#3 V

The original, of course. Far be it from me to judge a book by its cover, but Inara notwithstanding, the new one looks far too close to these substanceless lets play it safe network TV shows that have mysteries but not a clue that have all popped up in the wake of Lost. When in doubt, let's have something weird happen and if we make a few references to current events, someone will think its an allegory or something. Pfahhh.

Can see why it would get itself remade though, it is a rarer version of the alien invasion tale.

Excluding extraterrestrials of the sort in The Thing or Alien which are just evolved to biologically take over which is its own kind of terror, usually when movie aliens decide they want to take over our planet and enslave and/or harvest our species they do it one of two ways.

There's the overt War of the Worlds type way, where they just show up and start blasting away. Everyone knows there's a huge invasion going on, that the aliens are the enemy and that it's time to lock and load, whether with nukes or with a virus that can somehow stop alien technology. (I know, I know it's been said, but Roland, aliens use windows? Really?)

Then there's the insidious X-Files/Invasion of the Body Snatchers type of way. The aliens take on human appearances, or hybridize with them, or take over human bodies or minds, whatever. Most of earth's citizens, except a plucky band of folks in the right place at the right time have no idea that there are aliens at all, that they aren't our friends, or that they are invading. Not only are these aliens trying to run a successful invasion, but also trying to run the biggest coverup in the history of massive coverups.

The V version...is a mix of the two. Everyone on the planet sees the hovering saucers emerge over major cities but these aliens are attractive and charismatic and promise a better new world while making still making the people feel like they are needed, and not necessarily an inferior species. But underneath...damn, that reveal is so good. Poor hamster.

Like both of those other alien invasion archetypes this one is meant as a social allegory. It started out its life as an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, and the fascists were changed to aliens because TV execs weren't sure the American public would watch it otherwise.

But hey, let's give them a pass on trying to remove the main message of the original, that it is not inconceivable that all you ordinary Americans could let fascism rise within the country, instead having it pushed on you by a foreign power. They get the pass because even after it becomes clear that something isn't right about how the aliens are acting, huge amounts of the population help them with the invasion, ratting out dissidents and joining with them to go where the power is.

They start with the scientists, the intellectuals, the people most likely to be the first to sniff out fraud, and the most likely to figure out what to do about it once they have. The population of the world is more than happy to believe the aliens that promise them wine and roses than the scientists who've never made the promise to solve all problems in their lifetime.

That all seems frighteningly plausible in a country where somewhere around half of the population doesn't accept evolution when the evidence is enough to reach a near total scientific consensus because a church tells them not to. But I digress.

This has an almost Carpenter type feel to it. Found myself reminded of They Live more than once, even though this is entirely earnest in tone.

Fully intend to explore it more, anything featuring old ladies wielding makeshift Molotov Cocktails is good in my book, but another sci-fi series has gotten my attention in the meantime.

You shall find out more with #4

But right now, to contemplate fighting the system, we need some MC5.