Our Friends” appeared in subways around the United States – just as they did in the first part of the miniseries. Several days before V: Liberation Day (1983) aired, each poster was spray-painted with a bright red “V” exactly as was done in the show.
Marc Singer, fresh off from knocking about with wildlife in a loin cloth (Marc, not the wildlife) was the main squinty eye’d male protagonist Mike Donovan.
Look at the squint on that.
The music that plays when the ship is first seen has as a major motif consisting of three short notes followed by one long note. This is the letter V in Morse code. It is also patterned after Ludwig van Beethoven’s fifth symphony.
Due to the high cost of the laser visual effects, it was decided that human resistance fighters would use regular rifles and pistols. This was explained away in the script as due to high security on the alien armouries, not as “We’re fucking skint”.The high cost was due to the lengthy post-production work by manually adding optical effects to the film.
The vast majority of the shots of the mother ship are matte paintings. A model was used for a few scenes where the mother ship is in motion.
Everyone’s favourite horror icon Robert Englund, also starred as friendly Visitor ‘Willie’.
This is ironically in the same year as he hit the big screen as razor fingered noncy child bother Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven’s classic A Nightmare On Elm Street.
Darn mouse eater.
Michael Ironside Joined the cast for V: The Final Battle as resistance member ‘Ham Tyler’. Ironside has seemingly made a career of having disputes with alien and monsters, starring in numerous sci/fi series and movies. Most notably Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone (1983), Watchers (1998), Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997). He has also carved a career in voice overs, Voicing Darkseid in both Dc’s Superman and Justice League series for nearly the last two decades.
The Leader (or commonly referred to by the Visitors as “Our Great Leader“) is the head of a military dictatorship that controls the Visitor population on Sirius 4 and controls every resource and ship-of-the-line in the entire Sirian Fleet through his ministers. The Leader was constantly mentioned, but not seen, in the series. However in the final episode, he had one line of dialogue (offscreen).
Faye Grant starred as Juliet Parish, She founded the Resistance in Los Angeles and created the cell-structure organisation method that would remain essential to the organisation’s survival.
Although she did get captured at one point and spent a stint in a conversion chamber by every ones favourite second-in-command (later to become Supreme Commander) Visitor, Diana (Jane Badler)
Jane Badler gained instant notice on V. The character Diana was ranked #5 in TV Guide’s list of the 25 Greatest Sci-Fi Legends (August 1, 2004 issue). Even having her face half ripped off to show she secretly was a bit of a salamander, seemed to to effect her sex appeal.
V ran from 1983 via The Original Series , The Final Battle and then finally V: The Series.
The cancellation of the TV series in the spring of 1985 meant that the season ends with a cliffhanger. The TV series’ single season was released on Region 1 DVD in 2004. The series was remade in 2009 with Morena Baccarin (previously known from the cult hit Firefly, and now know as Deadpool’s other half) as Visitor leader ‘Anna’.
Sadly the 2009 series followed the fate of the 80’s version, and was cancelled in May 2011. Bastards.
But it’s ok. We can still play the game on Commodore 64 and Spectrum 48k.
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