I don’t know exactly what I was doing when V premiered on NBC in 1983. I was in high school, so I’m sure I watched it. I just don’t remember it. Or maybe I was out doing whatever teenagers did at night before cell phones, streaming and the internet made it possible for our parents to find us every five seconds.
Either way, I found V: The Original Miniseries sitting on Plex and knew I had to dig in.
And listen, I’m not going to spend this entire review explaining the fascism allegory. There are approximately nine million articles on the internet that can do that for you. Kenneth Johnson wasn’t exactly hiding it, and we’ll get there.
I came to V with a much simpler question: Is the damn thing still watchable?
I wasn’t even planning to watch both parts. For about five minutes, I seriously considered waiting until the next day for Part 2 so I could experience V the way people did when NBC originally aired it over two nights.
Yeah. That didn’t happen.
I started Part 2 in the middle of the night because I had to know what happened next. So I guess that answers the question pretty early.
Welcome to Earth. Please Ignore the Giant Spaceships.
V doesn’t screw around. We open in El Salvador, where cameraman Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) and Tony (Evan C. Kim) are covering a war and trying not to get themselves killed. There’s gunfire, helicopters and plenty of action before the actual story has even arrived.
Then the helicopter that’s about to blow Mike into another dimension suddenly takes off.
Why?
There’s a gigantic alien spacecraft hovering overhead. And it’s not alone. Ships have appeared over major cities and landmarks around the world, and suddenly whatever humans were fighting about five minutes ago doesn’t seem quite so important.
Do the spaceships look like they were made for television in 1983? Absolutely. Do I care? Absolutely not.
If you’ve never seen V, the image will still look familiar: enormous alien ships hanging over major cities. Watching it now, it’s impossible not to think about Independence Day.
But what got me wasn’t the ships. It was everybody watching them.
A countdown starts coming from the spacecraft in different languages. People gather around television sets. Streets stop. Nobody knows what’s going to happen when the clock reaches zero, and V lets that anticipation breathe.
It’s tense as hell.
But I also kept thinking: Why is everybody so f*cking calm?
There are enormous alien spaceships parked over their cities and these people are sitting around watching television like Walter Cronkite is about to deliver the evening news. Nobody’s screaming. Nobody’s emptying grocery stores. Nobody’s trying to get the hell out of Dodge.
Eventually the Visitors ask for the Secretary-General of the United Nations. A shuttle lands on the roof, the armed guards are asked to lower their weapons, and the Secretary-General is invited inside.
Sure. Climb into the mystery alien pod. What could possibly go wrong? Except he comes back out smiling.
The Visitors have come in peace. Uh-huh.
Their Supreme Commander, John (Richard Herd), looks like somebody’s kindly grandfather. That’s what makes him creepy. No tentacles. No giant alien head. No little green man. If a Xenomorph walked out of that shuttle, we’d know we had a problem.
John looks like somebody who might sell you insurance.
He tells humanity that the Visitors’ planet is suffering from environmental problems. They need Earth’s help manufacturing a compound that could save their world, and in exchange they’ll share their advanced knowledge with us.
Help us save our planet and we’ll help you save yours. What a deal! Why yes, Monty, I’ll take doors 1, 2, 3 AND 4.
Soon the media are touring the mothership. The rich and famous are inviting Visitors into their homes. There’s even a giant public welcome where an entire army of Visitors marches in while the band plays the Star Wars theme.
I still can’t get over that.
Nothing says Welcome, mysterious alien military force! like music from a movie about a galactic war. Maybe somebody should have taken that as a hint.
Never Trust a Smiling Alien
The genius of Part 1 is that the Visitors don’t start by blowing shit up. They charm everybody.
They learn our culture. They shake hands. They smile for the cameras. They make promises. Rich people want them at their parties because apparently having an alien over for cocktails is the ultimate flex.
Meanwhile, V keeps dropping warnings everywhere. Animals freak out around the Visitors. Birds panic. Rats react. Scientists and archaeologists start disappearing. And there’s an organization called Visitor’s Friends aimed at young people.
Nothing ominous about that.
Diana (Jane Badler), who oversees the scientific side of the Visitors’ operation, starts cozying up to television reporter Kristine Walsh (Jenny Sullivan). She wants Kristine to become their spokeswoman — their PR rep.
Because even alien invaders understand that if you want to control people, controlling the message is a pretty good place to start.
