V was created as an anti-fascist tale for the modern age and early in its developmental process didn’t even include the infamous flesh-eating alien reptiles. Kenneth Johnson, the creator of V, revealed in 2019 that the show was originally an homage to the novel It Can’t Happen Here, a book about how fascism could rise in a democratic country. The concept of the alien Visitors as those fascists was suggested by then-NBC vice president, Jeff Sagansky, who said, according to Johnson in a SyFy Wire interview, “How about aliens?”

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While the various arcs throughout the season run the gamut from interesting to downright silly, this basic idea is what makes V: The Series such a worthy thought experiment. There is no status quo for humanity after beating back an alien invasion, but V: The Series suggests that how people would try to get things back to normal would contain even more drama and intrigue than the battle that preceded it. In 1984 V: The Series was making smart critiques about capitalism and faux-innovation, which served that capitalistic machine. Yes, aliens were the cause of it all, but V was smart enough to say that beating back the aliens wouldn't solve our problems. Not even a little bit.

V: The Series streams for free on Plex.

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/v-the-series-sci-fi-1984-retrospective