Morena Baccarin

One the most eagerly awaited projects of this development season was ABC’s reinvention of the classic 1980s sci-fi cult series V.

I had the opportunity last night to watch the gripping and electrifying pilot for ABC’s new V, from studio Warner Bros. Television, and was completely sucked in by the promising vision and deft skill of the pilot installment, which sets up a slew of intriguing possibilities for the ongoing series.

For those of you not in the know, V, originally created by Kenneth Johnson, was a series about an alien invasion that aired on NBC during the 1984-1985 season following a successful run as two separate mini-series. Likewise, this new incarnation of V, overseen by The 4400 creator Scott Peters also tells the story of the arrival of an alien race to Earth via behemoth spacecrafts that appear out of nowhere to hover above 29 cities around the world.

Calling themselves The Visitors, their leader Anna (Firefly’s Morena Baccarin) quickly makes contact with Earth’s leaders to deliver a message (in multiple languages) proclaiming that they come in peace and, in exchange for the use of Earth’s water which they need to survive, they will provide the human population with technology, the curing of 65 different diseases, and universal health care.

After all, the world right now is not in a good place. Beset by economic meltdown, multiple wars, and rising discontent, our planet desperately needs a savior and The Visitors seem to have arrived at just the right time, bringing with them the very tools to our salvation. Or have they?

However, despite the populace’s open-armed acceptance of The Visitors, not everyone falls under the spell of The Vistors’ charismatic charms and studied propaganda. FBI Agent Erica Evans (Lost’s superb Elizabeth Mitchell) and her partner Dale Maddox (Dollhouse’s Alan Tudyk) are investigating a terrorist cell that could have links to the arrival of The Visitors but Erica quickly learns that the cell, whose chatter has increased after the Visitors turned up, may have informants within the FBI itself. Erica must also contend with her rambunctious teenage son Tyler (America’s Logan Huffman) who feels himself drawn to The Visitor’s cause. Against his mother’s wishes, Tyler is tempted to join The Visitors’ Young Ambassadors program and spread the "message of hope" that The Visitors claim to bring, partially because of his blatant attraction to Lisa (Smallville’s Laura Vandervoort), an alluring young Visitor guide assigned to the New York mothership.

Elsewhere, Ryan Nichols (The Perfect Holiday’s Morris Chestnut) is buying an engagement ring for his fiancée Valerie Stevens (Cashmere Mafia’s Lourdes Benedicto) when The Visitors arrive. He seems extremely uneasy about the presence of The Visitors and is quickly drawn back into a conflict that he wants no part of when he is contacted by members of a covert group that could have ties to the terrorist cell that Erica and Dale are investigating. And then there’s dashing news anchor Chad Decker (The Nine’s Scott Wolf) who is able to use The Visitor’s arrival to leverage a better profile for himself when Anna selects him for an exclusive on-air interview. Will greed overwhelm his instincts to question The Visitors’ motives, especially when Anna tells him that they "can’t be painted in a negative light"? Or will be fall victim to the lures of fame and fortune?

Meanwhile, Father Jack Landry (The 4400’s Joel Gretsch) finds himself in a difficult position, having to explain the co-existence of a divine presence and an alien race among us. His job is complicated by the fact that the congregation of his small Manhattan church has suddenly ballooned with people turning to religion in the face of fear and uncertainty and his superiors are pressuring Father Jack to toe the party line and accept The Visitors as a miracle in itself. But Jack worries that gratefulness can quickly turn to worship... and worship to devotion. His fears are realized when he receives a package from a mysterious wounded man who dies after passing along a mission to Jack: he should fear The Visitors and take the package to a specific address.

SPOILER ALERT! It happens to be the very same address where Erica and Dale are themselves headed, after receiving a tipoff at a crime scene about a possible meeting of a terrorist cell. Erica agrees to go in undercover to the meet and, after meeting Jack, discovers just who these people are in a fantastic twist: they are members of the underground human resistance and membership to their group is depending on various conditions. One, that the candidates have been referred by someone they trust. And two, that they agree to be anesthetized and have a section of skin behind their ears peeled back.

