V "Birth Pangs" Written by Cathryn Humphris Directed by David Barret Original air date: February 22, 2011

Erica must prove herself as successor to Eli as worldwide leader of Fifth Column; while Lisa grows further from her mother, her bond with Diana gets stronger.

Read the detailed episode recap at IMDB

Didja Notice?

The information screen regarding Raphael reveals his last name is Mendoza; birth date 11-11-1992; located in Barcelona, Spain.


John Fiero remarks that an abnormally high number of the babies delivered by Dr. Nazani died prematurely, attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. SIDS is a real world syndrome that results in the sudden, unexplained death of infants in their sleep. The cause is unknown. In the case of the babies delivered by Dr. Nazani, it is presumably caused by the Visitor DNA alterations meant to make the newborns compatible for interbreeding.

Fiero also mentions that all of the mothers of the deceased babies suffered from preeclampsia, the same affliction Erica suffered from during her pregnancy with Tyler, as revealed in "Red Rain".

The view of a tower outside of Dr. Rai's window at 18:16 in the episode looks to be of the International Finance Center building in Hong Kong.

In "Laid Bare", Ryan warned his Fifth Column allies that female V's can whip out a deadly tail whenever needed (we saw Anna use it in "Red Rain"). Why does Dr. Rai not attempt to use hers when she is being held by Erica and Hobbes?

When Hobbes pulls some detonation cord out of his watch, Erica says, "That's very Mission Impossible." Mission Impossible was a CBS TV series from 1966-1973, as well as a revival series on ABC from 1988-1990, and a series of films in the 1990s-2000s.

At 21:44 in the episode, there is a brief moment of what could be romantic tension between Erica and Hobbes as they set  explosives on Dr. Rye's safe together. In previous episodes, there has been an understated attraction between Erica and Jack. Later, in "Uneasy Lies the Head", Erica and Hobbes finally do have a one-night stand.

This episode reveals that the 29 motherships are hovering over 29 Earth cities because of 29 human boys who were successfully engineered 18 years ago for interbreeding with the Visitors.

The tiny, metallic creatures found inside the medicine capsule that Hobbes cuts open appear to be scours, seen as torture devices in "John May".

Sidney seems to be impressed over the Visitors' skills at harvesting human DNA to augment their own evolution. Could he be on the road to betraying Fifth Column for a chance to learn the scientific secrets of the Visitors?

The scene at 33:34 in the episode appears to be recycled footage from the Pulaski Bridge shot at 14:44 in "Concordia".

The Barbie-doll-like figure with which Ryan's hybrid child is playing, is wearing a V uniform and almost appears to be a Lisa figure!

The artificially accelerated aging of Ryan's hybrid daughter is similar to the accelerated aging of the starchild Elizabeth in the original V series.

When the hybrid child runs past Ryan to Anna, she refers to Anna as "Mommy". 

Tyler's shuttle pilot uniform has patches on the sleeve and back. The V writing on the sleeve patch appears to read "ETHERC GUIDE 1"; this would seem to explain what EG1 stands for on his breast patch. The back patch seems to spell NANY, whatever that means!

Diana tells Lisa to "trust no one" on the ship. "Trust no one" was one of the catch phrases of the X-Files TV series which ran from 1993-2002 on the Fox network.