V: 1.19 The Return
1.19 – The Return
Teleplay by David Abramowitz & Donald R. Boyle
Story by: David Braff & Colley Cibber
Directed by John Florea
Original air date: March 22nd, 1985
Synopsis:
The five remaining resistance leaders (Donovan, Julie, Willy, Kyle, and Elizabeth) are chased by Lt. James and a sizable patrol. They turn down an alley and run into a brick wall. They are trapped between solid brick and a battalion of Visitors.
They turn to Elizabeth, but she once again has problems with her powers. She can’t harness them. The resistance face the grim fact that there is no way out. Instead of surrendering they decide to go out with a blaze of glory.
James’ soldiers line up to shoot them dead, when suddenly Philip’s voice echoes throughout Los Angeles ordering Visitor armies to cease all hostilities and return to the mothership. James can’t believe it and decides to disobey the order when it is repeated, convincing him to do as he is told, leaving a bewildered resistance alive.
Diana storms onto the bridge demanding to know what is going on, and Philip tells her that he has ordered a ceasefire under the authority of the Leader, who will be arriving for peace negotiations. Diana is disgusted.
Back at resistance headquarters, the resistance checks in with their contacts around the world who all confirm the same thing. The Visitors have withdrawn. They feel very ill at ease.
Willy and Kyle find Elizabeth talking in Visitor language and Kyle freaks out, believing that the lizards are trying to take over her mind. Willy explains that is the Leader’s province to communicate with whomever he wants, whenever he wants. Elizabeth comes out of it insisting that she must go to the mothership. Kyle balks at this until Philip arrives.
Philip has been trying to convince the Leader, that humans and Visitors can co-exist. Elizabeth is key to helping him see that. She wants to go, but the resistance aren’t letting her go alone.
Worldwide celebrations are shown as the aliens are withdrawing from Earth’s orbit. Diana feels it would be the perfect time to attack but Lydia is loyal to the Leader.
Kyle, hurt and jealous, remains extremely skeptical about the whole thing. He feels that Elizabeth is being brainwashed. The rest of the resistance are more eager to end the war.
The resistance is greeted by their former mortal enemies, Diana and Lydia. There is tension in the air. Diana and James plot to make certain the war continues.
Philip and Donovan walk around a Visitor gymnasium of sorts where they see two people engaged in a fencing contest of sorts. Philip explains that when the swords are charged the slightest touch to the skin would disintegrate the body. Philip challenges Donovan to a friendly duel with uncharged swords. Upon hearing this from James, Diana sees an opportunity to advance her cause and orders that the swords indeed be charged.
Willy is walking down a corridor when he literally runs into Thelma, who turns out to be Willy’s fiance. It seems they had been arranged to married since they were children but it had been believed that Willy had been killed during the war. Thelma wants to continue where they had left off. Willy is bewildered.
Kyle doesn’t trust the situation and pleads with Donovan not to duel. Donovan feels a little mistrustful now, but is too late to back out now. Donovan tells Kyle that he has a ship standing by, in case anything should happen to him. The duel begins with both showing some skill. During the match, James takes out a device and targets the swords. Donovan knocks Philip’s sword to the ground and it slides under a rock where it explodes. Donovan and Philip are shocked. Donovan touches his sword to the ground and it blasts. Philip says he checked them himself. Diana orders an investigation.
Thelma finds Willy in the landing bay and talks about all their future plans, forcing Willy to stop her to tell her he doesn’t know how he feels and that he is going to stay on Earth.
Diana dresses down James for botching the assassination and turns her attention to overthrowing the leader. She blackmails James into staying loyal to her, saying if he doesn’t, she will turn him in as being behind the assassination attempt.
Elizabeth and Kyle walk the corridors together and Kyle again objects to everything going on. Elizabeth insists on going through with it although she does love him. They kiss. Elizabeth and Diana share a tense greeting. She meets with Philip who is to teach her about her Visitor ancestry prior to her meeting with the Leader.
Donovan and Julie have a conversation about the arrival of the Leader. They believe Diana will be finished, but they aren’t certain. Donovan informs her of his escape plan
James is with two Visitors who are disguising themselves as resistance members. James gives them a weapon and tells them that the attack has to look like a resistance attack.
The Leader’s shuttle arrives as the resistance, and the top Visitors are on hand. Up on the catwalk, the fake resistance disarm some troops on the catwalk and blow up the Leader’s shuttle. Diana orders them shot and declares that the resistance have killed the Leader. Kyle announces that the bodies have been disintegrated so they’ll never know who they are. Diana orders the resistance and Philip arrested and grabs Elizabeth for herself when a voice over the speaker system announces the arrival of the Leader’s shuttle. Philip smiles and tells Diana that he thought something might happen so he set up this decoy. Kyle demands Elizabeth’s return. Diana throws Elizabeth into Philip and Kyle and runs away with James and her loyal troopers. The resistance and Philip chase Diana down, but James seals the doors. Elizabeth is still in contact with the Leader.
Diana makes it to the bridge and orders the infusion reactors be set to reach critical mass which would destroy both the mothership and Earth.
