'V' recap: Do they come in peace?

Image credit: David Grey/ABC

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The Visitors arrived last night, bringing hopeful slogans (''We are of peace'') and the promise of a ''Yes We Can!'' future. They had telegenic smiles, silver-hued couture, and eyes so friendly and flying saucer large you could fall into them and drift away into oceanic bliss. True, they have that creepy blinking thing going on — like a boa constructor fluttering excitedly at the sight of an abandoned baby in the woods. But that's an easy quirk to overlook when they've got an Audrey Hepburn look-alike for a leader (Morena Baccarin, late of — sob! — Firefly) and miracle cures for the sick and infirm. Plus: Free rides on beagle-shaped anti-gravity shuttles and public tours of ginormous motherships! But for intrepid FBI agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell, late of — double sob! — Lost) and skeptical priest Father Jack (Joel Gretsch, late of The 4400; I'd weep for that, too, but I didn't watch), the private discovery of two unsettling truths left them convinced that the seemingly angelic nature of these interstellar nomads is actually a devilish ruse. Truth No. 1: The Visitors have actually been here for years, hiding in plain sight, plotting... something. Truth No. 2: Underneath that costume of creamy-sexy flesh, something cold blooded and reptilian oozes and breathes and maybe, just maybe, hungers. Hide your infants and pets, planet earth: it appears we've been invaded by some sneaky foodies on an interplanetary culinary crawl.

But let's stress that ''maybe.'' And stress appears, too. Because we could be totally wrong about these so-called ''Visitors.'' Indeed, ABC's V — a spiffy-sleek reinvention of the golly-cheeze-whiz eighties classic, engineered for an era that likes its sci-fi mysteriously shaded and smarty-pants cerebral — clearly wants us to play the guessing game of ''WTH's really going on here?'' Do these don't-call-them-aliens aliens harbor a sinister takeover agenda? Or do these reptiles-in-disguise really come in peace? Recent sci-fi pop has specialized in dramatizing post-catastrophe cultures. See: Lost, Battlestar Galactica. V wants to be a freaky fable about reconstruction anxiety. Our own real-world jitters about the authenticity and ambition of brazenly bold do-gooding leaders are reflected in the show. Can we really trust the charismatic crusader with the crackerjack plan for the future? What's the secret pricetag on a Brave New World? How can we be certain this new administration won't lead us into a new kind of ruin, let alone turn us all into sex slaves servicing the pervy desires of an evil megalomaniac who resembles the hot high class shuttle whore on Firefly? Because ladies and gentlemen, I do worry about that. Every. Single. Minute.

The first nine-minutes of V's mostly entertaining, though occasionally infuriating, pilot deftly introduced the main characters as 29 island-sized space cruisers (they evoked snake heads to me, but maybe I'm projecting) descended upon the globe fully attended with the clang and clatter of much Rapture symbolism. The Earth shook, a jet fell from the sky (a cataclysm pop cliché by now, don't you think?), everyone looked toward the heavens with mouths agape (insert seagull/Cindy Lauper joke here) and got fake-baked by clean white light blasted from the high-def superduperjumbotrons embedded in the underbellies of each spaceship. All that was missing was Handel's ''Hallelujah!'' chorus to drive it home, although there was this none-too-subtle act ending exchange from Mitchell's Erica and her son:

''My God...''
''Yeah.''

There were a couple groaners like that during this otherwise impressive set-up sequence. I could have done without the portentous, pretentious questions that opened the show. ''Where were you when JFK died? Where were you on 9-11? Where were you this morning?'' (My answers: 1. Wasn't alive in '63. 2. Driving to work. 3. On the toilet, thinking about Lost.) Why bother with doing the hard work of establishing a sense of urgency with top-notch drama when you can just shamelessly punch real-life psychic wounds? Hey, kids! Remember that time the world went crazy and made you feel like s---? Okay, now: feel the same way about what you're about to see. Trust us! It'll be fun!

NEXT: Who's ripping of who?