OK, remember that crazy kook some time ago that said that George W. Bush was a reptilian alien in human skin secretly plotting to destroy the world and our very way of life? Remember that? Well now he has a TV show.

V is a science fiction series that just premiered on ABC that has been called “the best thing since X-Files.” Now, I was a big X-Files fan, so they are making some big claims as far as I am concerned. The basic premise is that large alien mother ships show up and they are filled with “visitors”, aliens that basically look like extremely attractive humans. They turn on a big screen LCD TV and broadcast to the world, saying that they are very far from home, and that all they need is water. In return, they offer us universal health care (political statement much) and technology that will not only solve world hunger and bring world peace, but will also increase our penis size by several inches. It’s an obvious “too good to be true” story that everyone eats up, because we are so sick and tired of our wars, global catastrophes, and general high suck quotient of human life.

Of course, it is natural for human beings to be paranoid, and, as is the case in most of these science fiction shows, the paranoid ones are right. A group of almost insane cult-like radicals is preaching that these visitors actually have dire plans for humanity, and oops, turns out they were correct. The visitors have been among us for ages and have been the cause of every global crisis we have faced. Every war, every economic downturn, every natural disaster, and even George W. Bush, have all been plans of the visitors to push humanity into the gutter. They walk among us, reptilian aliens wearing human skins, and they try to make our lives suck so that now, when they reveal themselves, we have no choice but to accept them as our saviors. This is because they … actually their horrible evil plans haven’t been revealed yet, but we do know this is all a scheme and they tend to kill anyone who knows of its true nature.

The show brings together a variety of characters. There is a priest who has a hard time accepting the visitors due to his faith, an FBI agent with a renegade son, a crazy conspiracy theorist, an alien rebel, and a news reporter who was one of the first to make public contact with the visitors. Everyone but the news caster gets together and forms and underground alliance, while the newscaster … pretty much just hits on the sexy alien leader and then feels regret about it.

Overall, I was amused by the story. There were these intense scenes which had my heart racing (most of which were interrogation scenes) and I genuinely wanted to know more about the meta plot. The action sequences were decent too and involved a lot of interesting alien weapons as well as plenty of plain old stabbing and shooting with good old earth knives and guns. The whole thing was a bit preachy, though. Lots of plotlines revolved around how powerful faith and devotion are (*cough cough religious allegory cough*) and they seriously harped on the whole healthcare issue. However, looking past this bit of preachiness I have to say that ABC did put together a decent sci-fi experience.

Now, the next X-Files, this certainly ain’t, if only due to the fact that it revealed a lot of its main plot premise right in the premiere. In fact, I don’t know where else they are going to go from here. Sure there is going to be a human resistance, but the only big plot reveal they have left is “just what is the horrible evil plan that the visitors have been working toward?” Granted, this is a juicy enough bit of bait on the plot hook to keep me coming back for a while, but if it isn’t revealed I can see myself getting bored. If anything, V will be a great, although short lived series.

So, in my opinion, you probably shouldn’t watch V if you are looking for the next X-Files. As far as I saw, it just didn’t live up to the hype. However, if you are just looking for another good sci-fi series to watch, V is a great way to spend a Tuesday night. Now if you will excuse me, I must return to my reptilian overlords.

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