This is my “the first time I saw V story”. Sort of.
V first aired in New Zealand in 1988. Yes I know. It was a long time after it first aired in the States or even the UK. But this was in the before times, before the internet, before streaming and before even cable television.
Back in the 1980s New Zealand was very far away, not just physically but also culturally. We were like the alien race Juliet Parrish (Faye Grant) was trying to contact, working off of years old random signals; a cargo cult built around the various fragments of old American and British culture that had washed up on our shores. Kenny Rogers. Charles in Charge. Dad’s Army. All these things were cherished as if they were always meant to be consumed together. It meant that things no one gave a damn about in their home country like The Goodies or stone-washed denim were insanely popular in New Zealand and remained so for years.
In 1988 New Zealand only had two television channels*, both run by the state owned enterprise TVNZ. We didn’t have 24 hour television. Around midnight each night a cutesy cartoon was played on both channels as if to gently tell us all it was time to go to bed.
TV One was roughly equivalent to BBC1, airing all the serious and worthy shows such as Foreign Correspondent, Sunday Playhouse Theatre, The Southbank Show and A Dog’s Show. If it was British, or high culture (and yes, I am lumping sheepdog trials in with theatre and classical music) it was on TV One. If it was American, popular and actually entertaining it tended to end up on TV Two.
And that’s where V aired. As in the UK we were treated to V the original mini-series and V The Final Battle over a series of weeks. I was the requisite age to become obsessed by it, pre-teen, and it was all anyone at my intermediate school would talk about for weeks. I remember it being double-billed with a documentary about alien abductions, which was the thing that I was really more keen to see, but both V and the documentary would fit together on a 180 minute tape so I recorded both. (Episode one of the V miniseries aired on Sunday, which back in ‘88 meant it was uninterrupted by advertisements because it was the Lord’s day of rest. This was great as you could set record and not worry about having to edit all the ads out yourself as most people did back in the day.) As it turned out the alien abduction documentary was a bust but V was a Bobbie Dazzler!
I had a school friend who was also very much into V. She had the slightly more age appropriate crush on Peter Nelson who played Brian and had much invested in his relationship with Robin Maxwell (Blair Tefkin). I had the less appropriate crush on Frank Ashmore as Martin, I’d like to say that was because I was more mature and cerebral but in reality I was a Freudian 12-year-old hot mess. If there was something completely unattainable that would break my heart in the pursuit of it, I’d be all over it.
So, and here is where we come to the raison d’etre of this post, I’m not sure how or why this happened but my friend also had much loved and abused videotapes of V, and we did a swap. I think she had all episodes of The Final Battle whereas I only had the original mini series. Anyway, it soon became apparent that she was the winner in this exchange because there were some significant differences in what was included in each of our tapes.
My friend’s parents were deeply religious Baptists. The routine in my friend’s home was for the parents to prescreen all tv programmes, taping them for the kids to watch later and pressing the pause button on record the minute anything got too saucy. Which meant the tapes of V that I had, had absolutely no love scenes in them whatsoever!
Meanwhile my friend was able to watch Robin and Brian pashing as much as her heart desired (and how much she desired this was apparent from the degradation of the tape during the scene in which Brian “comforts” Robin on the mothership before they get into it). Plus she didn’t have to worry about the consequences of the act because she didn’t have to endure the lizard pregnancy arc of The Final Battle. Win:win. Hooray for irresponsible sexual health messages! If only her parents knew!
This post has now been created to redress this 30+ year old wrong. I am using this page to doggedly put back all the scenes Mr and Mrs Folau** edited out of V. And no, this isn’t prurience, it’s science. And. It’s a matter of principle.
So here they are in all their glory, V’s sauciest bits, well saucy according to a pair of New Zealand middle aged Baptists from the 80s who for the most part are right on the money. Enjoy.
Kristine and Mike
Well I’m glad to see Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) and Kristine Walsh (Jenny Sullivan) are practicing good sleep hygiene here – no screens in the bedroom! I myself practice this, not because I’m particularly concerned about sleep but because of V. I am now terrified that Diana (Jane Badler) will be watching me through the television set making me nervous. The fact that these two are going to end up couch dancing is telegraphed early on when an embarrassed Tony Leonetti (Evan Kim) has to go fiddle with his sound equipment (the thought of which is actually more arousing to me now I’m older) while Donovan and Kristine argue about whose idea it was to not stick around for brunch last time they met.
Kristine and Mike again
This scene confused me for years. I somehow managed to forget what had happened on my original tape, only having the cut version for reference. One minute Mike and Kristine are talking about “[lizards] with tongues that …” and yes I could see now how that statement complete with that heavily pregnant ellipsis might potentially lead to the scene above. But for me the towel-clad smoochy double-crossing got cut out and the next thing Mike Donovan is clambering down the fire escape and Juliet Parrish of all people is also running away after … an unsuccessful attempt at a night out dogging?! Wait?! What?! What actually happened here? I’m not entirely sure which version I prefer on this one the original or the Folau family cut.
Barbara
Yes. Well. This is pure fan service and it doesn’t age well. Jenny Neumann as Barbara apparently struggled to keep her undies on for this scene which in a post #Metoo world is kind of gross and I feel for her. (It’s happened to me a couple of times trying to shimmy out of a particularly tight pair of skinny jeans in the changing rooms at River Island. The experience was humbling but at least no one witnessed my humiliation). This scene may only be mildly redeemed by the fact that Kenneth Johnson had intended for Mike Donovan and Barbara to have a relationship, thus the “You don’t look like an iguana” which was clearly a sad attempt at negging on Donovan’s part. Unfortunately the script didn’t go that way. Shame, would have been interesting.
