All of a sudden, the little piece of unknown empty is filled. For some, it's religion. For others, it's love. For me, it was Dan Copp's Fascist Lizards From Outer Space: The Politics, Literary Influences and Cultural History of Kenneth Johnson’s V.
Seriously.
When I saw the title on the list, without the subtitle, I knew I had to read it. Then, discovering it's 1) Non-fiction, 2) From one of the best pop-culture publishers ever, McFarland, and 3) About the coolest science fiction television show of the eighties... well. Sounds like perfection to me. I was able to get an reader's copy, and I was more than pleased.
First, Copp fills a fanboy need we didn't even know exists. V, the original, was two mini-series and a short lived prime time series about lizard aliens in people costumes, who came to Earth for our water and people as food. FLfOS provides an excellent view of the behind the scenes development process, from Kenneth Johnson's original ideas in the original mini-series, to the follow-up mini-series that Johnson wasn't involved, to the weekly series that... had flaws. Copious interviews with not just the production staff, but the stars as well, give the reader not just a terrific background on a cult favorite show, but also allow for a deeper understanding of just what goes into developing a network television show.
For the old-school V fans, Copp provides something that Trek fans take for granted: an episode guide. He's rewatched every classic eighties episode and provides some pretty good commentary.- for example, because it was SCIENCE FICTION and I was a kid, the Diana/Lydia/ Dynasty thing was lost on me. I was all about the lizard people eating rats, or the makeup tricks that seem simple today, but at the time, were pretty spectacular- like the unmasking of one of the Visitors: he was captured by the resistance and unmasked on live-tv in the story, so they made a prosthetic face piece for the actor, of his own face, that went over an alien face piece that went over the actor's skin. I think it was TV Guide that showed how it was done.
Of course, like good cult television, it didn't die just because the show got canceled. There were novels, from Pinnacle then Tor. Several moves ago, I lost my collection of them, but they're easy enough to replace. There was also a short lived comic book. I think the artwork impacted that more than the cancellation of the show- it was by classic Flash artist Carmine Infanto. This was the hey-day of George Perez and John Byrne, and Infanto's art seeemed... clunky.
Copp includes a look at both of those, as well as what might have been- Johnson's generation mini-series, over several years, and even a follow up from Babylon 5's J. Michael Straczynski. But these were not to be, sadly, because in 2009 ABC brought V back with a reimagining for the post 9/11-Obama era.
I found this part of Fascist Lizards a little dryer than the earlier part of the book, mostly because I never saw the reboot, not a single episode. Apparently, I wasn't alone. Fraught with behind the scenes shakeups, V-The Reboot never really grabbed the audience like the original did.
Copp reminds us, however, that Kenneth Johnson still owns the rights to the movie version, so there's always hope.
As with all McFarland books, Fascist Lizards from Outer Space is lovingly and exhaustively researched. At $19.99 it's more accessable to the fans than most of their other titles, a good shelf companion to a box set of DVDs and yellowing mass market paperbacks. Highly entertaining and informative.
This is a good book, but could have done with a good edit before being printed, ie with the mentions of the v files authors, it's Ed Gross, not grose! and an even bigger mistake later in the book where someone else, who wasn't a writer of the V files is cited as an author of them! plus the Red Dust bacteria is cited as being a terrestrial bacteria? was the writer of the book asleep when he watched V? I haven't finished this book yet but am hoping there aren't more errors.....
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