Back in 1983 I remember riding the subways in New York City and seeing these strange posters on the walls with messages like "Friendship is Universal." A much older friend commented they looked familiar, like old propaganda posters he saw in World War II. A week later, all the posters were defaced in the same way with spray paint - V for Victory, and I knew something was up. A week after that, all the posters had "the battle begins on ___" pasted to them and I was hooked, I had to see what this was about! When I saw the mini-series, I was blown away by the dazzling special effects (for their time), the great multi-faceted human story, and the strong moral message that combined to make one of the great Sci-Fi epics of our time. Eighteen years later, digitally re-mastered on DVD with Widescreen and Dolby Surround Stereo, this epic has never looked or sounded better!

The first few minutes of "V" are almost word for word, scene for scene from the first few chapters of Arthur C. Clarke's classic novel of First Contact, "Childhood's End." Fifty gigantic starships appear in the skies of the world and slowly settle over major world cities, stirring awe and fear in the hearts of humanity (Clarke's name is mentioned as one of the TV commentators in hommage). The ships issue an invitation to the United Nations Secretary General to appear on top of the U.N. headquarters at a specified time, where he is greeted by a "Visitor" shuttle. But from this point forward, Screenwriter/Director/Producer Kenneth Johnson (whose Writer/Producer credits include the pilot movies and series for "The Bionic Woman," "The Incredible Hulk," and "Alien Nation") puts his own ominous spin on First Contact between humans and aliens. We see the supreme commander of the "Visitor" fleet emerge from the shuttle with the Secretary General, looking human, though with a strange artificial voice. The human-looking "Visitors" begin by offering peace and fair trade, slowly weaving themselves into the fabric of our society, and becoming part of our popular culture and our economy. The Visitors win influence with the media by trading access for favorable coverage. They form alliances with powerful industrialists in exchange for retooling industrial plants around the world to process chemicals the Visitors say they need. They start a "Visitor Youth" program, indoctrinating young people and giving them Visitor weapons and Brown uniforms. And then the Visitors use their influence to light the fires of hatred and prejudice against a convenient minority, the scientists of the world, who they claim have been conspiring against humanity for centuries. The character Abraham Bernstein, a Holocaust survivor, becomes the voice of experience, warning us: "I have seen this all before!" Finally, the Visitors create an emergency, have the world's leaders declare martial law, then take those leaders into "temporary protective custody" for "the duration of this crisis." When the Visitors send in armies of their troops to enforce martial law, it is too late to start asking questions or raising objections - far too late! With all institutions under fascist rule, the only alternative for freedom-loving citizens is to band together and organize a resistance from the bottom up. And so the battle begins!

We see this story unfold from several different points of view, a complex web of families, neighbors, friends and lovers, collaborators and innocents, as well as larger than life heroes and villains. We see the Bernstein family, with grandfather and Holocaust Survivor Abraham (played to perfection by Leonardo Cimino), parents Lynn and Stanley, and their creepy misfit son Daniel (David Packer) who joins the "Visitor Youth" and finally finds a place he fits into (!). We see the Maxwell family, another typical middle-class family whose father is a Scientist, and so becomes persecuted and eventually forced to flee their home. When the Maxwells show up at their neighbors the Bernsteins seeking to hide from the authorities that are rounding up scientists, there is a stunning scene with Abraham confronting his reluctant son Stanley with their own family's Holocaust memories. Abraham scolds Stanley "don't you see, we have to hide them, or we will have learned nothing!" The larger than life heroes of this piece who become romantically involved are Dr. Juliet Parrish (Faye Grant) and Mike Donovan (Mark Singer). Juliet, a physician and scientist, becomes the leader of the Los Angeles cell of the resistance (her character based on the woman who led the French resistance in World War II). Mike, a broadcast journalist and risk-taking investigative reporter who becomes a fugitive when he discovers the truth about the Visitors, becomes the resistance's intelligence man and link with the Visitors' "Fifth Column." But it is a measure of the complexity of this piece that not all Visitors are evil. We also meet Martin (Frank Ashmore), a Visitor senior commanding officer and leader of the "Fifth Column," the Visitors' resistance movement against their own oppressive leadership, who forms a friendship with Donovan and saves Donovan's life time and again. When Mike Donovan confronts Martin about how the Visitors could allow such vile, evil leadership to come to power, Martin retorts "charisma, false promises, not enough of us thought to question him until it was too late. It happens on your planet, doesn't it?" We also meet Willie (played a pre-Freddie Kruger Robert Englund), a kind, friendly Visitor chemical plant worker who injures himself rushing in to save the life of a human co-worker in an accident (much to the disapproval of his Visitor bosses), and becomes romantically involved with a human. It is hard to do justice in the space available to the vast cast of actors in this mini-series, suffice to say Kudos to all involved.

Kenneth Johnson certainly fought the good fight for the special features on this DVD. It features a commentary track by Johnson with many never-before-revealed details about this epic mini-series, and a behind the scenes documentary on the making of V. As relevant today as it was eighteen years ago, the science fiction epic V is a must-have DVD for any collection!