It's not my intent to bash it, but I'm curious, why this mini-series is rated so high? Can someone explain? Maybe mostly the "old" fans voted for it? Or there's more to it?
We already had pretty great sci-fis in 1983, it's hard to understand why this one gets so much praise. I've watched one and a half hour of it, but it really didn't hold my attention. Something revolutionary happens after that?
I still find it great after all these years
shareI've seen the original miniseries, The Final Battle, and several episodes of the 1985 TV series. Here's my quick thoughts on why its rating is so high. For its era and time period, there was literally nothing else like it on television. V was the first ever big TV network sci-fi miniseries, and its production values were more cinematic than anything else on the tube at the time, and I think it gets remembered with a fair amount of fondness on a nostalgic level for that reason.
Before then, the TV miniseries format had been reserved for period pieces like Roots and Centennial, so it was really quite novel for it to be applied to science fiction. Star Wars and Star Trek were dominating the box office at the time, and its clear viewers were starved for some epic-scale sci-fi adventure, and V smartly capitalized on that hunger by offering viewers large-scale sci-fi they could see for free on TV.
While I'm not a huge fan, I at least admit it's fairly watchable. To have watched both miniseries adds up to nearly 7.5 hours of screen time and I made it through without too much trouble, horribly cheesy ending to The Final Battle notwithstanding.
I assume a lot of people like myself have fond memories of watching it when it first aired when there was nothing like it on TV and it was epic, essential viewing for not just sci-fi fans but for pretty much everyone.
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