Any other fans of this (Original Mini-Series and The Final Battle... not that crappola series later on...)

Watched it at the time, but can't remember much except for Diana (?) and her swallowing antics.

It was Diana...

You must remember Willie, the alien who got his words wrong, as played lovingly by a pre-Freddy Kruger Robert Englund!

I remember his character, yes - he was a friendly lizard.

Indeed... I've got both series on DVD and they are soooooooooo 80s. It's great though...

Although I think Robert Englund was the only one to go on and make a decent name for himself... I really don't think Marc Singer's "Beastmaster" films really count!

I think old Lane Smith ended up in the crap series though!

Was that the one where they were all bindling people up in sacks for food?

That's the one. They came to earth in these huge motherships and pretended to be benevolent when in reality, the were here to steal our water and use us for food.

I loved it. I read the books first as I think I had to wait for it to be repeated. In fact, I may well have tapes with it on in the loft.

Michael Wright (played Elias Taylor) has cropped up elsewhere. He was in a few series of one of my favourite shows (Oz) and is in the new Nicole Kidman movie The Interpreter.

Well... there we go...

I think he may have been in Total Recall...

Not according to the IMDB.

Michael Ironside (Ham Tyler in The Final Battle and the TV series) hasn't done too badly for himself. He was in Total Recall. And Scanners, though that was before 'V'.

Duh... Of course Michael Ironside... What was I thinking...

So, as far as success goes we've got

Michael Ironside
Robert Englund
Jason Bernard (did pretty alright for himself)

And just looking at IMDB... THEY'RE MAKING A NEW SERIES!!!!

And looking more into it... It's commissioned by NBC, although they're still hashing out details...

Apparently, Kenneth Johnson, the creator of V was asked by an exec at NBC... "Do they have to arrive in those big motherships... People may think we're ripping off Independance Day!"

What a moron!

Don't forget that the Madness of King George was originally called The Madness of King George III. The title was changed so people wouldn't think it was a sequel. TV/film audiences seem to have a low IQ. A bit like football crowds.

This is true... I love America, but sometimes I just wanna....

Get in your mothership, steal their water and use them for food?

Yeah... but I think that you're average redneck american is gonna be really high in cholestral. We'd end up all fat and bloated...

The weekly series degraded into soap opera antics. Personally there were some good aspects like finding out more about their culture but overall it went poorly. I quite like Lydia who always seemed to be trying to find ways to beat Diana.

And who else was really ticked off that Martin played by Frank Ashmore was killed off in the weekly series?

For an early appearance of Frank Ashmore, he was in Airplane as one of the crew.

BTW, Marc Singer also appeared in an episode of the Planet of the Apes TV series as well as a Vietnam war film called Go Tell the Spartans.

That's not the only thing that pissed me off... What happened to the Visitors' voices... Apparently, they were normal in the new series! How did that happen.

It then got worse when they had Martin's "twin", played by Frank Ashmore, show up. And he was a member of the 5th Column as well. And he chose the same face as his brother, who was a member of the 5th Column... AND NO-ONE QUESTIONED THIS!

And the less said about the marriage between "Charles and Diana" the better!

Original series ruled.

Follow up sseries - evil!

I particularly liked the way people would get written out when the actors clearly got bored. They would just get vapourised randomly, or suddenly at the end of an episode they'd say 'We're off - bye!'

Ham Tyler rules, though. I used to draw comic strips about him.

Even he had enough after a while!

And she was played by June Chadwick, who had just come off playing that ultimate paragon of evil, Jeanine (David's fiancée) in Spinal Tap.

Agreed, tho, the two miniseries were far better. 'Nuther nugget of trivia - Dominique Dunne (daughter of Dominick, sister of Griffin, Dana in Poltergeist) was the original Robin (her that gets knocked up by Cute Lizard Lieutenant). She'd shot about half her scenes when her real-life boyfriend strangled her to death.

The only scene left in V with Dominick Dunne is just after one of the Maxwell children gets hit by a car, and the street comes out to see the Visitor ship. You see a shot of the Maxwells from behind.

