bstempleton (05/02/83)
I thought at first this might have something to do with Pynchon, but found out quickly it did not, being from the maker of "The Inrcredible Hulk" and The $1E6 Man. So I didn't go in expecting too much. I got more than I expected, though. I found it fairly entertaining. The beginning, up to the "scientist conspiracy" part, was a reasonable, though not outstanding first contact story. I'll accept aliens who are close to 100% human fairly easily - it just posits we came from the same stock rather than evolving of different planets as we now think. I was pleased to see the scientists of the world amazed that they were human, so things looked good. The the anti-scientist sentiment. I found this hard to take at first, figuring the public, at least in educated countries, would never go for this kind of thing. Then I began to think about the amount of mistrust a lot of the public has in us - the aid of mystery about our work and the envy of our success in society. Remembering Hitler, as this movie told you rather blatantly, again and again, to do, you could see how it might happen. It was Marc Singer's espionage mission aboard the alien ship that really broke the crediability of this film as SF. Aside from the incredibly campy "let's reveal our secrets again in case anybody is watching from the wings" dialogue, the facts that the aliens spoke English on board their ship and in fact were lizards dressed up as men were inexcusable. I have long been of the opinion that an alien race would never bother to invade our planet for military purposes. If their technology is high enough to allow them to cheaply flit from planet to planet in huge ships, then they can hardly need us, even for raw materials. If it is only high enough to barely manage interstellar travel (especially non-FTL) then it would not be economic to invade other planets. Lately, though, I have seen how it might be to the advantage of an alien race to enslave another race. We'll see what happens tonight. If the "Hitler" of these people turns out to be a computer, I take back everything I said about the quality of the show.
perelgut (05/03/83)
I watched the "V" mini-series (these used to be called two-part movies)
and I have $.02 worth to add. The aliens are incredible shots, must come from
being lizard in people suits. They could train nearly infinite numbers of
little-blue blaster shots on a single individual in an open field, and miss
every one of them. They even repeated this amazing feat time after time after
time in the movie. And they almost never hit anything.
"V" also proved something I have always wondered about. You most
definitely can run 2 miles or more after having your hip cooked by an
unlucky little blue lazer blast. The only problem is you have to walk with a
cute limp afterwards.
Our Hero (OH) is able to sneak aboard an alien spacecraft hovering miles
above the planet whenever he feels like it. OH is definitely human since
no yuckky alien could manage that. OH even recovers from a little blue lazer
blast to the thorax.
The neatest thing is that the aliens have perfected rubber mask technology.
Who could picture hundreds of thousands of lizards wearing people suits and
not one rips, wrinkles, or slips unless OH makes it.
Last point. OH fights an alien at close quarters, rips off its mask, and
then kicks it in its alien balls and flees. Later OH's friend sees an alien
up close and the lizard spits a neuro-toxin in his eyes and kills(?) him.
I guess OH is so overwhelming no yuckky alien lizard is gonna spit on him!
--- Stephen Perelgut ---
{decvax!utzoo,ihnp4,uw-beaver,ubc-vision}!utcsrgv!perelgut
(less desirable links) {floyd,mhtsa,sask,cornell,watmath,hcr}!utcsrgv!perelgut
" " " " " {dciem,trigraph,garfield,qucis,nabu}!utcsrgv!perelgutkcarroll (05/03/83)
Why is it that I wasn't surprised, when we found out that the aliens were after our water, with "Food of the Gods" thrown in as well? (snide comment of the day; also, I disliked the directing extremely).
bstempleton (05/04/83)
I didn't think the directing was that bad, Kieran. The writing was what had problems. Of course, they were done by the same person. I read that this guy essentially wanted to do YAFIBM (Yet Another Fascism is Bad Movie) but decided that adding Science Fiction would attract a lot more viewers since that's popular. I felt the production values and SFX were good enough that it would have had potential if not for the tremendous realism Gaffes. (sp?) Lizards in human suits that talk English on board their ship when nobody else is around is one thing. Stealing water and taking humans for food is pretty bad, though. I don't see why they had to do this. The director did something unusual in this movie, namely he gave the aliens some morals and a bit of depth of character. They are not all of one voice, for one thing. The idea of eating people is completely needless. Stealing people for slave armies is perfectly acceptable as a premise in my mind, and is certainly more than enough to get the freedom fighters worked up. The eating just makes the whole thing two extreme. One thing Hitler never did is eat people. What did the alien do to the valley girl? I assume he got her pregnant in some way, but boy would that be a feat of biological engineering. Perhaps he put something inside like the creature from the O'Bannon movie "Alien". Boy could those guys ever french kiss! Both the Hulk and the $1E6 man were series that started off good in my opinion, and went downhill. That seems to be the trend of this director. I don't want to see what happens when this show goes "downhill". Perhaps the enemies of the Space Nazis will be wingless birds in human suits. Still, what do people think of the rest of this show? I think it would have been acceptable if they had: 1) Not been lizards, but rather humans from the same genetic stock. (ie. both races planted by some father race of humans as in Chariots of the Gods) 2) They had been after people only as slaves 3) They wanted valuable natural resources like gems, rare earths and fisionables, instead of water.
kcarroll (05/05/83)
You mean that there are going to be >more episodes< of this series?!? Gods of all stars!