{"id":912,"date":"2009-11-04T23:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T07:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/11\/04\/here-v-go-again\/"},"modified":"2009-11-04T23:51:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-05T07:51:00","slug":"here-v-go-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/11\/04\/here-v-go-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Here V Go Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just watched the pilot for the new V<\/span> television series (based on the 1983 miniseries<\/a>). No spoilers here, but I will say this: an awful lot of pipe, not a lot of details, and still quite a few science errors.<\/p>\n

Because they recycled this particular plot point from the 1983 original, I’ll mention it: is anyone with any knowledge of astronomy really<\/span> going to believe that aliens looking for water would sail through an Oort cloud full of icy comets and<\/span> several outer planets with icy moons just so they can get liquid<\/span> water from Earth? Does their advanced otherworldly technology include gravity control but not, y’know, heating elements?<\/span> (Bonus round: if you have seemingly ubiquitous anti-gravity devices, why do your ships still need rocket thrusters?)<\/p>\n

Also, I would have called the big reveal after act two, except I thought it was so preposterous that they wouldn’t go there. I guess the moral here is, never underestimate the ridiculousness of most TV writing.<\/p>\n

(Sidebar: in his collection Playgrounds of the Mind<\/span><\/a>, sf author Larry Niven talks about how he and Jerry Pournelle pitched a story idea for the original, 1980s “V” series to NBC. You’ll find that anecdote in the essay “The Lost Ideas,”<\/a> and their proposed backstory for the Visitors could have been a lot of fun, if implemented by the right showrunner.)<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t all bad. I did enjoy the little genre in-jokes, including the crowds gathering in “Oceanic<\/a> Plaza” in the teaser and the Independence Day<\/span> dig. I would have enjoyed them a little more if ABC weren’t so obviously desperate to catch the Lost<\/span> lightning in a bottle again, both with this show and FlashForward<\/span>.<\/p>\n

I’ll give V<\/span> a few more episodes, but I’ll say what I’ve said before: I like a little more science<\/span> in my science fiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"CKL\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just watched the pilot for the new V television series (based on the 1983 miniseries). No spoilers here, but I will say this: an awful lot of pipe, not a lot of details, and still quite a few science errors….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[32,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sci-tech","category-tv"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}