Questions no one seems to be asking.

1) Casualties of war. Sacrifice millions to save billions

2) Maybe we taste better. And not all were going to become food. Some were going to become slaves and soldiers. Easier to train a Human to do something than big game.

3) Earth is kinda far from their home planet. Easier to take it all back than deal with the trip back and forth for resupplies. Imagine you have to drive 1 hour just to get to a grocery store. Would you shop a few days worth at a time? No. You'd bulk up on supplies and haul as much as you could at once.

4) Simple filming budget reasons. You're looking too deep into it.

5) If they tried to replace high profile people, the deception would be figured out the first time they spoke. Remember, Visitors had those funky voices.

6) Look at current media and politics. LOTS of people will believe ANYTHING that is said on TV. They have the "The TV people said, so it MUST be true" mentality. Need more proof? FOX NEWS.




Last movie I've seen: ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO - 2008

These questions can be answered by watching the movie. Some of them are answered.

1. Julie states thousands maybe tens of thousands may need to be sacrificed. It is the casualty of the war. It may not have been possible to save those on the ship. The whole earth was looking at extinction.

2. Martin explains this to Donovan. Some will be soldiers, others will be food. Whatever criteria they have for food is up to them. Perhaps those whose minds couldn't be turned or weren't fit for service yet not too old. Maybe old humans have taste that appeals to the Visitors.

3. Diana's anger led her to quickly try to destroy the earth. That wasn't planned in the manner she implemented.

4. Humans were on board. It may also have been time consuming to get into human disguise.

5. Not as easy to do, taking over a person's identity without being caught. Also would have to modulate voices. It would serve the Visitors better to alter their minds. Then they can be more convincing to the masses.

6. The whole scene was a terrorist attack. Part of the Visitor's cover up would be the old lady no one has ever heard of took over for the trader. They could easily have said Kristine Walsh was killed in the terrorist attack that occurred before the original live broadcast.

I have a question no one's asked, yet. Those compact pick-ups the Resistance was driving (just before Tyler and Donovan's fight for leadership); were those Datsun 620's or Nissan Hardbodies?

1. TFB's happy ending makes us assume they will be released with the help of the 5th columners. The short-lived TV show ignores it all, unfortunately.

2. The number of people on the planet (3 billion at the time) makes us, collectively, an easy target. Far more than for most species. Your point about the weak and old is very true, of course.

3. The whole ending was sloppily written, right down to magical Elizabeth. As Ken Johnson walked out very early on, NBC might have wanted a nice ending in case it wasn't well-received. Sadly, it was, and then came the tv series... but to destroy the planet was senseless. Maybe the red dust had something to do with it...

4. The 1985 TV show did show visitors in their natural gorn look. What bothered me were some fight scenes (often with Diana vs another alien vying for power) where they wore their human suits instead of chucking 'em before fighting... but, yeah, keeping on the suits while getting busy... dumb move on the makers' part.

5. They were the ones first contacted. Despite their bulk, the Visitors wanted to conquer slowly - and prevent opposition from getting organized. Converting leaders, who then tell the masses all is well, would help matters. If they just arrived and went *BOOM* on everybody, there would be a lot more discontent, riots, destruction...

As to why they didn't eat people and replace them on the spot -- personality differences. Converting real beings would be better... unfortunately, Christine notes a former colleague who hates her one minute but has a huge personality change by the time they meet again... but it's also said the process was imperfect. Still, converting the original is going to be less risky than putting in a double, as the double would be more quick to trip up and be noticed.

6. People are suckers. Even if the staged re-do of the broadcast was heavyhanded in its writing (mostly for the benefit of we, the real audience rather than the fictional audience. Even us in the real world, treated to lines like "And you have just seen the REAL presentation" would be too obvious.)

Answers to your questions:
1. The ones they took aboard their ships they were able to escape with at the end. The point was they couldn't take everyone.
2. To the Visitors, the humans were like what we consider cattle, they are meant to be eaten. I have the feeling that the old, sick people were used for food, like Abraham Bernstein. Or maybe Diana used them for experiments, like with Tony.
3. They needed to fool the Earthlings into thinking they came in peace and needed help in order to gain our confidence. Once that happened, they could make up the scientific conspiracy and gain power. And it wasn't like they could just go next door and get more water from their planet. They needed to gather up everything and then take it away, which would take a generation.
4. They wore their disguises to fool any humans who were on the ship like Kristine.
5. They needed to show the leaders who were now converted puppets because Kristine was always requesting interviews with them. Diana kills her because Kristine didn't do what she was told-say it was a hoax. She just decided to get rid of Kristine right then and there. Remember, you had chaos going on at that moment.
6. When they reshot John's speech, there was actually something in the book that was not mentioned: That Kristine had been killed during that fake raid by the rebels.

[deleted]

1. revived over time, I hope
2. but not nearly as many - human population at the time (3+ billion) was a good juicy number
3. Yup. It felt a bit contrived for them to do the "self destruct" shtick, given their size and presence
4. The same problem is worse in the 1984-5 TV show, where ritual fights had the Visitors fighting still in their human suits when they should have had the ritual makeup put over their real faces... oops...

5a. Continuity - at least for needed people. To infiltrate Earth societies for long enough - after taking over conclusively, the need to keep the sham going wouldn't be an issue any longer, but their control was not complete
5b. When Christine spoke out, it became too late for her. But, yeah, why not replace her with a double - that would be easier.

The original miniseries, characters reflected on how the general population would blindly buy into the tripe. Christine's death was sold as a stunt and hoax; some people probably questioned, but most didn't. Granted, with Eleanor's "and this has been the REAL presentation", that should have made enough people wake up...


The Final Battle itself was more an exercise in vapid action. How they could use human technology (with Star Trek sound effects, no less) to duplicate a Visitor security pass key was ludicrous. Julie's conversion was more soft porn than anything else... too many scenes where people escape, get captured, then escape again... lots of soap opera between characters... it definitely did not repeat the methods the 1983 miniseries wanted (and creator Kenneth Johnson bowed out of The Final Battle because his vision was much more intellectual than what NBC wanted...)

What I want to know is why the Visitors are never shown conversing in their own native tongue(s).

I want to live in a world of magic and miracles, not emptiness and entropy.