An observation on neo-V

[dvandom]

While I may be reading too much into Morena Baccarin's performance as Anna, it seems like she brings a sort of "Wait, I thought I debugged that?" confusion to scenes where people don't swallow her "I'm a friendly alien here to help" act. Where John in the original series brought a sort of blustering politician's BS to things, underlying it was a fairly human set of emotional responses. With Anna, it feels like she's running a human emotion emulator instead, leading to mild confusion and internal bugfixing when it misfires, rather than to an intensification of blathering. A brief pause where she's not quite there in the conversation before she patches her script and starts running it.

Comments

[grant-p.livejournal.com]

Well, she is acting a script (both in reality and in character) so it makes sense that when things don't work according to that script, she momentarily gets thrown off a bit. Plus, there's no way to be sure that the emotional responses of a non-human intellegence match up exactly. They may be roughly the same, but who's to say the exact triggers work in the same way? It might take a minute to think of which response was the appropriate one. You don't want to decapitate something when slapping it would work better socially.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Exactly. It enhances the feeling of alien-ness. The Visitors in the original were basically human under the skin (that was under the fake skin). Some of them were naive (i.e. the one who got drunk, IIRC), but while their motives were sinister their emotions were pretty much human. The neo-Visitors are faking those emotions, their own set being too different from ours to trust.

[grant-p.livejournal.com]

I do wonder if that will be a plot point later. Things like body language, emotional responses, and so on are so variable among real species, the confusion between two different sentient ones, even ones that are good actors, must conflict at some point. Like how some fish flash red to say "Here I am, do you want to follow me?" while the same red flash in a duck can mean "I am going to try to attack you. Run." Heck, even in humans, a guy I knew who was a reporter during the first gulf war was thrown out of a restaurant bodily after he said everything was "OK" and gave the gesture, which they interpreted as the evil eye.

Then later in V we find out that they've been totally honest the entire time, "We are of peace" in their language meaning "You look like food, we're going to eat you." and the visitors have to admit, humanity certainly reacted in a disturbingly friendly way to that pronouncement. Really creeps them out...

[zamiel.livejournal.com]

I have an immense rant built up about the awfulness that is neo-V, from the sad incompetence of the V, to the awfulness that is the Resistance, to the awfulness that is ... well, actually the effects are pretty decent.

But really, at this point I want the whole lot of them who aren't the broadcaster guy to DIAF. And he only gets a pass because he had a moment of epic bastardry last ep, and I respect that.

Hey buddy, you got a dead cat in there or what?

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

1. YES
2. NO
3. OR WHAT?
4. well, you know the rest.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Changing the subject slightly, if I were humanity, and the Vs were claiming we were the first other intelligent species they'd ever met, I'd be wondering 1) why the bottoms of these giant, atmosphere capable, ships, are a mass of flat panel video displays. 'Cause what's that for other than addressing huge numbers of sentients? 2) How they so quickly came up with a universal human language translator that so far has been perfect in operation. Along with other things that indicate they either have met other sentient species before or have no freakin' idea how to do a first contact (free hint; parking giant ships over major cities instead of orbiting and sending down representatives is silly...which all should make people think that they must have already had reps on Earth since otherwise they're complete idiots).

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

"Our computer models show that hovering our motherships over their cities and projecting welcoming messages across the bottoms will be well-received."

"Are these the same models that generated agents 'Michael Moore' and 'Glenn Beck?'"

"Um, yes?"

"Good, good...they've clearly been successes. I predict only good things for this mission!"

[grant-p.livejournal.com]

Actually, the broadcast screens are just bug zappers...

Add to the questions: Why are they wasting fuel in this perpetual hovering? Why not find a nice open area, or barring that, some water (this is New York, if the ships can float the harbor's right OVER THERE, it's not hard to find...) or if landing is impossible, just get back into orbit and quit freaking people out.

Plus, what happens when it rains...?

[richardx1.livejournal.com]

If they have VERY efficient solar panels on the dorsal surfaces of their ships, they might be able to power a repulsorlift system indefinitely.

Also, keeping the ships hovering over major cities keeps the people constantly aware of their presence, which is useful whether you're trying to be assimilated into their day-to-day paradigm OR trying to become Big Brother.

[grant-p.livejournal.com]

Just saw the 'meet the widow' episode...you're right, she's SCRIPTING tears...

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

And MASSIVELY debugging her scripts.