V premieres this week on ABC but to TV viewers who were around 25 years ago, it feels a little like déjà vu. The original V series aired on NBC in 1984 with lizard aliens coming down to earth. The new version shows how we'd handle an alien invasion in a post-9/11 world.

"The original series, to me, felt very much like a military show almost," said exec. Producer Jeffrey Bell. "It was a resistance and gun fights, and there was a very clear and present enemy. They wore uniforms, and it was the Cold War. It was the Nazis, whoever it was. Post-9/11, that's not who our enemy is anymore. There is no other single threat. It's terrorists, and it's the guy across the street or the woman next door, and who do you trust?"

That makes this V a stickier, more complicated drama, akin to its competitors like Lost and Desperate Housewives. "I think one of the things we're trying to do is we have humans, and we have humans who are traitors, and we have visitors who have a nefarious agenda, and we have visitors who are heroes. So not knowing who or what someone is and playing the paranoia that we all experience living in a world where we wake up every day and everything is at an orange alert, I think we've tried to tell stories that regular people - moms and FBI agents and teenagers - keeping them in their lives, have to figure out what they're supposed to do."


Also, there's lizard aliens. The producers have a lot of cool plans for all they can do with the invasion. "The original was conceived as a miniseries. So it was built that way. Knowing that we are built for longer, we've structured the end that way. So we've set up the first season so, by the end of the first season, you know what the Visitors' agenda is and sort of where characters end up, on which side of the line they will be by the end of first season. Then the second season, beginning there, we have a whole different arc again."

V premieres Nov. 3 at 8 on ABC.

Image © American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.

Story/Interview by Fred Topel

Starpulse contributing writer

(Starpulse in Hollywood): Every week, Hollywood's biggest stars are meeting in the hot spots and Starpulse is there.