Hey, all! It’s been a while… hope you had a happy 2010 holiday season and that 2011 is off to a great start for you. Anyway, Scary-Crayon is back — at least for the moment! And to that end we’ve got a new article, V for Vitriol, which is about the 2009 “V” television series and why it kinda sucks. There’s a brief discussion of the 1983-85 series as it compares to the new show, too.
I’ll make no promises regarding future content. SC will remain active while breath animates my fingers as they fly across the keyboard and manipulate the mouse for image editing and such, though I can’t say how frequently. I can, however, say that I hope the next article won’t be two months away, and I hope that some of y’all out there are still with us. Thanks. 🙂
Wes,
Good review, but I think you can’t be to harsh about this soul thing. Souls have been addressed in Sci Fi before – in Babylon 5, one race is afraid of a “soul thief” which the humans dismiss out of superstition, only to find out that that race actually does track souls after death due to reincarnation and the “thief” had been capturing them, for -in his mind- benign reasons. That episode was sort of weak, but at least there was coherence and depth to it, and the concept came back in a big way later in the series – the ultimate effect was that whatever silliness there was in the concept had been done already and was out of the way when the concept came up as a big plot point later.
I’m not emotionally invested in the show anymore, so nothing really bothers me, but it’s insulting to intelligence to have a bunch of angry, suspicious, scheming, fearful and covetous people say they don’t have emotions and look down with disgust at people who they say do – it’s like listening to a Republican describe Democrats (ha!) Original Trek so thoroughly explored the role and nature of emotions – and demonstrated their necessity – the fact that this show ignores all that – not even rebutting any of it – that it’s like a sci-fi show for people who have never watched sci fi before. (Now, I know that’s super nerdy of me to be all like “But Spock needs emotion! But the Mumbari actually have souls!” but I’m just trying to figure out who’s watching this show, because it’s likely not science fiction fans) …I have let go, though. V doesn’t bother me anymore.
In the original V, we see that they eat their food live. So, naturally, they can’t have us fighting them, even if they are superior technologically and militarily, because if they kill us all, they lose their whole goal of being there. But in this one, you’re right, super, super, ultra nerds would have sex with the lizards – and for the rest of us, why can’t they just leave the blond teenager costumes on? And it seems like they can lay thousands of eggs, so what’s the rush? And they haven’t shown that anyone has to die from this – au contrare, didn’t they have to go out of their way to kill the 5th column guy’s wife?
Also -minor point – but if emotion “leaks” through the human skin, why do they wear it when on the ship? It’s just a quick spray on process, as we’ve seen.
Finally, my favorite scene, above all, is when the ships arrive, hovering over a crowd of people, covering the entire field of vision for the area, all staring up at it, and one or two people point at it, as though they think people are staring at something else.