Why the Critics Like V
11. Nov, 2009 
10 Comments
After writing my own brief impressions of last week’s premiere of V, I went and read some other reviews.
Almost to a critic/blogger they said things like “intelligent sci fi”, rousing science fiction tale, the original was good science fiction, etc., etc.
Which made me realize that the critics are both woefully ignorant of science fiction and ignorant of what makes for good science fiction.
Someone over at the Dartmouth college paper (?) stated that the alien’s arrival was “reminiscent of Independence Day”. No – ID was evocative of the NOVEL written by ARTHUR C. CLARKE named CHILDHOOD’S END.
How can anyone who thinks that the icons, themes and tropes of science fiction began with film-based CGI have anything meaningful to say about…check that. The Dartmouth paper’s article illustrates exactly why modern media SF can suck terribly and yet be commercially successful. The education of the (maybe/not sure) SF fan is so woefully bereft of any sense of background or history that lizards wearing human rubber suits who arrive on Earth in gigantic city-sized spaceships is new, fresh, awe-inspiring and, dare I say it, generates a real sensawunda.
Makes me almost throw up in my mouth and definitely makes me want to tear out my eyeballs with a blunt meat fork. (Because bashing other people’s heads in for being so ignorant remains illegal for some strange reason.)
There’s no way to force feed the masses (unless you dress up a pile of shit in pretty CGI and spend several hundred thousand dollars a week advertising it), but I can perform the rear-guard action of running down a few of the things that take V out of the “intelligent sci fi” category and put it into the crap category:
A presumed FTL drive, for starters.
The economics of traveling across interstellar space for ‘water’ does not make any sense. If the invaders gave such an explanation for their appearance, it would quickly be debunked. (Comets, Oort cloud in their own system are obviously harvestable given their technological level.)
The ease with which the lizards in human suits adapt to Earth.
The ease with which lizards in human suits fake out the entire worlds population.
The need for the lizards to cajole us, given their apparent technological domination.
The tired old idea of alien-human hybrids. Maybe in the lab – not in the real world.
Children of holocaust survivors are not going to buy it.
The tired old idea that aliens would look exactly like us – except prettier.
That we’d let them land and walk about without extensive quarantine and testing before hand. (Unless they forced themselves on us, which kind of ruins the plan.)
The fallacy of thinking that interstellar conquest is economical.
The concept that aliens that want to conquer us (despite any of the foregoing) would need to do anything other than say “as of now, we are taking over. Humans over the age of 65 will report to the fertilizer factory, all other humans will report to the fattening facility) is absolutely ridiculous. Our technology is demonstrably useless against them.
Aliens that want to eat us as a theme was more than adequately written up by Damon Knight in his short story To Serve Man (It’s a cook book! Soylent Green is PEOPLE!). If this is a novel concept for you, I’m sure you will be equally amused and entertained by going out into the yard and watching the grass grow.
I’m sure there is a lot more. The fact that TV critics haven’t caught any of these show-stoppers – or don’t care that the entire premise is just plain stupid – reveals utter ignorance of the genre on their part. We’ve seen this basic tale so many times before, both in print and on the screen, that we’ve had decades to pick it apart.
Intelligent indeed.
Johne, I was referring to gigantic city-sized ships parked over major US cities – not the concept of alien invasion.
Arthur, I’ve read the entire Turtledove series and thoroughly enjoyed it. Harry amazed me with his ability to come up with plausible reasons for why the aliens didn’t just wipe us off the face of the Earth with their superior tech. However, it still suffers from the flaw that the economics of invasion are just not there: any species capable of crossing interstellar distances has the means to develop the resources in their own or close-by uninhabited systems without having to fight for those resources; planet forming is more of a sure thing that warfare. When you invest that much treasure in a venture, you don’t do it on a roll of the dice – you make sure that you will get a return on your investment.
In fact, it is far cheaper and potentially far more reliable to utilize von neuman machines to send the resources back to your own system. Colonization does nothing to relieve population pressure; there’s no way to really exert remote control over the colony and etc., etc., etc.
This subject has been picked over endlessly and about the only viable reason to visit other systems is sight-seeing or as a temporary base as you move on – and that presumes the presence of a VERY inexpensive FTL drive.
@Richard – me too but I lent mine out around 1992, still haven’t been able to replace it.
re: ID and Childhood’s End, War of the Worlds predates them both.
V sucked marginally less this week. That’s hardly a rave review.
This show is absolutely terrible.
Hmmm… okay, I’ll grant you that in the case of V, we’re talking about a horrid little tv series that made for a worse book (I may have that reversed, but the book had the feel of a made-to-capitalize novel), and twenty-odd years down the road, a really, really, god-awful movie.
But – unfortunately I have to disagree with a couple of your statements about the economics of interstellar conquest, etc.
The way it’s done in V I have no problem agreeing with you. However, I did happen to read a series of novels by Harry Turtledove, tackling the same issues, but well done, with real thought and an engineer’s detail on exactly how, why, what, and where. All done in Mr. Turtledove’s entertaining and vivid alternate universe style. I suggest you give them a try, if you haven’t already. The first is “Worldwar: In the Balance”.
Start off with the premise – no, assumption, um, definition that this is NOT SF but is in fact horror, and most of the arguments against it go away, since horror requires no logic, just scary (often stupid) stuff. I thought the original V was a horror story, not so unlike Night of the Living Dead or The Body Snatchers, and was able to enjoy it as a campy, funny horror show. Not that I’d want to see it again, nor this new version. And also remember, television is only about ratings, all else, including intelligence and logic, are secondary.
I do want to go back and re-read CHILDHOOD’S END.
Original sucked too, I guess the masses love alien human hybrids and invasions that make no sense.
And eating people? How likely is it that aliens could digest earth proteins?
You’ve put into words everything that’s bothered me about V, especially the things that I haven’t been able to articulate. Every preview I saw had me cringing and I haven’t even seen the original…
Yep. But apparently 25 years is more than enough time passing for everyone to have forgotten all of that.
Didn’t we have all these criticisms with the first version (e.g., how about mining water from a low-gravity moon, asteroid, comet)? So glad I’m not watching, because it sounds like it ain’t an improvement…