Her name is Morena Baccarin, not Monica.

Actually, the pilot has gotten REALLY mixed reviews; some think it's good, some think it's promising, some think it's garbage. Was disappointed that Mo Ryan, the big mainstream BSG-fanatic tv critic, wasn't even aware that "V" creator Kenneth Johnson's name is only on this thing thanks to a court order ... does not bode well. The original was in many ways an ode to ground-level freedom fighters like the Sandinistas ... you watch it now, and despite the '80s fashions, it's pretty timeless. This thing looks snarky and out of date. I'd LOVE to be wrong, though ...

LA Times gives it a pretty good review. Though, its in line with what everyone has said to this point...Looks promising

Looks a little like an epick phaile, but so do most things in my eyes. I'll be streaming live from America to Britain thanks to the magic of modern technology of, course. Until then, I'd better stamp this RESERVING JUDGEMENT UNTIL VIEWING ink on my head.

*stamp*

Sweet, thanks for this reminder. I could have accidentally flipped by the channel and actually watched it. Now I'm sure to avoid ABC at 8 at all costs.

Will this be on hulu or abc.com? I wanted to see this but wont be home in time.

I never saw the original so the show is starting with a clean slate in my mind; I am cautiously optimistic.

Maybe this series could be the next TR Liveblog show?

I expect a whole lotta "'V'? More like 'Zzzzzz'" jokes after it airs.

Now WTF didn't ABC cast Nathan Fillion in this?? If he was in it all you nerds would be fapping off to V, me included, but I'll still give it a shot...It's not like it's a hollywood remake, it's a TV series...

I'll be checking it out, too. Watched all of the original "V" with my two boys way back when. I saw the original BSG begin at age 29 and was a big fan. Didn't even hate "Galactica 1980" all that much. Wierd though, I hated the thought of a BSG remake, and avoided it for FOUR years. Never have seen those episodes, BUT ........ the wife and I got ourselves sucked in to season 5 and watched it all the way to the end. Go figure. I don't really expect much from this "V"ersion, but it'll be a break from reading the spots off this blog. BTW, thanks for the Honorable Mention in the Halloween thread.

Huh? There's Olympics this winter?

Cautious optimism, Morena Baccarin is a +

Leaving the rest of the show till after the Olympics?! the 2010 Summer Olympics?! This is madness!!!

Um, hello, are you forgetting that Alan Tudyk is also in this? Meaning that when the aliens turn evil and enslave mankind, etc, etc, he can scream, "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"

I overheard two older teenagers talking about this earlier today, and one of them said, "Did you see the spaceship? It is a total ripoff of Independence Day!"

If I could have stopped laughing I would have told them about the original V back in the 80's and that Indy Day was a ripoff of V. But, as I said, I could not stop laughing!

Ehhh...not terrible but not great so far. Seems like they're following the original cast setup except for the FBI duo. Things are falling together a little to quickly though, how many episodes is this set for? I have a bad feeling it's going to go all Lost on us.

I didn't realize Alan Tudyk was in it until I saw him, he hasn't done much since Firefly I believe?

And LOL @ Pandora's comment!

Hate to double post, but dammit I just realized from that climax scene and the fact that they aren't using voice effects for the V that this is going to turn into "OMG everyone's a V" instead of "OMG everyone's a Skinjob".

Sigh...

Just watched the first episode and I think it's great so far. I'll be catching the next few episodes to see if it sticks.

@Gleeman, you really should Google before commenting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Tudyk#Credits

;)

WOW!!!! Now I know where to find most of the Firefly cast, lol. I love it! Just wish they could have squeezed Nathan Fillian in there somewhere. I guess it's ok. He's being awesome elsewhere, lol. I enjoyed epsiode 1, and hopefully the series doesn't turn to sh!t the way so many other series do. I won't twist the dagger by naming names.

Wow, this pilot was really cool! I'm looking forward to the rest of it!

Why, Alan Tudyk Why?! Argh... He's gonna die again.

The Firefly cast will slowly assimilate and crush ABC primetime television!

"Ramone said:

@Gleeman, you really should Google before commenting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Tudyk#Credits

;)"

Now, you know that Dollhouse doesn't really exist, that's just one of those urban legends that got out of hand.

