Visitors Among Us

"V"- CAST #1: Official Video Podcast of Visitors Among Us.com

Welcome to the first video podcast of Visitors Among Us, in which we look back at recent news events in the world of "V", and include an audio excerpt from our interview with Laura Vandervoort.

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KEN JOHNSON'S RE"V"LECTIONS, PART 5

Early In the process of writing the screenplay for what he hoped would be “V”: The Second Generation, Ken Johnson realized that the story and characters would lend themselves to a novel. Negotiations began with Tor Books and Warner Bros., with the decision ultimately being made that he could indeed write it. The resulting novel was published at the beginning of this year.
   “It was a wonderful experience in that I could really let my mind go and really get in to the minds of the characters and a little more into their history,” says Johnson. “Obviously when you’re writing a 600-plus page novel, you can get a lot more information on the page than when you are confined by the length of even a four-hour miniseries. Also in the course of writing the novel I discovered many new scenes and elements and pieces and ideas that were very intriguing, and I went back and folded those into the screenplay. So I think the screenplay has also been enhanced by the fact that I took the time to write the novel.”
   One would assume that if his movie version of “V” works, Johnson will get the opportunity to bring “V”: The Second Generation to the screen as well.

KEN JOHNSON'S RE"V"LECTIONS, PART 4

In his screenplay turned novel "V": The Second Generation, Ken Johnson explains that the stories of many of the characters audiences came to know and love are carried on. "Certainly Diana is a pre-eminent figure as the Visitor commandant," he says. "Juliet, our resistance leading lady, is a key player. Harmie, the waitress who fell in love with Willie, played by Robert Englund in the original, are both back in very key roles, as well as Robert Maxwell and a couple of others. There are, of course, a raft of new players that are indeed the second generation. And they're exciting folks. There are many new characters on both sides of the battle. A number of people have asked me about Mike Donovan's character, and what I have said is Mike was apparently killed in a battle in London.
   "As I've mentioned," he continues, "I think that there are elements of The Second Generation that very clearly speak to some of the issues we're facing in the world today, and America's role as a hyper power. It was something I was anxious to have the opportunity to deal with in an allegorical, metaphorical way. And it's an important element in the picture. One of the other elements was, if the original 'V' was thematically about power, then I think 'V': The Second Generation is thematically about loyalty. Virtually every character in 'V': The Second Generation has, at one time or another, some crises of conscience regarding loyalty."

KEN JOHNSON'S RE"V"LECTIONS, PART 3

Once agreeing with NBC to proceed with a remake of "V" rather than a sequel, the first thing Ken Johnson did was to relocate the setting from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which is where the majority of "V": The Second Generation takes place.
   "That immediately gave it a different visual look," says Johnson. "And I moved it up a generation from World War II so that the Jewish family who had the grandfather who lost a wife during the Holocaust now was a black family in the remake script, with a grandfather who lost his wife to Aprartheid. So this way I was doing something that I could hold my head up and feel good about.
   "By the time I had finished the remake script, NBC had lost a billion dollars of advertising revenue because their network was so far in the tank," he elaborates, 'and they were concerned about doing a big pricey miniseries. And also there was going to be a lot of science fiction episodic shows coming on in the fall, so they were a little nervous about the whole thing. It should be said, though, that in the midst of this they did buy four hours of Hercules. That's fresh! So at that point we moved away from NBC."
   In his opinion, the new "V" would actually be more relevant today than the original was, because, as he explains it, "in the early '80s we were in a relative time of peace and prosperity; there was no major external wars going on that we had ventured ourselves in to. And in writing the sequel, The Second Generation, I was able to sort of make some comment on imperialism and the responsibilities one has as a hyper-power. When 'V' was originally written, don't forget there was still a Soviet Union and there were a number of super powers, but no hyper-power. Now after the fall of the Soviet Union there is indeed only a hyper-power which is the U.S. Which brings with it a tremendous amount of responsibility which we have not always handled very well. So in the sequel, I was able to make some sub-textural commentaries about that, and sometimes it's even textural commentaries. There are lines in The Second Generation that are phrases we have heard some of the world's leaders speak."

