The 1984 Miniseries entitled "V" is a followup miniseries of 19 episodes that take place after the 1983 miniseries of the same name.

 

The theme is an extention of the original miniseries - a group of humans known as "the resistance" are fighting agianst a group of reptilians posing as humans - now exposed to the world.  

 

The show is a good romp, funny at times, cheesy at times, dramatic at times.

 

However, it at times seems somewhat "low budget", and had minor inconsistencies.

 

In Episode 18, entitled "The Secret Underground", presented the most inconsistent and unrealistic scene that I have ever watched on television.

 

In this scene, the two main characters, heads of the resistance secretly go up to the ship in uniform.  If someone they know sees them, it means instant death or torture.  But they go up anyways.  This just happens in tv and movies, the main characters have to confront the bad guy, I get it.  But here is where it gets odd.  They are spotted by Diana, their main bad guy.  They then fake it and pretend they are lizards, and to prove it, take off their "masks" showing they are reptilians.  The main bad guy is fooled and lets them go.  They then proceed to hide and take off their reptilian masks, deciding that it's better to roam the ship without the masks.  The woman leader of the resistance is then caught.

 

So here's my gripe about this... Why not board the ship with the reptilian masks on?  As many of the members do walk around without their masks on the ship.  Why was the bad guy fooled?  Wouldn't she detain these two crew members, wearing masks of her worst enemies?  Why let them go?  Then the biggest one, why take off the masks and sneak around the ship as humans agian, when an entire task force is looking for them?

 

The writing in this next to last episode is just glaring with inconsistency, no, it goes beyond inconsistancy, it shows perfectly smart characters acting in complete stupidity.  Imagine a wanted criminal recognized by the entire force sneaking around a police station, without any mask, being caught, the police realizing who it is, then he takes off his mask to show he's really another police man, just joking around, they believe him and let him go, and then he hides, takes off his mask, now has no masks left, and begins snooping around agian, and then is recognized and caught.  It throws realism right out the window.

 

In the episode's defense, they did have important talking scenes in between, and perhaps the writers thought it would be disturbing to see our heroes talking with reptile heads.  Reguardless, if you've ever seen similar "sneaking around a giant, heavily guarded area where they can recognize you" movies or tv shows, and thought they were slightly unrealistic, then watch this episode.

 

Now, it is good in it's own campy, cheesy fun, and I enjoy it.

I also laugh every time they use the laser sound.  It's a single sound effect, used many times in every single episode, without variation.  Imagine taking a high budget miniseries and then taking all the sound effects and action shots and putting those into a low budget 19 episode season, and you'll understand where the campiness comes from.

One of the best sneaking around scenes in movies, in my opinion, is Obi Wan sneaking around the ship in the first Star Wars, using stealth and jedi mind tricks, he manuvers around to shut down the shields, only to realize that Darth Vader senses him and he must be fought.  

 

By the way, if you have netflix, the entire series can be watched online.