Philip knows of Diana’s mental state and figures she’s going to go out in a blaze of glory. They go off to find a way to get into the bridge leaving Willy and Thelma to guard the first door. Thelma and Willy reunite and Willy says he’d love to marry her if she would stay on Earth. She agrees.
Donovan and Kyle try to bust through the doors to no avail. Willy shows up with a white robe for Elizabeth who is still communicating with the Leader. Philip reasons that because the Leader designed the mothership, he may be able to open the doors through Elizabeth. Julie and Willy leave to see if they can find a ventilation shaft to use.
The Leader uses Elizabeth to blast open the doors and Donovan and Kyle attack without weapons as to fire them could be disastrous with what Diana is doing. They take over the bridge and Diana is captured again.
The Leader’s shuttle arrives and Elizabeth is set up to meet him. Kyle tries in vain one more time to stop her, but Donovan and Julie stop him.
Diana whispers to James, implying that she has had a bomb planted on the Leader’s shuttle, and that she will return to power.
The shuttle closes and takes off again. As the resistance (plus Thelma) walks away they note that Kyle is missing. Donovan and Julie realize that Kyle has stowed away.
Analysis:
The first thing I thought after this season (and ultimately series) finale was that the producers must have been the only ones NOT to realize that V was going to be canceled. So they ended it the same way they had been going for the last half of the season. Messily.
Conceptually it was certainly interesting. After years of war, there’s a cease fire. That would have been a VERY interesting place to take V and probably the best way to bring it back to Kenneth Johnson’s original vision. The Visitors could have resumed their subtle take-over through the media and politics. In fact I would have looked forward to that, and I will pretend that’s what was going to happen (it just requires me forgetting I read the synopsis for the next episode that would have happened).
Either way it certainly made for an interesting beginning. Obviously this was the big season finale as all the characters are back together again instead of in groups of two or three. Unfortunately that means Elizabeth and her Jedi act is back…except of course for the beginning where she inexplicably loses her powers again. I guess you could say that the Leader already began communicating with her, but I think that would do too much credit to the writers.
The tension and unease at resistance headquarters is real and palpable until the Leader begins his telepathy with Elizabeth and talking through her…either that or Elizabeth hit some kind of super-powered maturity that dropped her voice 4 octaves. It was the first notion that we were dipping even further into the sci-fi portion of the show, something that had been long avoided.
Diana’s lust for power and war mongering is well documented and is played well even if her character by now has grown so cartoonish that just doesn’t seem to be much of a threat anymore. It is really sad when you look at her in the mini-series, she is someone to be feared. Now she is histrionics and that’s about it.
Willy gets a good angle with meeting his former fiance, and telling her that he wants to stay on Earth even after the peace is negotiated. Robert Englund has long remained one of the bright spots of the show and he is up to the task in this episode, even though he has some horrid dialogue and some really cheesy scenes.
The long action sequence at the end is where it really runs out of gas. The only thing that is even memorable is seeing the resistance grabbing lasers again. The producers must have felt they could go all out and spend the $1,000 per blast for the season finale.
But it led to really ridiculous moments. First Willy shows up out of nowhere with a white robe for Elizabeth which should help her communicate with him. Well, firstly, she’s had no problem with it before. There is no explanation about what the robe is, where it came from, and how Willy had it when directly the scene before he and Thelma had been guarding a door and reuniting. I have no idea but there it is. Secondly, because the Leader designed all this (the mothership, I assume), he can use Elizabeth to break open the doors sealed by Diana and James. What? So let me get this straight. Because an architect designed a builidng…I should call him when someone locks a door because he can bust it open?
Then the ending. The big “cliffhanger” moment, part 1 of 2. Diana has left a “going away” present in the Leader’s shuttle that he’ll get a big bang out of. Well…how? The shuttle was landing just as she made a power play and sealed herself in the bridge. The resistance breaks in the bridge and Philip holds Diana at gun point. The next time we see her, she’s handcuffed to Lt. James. So when did this happen exactly?
Part 2 of 2 was a slightly better cliffhanger…Elizabeth goes with the Leader, but then Kyle stows away because he loves her. Ok, I like that one as it could have furthered the story…but how did he get on the ship. Everyone was watching the opening of the shuttle where Elizabeth walked in. There has never been a second way on board a shuttle…so how did Kyle get in? Is he hanging on top? But anyways…this is how V ends. Not with bang, but with a whimper.
And yet, I want closure that I’ll never get. It’s amazing how that can well up inside of you. I realize how bad the series got at the end, and understand exactly why it was canceled, and I’ve even read the synopsis of how it would have continued. But it doesn’t matter. No matter how bad it was, I still want to watch it unfold and finally end. I owe V that much for the hours of entertainment it gave me and for the great storyline it began with.
The season finale wasn’t as bad as some of the previous episodes. Beyond the usual chessy and ridiculous factors involved, it is inherently watchable if you’ve watched the rest of the series and it does provide SOME small sort of closure with regards to the war…just don’t read the synopsis ahead!
C