;P

Kinda meh,not horrible,not spectacular.
Would have been better if the aliens appeared
or at least sounded more alien.
If they had brought back the ring modulator effect to their voices like in the 80's show would be in need of a change of pants right now.

It has potential. I think Tudyk's sudden and inevitable betrayal was way too obvious, but at least he DIDN'T get the other role. You know. "I'm just gonna go over here without telling anyone I'm doing this and OH BIG DISCOVERY *dead*"

I still think there are issues that will make my head hurt. If the whole point turns out "humans make the best food yum" why not just plonk some ships in the hinderlands of China and Russia and the Indian subcontinent and harvest away?

(I assume that must be the 'plentiful resources' as anything like metals or water are much easier to gather IN SPACE)

Oh, if only they had the balls to do something like "you're....frozen treat technology...we have nothing like your Slurpee, your smoothie, your milkshake. Please, teach us these things" but they won't.

It's 10 PM and I just read this.
I forgot that it premiered tonight, so my DVR was not set.
Anyone know if there will be an encore or where I can catch it online?

Actually since y'all have already seent it, first question is, "is it worth catching?"

It's 10 PM and I just read this.
I forgot that it premiered tonight, so my DVR was not set.
Anyone know if there will be an encore or where I can catch it online?

Actually since y'all have already seent it, first question is, "is it worth catching?"

It has potential.
Check the ABC site to see if'n you'ns can stream it over them thar Webernetz.

Just watched the pilot.

I liked it.

I have to say that I was absolutely not looking forward to this. I also have to say that it was not terrible. I was pleasantly surprised by it, and will definitely watch the next few episodes to see where it goes.

@MyNoNos I don't know specifically about an encore, but I assume it has to be available somewhere. And I would certainly say it is worth catching.

it was pretty average in my opinion. the very thinly veiled polictial references "universal health care" "being afraid of hope" are gonna get old quick. the pace this series seems to be moving in is kinda scary. so much happened in the first episode that i worry there is gonna be way too much filler.

Well, Obama is pretty unpopular right now... the show is tapping into that sentiment. I liked it.

Steve-

If it's anything like the original the aliens will be harvesting water. That's actually somewhat believable given the compound's relative scarcity (I think) in the universe and the location of almost all hydrogen in stars. And if I'm not overthinking on behalf of the original's creative team, I think there was something in there about inhabited planets being preferable due to the amount of labor needed to suck a world dry.

And here's where TR's science geeks rush in to tell me how wrong I am about water and hydrogen...

Wow... That was the best three-hour pilot crushed into 45 minutes I have ever seen.

HeroPower, too true.

I guess they actually believe people are familiar enough with the concept that making them wait to discover anything would spell doom. Admittedly, I would have been one of those people that would have fell asleep during the show if I had to wait three weeks to see what happened tonight.

watched it. found it to be simplistic and overly compressed. had they spread the story out over at LEAST one more episode it would've been worth it...

this show is going to tank, and based on what i saw, rightly so.

I have to disagree with the naysayers - I was very pleasantly surprised. I agree that everything was a bit too compressed to fit into the first episode, but overall I liked the many nods to the original along with some of the new directions. This is definitely getting recorded weekly on my DVR.

My one question is whether this is going to be an ongoing series, or do they know their run length? I'd like to see a nice, tightly scripted plot run through the series and not have it just peter out.

I still can't believe that people watch one episode of a remake and then deem it unworthy of future attention. Maybe they are going to do more that just do a straight remake, maybe they will add some new stuff that you haven't seen. Just because it wasn't just like the original isn't such a bad thing.
Going to reserve judgment on it till i have seen more than one eppie. (this also goes for SG-U)

My wife said she liked it when it was over, and that I should stop comparing it to the original, but I was a big fan of that show growing up (I was 8 in '83), and it just not possible. I appreciate that they wanted to do something different with it this time, but the things they changed weren't to any benefit I could see.

