The Big Picture – V

V is a series about the dangers of devotion. Seemingly benevolent aliens arrive, hovering in massive spaceships over the world’s capitals, offering amazing medical and technological advances. Most of all they hold out the hope of an end to conflict. Not surprisingly the visitors, or ‘Vs’ are not as benign as they pretend to be and the unity they preach will come at a terrible price. As always, science fiction is the genre where we test out our futures to see if they are worlds we’d really like to live in. Sometimes it’s the technology; other times the philosophies are the real focus. When V was first released as a television series in the 1980s, its chief concern was totalitarianism.

The Cold War held sway over film and television as well as politics. The guidance offered by the Vs slowly gives way to coercion in the original series until the aliens start to take on a distinctly Nazi appearance. In the new series, though, the danger is more religious than political. The Vs offer a peace that centres around the veneration of a leader who heals and holds out a spiritual calm called ‘bliss’. However it’s all a manipulative con. The small resistance movement realise that the aliens are wielding, “The most dangerous weapon on the planet: devotion.” Thirty years have passed and the new bad guys are not political fascists but religious fanatics. V’s building tension makes for great science fiction and the content is benign enough for the average teenager. But watch out as the visitors use their quasi-religion to control the masses and carry out their evil intentions.