Toy Galaxy covers the amazing miniseries “V”

Originally published at: Toy Galaxy covers the amazing miniseries "V" | Boing Boing

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I’ve wanted to re-watch the V series spinoff that came after the 2 mini-series, but I’m so afraid it’s not going to hold up to my childhood mind-blowing.

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Talk about appointment television in the 80s. “Oh my god they’re LIZARDS!” rocked the barely-pubescent brains of me and my nerd pals.

Some memories are best left as memories.

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Young me thought they had the coolest sunglasses in that show.

Current me realizes that fashion has moved along…

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Me and 2 pals ditched out of a 2+ hour uni class during a break to watch the finale. It was an East Europe studies class with like 12 students in it so there was no hiding our escape. Teams of 3 were giving their project presentations that week. The presentation we skipped out on was a trio of young conservatives, so nothing lost. The prof punished us by giving us a B for the course. But that’s how important V was to us!

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We tried watching this again during lockdown. Even though it doesn’t hold up, it was fun picking apart what 80’s appointment television looked like.

It was a bit of a slog to get to the human giving birth to an alien part, and then once we finally watched that episode, we never watched the rest.

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  1. Toy Galaxy is a great channel if you like toys and/or 80s pop culture. Plus, that Fett collection!

  2. I LOVED V as a kid. Aliens! Explosions! Bright colored uniforms! I haven’t seen it in decades and scenes still stick with me. The fact they were mostly bullet proof was a real tension device for me. “You can’t just blast them?”

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The details of the video’s sponsoring underwear are very… detailed.

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I just wish it’d been popular enough for them to do I-IV.

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Pop trivia: when the original series came out Thomas Pynchon’s publisher sued for trademark infringement as the title was the same as his debut 1963 novel.

This case was appealed four times before being settled in the case “V v. V V.”

/dadjoke

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V was one of the first shows that we recorded on VHS. I watched the mini-series over and over again. So good. Well, maybe not so good any more, but great at the time for a 7 year old.

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The first episode was really good. Watching how fascism rolls out across a country. The writers came from a generation that remembered WWII, and saw many of the things happening in Latin America, during the 1980s. We see the same script replaying again in the Trump era.

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What people don’t realise is that this is actually a documentary…

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The special effects and alien costumes don’t hold up, and the characters are dated, but the dialogue, acting and allegorical story do, IMHO and based on re-watching it and the original miniseries (which is undeniable better) within the last decade. YMMV.

But for the love of the gods save yourself from the reboot. I know it has Morena Baccarin, but be strong.

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Not even she could save it. I was super excited, and then disappointed :confused:

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They wanted to do a show about American fascists, but the network suits didn’t like the idea. Allegedly not because of denial or complicity, they said it wouldn’t sell. So the writers changed the villains to aliens.

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I don’t remember it being particularly good at the time.

Diana got freakier. You weren’t sure if she was eating people, having sex with them or both.

Here is a good site reviewing the show episode by episode.

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That was an early “Jumped the Shark” moment. I’m not sure I watched the rest either.

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I still love the original mini-series. And I totally agree with you, the reboot just made me sad.

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