Things that bothered me and would have made it better:
1) It needed more Marc Singer or Michael Ironside.
2) No laser guns. They were so cool in the original.
3) Why'd that change the principal character's names? The original Visitor Commander chick was named 'Diana'.
4) They got rid of the voice modulation. That was another staple of the original that made it so awesome!
5) No red uniforms. You couldn't tell who was a Visitor and who wasn't (which I suppose was supposed to be a new plot point, but still).
6) All the actors felt pretty blah... even Juliet from Lost was really bland.
7) The title was originally not derived from the aliens being called 'Visitors', but from the red spray painted V's the resistance sprayed as graffiti. It stood for 'Victory', and the Visitors were definitely never referred to as 'the V's'. /cringe
8) If Alan Tudyk's character had revisited his Steve the Pirate character from Dodgball. THAT would have made the show right there.

All in all, I was disappointed. All the new show made me want to do is show my wife the original show. Even with the hoaky special effects it was lightyears better than last night's boringness.

I didn't like them suddenly calling the Visitors "V's". It was annoying.

I thought the alien serpent reveal was better in the original V, and a little more surprising.

Having some dude standing there talking about them being reptiles under their skin -completely- and utterly ruined the climax and surprise that should've occurred when you actually saw it.

I'm slightly disappointed there is really no strong human male lead. You've got the alien dude, the priest and the mouthpiece reporter, but no one you feel is going to start kicking ass and taking names from a human perspective.

I like having a strong female lead type in there too, but both would be nice.

Still a good show over all though.

Although, I wonder, if they test everyone who joins their little resistance cell by cutting into them to see skull bone, how did the one guy ever get in (unless he was the one who started ti and was then never tested, which kind of makes sense I suppose).

"If it's anything like the original the aliens will be harvesting water. That's actually somewhat believable given the compound's relative scarcity (I think) in the universe and the location of almost all hydrogen in stars. "

Um, no. As Gregg Easterbrook pointed out in his Tuesday Morning QB column on ESPN.com, if the aliens wanted water - and much purer water than you'll find anywhere on Earth, at that - all they'd have to do would be to start harvesting comets. There's much more water - orders of magnitudes more, in fact - in the comet cloud surrounding the solar system that could ever be harvested from Earth, and you're a lot less likely to have to fight off resisters in the Oort cloud.

If we're going to get all nerdy about the water and such, I'm sure Issac Newton would like a word with whoever came up with the idea of giant multi-million ton spaceships hovering over cities. Sure it looks cool but they're forgetting Newton's 3rd Law.

Geoff--

Or they could have just mined Pluto or one of the icier gas giant moons.

Whenever a more advanced group of people encounters a primitive culture they are after resources (which includes slaves), real estate or religious converts. If they're not picky about their protein sources, slave is interchangeable with food.

This is why nobody should be excited about first contact with an alien race. Unless we have something that they don't that gives us a technological edge, or their socioreligious structure makes them vegetarian pragmatists/pacifists (Go Vulcans!), they're just going to give us the rough ride that Europeans have given almost every other group of people on the planet.

With the naysayers on this one. This was lame, lazily-written and uninspired. It's like someone took Flash Forward and Heroes and tried to make something even lamer. Everything on this show you've seen before on better-written, less boring programs. If there's a show on TV that was made to make Stargate Universe look good, this is it.

If Marc Singer or Michael Ironsides show up then I'm onboard
If Robert Englund shows up as a "V" elder of some sort well then I'm going to need to wears Depends for sure.

@Necromancer: At ease, my brother. The next summer Olympics are in 2012. The 2010 *Winter* Olympics are this coming Feb. Although that's still a loooong wait.

If you're gonna pull a crazy BSG hiatus, how about building a fan base first?

I believe H2O is quite plentiful in the universe. However it doesn't exist in liquid form. I personally would think, though bulkier and not as efficiant, Ice would be much easier to harvest than pumping a few billion gallons.

I think they are assuming that we all know all the fun suprises that made the first series so popular. We all know that they are reptiles, and they eat "meat". No point retelling everthing that we know from the past, even though this is suppose to be a retell. I'm curious how they are planning on creating the suprises, and if they can.

Otherwise this is just another retelling of a story w/ new special effects. At least BSG had a lot of NEW story to it to make it interesting. New Twists and turns. Not so sure they can do that with this one.

Nerd argument, HO!
Ice in space v V coming to Earth, whee!

From the first episode some of you have judged V to be a retelling. It is now a series, so it might be good or not, but at least give it a chance.