Characters / V (1983)

For characters from the remake, see V (2009).

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V (Original Series) Characters:

The Resistance

Julie Parrish

Played by: Faye Grant

• Action Girl: She was among the first to lead the resistance.
• Brainwash Residue: She's rescued before full Conversion, but worries that maybe she was rescued too late.
• The Chains of Commanding: At one point she vents over the responsibilities (both administrative and military) of being a Rebel Leader when you don't have the experience to back it up.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Having to become The Heart of the resistance kinda helps, especially as far as the fight against the Visitors are concerned.
• Just a Kid: Donovan's reaction on being told she's the leader of their Resistance group.
• The Kirk: She's usually the one to mediate.
• Mind Rape: She's subjected to it.
• Rebel Leader: She was at least competent in the first miniseries.

Mike "Gooder" Donovan

Played by: Marc Singer

• Determinator: He will fight the Visitors as much as he has to in order to get his son back.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Often engages in hand-to-hand combat with the Visitors when he's already carrying a gun and it would be much more prudent to do so.
• The Idealist: Very much. His nickname was given to him by Tyler as a shortening of "Do-gooder."
• Intrepid Reporter: His job, which he attempts to use to discover the Visitors' true motives.
• Large Ham: In fight scenes, he really oversells the whole thing. There's also a hilarious scene where he walks into a room, shouts "They did what?!" and smashes a metal panel with his fist.
• The McCoy: He's the most emotional out of the resistance.
• Papa Wolf: The reason he fights against the Visitors in the first place.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The more emotional red to Tyler's stoic blue.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Becomes this with Tyler.

Ham "The Fixer" Tyler

Played by: Michael Ironside

"Watch the shadows."

• Berserk Button:
  • It's simply better to be nowhere around if he thinks children have been hurt — the object of his fury ''will'' be beaten into the ground with extreme prejudice.
  • Also, don't kill anyone he's taken a liking to.
  Tyler: "You're the punk who killed Ruby, huh? You like hurting little old ladies, eh punk?"
  Daniel: "She was a spy, and I'm proud of what I did".
  Caleb: "Are you gonna kill him?"
  Tyler: "AS MANY TIMES AS I CAN!"
• Combat Pragmatist: He's particularly fond on obtaining explosives for missions. He even keeps a small amount in his boot for whenever he gets captured.
• The Cynic:
  "You start believing in that 'peace on earth and goodwill stuff,' there's no telling how screwed up you'll be."
• Friend to All Children: He may be an asshole most times, but he has a soft heart for kids.
• Heartbroken Badass: When he was a U.S. soldier in Vietnam he married a Vietnamese woman and had a daughter with her, but both were killed when the place where the U.S. army said they would be safe was napalmed by a U.S. plane.
• Heroic BSoD: After being forced to (nearly) assassinate Donovan, he so completely shuts down that Farber practically has to carry him. He gets better, of course.
• Hidden Depths: He is an ardent fan of the theatre.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Farber.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Very much hidden. He's a cold, cynical mercenary who lost his wife and daughter, but he dresses up as Santa Claus for the children.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Grows out of The Cynic and into one.
• Loner-Turned-Friend:
  Donovan: "I would like you to meet Ham Tyler; master of covert operations, communications, and very bad relations."
• Manchurian Agent: In one episode, the Visitors capture him, Mind Rape him, and set him to assassinate Donovan when he heard a certain trigger phrase (it was foiled).
• The Nicknamer: Nicknamed Donovan "Gooder" and Kyle "Ace."
• Odd Friendship: With Ruby, too bad she gets killed off.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Donovan's red, but, funnily enough is also red oni to his friend Chris Farber's blue.
• Token Evil Teammate: At least in the mini-series; for instance he prefers not to let the Fifth Column have a cure for the Red Dust.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Becomes this with Donovan.

Elias Taylor

Played by: Michael Wright

• Always Someone Better: His brother Ben was this to him.
• Black Dude Dies First: Get vapourised by a visitor laser while he and Willie are out scouting.
• The Scrounger: His past as a drug dealer comes in handy with underworld connections.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: During the TV run.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: His brother Ben was a responsible upstanding doctor. He was a drug dealing hoodlum.

Willie

Played by: Robert Englund

• Alien Autopsy: Is subjected to it, but fortunately not as thoroughly as certain members of The Resistance wanted.
• Going Native: He joins the humans to fight against his own species due to his relationship with Harmony.
• Hero-Worshipper: He has a lot of respect for Donovan. So much so that to emulate Donovan, he takes up an M1911A1 pistol as his weapon.
• Interspecies Romance: With Harmony, who's human.
• Malaproper: Was supposed to have been placed in the Middle East and so had learned Arabic, but paperwork got shuffled around and he ended assigned to the U.S. and had a very short time to learn English, leading to this trope.
• Nice Guy: Very nice, extremely kind, and almost invariably sweet.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Was a simple low-level grunt among the Visitors, doing as he was told (and actually genuinely friendly towards humans), until he was captured by The Resistance.
• Vegetarian Carnivore: Becomes a vegetarian so as to distance himself from the Visitors.

