On stages 25 and 26 at the Burbank Studios, in Burbank, California, sits the biggest space station on earth. But this one is make believe. It's home base for "V". Occupying these two giant soundstages are the real life-size mothership of the alien earth invaders and five movable spaceships. These include the Supereme Commander ship and its squadron of four skyfighters, which rest on an enormous landing bay. These active spacecrafts, ranging from 18 to 68 feet in length, require five tractor-trailer units to transport them from location to location. Inside the mothership is a UFO master control room, complete with dozens of computer and television screens and consoles equipped with thousands of blinking lights, buttons and switches. Also in the luminous mothership exists the alien leader Diana's living quarters and many long labyrinths of corridors with futuristic walls that light up.
"Without question it's the most elaborate set in television for this coming season," says construction
coordinator Barry Kingston. "No other weekl program will offer the scope and technical wizardry of this contemporary science fiction thriller."
"'V' is to tleeivsion what Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind was to feature film," says Daniel H. Blatt, executive producer (with Robert Singer) of the highly successful six-hour miniseries "V": The Final Battle, "and our new weekly series will be an extension of that."
The dimension and scope of the drama has been intensified and the production technology will resemble most major science fiction motion pictures. "Television has never seen anything like this in a weekly program," Blatt continues.
One thing is for sure: After 10 hours of intergalactic travel for two miniseries and its current mission as a series, the 1983 model spaceships are definitely in need of a 50 million mile tune-up.