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I'll start with a caveat: I haven't seen the original V. I know a mythology/sci-fi fan such as myself should be versed on all of the classics. Please accept my shame. I'll catch up, I promise.

Another caveat, I'm a filthy, stinking liberal. I try to keep my politics out of these columns. Such views are usually beside the point when evaluating art, or artistic movements. I resent it when folks like or dislike a work based on the ideology of the theme rather than on its artistic merits. There are many films and shows I love which do not align with my beliefs, as well as many which do that I find to be dreck.

Nevertheless, science fiction as a genre exists to present political ideas and questions in a palatable way. The alien trappings are the spoonful of sugar making the medicine go down. Without the fantasy-based setting, the themes can seem preachy and off-putting. Still, while it's difficult to set aside my politics when discussing a show with as slanted a premise as V, I'll try to approach it from a position of how this affects the art...but no promises.

On the other hand, maybe it's a little easier than I might be giving myself credit for. The characters in the show point out how the events are just like Independence Day and numerous other invasion stories. Therein lies the problem, we've seen it before, and I don't just mean in the '83 version. Aliens hover over some major city, they either attack, or pretend to be peaceful before attacking.

Fair warning, here comes the politics. This is a xenophobic and fear mongering point of view. Why do visitors always have to be villains? I'm not sure how the Reagan-era original presents them, but the remake draws parallels between the aliens and the terrorist threat we've felt for nearly a decade now.

I'm not here to claim that there is no such threat, nor am I unaware that goody-goody aliens would make for a dull, conflict-free narrative, I'm just saying that there are more complex, less polar ways to present the possibility of extra terrestrial life coming to earth. Just this summer, District 9 showed a less clichéd view of an alien settlement. That one could be seen as just as black and white, however, but from a more liberal point of view. I would argue that it's a little more complicated than that, but I'll accept that it's a bit of a reversal of the same concept.

V remake writer Scott Peters himself created a more layered show in The 4400. I don't know why. Perhaps it was the low budget, the fact that it was on the USA network, or that it was an original, but The 4400 explores the social ramifications of its mythology rather than painting the narrative as an us vs. them tract. The concept - spoilers, folks - is that a future society abducts 4,400 people over the course of the 20th century and then returns them all at once with supernatural abilities in a plan to fix the future's ills. Yes, there's tons of mythological fun over the nature of the future plan and the different abilities, but what the show really examines is how society responds to the advent of the 4400.

V seems to delve a little into that realm. We see an underground group challenging the Visitors' claims of peace, declaring that they've infiltrated our American society in an attempt to conquer us, or some such nefarious goal. This would be a compelling development if we were left to wonder if maybe they're right, or maybe they're just reactionaries. Nope, a few moments later, the aliens attack the group. They're right.

There's another show, also a remake that raises more questions than it answers. Creators Ron Moore and David Eick make no bones about their real-life left leaning ideals, but you might not know it to watch their version of Battlestar Galactica. We see our heroes debate hot button topics like abortion, genocide and terrorism with what seems to be no clear-cut right or wrong answer. In fact, the cylon villains become less and less evil as the show progresses to the point - spoilers, y'all! - where they settle in with the humans, creating a new joint society. Okay, well, maybe that's a little liberal, but it's certainly more complex than just humans good, cylons bad.

I'm sure much of this new V's stuff is present in the '83 mini-V. Of course, the country was pretty conservative in that time of Reaganism and the cold war. And so are we now. Yes, we went almost polar opposite president-wise in the last election, but 9/11 still hovers over us, like a spaceship, filled with insidious lizards pretending to join our society, while planning its destruction. Bottom line, no matter the politics, the evil alien invasion is a tired cliché. I'd rather see a more complex social examination of the possible discovery that we're not alone. Nevertheless, until then, I'll enjoy me some alien/human conflict. What, just because I'm a lefty I can't get a kick out of this stuff? Or is it because I'm a smug critic type who sneers at cliché? Whatever.