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V
"The Dissident"
TV episode
Written by Paul F. Edwards
Directed by Walter Grauman
Original air date: December 7, 1984 |
In collaboration with Bates, the
Visitors erect a force field around the perimeter of Los Angeles to keep the residents in and
freedom-seekers out.
Read the summary of this episode at
V: The Series Interactive Website
Notes from the
V chronology
Although it originally aired after "The Overlord", I have chosen
to place "The Dissident" before that due to the fact that the Visitor
character of Daniel (no relation to Daniel Bernstein!) is seen alive
and well here even though he was killed "previously" in
"The Overlord". So the air order must have been a snafu on NBC's
part, right? Well, not so fast, because Lydia "dies" in this
episode (actually she fakes her death, but she is gone for a
couple of episodes) and yet is seen in
"The Overlord". So, really,
these two deaths wind up completely contradicting both of these
episodes! I think I recall reading somewhere that the producers
realized they had made a mistake with the two deaths in these
episodes due to the fact that episodes and scenes are often shot
out of order, so it can be confusing to keep the script
chronologies intact; I believe they decided that viewers
noticing guest-star Daniel's brief "return from the grave" was
less likely than their noticing major character Lydia's, so the
episodes were presented "The Overlord" first,
"The Dissident" second. But another aspect of this
episode's
story makes me present the two episodes in the opposite manner:
Elizabeth's stowing away with Kyle for the adventure, upsetting
both Kyle and Donovan. In "The Overlord", Elizabeth finally
stands up for herself and insists on accompanying the rest on
their mission and stating how she resents being protected all
the time. Kyle and Donovan finally accept this and allow her
more freedom to participate. Since Lydia's scene in
"The Overlord" is so brief, I think we must simply overlook her
appearance and pretend she was never there.
Didja Notice?
On the Freedom Network Report, Howard K. Smith reports that
Athens, Greece has been taken by the Visitors (and referring to the resistance there as the Pan-Hellenic Resistance); and in Florida, Janet
Weinberg of Daytona Beach, FL led a raid on a detention camp in
which over 250 captives were freed.
For the meet-up with the munitions truck, Tyler carries his MAC-10 machine pistol. Kyle carries a
Heckler & Koch HK94, chopped and converted for fully-automatic fire.
In this episode we see what must be Kyle's new house (the
one
seen previously was revealed in
"Visitors' Choice" to have been repossessed by his father).
It seems that Kyle and Elizabeth are staying with him more-or-less permanently at this point!
After the munitions truck is vaporized by the force field surrounding the city, Kyle and Tyler run up to the smoking spot on the road where it had been. It seems like the Visitors should have seen them considering they were monitoring the exact location by video feed during the test!
At 5:44 on the DVD, Kyle has yet another pick-up parked in his driveway, a
Chevy Blazer from the 1973-1980 models.
The license plate on it, 9HB676, was previously seen on a totally different Resistance member's car in
"Visitors' Choice". However,
at 40:45, the same truck has a different license plate, 1ARI685 (this plate was also seen on several different vehicles in episodes of the 1985 TV series
Stree Hawk.
At 7:38 on the DVD, we again see Bates' map of the L.A. area
freeway system. It can be seen that it is not a digital vector
map as I had first stated in "The
Deception", but a glass overlay onto a neon outline of the
freeway system.
At 8:00 on the DVD, we see the Science Frontiers symbol on
Bates' neon map. Is it meant to mark the location of Science
Frontiers headquarters? If so, then judging by the freeway
patterns, Science Frontiers is located approximately in the
greater Los Angeles city of Whittier.
As they plot to set up the force-field around Los Angeles, Diana
states she will allow Bates to choose his own combination code
of four letters, saying that the chances of someone discovering
the 4-letter combination being a half-million to one. In today's
computer age, we now know that a 4-letter code would be easily
cracked by a hacker program within minutes, so, realistically,
the Visitors' advanced computers could do it in seconds or less.
At 8:55 on the DVD, we get another look at the Visitor writing
on the outer wall of the embassy (seen in previous episodes).
At 9:00 on the DVD, Donovan drives a
Ford Econoline van to
kidnap the Visitor officer.
After kidnapping the Visitor officer, Donovan and Tyler seem to
play good cop/bad cop with him, a long-time cliche in Hollywood films and television, in which two people interrogate a suspect/enemy, one acting tough and belligerent, the other sympathetic to the target, as a psychological manipulation tactic for getting information.
Willie says that Jacob is the father of the Visitors'
technology. If true, that would suggest that they have not had
their current level of technology for very long. In
"Arrival", Diana comments that they've
had the gravity drive technology for about 100 years; is this
what Willie is speaking of?
When we see Jacob, he is wearing a human disguise like the rest
of the Visitors. But there is even less reason to disguise him
than there is the typical Visitor since he has refused to
participate in the war and was never intended to be seen by
humans. He is even wearing white lenses over his reptilian eyes to emphasize his blindness.
