V is an American science fiction television series first broadcast on ABC on November 3, 2009. A re-imagining of the 1983 miniseries created by Kenneth Johnson, the new series chronicles the arrival on Earth of a technologically advanced alien species which ostensibly comes in peace, but actually has sinister motives. V stars Morena Baccarin, Morris Chestnut, Joel Gretsch, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Scott Wolf, and is executive produced by Scott Rosenbaum, Scott Peters, and Jace Hall. The series is produced by The Scott Peters Company, HDFilms and Warner Bros. Television. On May 13, 2010, ABC renewed V for a second season. A return date has not been confirmed, however, it may be in November.

Premise

Giant spaceships appear over 29 major cities throughout the world, and Anna (Morena Baccarin), the beautiful and charismatic leader of the extra-terrestrial "Visitors", claims to come in peace. The Visitors claim to only need a small amount of Earth's resources, in exchange for which they will share their advanced technological and medical knowledge. As a small number of humans begin to doubt the sincerity of the seemingly benevolent Visitors, FBI counter-terrorism agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) discovers that the aliens have spent decades infiltrating human governments, businesses, and religious institutions and are now in the final stages of their plan to take over the Earth. Erica joins the resistance movement, which includes Ryan (Morris Chestnut), a Visitor sleeper agent who over time developed human emotions and now wants to save humanity. The Visitors have won favor among the people of Earth by curing a variety of diseases, and have recruited Earth's youth — including Erica's son Tyler (Logan Huffman) — to serve them unknowingly as spies.

Origins

Inspired by the Sinclair Lewis novel about fascism in the United States, It Can't Happen Here (1935), director–producer Kenneth Johnson wrote an adaptation titled Storm Warnings, in 1982. The script was presented to NBC, for production as a television mini-series, but the NBC executives rejected the initial version, claiming it was too "cerebral" for the average American viewer. To make the script more marketable, the American fascists were re-cast as man-eating extraterrestrials, taking the story into the realm of science fiction. The new, re-cast story was the mini-series V, which aired from May 1–2, 1983