And then Willie shows up. Wait. Is that f*cking Freddy Krueger?
Yep. Robert Englund is here a year before A Nightmare on Elm Street, playing a confused, bumbling Visitor trying to figure out humans. Seeing Englund like this when Freddy is permanently burned into pop culture is bizarre.
But Willie also immediately feels different. When an accident nearly kills a human worker, Willie saves him. Maybe not every Visitor is marching to the same beat. File that away.
The Friendly Alien Act Goes to Hell
Mike isn’t buying any of this either. He and Tony start investigating the facilities where the Visitors are supposedly manufacturing their miracle chemical, and Mike eventually sneaks aboard a shuttle with his camera and takes an unauthorized trip to the mothership.
What he finds isn’t exactly E.T. phoning home.
The chemicals aren’t being used for what the Visitors claimed. They’re being dumped. Then Mike overhears Diana and another Visitor discussing the operation and how they’re manipulating humanity.
And then he sees them eat. Holy hell. Diana swallows a furry guinea pig whole.
That alone would have sent me through the nearest emergency exit, but Mike gets an even bigger surprise when he discovers what’s underneath all that perfectly normal-looking human skin.
Scales. Snake-like eyes. They’re Reptilians!!!!
Mike escapes with his footage and prepares to show the world the truth, which leads to one of the things about V that works just as well in 2026:
Having proof doesn’t mean jack shit when somebody else controls who gets to see it.
The television station tries to broadcast Mike’s footage. The Visitors knock them off the air. And who appears on television instead? Kristine.
Suddenly the story has been rewritten. Scientists are supposedly conspiring against the Visitors. There’s a plot to seize the motherships. Mike Donovan is a dangerous traitor being used as part of the conspiracy.
The Visitors manufacture an enemy and then offer themselves as the solution. Martial law follows. Scientists and their families are ordered to register. Visitor’s Friends are encouraged to help. Posters start appearing everywhere:
FRIENDSHIP IS UNIVERSAL.
People inform on their neighbors. Scientists disappear. That friendly alien visit went to shit awfully fast.
No, This Isn’t a Subtle Allegory
V opens with a dedication:
“To the heroism of the resistance fighters — past, present and future — this work is respectfully dedicated.”
So no, Kenneth Johnson wasn’t being coy.
The Visitors’ rise mirrors fascism, and the Nazi parallels become increasingly explicit. One of the first people who recognizes what’s happening is Abraham Bernstein (Leonard Cimino), a Jewish Holocaust survivor. He’s seen this movie before.
His grandson Daniel, unfortunately, gets swept up in Visitor’s Friends. They recruit him, give him authority and make him feel important. Even when his own family starts paying the price, Daniel keeps swallowing what he’s being told. The kid is a dolt.
But that’s part of what V understands. The Visitors can’t pull this off by themselves. They need frightened people, ambitious people, gullible people and people willing to look the other way because the new arrangement happens to benefit them.
And Christ, some of these humans make it easy.
Mike discovers that the Visitors are lying, manipulating the public and actively hunting him, so naturally he goes straight to Kristine and tells her what he knows.
Dude.
SHE’S THEIR PROPAGANDA MACHINE.
Robin Maxwell isn’t much better. She’s infatuated with Brian, one of the Visitors, and keeps making decisions that practically beg for disaster. Robert Maxwell makes his own spectacularly bad choices later.
At a certain point I stopped wondering whether the Visitors could conquer Earth and started wondering whether humanity was going to save them the trouble.
Some of that stupidity works because it’s part of the point. People trust people they shouldn’t. They rationalize. They convince themselves something can’t possibly be happening even when it’s happening right in front of them.
But occasionally it crosses the line from believable human weakness into: USE YOUR F*CKING BRAIN.
As the Visitors tighten their grip, Juliet (Faye Grant) begins organizing a small Los Angeles Resistance group. She’s overwhelmed by the responsibility and knows her decisions can get people killed, but that’s exactly why I liked her. V lets her be scared without turning her into someone weak.
And when Abraham eventually comes up with the V symbol for the Resistance? Chills, I tell ya. Chills.
By the time Part 1 ended, I was completely in. Which brings us to my brilliant plan to wait until tomorrow.
Part 2: Somebody Found the Cheese
I lasted about five minutes.
