Q: Is there a different context to the issues of media, technology and religion in this version?
Scott Peters: To me, the main theme that kind of runs through all the stories is about blind devotion, whether it’s blind devotion to your religion or to your partner in life or to your work or to anything really. So the idea that Father Jack’s big question at the beginning is how can I reconcile the reality of spaceships outside my window with what I know of the bible? So his faith is shaken a little bit. It’s those sorts of themes that I think run across the board.
Q: How about the idea that the talent tells the journalist what he can’t ask, or having medical technology that cures 63 of our diseases?
Scott Peters: It is. We try to bring new elements to the show that will certainly play for an audience in 2009/2010. You heard universal healthcare get a laugh because it’s so topical in the news right now. I mean, it’s been in the news for a long time but it’s particularly topical right now. All of that stuff, the media, obviously the TMZs of the world, there’s such hugely driven celebrity that goes on in our society and I love that Anna tries to basically rig the election before anything can happen.
Jace Hall: Let me add to that which is all great science fiction, at least in my view, has a real opportunity to make a comment or look at the human condition in various ways. Taking the media as an angle is a really good way to look at our obsession with the cost of what are we willing to do? We’re living in a Facebook/Myspace age so you’re getting characters that Scott and team are writing that are exploiting some of those things, along with medical issues in how we can talk about those elements of the human condition.
Q: Was it intentional to cast popular genre actors?
Scott Peters: Honestly, the first thing we look for is the right actor for the right role. In fact, Father Jack for instance was originally scripted as a much younger, late 20s/early 30’s kind of guy. As we started going through the casting process, we started to realize that Elizabeth Mitchell was going to be involved, we’re like, “No, maybe we need to go a little bit more man’s man.” What’s bizarre is that literally, when we just came back from ABC and we had had that discussion, Joel Gretsch called me and just said, “Hey, what’s happening? What are you doing right now?” Just out of the blue. And I’m like, “It’s funny you should call. What are you doing right now?” So there was no particular design to go out and look for genre actors. It just so happened that A, folks were available. B, they were perfect for the roles and C, they happened to be in genre shows in the past. I think it’s a nice thing. It’s wonderful for us. We get 4400 fans and Firefly fans and Lost fans. We’re hoping to collect all those fan bases and put it in one ginmorous take control of the world fanbase.
Q: What themes of racial relations did you set out to infuse in the script?
Scott Peters: There was really no intention to set out any kind of idea of racial relationship. There was a strange question in the audience.
Jace Hall: You mean between visitor and human as the races?
Q: Is it an intentional theme, the persecution of minorities?
Scott Peters: No, in fact it’s not. The idea is that yes, the visitors, certainly in the beginning of the pilot are seen as these terrific people come from another planet and they’re bringing all kinds of gifts and everyone’s on board very quickly. As we all know, I’m not giving anything away, visitors have a very different agenda about what it is that they need to do and that does not bode well for us. So really, yes. In fact, you saw some in the pilot, that there are protests. Not everybody’s on board. There are protests about them. People are thinking wait a minute, everything’s happened a little too fast. You’ll see that growth throughout the beginning of the series. You’ll see more and more people dissatisfied and Anna having to try and find a way to quell all that. In fact, you could look at the visitors certainly as a new minority that has shown up. So you can sort of play to some of those themes in terms of when they want to try to do something that we know as, ‘Oh my God, don’t let them do that,’ they can say, “Well, we’re bringing gifts. We’re bringing you all these wonderful things. Why wouldn’t you?” So there’s play back and forth between people who are protesting and people who are not protesting.
Q: Are you afraid of the reaction from old V fans?
Jace Hall: I wouldn’t say that we’re scared of their reaction. From my perspective, we want to engage them and tell a story that has similar themes but this is a very different show. As Scott said on the panel, we’re not trying to retread what already was done for a specific time frame and played well during that time. We’re on a different period now. Our audience has different expectations so you want to build a show that touches on concepts that were in the original, aliens are here but move it past in a different direction. Tell new stories to engage not only the original V audience but also new audience and try to widen it out as much as you could.
Scott Peters: I think the audience that does remember the show, to me, I would come just out of curiosity to see what’s the new version of this. Listen, you can’t please everybody all the time. We can’t force anybody to watch the show. If they feel like this is not doing the old one honor, they’re not going to watch the show. The good news for them is that there is still the box set of the old DVDs and they can watch the original as often as they want. We hope though, before making that decision, they would at least give our show a chance and come and look at it, see what it’s about and give it a few episodes. If you really hate it then you’re going to turn it off. And if you don’t, then you’re going to watch it and hopefully become a huge fan.
Q: Also the originals were designed as miniseries. How do you approach stories from a potential 7 year standpoint?
Scott Peters: There’s a pretty in depth plan involved in terms of whether we’re doing 13 episodes or 22 episodes in a season, that we want to try to call them, in our minds they’re sort of chapters. They sort of have a beginning, middle and end. We’re looking to put game changers throughout so that when we come back for another season, it changes things up dramatically. I think that in terms of the miniseries versus series aspect, because we know right away we’re going for the long term in success. I think the old series may have made a mistake in becoming sort of a war picture, where it was battles every week and a lot of action, running around with guns and trying to take over.
Jace Hall: Plausibility has played a pretty big role in the development of this. You want people to ask plausibly in situations. When you get into the battle of the week, how plausible is that to sustain and for you as an audience viewer to go, “Okay, that really could happen.” It’s hard.
