I thought the first episode of War of the Worlds was pretty good, unfortunately it quickly turned into the “Monster of the Week” show and I quickly lost interest.
I remember very little about the show V but remember enjoying it quite a bit. I also read one of the novels. The only thing I remember about the TV series is that the red powder did not affect the aliens in colder climates, so they moved up north.
It was really bad.
The main premise of the story was that the Martian invasion that took place in 1953 has been completely forgotten by the people of Earth. Some kind of collective amnesia (!). The bodies of the martians have been stored away in 55 gallons drums and the Martian war machines are gathering dust in various hangers and military bases around the world.
This is like expecting people to forget World War II. My only explanations for this is that the writers just didn’t want to deal with the political, social and psychological fallout of a world-wide alien invasion that killed millions of people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage. It’s too bad, because this I can think of half a hundred story ideas just dealing with these issues alone.
I had forgotten that part, that was pretty lame.
I remember liking the V movies when I was a kid. In fact, when Independence Day came out, my first crack about it was, “Hey look, they’re re-making V!” Turns out I wasn’t too far off.
I also recall enjoying War of the Worlds (the TV series) and Friday the 13th (the TV series, ooh that hot redhead Robey!) when I was a teenager.
Somehow, I doubt that any of them would stand up to scrutiny if I saw them again now.
At the end of the mini-series, Diana (the head alien) had set a bomb to explode that would destroy the ship/Los Angeles/the world/life as we know it. No one could figure out how to stop it but the baby (now a young girl; she grew fast) did something (exactly what is unclear). She grabbed the console, and energy field appeared and the bomb fails to go off. It is unclear if she somehow disarmed the bomb or if she absorbed the power of the explosion somehow.
No, I recorded it too and still have it floating around somewhere.
Yeah, I remember it. It had an introduction by Walter Cronkite each episode in which he covered “The State of the War Tonight”.
They got around the “infected planet” thing by discovering that the germ they had come up with had to go dormant periodically or it would “burn itself out”. So, places that got cold in the winter were still infected (cold made the germ go dormant) but places that stayed warm all year round were not. (Hence Los Angeles, where most of the show took place, was open to invasion again.)
Gad I feel like a geek… :smack:
Hey, Jane Badler was on my adolescent list of women to eventually nail, along with Stephanie Zimbalist and Erin Gray.
I turned 13 in 1982.
I remember it had a black guy in a wheelchair who was an expert fighter with a quarterstaff.
I remember the main character could hypnotize himself so he could have perfect recall of any moment.
I remember that the only way to kill the aliens was to douse them with liquid nitrogen.
I remember really loving this show when I was a kid. I have no idea why.
Oh, I loved “V”. Of course, I knew it was hokey, even back then. But it was quite popular when it came out. And hey, look! It’s available on DVD! I think I’ll have to get me a copy—my VHS tape is buried somewhere.
I taped all of the series (one or two seasons? I can’t remember. One, I believe.) I think I almost cried when the ditched Ham Tyler (Michael Ironside) in the series because he was the coolest. The series was never the same after he and his buddy (the big biker guy) were cut from the show.
I’ll never forget the “Christmas” episode which was beyond awful. It was so laughably bad. I can’t remember it all, but I think there was a rip-off of the “Casablanca” scene where the evil aliens are singing their national anthem in some restaurant somewhere, and then the humans start singing “God Bless America” (or whatever) to drown them out? That was nauseating. And we can’t forget the “evil twin” thing with the alien baby Elizabeth, all grown up now and big-busted! The aliens grow an evil twin of her. I forget how it ended, but I think the evil twin (also big-busted) sacrifices herself to save Elizabeth. And then Ham becomes an old softy and he ends up dressing up as Santa at the end of the episode. Bah humbug. And this was ALL in one episode! It was so deliciously BAD, so horribly WRETCHED. I dunno, it should have won an award or something for being so horrible in a hilarous way.
I have that episode on tape somewhere. An absolute treasure.
And don’t forget the alien wedding episode in the TV series. “Diana”, the head alien, is facing a challenger for alien political power. Said challenger is a male alien, so they make a political marriage. The wedding scene has them being married in human disguise, although the alien marrying them looks like a lizard. To top it all off? The human name the male alien uses is
CHARLES!
Oh my gosh, Baker, don’t remind of me of this stuff! I barely remember a lot of it now (though am tempted to dig out the tapes). It was so, so SO very bad.
I haven’t seen V since it first came out, but remember an embarrassingly bad plot device. The Earthlings have hijacked an alien ship and have flow it up to the big mamma-ship. I will paraphrase:
ALIENS: Who goes there? Speak and identify yourself!
EARTHLINGS: Uh–this is, uh, Spaceship X-20.
ALIENS: X-20? We have no Spaceship X-20!
EARTHLINGS: Uh–We’re not listed because we’re, uh, on a secret mission.
ALIENS: Okay, come on in.
