V: THE SECOND GENERATION

In the 1970s, Kenneth Johnson played an important, though largely unheralded, role in science fiction television: he penned thoughtful, intelligent scripts for several weekly series that were dismissed as juvenile: THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, THE BIONIC WOMAN and THE INCREDIBLE HULK. He understood that human drama and acting came first, over special effects. In the 1980s, he created his crowning achievement, the four-hour SF mini-series V, which depicted a deceptive alien race that arrived in giant "mother ships" straight out of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and took over the earth through political subjugation. The show was a metaphor for the WWII and the rise of Nazi Germany, although looking at it today, the manner in which the Visitors ostracize the scientific community was remarkably prescient of today's political environment and opposition by certain factions to beliefs in Global Warming.

Thanks to Johnson's sharp teleplay and direction, and benefiting from a masterful marketing campaign by NBC, the mini-series was an enormous success. Naturally, a sequel was ordered. Johnson developed V: THE FINAL BATTLE, but left the project after several battles of his own. His mercenary character, Ham Tyler, (Michael Ironside) was bound to a wheelchair, Juliet Parish (Faye Grant) remained the leader of the Resistance, as set up in V, as opposed to Mike Donovan (Marc Singer), and Elizabeth, the silly "star child," did not win the war. Craig Buck and Diane Frolov (THE SOPRANOS) wrote the final draft of the second mini-series, which, while vastly inferior to the original, still had several entertaining characters and sequences. The sequel was also a hit, so a weekly series was inevitable. The series was the sort of lame SF TV that rarely rose above its lot without the participation of a talented writer like Johnson and it limped to an ignominious cliffhanger that was never resolved--and still hasn't been.

Over the years, Johnson was approached several times about reviving his creation as a weekly syndicated series, TV movie, or mini-series. More than once, fans almost got their wish. Most recently, Johnson wrote a script for a three-hour TV movie which NBC rejected--because they didn't want any of the original characters to return! Network executives are not known for their wisdom.

So Johnson novelized his screenplay, partly as a gift to his fans and partly to revive interest in the project. He has reason to be optimistic: when FOX TV hired him to write a TV movie wrapup/sequel to his other 1980s alien franchise, ALIEN NATION, they also rejected his script--until he novelized it. In all, five TV movies were produced. I read that novelization when it was published and I remember being completely unimpressed by it--and then pleasantly surprised by the resulting TV movie.

If you're a fan of the original V, don't be too disheartened by the following review. Johnson's story is interesting enough, and I wanted to see how this epic story ended 30 years later. But he's no novelist. I've never read a book so jam packed with passive verbs in my life. It appears that he went through his teleplay and turned every "is" into "was." He also makes little attempt at putting us in his characters' heads, his action scenes are un-involving, and he constantly jumps POV from one character to another, with no segue--exactly as a screenwriter intercutting scenes would do. Worse, Johnson stops the action more than once to remind us that we're supposed to be reminded of World War II--and actually says as much! There is such a thing as underscoring a theme too much. As a novel, V: The Second Generation is spectacularly amateurish and I would have preferred to have read the screenplay, a form which Johnson has definitely mastered. When Richard Hatch wrote the first of his own BATTLESTAR GALACTICA novels based on the original TV series, Armageddon, he wisely hired Christopher Golden to co-write it with him. Johnson goes it alone, and as a novel, his story suffers for it.

Is the novel a complete waste of time? Not if you're a fan of the original mini-series (And who isn't?). The Visitors have ruled the earth for 20 years. The events of The Final Battle and the TV series never occurred. The last time we saw Juliet Parish and Mike Donovan, they had just beamed into outer spaces a call for help aimed at the Visitors' enemies. In the novel, that distress signal is answered.

Johnson opens the action by introducing several new characters, then gradually re-introduces the original protagonists--some of them. During the course of the action, the Visitors' Leader comes to earth for the first time, and so do scouts from another alien race, the recipients of Parish and Donovan's call for help. We're also introduced to Johnson's answer to the ridiculous Star Child foisted upon his creation: thousands of half-breed human-lizards who function as menial laborers. The action builds to Johnson's own "Final Battle," and I must admit I was impressed by the humans' grand plan to overthrow the Visitors. The final moments are nicely ambiguous, and suggest a TWILIGHT ZONE-like twist that would have been more satisfying had Johnson gone all the way with it.

There are several problematic plot holes, however. In V, Donovan taped Diana eating a hamster, and discovered the Visitors were lizards wearing human masks. In THE FINAL BATTLE, the Resistance revealed this to the rest of the world, which made it silly that Visitors continued to wear their "human faces" in V: THE SERIES. In Johnson's world, earthlings know the Visitors are lizards because the half-breeds are half lizard--but the Visitors still wear their masks! "Highly illogical," an alien who never had to worry about such things would say. And I laughed out loud when a human prisoner of the Visitors, addicted to their drugs for 18 years and reduced to an animalistic state, turned out to be a character from the original mini-series--half a chapter after other characters had been lionizing his heroism!

The Visitors themselves are rather silly villains this time out. They're always thinking about sex--with humans! And these lizards are heavily into lesbianism. All of these horny Visitors--and the "adult" cursing by the humans--feel out of place in this particular universe.

But the SF TV geek in me was satisfied by Johnson's overall arc, and I hope to see his script filmed some day. At the very least, he's given his fans a taste of what he has on mind.