Streaming is a blessing and a curse because unlike everybody watching NBC in 1983, I didn’t have to wait. So there I was in the middle of the night starting Part 2.
And this is where V loses me a little. Not completely. Not even close. But Part 1 is considerably better.
The first half builds its menace through tension, propaganda, paranoia and the horrifying realization that humanity has basically welcomed its conquerors through the front door.
Part 2 increasingly becomes Star Wars on a television budget.
Blasters. Fighter shuttles. Space battles. Visitor soldiers who look like stormtroopers. Mike Donovan occasionally looks like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Buck Rogers somehow had a baby.
There’s some cheese here. Okay, there’s a lot of cheese here.
And I think it actually makes the Visitors less frightening. They were scarier smiling on television and telling everyone they were our friends than they are flying around shooting laser beams.
But here’s the problem. I was still watching.
Because underneath all the space cheese, the story keeps giving me reasons to care.
Juliet is struggling with the pressure of leading the Resistance but keeps pulling herself together. Elias Taylor, who started this thing as a burglar, gets pulled into the fight after losing his brother. Willie continues looking like a Visitor who may not be entirely onboard with exterminating humanity.
And then there’s Ruby.
The Visitors and their human collaborators are busy looking for dangerous young Resistance fighters. Nobody pays much attention to the little old lady walking down the street. Bad idea.
Ruby lights a Molotov cocktail and throws the damn thing into a Visitor shuttle and BOOM.
Never underestimate Grandma.
It’s the Water!
Part 2 also finally reveals what the Visitors actually want. It’s not the chemicals. It’s the water. All of it.
And that’s not even the worst part.
Mike discovers rows of human beings being stored aboard the ships. Some are apparently going to be converted into soldiers.
Others? Food.
Suddenly those rodents don’t look so strange.
But V makes the smart choice not to turn every Visitor into an identical monster. Martin reveals that some of them were deceived by John too, and a faction aboard the ships is willing to help the human Resistance. Willie has already given us reason to suspect the same thing.
There are collaborators and rebels on both sides.
Unfortunately, by the time the Resistance and Visitors collide in the big battle, we’ve gone all-in on television spectacle. Shuttles are firing, blasters are going off, Diana is attacking from the air, Juliet is running around with a pistol and Mike is doing his best intergalactic action hero impression.
It’s melodramatic. It’s ridiculous in places. And when Diana gets injured and part of that fake human skin gets blown away, it’s satisfying as hell.
Then everybody starts celebrating. Guys. YOU HAVEN’T WON.
Wait. That’s the Ending?
Here’s my biggest problem with V. It’s a miniseries.
I expect a miniseries to have a beginning, a middle and an end. V has a beginning. It has a middle. Then it basically says: SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!
The Visitors are still here. The war isn’t over. Robin has been sick for several days after Diana’s little experiment involving Brian, which I’m sure is going to turn out just wonderfully. The Resistance has barely started fighting back.
Then Juliet sends a mathematical signal into space hoping to contact the Visitors’ enemies.
And that’s it.
I know V: The Final Battle came afterward. And yes, I’m watching it next. But I’m judging the miniseries I just watched, and that ending annoys the hell out of me.
If I’d watched this on NBC in 1983 and then had to wait for the next chapter, I’d have been pissed.
Of course, there’s a slight problem with my argument.
Here I am in 2026 saying: Fine. Put on The Final Battle. I need to know what happens.
So I guess the bastards won.
🔥 Our Verdict: WATCHABLE
V: The Original Miniseries isn’t perfect. Part 1 is considerably stronger than Part 2. Some of these characters desperately need to locate a functioning brain. The space battles push things into cheesy Star Wars-for-TV territory, and the lack of a satisfying conclusion annoys the hell out of me.
I don’t care. This thing grabbed me.
What begins as a giant alien-invasion spectacle becomes a story about propaganda, manipulation, conformity, collaboration and resistance. That’s where the fascism allegory works best for me. The Visitors don’t get their foot in the door by blasting cities into rubble.
They smile. They make promises. They offer people something they want. They convince everyone they’re here to help.
By the time enough people realize what’s happening, the machinery is already in place.
Nearly 43 years after V first aired, I found it sitting on Plex intending to sample one part and wound up starting Part 2 in the middle of the night because I couldn’t stop watching.
That’s the whole test around here. It earned more of my time. And apparently quite a bit of it.
Next stop: V: The Final Battle.