Of course this isn’t the actual dialogue, but it wasn’t any stupider than that.
See, I just knew I was averting future brain damage by avoiding the series. Yeesh.
[sub]Charles and Diana, lizard style? Yeah, that’s a memory I’m glad I don’t have.[/sub]
Amazing how, goofy as it is, V is still making someone somewhere a couple bucks. Have to track down the DVDs now, I s’pose.
V. Probably the epitome of Bad SF TV in the eighties.
The first miniseries was the ham-handed allegory of the Nazi takeover of Europe (“It can’t happen here!” “It just did.”) Some time ago, I had heard that it was supposedly the young girl who gets pregnant that originally was to be the central character – the coming of the Visitors and their eventual takeover was to be “seen through her eyes.” However, the girl originally cast for the role, Dominique Dunne (whom some of you might remember from Poltergeist) had the misfortunate of being killed by her psychotic boyfriend. So as they were recasting the role, the producers went on with other scenes, rewriting as they went along, and eventually changed the focus of the story.
The second mini was more action-oriented…and thankfully introduced Ham Tyler! God, he was great. He had an interesting relationship with an elderly lady who was once a prominent stage actress and was now a member of the Resistance. Not sexual, mind you, but he had admired her work (having seen her on stage in London years before) and she saw what a good man he was underneath the blunt cynicism. Her death was one of the few things that actually affected him.
The series is a waste of time. Yes, the Red Dust was inhibited by the weather patterns as stated above – but only on a long-term basis. Short-term, it still would have made a very effective weapon against the Visitors (which wouldn’t effect humans!). Make some gas-grenades with the Red Dust…bye bye aliens. It’s this lack of thought that makes 80’s sci-fi TV such a wasteland.
Yep, cheesy stuff. At least Marc Singer wasn’t wearing a loincloth and talking to squirrels.
Why do tv writers think you can breed humans with a completely different species that evolved on a different planet? Did that start with Star Trek?
No, the idea goes back to at least the Greeks (you know, the whole Gods mating with mortals bit), and probably a good bit further back. Although, I’d think that if aliens had DNA, it might be possible to do some genetic engineering and create a hybrid of two species. (After all, we’re sticking fish DNA into tomatoes.)
I broke up with a girlfriend becaus eof V.
We were watching the first showing of the first episode of the first miniseries. The “Visitors” had just announced that they were from Sirius and needed sunglasses against Earth’s sunlight.
I said “They’re lying.”
She said “About what?”
“Where their home system is. Even if there could be a habitable planet orbiting a binary system, Sirius is a heck of a lot brighter than the Sun. If anything, they would find Earth to be cold and dark if they were from Sirius.”
She said “What does it matter?” or words to that effect.
I broke up with her the next day.
Oh, I loved V at the time. The whole theme of our ordinary world turned upside down and how ordinary people were trying to reclaim our planet. Juliet Parrish (can’t remember the actress’s name but she looked like Virginia Madsen), the med student who finds herself pressed into a leadership role in the Resistance; Marc Singer (can’t remember the character’s name), the fearless, ambitious TV reporter who’s always looking for trouble; his mom is a silly, brittle, country club type who lets the handsome older alien guy ply her with diamond bracelets and such so that she’ll betray her embarrassing son to the Visitors; of course Diana (Jane Badler) the evil, female commander of the lizards; Robert Englund played Willie(?), a gentle, shy, pacifist, vegetarian (i.e., non-human-eating) lizard who wants us all to just get along. Later on there was a young male character who was Robin’s love interest, I think, and who in one episode made a moving speech about how much they hated violence and regretted having to shoot the aliens (in response to all the viewer mail about gun violence on television).
I liked it 'cause they were trying to do this ambitious, epic TV science fiction show on a relatively low budget. As a big Star Wars, Star Trek nerd, I was glad to see that. The whole show was supposed to be about how most of the world functioned normally, and the series followed this tiny group of Resistance fighters who were the only ones who knew the truth about why the aliens were really here. You were supposed to ask yourself what you would do: cash in and help the aliens and hope they spare you; risk your life in the Resistance; or mind your own business?
Later came Blake’s 7 and Alien Nation, along with endless reruns of Doctor Who, but for a while I was happy with V. Years later, when I got cable and the Sci-Fi channel tried rerunning it, I couldn’t even bear to watch it. Oh, well.
Surely Blakes 7 by far predates V? Watched that as a little mini-Iteki. V is/was fab, it is shown regularly on one of the budget channels here, and I often have it on in the background. I think the DVDs will be being bought soons.
Alien Nation 
They are rerunning that here again, the 1.5 hour long eps, or mini-movies or whatever they are. It is just me, or is Alien Nation still really really good?
C’mon now, it had Marc Singer in it! It can’t be that bad if the Beastmaster is involved!
Blake’s Seven started transmission in the UK in 1978, so it’s a few years older than V … don’t, offhand, recall its US transmission dates, though.