Twenty years later... wow, that was... kinda sucky.

Cafe Society
1

One of the premium movie channels, “Action” I think, was running a certain blast from the past the other night. Huh, I said, looking at the schedule at this memory-triggering title. I recall being fond of said program when I was like 13. Maybe I’ll check it out, see how well I remember it.

I didn’t have high hopes or anything for said program. It’s two decades old; I figured it would be pretty dated, with goofy hair, cheap effects, you know the drill. But I remembered it as being fun anyway, so I flipped to it midway through, just to see, and maybe get a little nostalgic thrill out of it.

And… damn. I mean, just, damn. Was I an idiot when I was 13? I mean, I know, we’re all idiots when we’re 13, but apparently I’ve been giving myself more credit for good taste than I deserved.

The show? “V: The Final Battle,” the miniseries. Aired by the “Action” channel without commercials in a six-hour block, back-to-back-to-back, as a three part movie.

And… well, not to repeat myself, but… damn.

Okay, we have the goofy hair. Check. Cheap effects, check. Bad 1980’s actors (Marc Singer, anyone?), check. That much I expected.

But horrible writing? Embarrassing dialogue? Ridiculous plot twists? I didn’t remember any of that. I had completely blocked out the humiliating scene where that poor actress is squeezed into a skintight white thingy and has to squeal and writhe in that small room while the Laserium folks project an orange squiggle on her face. I had no memory of the black-visored alien shock troops moving stupidly through the corridors of rebel headquarters, showing absolutely no advanced strategy or technology as they get mowed down by primitive projectile weapons and blunder into an obvious trap. And of course I hadn’t retained at all the whole basis for the alien invasion: stealing Earth’s water. One of the most common and easily obtained substances around. Lord, help me.

I stuck with it for as long as I could, and in fact much longer than I should have, hoping against hope it would get better. But no such luck. And after an hour of rolling my eyes, I gave up and switched away, feeling like a colossal dork for once having thought this pile of crap was even remotely watchable.

Oh, but Michael Ironside was cool. That I remembered, and that I was right about. So I wasn’t a complete dork, I guess.

Small comfort…

2

Hey, I remember V the mini-series. I remember liking V and I wasn’t 13! I especially remember the character named Elizabeth who had a half-alien baby. I remember thinking “Yeah, Elizabeth had a lizard birth.”

I think the baby saved humanity in some way. Jeez, now I wish I had Action so I could remember more.

P.S. I’m very proud of my bad taste.

3

Elizabeth had fraternal twins. It was the other baby she had that saved humanity. How? That other baby looked a lot more like a lizard, and it died. An autopsy revealed that it died because, in her inter-species pregnancy, Elizabeth had synthesized some new sort of disease-causing organism that looks like red powder and kills the aliens without hurting humans.

4

I remember seeing the first V miniseries for a second time a few years back.

Similar reaction, yup. It made me conclude that there are some memories from childhood that I should simply leave alone.

5

Cervaise, I too had seen that on Action, and had I written a post on my reaction, it would have mirrored yours, word for friggin word. My god, what were we thinking. I kept expecting to see Mike, Tom Servo and Crow to help justify the time I was spending watching this again.

It’s just like when I watch Miami Vice re-runs on TNN.

::shudders::

6

Oh, lordy, I remember V. I think it was the sex bits that really made my mind boggle.

You know, like the bit where Innocent Earth Girl is kissing her alien boyfriend, and she apparently doesn’t notice, or doesn’t find it strange, that he has a two-foot long, one-inch wide, forked tongue.

Or the bit where … I think it was the same alien guy, actually … and he’s lounging around in bed with Slinky Alien Commander Woman … and it all looks like a perfectly normal bedroom scene, except then I remembered they were actually alien lizards disguised as humans, and so they had, from their point of view, just been having sex while dressed in rubber monster suits. There’s only so much of that my brain can take …

7

Don’t forget the computer sound effects taken straight from the original Star Trek series.
I didn’t discover any of these things until AFTER I bought it several years ago. :o

Oh well, I got it on VHS, which will be obsolete soon enough.

8

Elizabeth was the baby. The mother’s name was Robin.

