V: The Complete Series (DVD)

It should be noted that although this is called "The Complete Series," it does not include the miniseries. You need to buy those separately. Also, the picture quality in this set isn't great. It looks like they just ripped the old VHS videos. But I'm still giving it five stars because it's such a great show. At its best, it's a frightening warning about the danger of fascism in America, the power of the media, and the fragility of our natural resources. At its worst, it's the most freaking entertaining TV series I've ever seen.

Created by Kenneth Johnson (CBS's The Incredible Hulk) "V: The Series" was the resulting spinoff of the highly successful TV miniseries V and V: The Final Battle. Personally, I thought (at the time) the franchise was tampering with success by advancing the story with a weekly TV series, given the possibility of decline in level of quality and the inevitable cost issues that came with producing a weekly sci-fi series. But then V was never really about the effects but more about the human struggle, the right to survive against a seemingly unstoppable foe - the mysterious Visitors. And the series, for the most part, continued the struggle fairly well.The series starts off strong by picking up exactly where V: The Final Battle left off with "Liberation Day" (where Visitors leader Diana escapes from capture and Starchild Elizabeth undergoes a transformation), then suffers slightly in tone after "The Betrayal" (where several strong characters exit the show) and sadly ends on a solid yet lackluster note with "The Return". Regardless, V: The Series remains just as entertaining today as it did back in the '80s thanks mostly to the great cast, old and new. Props to Warner Home Video for restoring "Breakout" back to its intended 3rd episode position between "Dreadnought" and "The Deception". Originally, the episode was pulled because it was considered too violent for its predominantly younger audience.V - The Complete Series is a 3-disc (897 min.) set featuring all 19 episodes; Full Frame (1.33:1) video; 1.0 English mono audio; English, French, Spanish subtitles; Closed Captioning. The discs are housed in a digi-pak case similar to V: The Final Battle. The menus are static "red dust" screens (cool and inspired) featuring one cast member per screen and a list of options which include a "play all" feature. Aside from a few grainy matte/effects shots that pop up here and there, the picture and sound are fairly clean. Night-time scenes look especially good. Episodes include: Liberation Day (10/26/84), Dreadnought (11/2/84), Breakout (5/24/85), The Deception (11/9/84), The Sanction (11/16/84), Visitors' Choice (11/23/84), The Overlord (11/30/84), The Dissident (12/14/84), Reflections in Terror (12/21/84), The Conversion (1/4/85), The Hero (1/11/85), The Betrayal (1/18/85), The Rescue (2/2/85), The Champion ((2/8/85), The Wildcats (2/15/85), The Littlest Dragon (2/22/85), War of Illusions (3/8/85), Secret Underground (3/15/85), The Return (3/22/85).

I remembered V from when it first aired. Good quality Vide and DVD's. I liked the program, but I cannot say that I loved it. I would base this on for age group specific... Millennials probably would not follow it

V: The Series was a very odd television show. On one hand, The Final Battle ended and it was a very satisfying end to the 10 hour miniseries. But this weekly series did actually made some interesting points to the ongoing story but it was soon abandoned as well as most of the originally cohesive cast.The series starts out about a year later and we soon see that Diana and the fleet wants revenge over the red dust. As we soon find out, the dust is harmful to people and really can't be used anymore and the visitors patiently wait for the dusts effects to cease. This sets up many good episodes about the visitors regaining control. However, gone is the Nazi allegory and it therefore goes for power and corruption plots all the while the resistance is back to fight the Visitor's once again.I found myself really enjoying the first several episodes. The acting was solid, Diana was as nasty as ever and they took chances and killed off regulars and that added to the dramatic impact. The Nathan Bates subplots were actually interesting and you really began to hate Mr. Chang. Michael Ironside was also very fun to watch. And the "soap opera" of "Charles and Diana" was also very entertaining.However, as it went on toward midseason, the series started falling apart by the seams. The idea of the resistance always winning and episodes ending with showing Diana dejected began to run thin. They just beat us over the head with Willy and his butchering of the English language, which is a shame, because he was such a charming character and performed well. The special effects were reused over and over again. The campiness factor of eating rodents was way over done and all originality that they could have tried for just went away.Then, when we get the new credit sequence, the show pretty much became a chore to sit through. Gone are some of the better and well acted characters. And the plots became paper thin and were filled with "filler" scenes where you just feel they were making it up as they went along. Add in "romantic flashback" scenes, illogical situations, cheesy actors making guest appearances and you can see that because of the daring chances they took with the series at the first, they were left with pretty much nothing. The acting also suffered, especially Faye Grant, in which she gave very uneven performances toward the end, especially in the dreadful episode "The Secret Underground". That episode was the worst in the entire run. The show ended with the Episode "The Return" and it actually felt like it would redeem itself but by then, it was too late. There was no saving "V."This DVD collection of V: The Series is no frills. They put episodes on both sides of the DVD, making this a 3 DVD collection. Box is nice looking with good shots of some of the cast but nothing extra comes with it. The picture and sound quality of this collection is about as good as you would expect from an early 80's show.I had a good time with this series and it was fun to see how it played out up to the unresolved cliffhanger. If you are a V fan, this is still a must have.