Recently, "V" creator Kenneth Johnson agreed to answer a number of questions about the original miniseries as well as his recent follow-up novel, "V": The Second Generation. To begin with, he was asked about the original's connection with the audience in 1983 and why it still touches those who know it so many years later.
"I think the original 'V' miniseries connected with the audience on such a strong emotional level because it was about people like them," he muses. "I carefully constructed it so that there would be someone in the picture who almost everyone in the audience could identify with and say, 'I think I'm like that person.' I was anxious to make it about everyday people, and how their lives would be changed and altered by a sea change in their life. Much the way that the world changed after December 7, 1941, or September 11th. Where suddenly real people wrre swept up into a brand new circumstance. And I think that's one of the main reasons it connected so powerfully with the audience; it was not about some futuristic place or we weren't on a spaceship in the depths of the universe. It was right here in the streets and it gave people the opportunity to show how they might react.
"I think what makes the miniseries so resonant even all these two decades later is the fact that indeed it's a timeless story. it's s story that has taken place over the centuries a number of times, where power has been abused by those in power, it has been sucked up to by those who desired to be a part of it, like the Vichy French in WWII. And it's also caused people to try to duck their heads in the sand, thinking, 'If I keep my head down and don't get into any trouble, then people in power won't bother me.' And lastly, of course, there are the people who say this abuse of power is wrong and we must fight against it. This is a story that goes back to the slave revolt that was led by Spartacus, as well as virtually every other circumstance where a powerful, often brutal fascist regime has taken tyrannical power over a people, and ultimately the people have decided to fight back. That's part of the reason that the title card appears at the beginning of 'V,' dedicated to the heroism of the resistance and the freedom fighters, past, present and future."