Robin and Brian, and Diana
I don’t know about you but whenever I move into a new house no matter what TV aerial cords I have (and I have everything) none ever are the right plug for whatever socket I’m confronted with. But, friendship is not the only thing that is universal apparently. He has gametes. She has gametes. Don’t think too hard about it. Now, the A.C.Crispin novel which provides more detail says that Brian has to undergo some “procedure” to prepare for this encounter, but the novel also mentions that Diana gives Robin a sandwich beforehand which I’m guessing is Diana’s idea of foreplay? I personally don’t find sandwiches terribly arousing, especially when you’re standing in the middle of Tesco on Tooley Street in a blind panic as to what to get for your meal deal in your stupidly short lunch break and all they have left is prawn cocktail or ham and mustard. But it worked for Robin. Poor girl.
Diana and Brian
So a couple of things jump out at me in this scene. One, blue eyeshadow is never a good idea even if you are a beautiful alien sexpot. And two, I didn’t know beautiful alien sexpots wore their pantyhose to bed. I guess she can get away with it though given she’s a lizard and her feet probably don’t sweat. Also this is an early example of a couple watching porn that they created together which is extremely sex positive for its time. I mean they could have saved everyone a lot of heartache by renting a Brian de Palma film, but when has personal trauma ever put a dampener on how anyone feels about the porn industry anyway?
Speaking of traumatic… I feel the following scene should come with a trigger warning.
Maggie and Daniel
David Packer as Daniel Bernstein deeply confuses me. If you look at him with just your eyes it’s like “hells yeah” but if you look at him with your soul its like – well just look at Maggie Blodgett’s (Denise Galik) face. I mean that is a woman who is staring into the abyss. Lord knows what’s staring back at her from there. And then after this she gets to go home to her dickhead boyfriend for another round of slut shaming. Poor Maggie, maybe she should dump both of these clowns and go cry on the shoulder of someone older, more mature, someone who wears leather even in summer and doesn’t like to repeat himself.
Mike and Julie
Speaking of things that are only bearable if you are using only your eyes there is this. That is because this scene happened in the 1980s and was accompanied by the most godawful tenor saxophone cue which was par for the course at the time but has not aged well. I never really bought into this relationship if I’m completely honest. But he has gametes. She has gametes. He talks to the animals and waxes his chest. She’s at the silent disco in a sexy white body suit. So yeah, why not?
Now I like Mike Donovan, sure, he’s fine (I guess). But I never thought that he was good enough for Julie. Look, he’s the hero sure, but he’s a bit of a selfish dick sometimes and look there’s Elias (Michael Wright) right there, clearly carrying a torch for her. And he’s a better and much more interesting man. And Elias was woefully under-utilised in both The Final Battle and The Series. It’s also rather unsubtly crowbarred into the last episode of The Final Battle that Martin has a thing for Julie too, just watch his fake little human face drop as accompanied by an almost comedic return of the tenor saxophone when Donovan and Julie pash in front of everyone at the very end of Final Battle (though hilariously this last minute love triangle reaction shot simultaneously gives so many slash fiction writers grist for a M/M Donovan/Martin pairing). And then later in the series Michael Ironside and Faye Grant were said to have wanted to play their character’s relationship as romantic. And admit it, so many of you out there were thinking “Oh please yes” and “No he’s MINE” both at the same time. So yeah several missed opportunities for less obvious pairings there. Time to start that fan fiction writing career folks!
An omission
So you may be wondering whether this scene got through the Folau editing process. The infamous shocking-for-the-1980s abortion debate where everybody in the Resistance gets to sit around a table and decide what’s going to happen to Robin and her lizard baby. It did! And the reason this wasn’t cut? Some kind of weird decision by the Folaus to ensure their daughters learned about the true consequences of teenage sex and heard the debate? No they just didn’t speak much English so probably thought everyone was planning another raid or something. No of course not! Robin is clearly very distressed in the previous scene, so they will have known this was a tearful confession where everyone got to judge Robin for all her life choices to this point in time. Which isn’t an entirely wrong interpretation.
You may be wondering whether I stayed friends with this girl from intermediate school. And the answer is no not really. We drifted apart in high school. But I am grateful to her parents for introducing me to the wonderful world of editing and understanding how easily a story can change with or without a vital scene. As for the video tapes, they are long gone, but not forgotten. Now I can watch V streaming or on DVD, but I still have nostalgia for my very special edited tapes.
*This was soon to change with the launch of a commercial television channel TV3 in 1989 which bought all sorts of delights such as Walker Texas Ranger, Welcome Back Kotter and the Phil Donahue Show in bulk. And yep you guessed it, this was where V The Series was aired in the station’s first year. Apart from Phil Donahue (which contributed to my formative opinions about homosexuality and the Pan Am lay offs) TV3 was a litany of bitter disappointments (it was after all the source that broke the news to me that Martin had died sob) unable to fulfil the promise of its own hype. But I digress, that’s another story for anotheri time. Perhaps for the pub, after I’ve had a sufficient amount of alcohol to think that dancing in public might be a good idea.
** Names have been changed to protect the individuals involved
When Martin Died 