Why don't I get started on that whole review thing... right now?

V: The Original Miniseries
Year: 1983
Original Format: Television Miniseries aired on NBC
Running Time: 196 minutes
Cost/Source: Bought at Wal-Mart for under $10
Cover: Cardboard with plastic snap
Starring: Marc Singer as "Mike Donovan", Faye Grant as "Dr. Juliet Parrish" and Jane Badler as "Diana" amongst others

This is a great one that any sci-fi fan should have. Aliens arrive in huge motherships all over Earth. They profess friendship, claiming they desperately need a compound that can be fashioned out of humanity's waste products, and in exchange for help in making it, they will share all their technology and secrets with us.

Sounds too good to be true.

V is a story of people, who from all different walks of life, come to unite and fight the threat that the Visitors end up being. It's also an extraordinarily strong allegory to Nazism as the Visitors systematically villainize all scientists, take over the media, then take over control.

In addition to the stars listed above (Badler in particular just reeks with evil and perversion as Diana), several performances stand out strongly.

Jason Bernard (also known as Mr. Bracken in the shortlived Fox show Herman's Head and as Captain William Eisen in the video games Wing Commander III&IV) plays Caleb Taylor, industrial worker and father to two very different sons, Ben, a doctor, and Elias, a street hustler.

Robert Englund (most famously known as Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare On Elm Street series of movies) plays a far different role than Freddy as Willie, a very gentle and heroic Visitor.

Leonard Cimino (whom I don't know from anything else) puts in a very strong performance as Abraham Bernstein, a survivor of the Holocaust who most strongly sees the parallels, and is one of the earliest voices urging people to fight. His strongest scene comes at the end of one of the parts of the series where he finds kids on the street defacing Visitor propaganda posters with red spray paint. Abraham takes the spray paint away from them and tells them that if they're going to do it, to do it right. He then paints the iconic red V over the poster that is the logo for the series, and tells them it stands for victory, and to tell their friends.

The disc is double sided and flips over right after the moment described above. At a staggering 3 1/4 hours, it pretty much has to to stay on one disc. It's a steal for the low price, but the cardboard cases are always an annoyance.

Still...

***** (out of 5)

Tomorrow: NFL Street