Look for Part IV on Wednesday.

KEN JOHNSON'S RE"V"LECTIONS, PART 2

As he explains it, the first notion of a modern day follow-up to "V" came to Ken Johnson when he was recording the commentary for the DVD release of the original. "I was at the dubbing stage, and we got to the last scene, where my leading lady, Faye Grant, tried to send a message into deep space, trying to contact an enemy of the Visitors, hoping that an enemy of my enemy would be my friend," Johnson says. "And a little bell went off and I thought, 'I wonder what would happen if that message ever got through.' And that led me to think, 'What would happen if I picked up the story 20 years later and took it from there? To see what had become of my characters; the people we loved or the people we hated.' And it was a fresh way to go. People had talked to me over the years about doing a revisitation to 'V,' and I had always ducked it because I felt I had done the original very well, and I felt it was something of a classic and didn't want to mess with something that wasn't broken. But this gave me an opportunity to build off of everything I had done previously and then move forward, and take the story to a whole new level and to a whole new sort of ending.
   "I pitched the idea to NBC, where we had done 'V' originally, and they sort of got it," he continues, "though they never got it the way Brandon [Tartikoff] got it 20 years ago. They bought it at any rate and I moved forward. At first it was going to be a three-hour project, because they didnt' know about doing a four-hour project. It was a tedious process and it took many months just to organize the deal. Now with Brandon I wrote a 230 page screenplay in 19 days. He read it over a weekend and sent me into production. With these guys now at NBC, this was a process that took 18 months. I stil wrote very fast, but it would take them sometimes six months to read a draft of the script. It was obviously a very frustrating situation. And after we got to a point where everyone seemed very comfortable with it, they told me they were thinking about doing a remake of the original first. Warner Bros. and I both sort of said, 'Why?' and the NBC brass said it wan't their idea, it was the NBC marketing department; they thought it would be a good idea to do a remake first, and it was not something I was interested in pursuing. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, 'Look, maybe this is the only way I can get my sequel  made. Secondly, maybe there's a way to go back and bring the original up to the 21st century and deal with cell phones and iPods and terrorism and that sort of thing. And still be true to the original story, the original concept, the original characters.'"

Look for part three on Wednesday.

KEN JOHNSON'S RE"V"LECTIONS, PART 1

Recently, "V" creator Kenneth Johnson agreed to answer a number of questions about the original miniseries as well as his recent follow-up novel, "V": The Second Generation. To begin with, he was asked about the original's connection with the audience in 1983 and why it still touches those who know it so many years later.
   "I think the original 'V' miniseries connected with the audience on such a strong emotional level because it was about people like them," he muses. "I carefully constructed it so that there would be someone in the picture who almost everyone in the audience could identify with and say, 'I think I'm like that person.' I was anxious to make it about everyday people, and how their lives would be changed and  altered by a sea change in their life. Much the way that the world changed after December 7, 1941, or September 11th. Where suddenly real people wrre swept up into a brand new circumstance. And I think that's one of the main reasons it connected so powerfully with the audience; it was not about some futuristic place or we weren't on a spaceship in the depths of the universe. It was right here in the streets and it gave people the opportunity to show how they might react.
    "I think what makes the miniseries so resonant even all these two decades later is the fact that indeed it's a timeless story. it's s story that has taken place over the centuries a number of times, where power has been abused by those in power, it has been sucked up to by those who desired to be a part of it, like the Vichy French in WWII. And it's also caused people to try to duck their heads in the sand, thinking, 'If I keep my head down and don't get into any trouble, then people in power won't bother me.' And lastly, of course, there are the people who say this abuse of power is wrong and we must fight against it. This is a story that goes back to the slave revolt that was led by Spartacus, as well as virtually every other circumstance where a powerful, often brutal fascist regime has taken tyrannical power over a people, and ultimately the people have decided to fight back. That's part of the reason that the title card appears at the beginning of 'V,' dedicated to the heroism of the resistance and the freedom fighters, past, present and future."