9

That channel shows the whole thing all the time. I’ve caught most of it in recent months. It brings back all kinds of childhood memories - I loved the whole thing as a kid. My personal favorite scene is a shuttle chase scene where the good guys are escaping from the lizards. At one point, it shows the good guys’ shuttle flipping upside down, and they cut to an interior shot - again, showing them upside down. Except the girl’s hair is still hanging down around her shoulders…

10

Okay, so I’m the only one who taped the entire six hours, vintage commercials and all, when it ran on network TV back when?

Check.

And I even still pop it in the VCR, and, well, listen to it mostly, as I read the boards/surf the web/whatever I’m really doing at the time.

That poor tape is showing its age, lemme tell ya.

[sub]Actually, I edited out the commercials during the first two hours,with a pause/play “remote” connected to the VCR by wire. This required me sitting about 18 inches from the TV, as the remote cord wasn’t all that long, so I gave up on it the second and third nights.[/sub]

Does anyone else remember the series that followed this, and just how they got around that whole “infected planet” plot point?

11

I caught a little bit of it. Yeah, it’s silly, but it’s still fun. Way back when, I liked it for the science fiction elements; now, I like it more for its parallels to Naziism. One memory of the original airing: my brother and I were V fanatics, and we’d seen every minute of the series. For some reason, however, my dad decided to enforce an early bedtime on the very night Robin was to give birth to her baby (which of course turned out to be babies). The only hour of the whole thing we missed, and it had to be that.

I remember the TV series as well, but I don’t remember how they got around the “infected planet” thing. Really, though, all they’d have to do is say, “We found a vaccine,” and run from there. One thing I do remember about the series was the finale, which featured combat between a human and a visitor (don’t remember who they were) with what appeared to be electrified fencing foils. You wanna talk about goofy…

12

I have a vague memory of a shot of an alien camp, where some of the aliens were still disguised as humans, but others were running around as lizards.

13

Speaking of the series…no doubt the original movies have not aged well, but all you have to do to make them look good is watch the tv series. Even back when I was 14, I knew that sucked. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

They got around the “infected planet” thing with some pseudoscience explanation about how the red dust needed seasonal temperature variations to reproduce, leaving a broad swath around the equator, conveniently including LA, dust free. Yes, I remember that, even though I hated the show. Think I’m a geek now? But wait, there’s more…

I’m 90% sure I at least have “Final Battle” on videotape somewhere, buried. More recently I got both that and the original in digital form, using means that…ahem…we’re not supposed to discuss here.

Not only that, I also have all but one of the V novels. You read that right. I am the King of Geeks, and there ain’t no higher, sucka mcs call me sire :stuck_out_tongue:

14

I remember writing a short story for school, something like 3rd grade or so. I based it on V.

I had been inspired by a Comic Book based on same. Pretty sad.
The good guy visitor/father of the half-breeds was played by Robert Englund, later of Freddy Kruger fame, if I recall correctly.

15

No, I have both “V” and “V: The Final Battle” on video, complete with commercials.

When I was an undergrad and stayed on campus one summer, I got my mother to ship them to me because the whole group wanted to watch them. So we did, over the course of a weekend.

16

They had detachable jaws and ate gerbils.

I’d watch it again.
I liked Battlestar Galactica MORE because it aged so badly. When I was nine, I knew it wasn’t as good as Star Wars, but when I watched it again at thirty, I laughed until my sides ached.

V could only be better, since the seventies, although they looked bad in the eighties, actually had plenty of cool, but the eighties were a virtually irredeemable decade.

17

I only remember a few things, one of which is that every other episode, they managed to have Marc Singer ride a white horse, so they could recycle the “Being chased on a white horse” footage…

18

I think the absolute worst scifi show has the be the TV version of War of the Worlds. Most of the original cast bailed out after the first season and there was a major story and budget change (downwards).

19

Ah, that’s where I remember the “Lizard birth”. I toldja I gotta watch it again to remember correctly.

20

He wasn’t the father of Robin’s babies, but he did help her when she was having trouble with her pregnancy.
NutWrench I remember I loved War of the Worlds, but I couldn’t tell you a thing about it, except that one of the original cast members was in Predator. Was it really that lame?