Donovan tells Kyle to meet him and Tyler outside of city limits
at Decker and Mulholland. I believe this refers to Decker Canyon
Road and Mulholland Highway in the Santa Monica mountains.
At 17:08 on the DVD, Kyle puts his HK94 and an
Ithaca 37 shotgun in his truck for the meet-up with Donovan and Tyler.
The delivery truck Donovan and Tyler sneak onto the Visitor
legation grounds on is a Ford LT900 with CA license plate 1L25205.
At 19:44 on the DVD, there is a Visitor sign outside one of the
doors into the embassy. There is also an odd sign to the right
of it that must be
part of the real building on-location; PRX de
Bon-something. Send me a note if you know what it
means!
Donovan and Tyler clobber two Visitor guards outside the
embassy, apparently to get hold of their uniforms. But the
resistance should have access to plenty of Visitor uniforms by
now so they could have come already dressed for the occasion!
| During Jacob's
interrogation on the mothership,
we see a keyboard with Visitor
characters on it in front of him
so that he can be coerced into
completing the force field
activation. The keyboard layout
looks remarkably like a human
one, though there are subtle
differences. |
 |
 |
| |
|
When Donovan and Tyler bust
Jacob out of the interrogation
chair, we see what looks like a
giant schematic of the
mothership on the wall behind
Diana and Lydia. It is similar
to the one seen in the command
center behind John and Diana in
"The Final Battle". |
 |
 |
Donovan and Tyler are shocked to find out that Jacob is blind.
Shouldn't Willie have told them this already?! Possibly Jacob
was only recently blinded, perhaps by some of Diana's
interrogation techniques?
Jacob mentions that his bracelet is made of saborium, a mineral
lacking on Earth. It seems to have the useful property of
channeling energy in many different ways.
At 27:58 on the DVD, we see a digital map of the perimeter of
the force-field around Los Angeles. It appears to even extend a
few miles into the ocean!
Throughout the skyfighter chase scene from 28:05-29:48 on the
DVD, the bottom of the airplane or helicopter that shot the
aerial footage can be seen (to a more-or-lesser degree) at top
of screen.
At 29:25 on the DVD, part of the console of Donovan's skyfighter
can be seen, with buttons and knobs labeled in Visitor writing.
At 33:23 on the DVD, Donovan calls into base on his
walkie-talkie, saying "Wilderness to Shiloh". When Elias answers
him in the speakeasy of Club Creole he also says, "Hello,
Shiloh, this is Wilderness." It seems like one of them messed
up...they can't both be Wilderness! It would seem to make more
sense for Donovan to be Wilderness since he is "out in the
field" as it were. (When Julie later radios Donovan and his crew
from Science Frontiers, he is still Wilderness, but she is now
Shiloh. I would have thought the Shiloh codename would always represent
the base at Club Creole.) After this, Elias says, "I read you
five by five." The term "five by five" means "loud and clear."
In the parlance of radio transmissions, a scale of one to five
is often used to indicate the signal strength and clarity being
received.
During his radio call, Donovan tells Elias they have crashed in
the Santa Clara River Valley, northwest of Newhall. These are
both real places in California and his description of their
location is about right. Donovan tells Julie there's no way his team can make Decker with Jacob being blind. I'm not sure what he's referring to by "Decker" unless it's Decker road or Decker Canyon in Malibu, close to 50 miles from them.
Julie tells Donovan that Nathan Bates' programmed corridor
through the L.A. force field is on the I-5 where it meets the county line if Donovan can make it there. Interstate 5 is an actual freeway that runs through L.A. but it crosses the county line at Gorman which is still about 30 miles north of their location at Newhall!
|
The two moles denoting the mark
of Zon on Elizabeth's hand seen
at 36:34 on the DVD, are smaller
and less hideous than when seen
in
"Dreadnought". |
 |
 |
| Mark of Zon
in this episode |
Mark of Zon
in
"Dreadnought" |
At about 38:24 on the DVD, the shadow of the camera or another
device can be seen on the hood of the truck, at the bottom right
of the screen.
At 40:06 on the DVD, Julie pulls her Heckler & Koch P9S pistol
on the Visitor who discovers her in the control room at Science
Frontiers. Willie suddenly shows up to help save Julie's hash during the encounter, but how did he get into Science Frontiers, especially an area that should be employees only?
As Kyle flees the pursuing Visitors at 40:45 on the DVD, Kyle's truck has sprung a leak in the
radiator, steam emitting from the front grill. From the single point of emission, it would appear that the radiator must have taken a hit from a bullet or laser blast, but we never saw that occur during the chase.
It's not too bright of Nathan Bates to use "KYLE" as his
password for the force field!
Throughout the distance shots of the scene from 42:06-43:37 on
the DVD, some kind of object can be seen at the left edge of the
screen.
According to Jacob, the high priest of Zon is Amon and the
old man believes that someday the priest will find Elizabeth, who is
"the future."
At 45:06 on the DVD, Visitor writing is on the screen as Diana
prepares to blow Lydia's shuttle out of the sky.
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