Series Overview: V

The hard-to-google series V is about alien visitors who come to Earth promising advanced technology in exchange for rare chemicals. They quickly form a fascist dictatorship which targets scientists as dangerous rebels. A resistance movement forms, which uncovers their true goals of stealing our water and using humanity as a food source.

The series has more emotional impact than one would expect for the material, largely because it was written as an “It Can’t Happen Here” style drama about the rise of fascism, with the alien aspect being an afterthought. As a political allegory it’s a bit of a mixed bag, like Planet of the Apes. On the one hand it’s about the dangers of the seductive appeal of totalitarianism, on the other hand the resistance to the Visitors is based on the fact that they look different and eat strange foods.

The Visitors are reptilians in disguise and eat live rats. You know the whole thing about shapeshifting reptilians secretly controlling the world? Yeah, it’s this. A little bit of They Live folded in later, but otherwise straight up V.

There was a miniseries in 1983, another in 1984, one season in 1984, and a reboot series in 2009. The novelizations are a bit odd. The first V book includes both miniseries, while the second is set in New York during the same time period, repeating probably a good 100 pages of material. Reportedly the rest of the 16 book series was supposed to be straight novelizations, but they didn’t have access to the scripts and instead dealt with original material.

In 2008, the original creator Kenneth Johnson wrote The Second Generation, which is set after the first miniseries and doesn’t include the rest of the franchise. The original novelization was re-released with material linking the two books.