The commentary on my US V disc said that's the only shot left in.

Svein, regarding the change in Visitor voices, one fan site put in an explanation that the Visitors had a sort of 'allergy' to something in the atmosphere, that by this time they had adjusted. That actually shows a better level of thinking than some of the storylines used in the weekly series.

And did anyone else thing Howard K Smith and his 'Freedom Network' seemed incredibly fake.

BOLLOX... They just couldn't be arsed to pay the additional costs for the voices...

Hell, they could have taken it out of Marc Wooden Singer's salery...

No, i mean that a fan site put more thought into it than the shows producers did. I know it's the money issue.

It's also funny that the Visitors practically abandoned the use of skyfighters in the series and used Jeeps and dirt bikes.

Maybe they ran out of fuel?

There were also a series of V novels, some only being printed in the USA. They vary quite a bit in quality, but can often be picked up in Comic and Memorabilia fairs. Some are a lot more common than others though.

Personally I wonder how Dominique Dunne would have done Robin Maxwell as I thought Blair Tefkin could be downright annoying. It's also strange that in the weekly series we see Robin and Robert Maxwell, but we never see what happened to the other two children.

I think Blair Tefkin was supposed be annoying. I had the novelisation of the 2 miniseries and she was that annoying in the books as well.... Typical 80s American teenager...

I was always a little upset that Daniel did not get MORE screwed over... I really wanted to see him suffer!!!!

Hey! Daniel's demise was gruesome enough for me - just the thought of it gives me the creeps. However, for the most awful scene in a TV series, I think the death of the pharmacist in the awful spin off series wins. She was framed by Diana and Lydia for the death of Charles, and she was put in a glass coffin with the corpse and ejected into space. Diana saw to it that she became conscious just as the funeral was finishing, I remember feeling traumatised for weeks after seeing that. In fact, the series is on Homechoice just now and it is still a really gruesome scene.

V was an incredibly patchy programme - the first episode is fantastic, very atmospheric and almost soap opera like as we get a glimpse of the reactions of a huge cast as the ships arrive; along with a slow burning plot that doesn't give much away.

Some brilliant bits were a scene where Julie is shot - and my goodness you can see the pain on her face as she struggles to get to her car. The Visitors stopped using "stun" soon after..! Diana's attempted conversion of Julie still sends chills down my spin, and I still find it difficult to watch.

But it had some terribly cloying moments - almost any scene with Donovan is embarrassing. One example is his "lucky baseball cap" which enables him to blast Visitors out of the sky! In the same scene, to show the ship flying upside down... that's right, the film was turned upside down. Oh yes.

And lets not forget THAT ending...

The novels ending made more sense, it was the same result, but basically Elizabeth sent the self destruct system into a continuous feedback loop.

I loved the mini series. I remember when Diana ate the Guinee Pig (or was it a rabbit). That fucked. Me. Up.

When the series came on TV I taped them all but lost interest as the budget ran out. Though everytime Marc Singer flew a skyfighter his eyebrow acting kept me enthralled.

Marc Singer did seem to think he was the centre of attention. That little SOB Daniel really did get what he deserved though.

Great line from Julie.

"Yes, congratulations Daniel, on selling your race out to a bunch of nightcrawlers"

And the Emmy for best use of Eyebrows in a Series goes to...

"ME???"

You also notice, that Singer had to be a bit more 'flash'. When firing a gun for instance he always did it with a flourish. Almost everything he did was exaggerated.

And he had an amazing latent talent for flying, which only manifested itself in times of crisis, when the rest of us would go to pieces. Helicopters, alien shuttle crafts... no problem to our Mike!

Come on... he watched the Visitors... That's all you need to know how to fly!

One minute in a chase he finds the controls too sensitive, ten minutes later he's flying through a tunnel with perfect precision.

Don't forget he's also a good horseman, being able to fire a pistol one and hit a visitor while maintaining control of the horse.