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INTERVIEW: Scott Peters And Jace Hall Talk “V”..

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?
SP: 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..

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Q: Was it intentional to cast popular genre actors?
SP: 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?
SP: There was really no intention to set out any kind of idea of racial relationship.. There was a strange question in the audience..

JH: You mean between Visitor and human as the races?

Q: Is it an intentional theme, the persecution of minorities?
SP: 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?
JH: 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..

SP: 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?
SP: 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..

JH: 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..

Q: Have there been any overtures to original cast members to get them to show up?
SP: You know, I personally love the idea.. I think that there is probably a world where that will occur at some point.. We still need to figure out in what capacity.. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made that are also predicated on factors above our creative needs.. There’s studios and networks and so forth involved but I think personally it’s an awesome idea and I would love to try and cycle in some folks, a tip of the hat to the old audience..

Q: How has 9/11 informed the new V?
SP: You know, 9/11 really informs my storytelling.. 4400 was very similar in that vein.. I think that’s maybe why I gravitated towards V when it came my way because to me, I just remember sitting watching television in tears, having never been to New York in my life and not knowing anybody directly involved in what happened, but everybody was affected by the exact same event in the exact same moment.. Then to see all of these different aspects of all these different stories that people brought to it was incredibly moving to me.. So to me, I love that storytelling.. To have a large ensemble cast, they’re all affected by one spectacular, and I don’t mean that necessarily in a good way, but a huge event that affects everybody’s lives, and then to see how that trickles down to their existence and their realities.. Then in a show like this, what’s really fun is you get these unexpected crosses.. You’ll see characters that are in completely different storylines that will, through a very plausible way, cross each other in an unexpected way.. In fact, we’re discovering these in the writer’s room every day.. We’re like, ” How about if these two cross because this person’s walking this way and they’re kind of at the same event..” So I think that’s going to be a lot of fun to see too..

Q: How many have you written?
SP: We’re in our third episode right now.. I wrote the first one with actually an old mentor of mine, Sam Egan.. We have an awesome writer’s room.. Jeff Bell has come aboard the show and I couldn’t be happier.. He’s a terrific guy, he’s immensely talented and so we’re breaking three.. We’re into sort of talking about four.. The first one’s written, the second one’s being written so we’re moving along..

JH: I’ve been in the writer’s room.. It’s a very diverse group of people, very sharp.. Reading the next episode that came out of there, the hotness, take it from me.. It’s going the way, as an audience viewer, because I’m sort of looking at this as what I’d like to see, it’s really trying to capture the potential, because I think people who see the pilot see the potential for how cool it could be.. We run with it.. They’re really doing it.. Scott and team are really doing it..

SP: What’s really gratifying is when we turned in the first draft to the network and the studio, we got back, ” We always knew this was a series but now we really understand what kind of series this is going to be..” What you were seeing, is it going to be a war picture every week? We told them no, it wouldn’t be every week.. So they were like, ” Well, what’s it going to be..” I think the first episode you realize, after seeing two of them back to back, you start to understand the direction the show’s going..

Q: Will we see more inside the mothership?
SP: Hell yeah.. Yes, yes. What we’re developing is the ability to show you very different aspects of the ship.. We have a terrific piece of technology that basically, none of the ship exists.. It’s all green screen.. It only exists in a computer so say, that hallway where they had their talk, where Chad and Marcus had their talk.. That hallway was constructed in a virtual world, a virtual reality world but the technology gives us the ability to drop the camera anywhere in that map and point it and we see on the screen exactly what it would look like if it were in the real world.. If somebody’s walking across and the camera tracks them, the background will shift as it should in a shot.. It really gives us the opportunity to explore that world, not be like a weather man against a green screen and not be able to interact.. It’s really exciting..

JH: That actually fuels story.. I’ll get back on my sci-fi soapbox which is great sci – fi always has this element of discovery.. What better place to do it than on the ship?

Q: What are your thoughts on the idea of the Visitors recruiting our youth?
SP: It was a little tip of the hat to the original as well but the youth, I think, Jeff has a great saying.. ” Youth often will look at things in very black and white terms.. It’s either great or it’s terrible as it’s good or it’s bad.. As you get older you start to see the shades a little bit more between things..”

Q: In a way they’re right..
SP: Absolutely.. There’s a great argument to be made on both sides.. You see in Tyler and Erika’s scene.. Tyler just thinks his mom doesn’t get it.. He just thinks you’re set in your ways, you don’t want to explore anything, you don’t want to give any new idea a chance.. Why are you criticizing this so easily? Her point is why are you embracing this so quickly? It’s an interesting divide of generations..

Q: What kind of mom will she be? They can’t just fight every week..
SP: No, they’re not.. In fact, one of the great dynamics I think that really helps us is that Erika is accused by her son of never being there because she’s an FBI agent in the counterterrorism division.. So at three o’clock in the morning when the phone rings, she has to go.. If it’s in the middle of the afternoon and they were going to do something.. She’s got to drop it and go.. This has affected him for however many years and it’s coming out in this scene.. Now, in addition to that, she needs to be falling into the leadership roles of leading the resistance so she’s going to be struggling to find ways of keeping her son safe and making sure that everything’s okay with him, but still being pulled in an even bigger direction so it’s going to be a huge struggle for her to try and keep that relationship viable because she can’t really tell her son what’s going on..

Q: What kind of tie – ins do you have planned?
JH: Honestly, my answer is it’s top secret.. But, just understand this that from the very beginning when we were working together, we always considered these other mediums and these other opportunities.. So the story that’s been built, the universe that’s been built is really designed to support all these other things without interfering with each other and there’s an eye towards that.. At some point after the show, everybody understand where it’s going, what we’re doing, you’ll start to see some of these things happening.. I know the studio and the network are very supportive of that.. Also, I make a big point to talk about the online community out there and the stuff that they do in supporting that along with the whole thing.. So try to figure out ways to do some cross integration between what people are doing, what the fans are doing and making that part of the show is something we’ve been thinking about since the very beginning..

SP: And there are great ways for this, as Jace was saying, to directly relate to the show as well as live in its own universe which is I think really cool and exciting because it’s not just a, ” Hey, you should go watch the show “ kind of thing.. I’s a much more complex and sophisticated campaign that’s being planned..