Fans of ABC’s alien-invasion remake V will remember Season 1’s cliff-hanger: the world looking on helplessly at reptilian alien queen Anna’s (Morena Baccarin) latest sleight of hand, a sky full of blood-red rainclouds. The second season picks up where we left off, with more of Anna’s manipulative spin as she uses her sophisticated chemical and biological armoury to wage war on human genes.

The V’s technology – blue energy, red sky – is far ahead of humanity’s, so there are plenty of mysteries for FBI counter-terrorism agent heroine Erica (Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell) and her Fifth Column freedom fighters to solve this season.

Better still, the show’s creators have something more than alien technological malfeasance up their sleeve: a dramatic addition to Anna’s immediate family. Now a triad, the interplay between Anna, her daughter – and queen-in-waiting – Lisa (Laura Vandervoort) and the new arrival makes for an interesting dynamic.

While it’s the daring antics of the Fifth Column that drive the plot of V, as in the previous season, the show really comes into its own when it explores more subtle terrain than that of the freedom fighting – the dynamics in a powerful family, for instance, or the effect of warm-blooded human physiology on the Visitors’ steely minds.

Anna’s new-found emotionality, touched on in the previous season, is shown to have ‘worsened’ with her prolonged exposure to the hormones circulating in her part-human body. She truly cares about Ryan’s (Morris Chestnut) human-alien hybrid child – more than she does about her own offspring, whom she seems willing to kill at times.

As our villainess’ warmth grows apace with her cruelty, viewers are left wondering whether her growing humanity is going to be her redemption or her downfall? It could go either way.

The physiology-psychology overlap is handled impressively well in V, with the writers approaching it from more than one angle. In a further twist, Anna’s new protégée, whom as a fifty percent human child you’d expect to be even more of an ally to humanity than Lisa is, turns out to be a bit of a janissary. Without giving too much away, she may yet turn out to be the alien queen’s most dangerous weapon.

The dilemmas continue for the enigmatic Lisa too. One of V‘s most fascinating characters, she is forced to confront some harsh truths about what she is and what she is biologically programmed to become as the show progresses – and how expendable she is, at least to her own people – all while dealing with her conflicting feelings for her mother. Her story is definitely one of the gems of the series.

Like Season 1 before it, V’s second year finishes on a killer cliff-hanger, which makes the show’s cancellation in May even more gutting. While it’s now unlikely that we’ll ever see V’s story wrapped up onscreen, there’s certainly enough drama, suspense and surprise in Season 2 to make it well worth the watch nonetheless.

Released on DVD and Blu-ray on Monday 24th October 2011 by Warner Home Video.

> Buy the DVD boxset on Amazon.

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