Why? To prove that they are human as The Visitors are actually a reptilian race that has successfully cloned human skin, which they wear as camouflage. Worse still: The Visitors haven’t just arrived, after all. They’ve been here for decades and have been fomenting dissent and chaos on the planet for years, destabilizing the markets, creating unnecessary wars, stirring up paranoia and persecution. The fact that they’ve now revealed themselves is a sign that they are moving into the final steps of their plan. That terrorist group that Erica and Dale were investigating? It’s a sleeper cell of Visitors.

I won’t spoil what happens next (sorry, I’m not going to give everything away!) but I will say that what follows is a rather obvious reveal (which can be easily fixed with some additional scenes perhaps), followed by a surprising plot twist that sets up a new direction for the series and creates an interesting situation that, I’m sure, will be mined in quite a lot of detail as the series progresses.

Coming off of her run as Juliet on Lost, the sensational Elizabeth Mitchell is absolutely captivating here as tough-as-nails Erica Evans, a woman scarred by the breakup of her marriage, emotionally distant towards her son, and driven by her job as a federal agent. It’s impossible not to root for Erica as she kicks down doors, solves crimes, and seriously kicks ass. It’s especially nice to see Mitchell, typically more reactive as Juliet, take a firm, proactive role here. Mitchell and Alan Tudyk make a hell of a team and it’s hard not to jump with joy the first time they appear on screen together at the start of the pilot. Joel Gretsch is fantastic as Father Jack, a man torn in half by questions of faith; you wouldn’t ordinarily think to cast Gretsch as a man of the cloth but the casting plays against type here and gives this priest a visceral and virile quality not normally seen in portrayals of priesthood.

Scott Wolf is perfectly cast as the suave womanizing news anchor Chad and he oozes the confidence and ego-centric charisma of a man used to getting his way. Morris Chestnut gives a subtle performance as a man caught in a battle he’s fought to stay out of for years and find himself pulled between duty and his love for his fiancée. (Sadly, Lourdes Benedicto doesn’t have much to do here but act suspicious and cry, but I am hoping that she has more to do as the series progresses.)

And I can’t say enough wonderful things about Morena Baccarin’s glossy performance here. She seems to radiate a Zen-like calm as Anna, the charismatic and polished leader of The Visitors but there’s also an insidious reptilian quality to her as well. The way in which she moves her head and body speak to this effect and her rapid blinking is not only apt for the truth of what lies beneath her skin but it also gives Anna an uncharacteristic tell that is utterly appealing. (I was worried about Baccarin cutting her beautiful locks but her shorn hair works really well here, allowing her show off her classical good looks.)

While the characters aren’t as deeply sketched as they ought to be, Scott Peters manages to set up a remarkable amount of conflict during the forty-odd minutes of this pilot episode and he creates enough characterization to set up the players in this sprawling story effectively enough that you’re anxious to see just what happens to them next. (The one exception seems to be Logan Huffman, but I am hoping he can grow into the role of Tyler.)

What Peters does do extremely well here is imbue the pilot of V with an immense amount of promise and potential. After seeing just the first intoxicating installment, I’m already delirious with excitement about seeing just what happens next. Like The 4400, V excels at juggling multiple characters, each with their own storylines, and a number of subplots. There’s a little bit of exposition at the start and, as I indicated earlier, the characters need some more shading but for a pilot (and one with the run time decidedly under an hour), I think that V perfectly sets up what looks to be an exciting and thought-provoking sci-fi series.

Ultimately, this reimagining of V captures the essence of the original while moving it firmly into our post-9/11 reality and it seeks to answer questions about race, religion, duty, family, compromise, and co-existence. Personally, I can’t wait for midseason to find out just what Peters has up his sleeve for these characters and the coming battle.