That’s a good question.  I’m glad you asked.  (Then again, maybe I’m not, because now I have to come up with an answer.)

Can I still use “just bought a house” as an excuse?  No?  Hmm.

(more…)

The third episode of V actually did better in terms of plot pacing – much, much better.

The problem is, a lot of it was a little unrealistic.  For example, the V surveillance room with all the video feeds; she sneaks in without being seen.  This is a restricted area of the V compound; why, exactly, are they letting her roam freely, unsupervised?  Why would a sensitive room like that be empty?

Sure, you might say it’s because it was a coded door.  Surely the Vs have better tech than a four-character PIN?  Surely the Vs are capable of having tech that automagically verifies that the person who enters the PIN is actually authorized to use it?

Entry guarded by a number pad was outdated a long time ago.  We have far better tech than that nowadays; an RFID badge, for example, is far more secure.

Furthermore, she’s on video herself in the room; surely she assumes it’s being recorded somewhere?  Yet she makes no attempt to hide or delete the video of her in the room.

Blah.  Stuff like that.

I’m told that after episode four, they’re delaying the show until March.  I don’t really think it deserves to come back.

I’m watching the second episode of V right now.  There are some things that don’t make sense.

• The Visitors have all this advanced technology, but the only photos they have of the resistance cell from the first episode are blurry.  If you can travel interstellar space, create holograms, make human skin suits… you can definitely have your flying recon drone record high quality video.
• If the Visitors have agents in the FBI, they probably have agents in all sorts of government groups.  They should be able to take the recording of the 911 call they intercepted and do voice searches.  (If I were doing an invasion this way, I’d definitely make databases of peoples’ voices.)
• Obviously, given that they have agents all over the place, the Visitors should have a lot more influence than the show indicates.  They’ve been around for decades, most likely; that’s enough time to infiltrate relatively high levels of world governments.  (Compare with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s shapeshifter infiltration of Federation and Klingon governments.)

So… yeah.

What can I say about V?  The premise was decent – aliens arrive on Earth, proclaiming love and friendship and oh by the way we can heal all your diseases.  And all they ask in return is water and some “common minerals”.  Whatever that means.  (An Anonymous Coward on Slashdot wrote an interesting post on whether aliens would actually be interested in Earth; read it here.  Try to ignore the how-many-calories-in-a-baby speculation.  Short version?  No, they’d probably have no reason to care about Earth.)

The biggest problem with the new show is that the plot moves too fast.  Some shows need to move a little faster – Stargate Universe is one of them, I think – but V needs to slow way down.  They should not have told us about the Visitors so early – instead they should have been dropping subtle hints for two or three more episodes that Things Are Not As They Seem.