ABC's V Premiere a Big Hit

The Nielsen Company's results for the opening week of the alien series V shows that over 14 million viewers watched the premiere. This was the second best premiere all season for all the networks with CBS's spinoff "NCIS: Los Angeles" edging out V, it was also the most watched scripted show last week.

V, stands for "visitors" and is a science fiction series that was created by Kenneth Johnson, an American writer, producer, and director. It is the story of an alien race of serpent like creatures that impersonate humans to lower the real humans guard so they can invade Earth. This spawns a human resistance group that will fight the aliens and resist their attempt to invade. There are also rogue aliens,disguised as humans, that help fight the invaders.

Kenneth Johnson says that the work was inspired by a 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis titled It Can't happen Here. But, several scenes from the original TV pilot caused controversy because it resembled work in a play by Bertolt Brecht. The story has political ties to it as Johnson has stated that portions are a Nazi allegory and that he wanted it to center on the rise of fascist government. You can see this with the Swastika-like emblems used by the visitors and their SS style uniforms. You can even see it in the television show when there is a scene of a young kids that resemble Hitler youth and the way that they announce things across the loud speaker makes you think about WWII propaganda.

The current television series is the remake of the 1983 miniseries that was written by Johnson. This was followed by a three part miniseries V: The Final Battle and a television series that ran during the 1984 season. There was some confusion stirred about the series when in early 2008, Johnson claimed he was in negotiations for a TV adaptation of a sequel that he had written called V: The Second Generation which was an alternative to the first miniseries and froze out a lot of the original fans.

Then eight months later Warner Bros. Television issued a statement that they would be producing a total remake of the first miniseries that aired in 1983 and that it would appear on the ABC network. The remake began shooting on January 26, 2009, and Johnson has never really cleared the air on what he meant when he talked about the alternative series in February 2008

Sources:
Neilson Media, Neilson Ratings
V, 1984 Television Series, Wikipedia

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