Cluttered Like My Head

 The Chicago Conversion is an interesting V book. The first two either cover the original series or run parallel to it. The third one features the TV cast running around in an attempt to capture Diana. This is effectively the first one that falls in that gap between the mini-series and the original series, and chooses to fix any problems with continuity by setting itself in a completely different locale, with a completely different cast.  This has strengths and weaknesses. A strength is obviously that there is less chance of it contradicting the story that we see in other media, but a weakness is that the cast from the TV show is already well defined, and the book has to introduce a cast from scratch. I'm guessing that they were also written at pace, and so we tend to see a selection of common tropes appearing in the books. In this one, for instance, we have a hero called Sam Walker, an athletic Vietnam vet, a bit rough around the edges, a reluctant fighter driven by the loss ...

From my recall, book 3 of the series, "The Pursuit of Diana" by Allen Wold came out around the same time as the weekly TV show - I could be wrong (Amazon lists a publication date of June 1985) By the time the weekly show made it to the UK, the wheels had pretty clearly fallen off of the wagon, and instead of it being a high profile weekly show, it was shunted to late night on some ITV regions - not all of them even carried it.  But NEL, in the wake of Pinnacle in the US ploughed ahead, with a book showing how Diana was captured at the close of the two mini-series.  Ostensibly, this closes a gap between those series and the weekly show, which opened a year later with Diana on the stand for 'Crimes against Humanity'.  In reality, its really a lot of set pieces where the resistance capture Diana, then they come up against some humans who have been converted, Diana escapes, they capture her again, they end up on a mother ship, they need to fix the mother ship, they fight ...

 The second V book was East Coast Crisis, a chunky title set (as the title says) in New York rather than the Californa locale loved by television production companies at the time.  This one says that it was published in September 1984 in the US (by Pinnacle) and then April 1985 in the UK (by NEL)  A co-write between Ann Crispin and Howard Weinstein, at 300 pages, this is the chunks of the spin-off books, and runs simultaneously with the events of the original two mini-series and thus the original book.  It's fair to say therefore that there's little opportunity for surprise. We see a lot of plot points from the original series repeated, only with a New York twist. The visitors are our friends / they're converting people / what's happening to scientists etc etc.  I think its also true to suggest that the characters in this book probably suffer in comparison with the ones from the TV show - we can all visualise Mike Donovan and Juliet Parrish in our heads because ...

Despite us having 57 Streaming Services, there seems to be nothing on, so I cheekily located my DVDs of Chancer and pressed play a week or so ago. We've made our way through S1 and there's much to recommend about it, as well as much to criticise. It's definitely a creature of its time.  Firstly - Clive Owen. His character is a complete shit. He repeatedly uses people he supposedly loves, at one point his on-off girlfriend says she has his foot marks all over her back, yet they keep coming back for more. But he's magnetic - you can't take your eyes off of him, every character in the show is defined by how they interact with him, and even though the dialogue is full of cliche "Crane's Law, Rule Number One..." and "Don't you trust me?" he gets away with it on charm.  As I said, the rest of the characters are defined by how they interact with the lead, and whilst they're generally well played, their stories are obviously seen as a lower p...

 As I said before, V was a roaring success, and that success meant that tie-ins needed to arrive. The first if these was the adaptation of the two mini-series in the form of a chunky paperback novel by Ann Crispin. At the time, Crispin was presumably seen as a safe pair of hands. She had experienced breakout success with a Star Trek novel and delivered a V novelisation that is engaging throughout and that rockets along at impressive pace.  Released in the US at the same time as the second mini-series, I think it's obvious to see the differences in approach to the two mini series.  Presumably, in the case of the original two parter, which had already aired, Crispin had access to both the scripts and the completed material. Much like that original show, the first half of the book is more thoughtful, takes more time to develop the characters, and indeed expands some of them from their televised version.  I wonder if, for the second series, she only had access to the scr...

  Back in 1984, a blockbuster US sci-fi show ran over 5 nights and gripped the nation, It was a short-lived phenomenon,  We didn't really know it at the time, but the original V mini-series was a 2 parter which aired in the US in 1983. It was a big success so the network commissioned a follow-uo but differences of opinion with the shows creator saw him depart and a three parter "V: The Final Battle" which saw the show veer away from being a parable about World War 2 towards standard television soap-opera, with lasers.  The 5 episodes were shown across a Monday-Friday in July 1984 on ITV and they were a huge success. Over in the US a weekly series had been commissioned, but it wasn't and although it dribbled into the ITV regions, it was never networked. The time for V had passed.  But - there were spin-offs. DC Comics started releasing a monthly comic to tie in with the weekly show. When that ground to a halt, the comic continued, their characters in stasis waiting fo...