Robin Maxwell

Played By: Blair Tefkin

• Smitten Teenage Girl: She fell hard for a young Visitor named Brian, who simply used her to impregnate her as an experiment.
• Tested on Humans: Diana decides to find out if a human-Visitor hybrid could work and uses her as a test subject.
• Too Dumb to Live

Elizabeth Maxwell

Played by: Jenny Beck (pre-metamorphosis), Jennifer Cooke (post-metamorphosis)

• Half-Human Hybrid: She's the product of an affair between a human and a Visitor.
• Interspecies Romance: With Kyle, much to the chagrin of her mother who's also crushing hard on him.
• Psychic Powers: She's not called 'Starchild' for nothing.
• Younger Than They Look: Due to her biology she rapidly aged as a child, by the time of the TV show she's about her Mother's physical age.

Kyle Bates

Played by: Jeff Yagher

• Distressed Dude: He gets captured by the Vistors a couple of times and has to be rescued by the resistance.
• Interspecies Romance: With Elizabeth, much to the chagrin of her mother who's also crushing hard on him.

Chris Farber

Played by: Mickey Jones

• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Tyler.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Funnily enough, though Tyler plays blue to Donovan's red, Farber plays a blue to Tyler's red.

Abraham Bernstein

Played by: Leonardo Cimino

• Platonic Life-Partners: With Ruby.

Harmony

Played by:

• Interspecies Romance: With Willie.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Doesn't faze her when she finds out Willy is really reptilian; she fell in love with his sweetness and kindness.

Ruby Engels

Played by:

• Odd Friendship: Starts one with Tyler.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Abraham.

The Visitors

Supreme Commander John

Played by: Richard Herd

• Big Bad Wannabe: He figured that he was the Supreme Commander who would win the campaign on Earth for their Leader. Diana eventually reminds him that he was just a useless figurehead.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's disgusted with Diana when she tries to annihilate all life on Earth with a nuclear bomb during the Visitors' retreat.
• Evil Old Folks: His real age is unknown, but his human guise is old enough to have completely white hair. He's also the regional leader of a fascistic alien invasion force.
• Faux Affably Evil: Adopts a kind, benevolent facade that makes him a perfect frontman for the visitor's true intentions. Contrasted to Diana who couldn't hide her evil bitchiness even if she wanted to.
• Manipulative Bastard: He presents himself as a benevolent alien who has come to mankind for help. His real plan is to install a puppet regime on Earth so he and his men can slowly drain Earth of its resources — food and water. And the "food" happens to be those humans who aren't drafted as shock troops in their other campaigns.

Diana

Played by: Jane Badler

• '80s Hair: Her massive perm from the tv series.
• Bad Boss: She has no problems with killing her subordinates in a variety of cruel ways.
• Big Bad: She eventually gets complete control over the Visitor Fleet after she kills John, to whom she initially served as the Dragon-in-Chief.
• The Baroness: Sexpot variety, although the fact that she's a lizard underneath tends to disgust her opponents quite a bit.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: She will murder other Visitors who threaten her position.
• Dragon-in-Chief: She was the real orchestrator of the Visitor invasion despite only being the second or third person in the chain of command of the Visitor Fleet orbiting Earth. She eventually points this out to Supreme Commander John, and he spitefully notes that she can reign all she wants over a destroyed Earth.
• For the Evulz: She insists on performing her terrifying conversion procedure herself simply because she likes to see people's minds break down in abject horror.
• Klingon Promotion: She murders several of her superiors in cold blood to usurp their position, arguing that she favors a "more direct approach" to behind-the-scenes schemes among the officer staff.
• Mad Scientist: She regularly performs "experiments" on captured prisoners. Donovan sees the gruesome results to one of his friends of one such experiment. She's also stated to be the one who invented the method for preserving humans as food for the Visitors and came up with the plan to harvest humanity.
• Mind Rape: She perfected the process with the conversion procedure. The subject is tortured with vivid, nightmarish hallucinations until they either become completely docile or are turned into a drooling vegetable.
• The Mistress: She was a mistress to the Visitors' Leader to advance her own career.
• Ms. Fanservice: Donovan gushes over her (before finding out she's Fan Disservice underneath) and the other Visitors are well aware that she's the chosen concubine of the Leader.
• Sadist: She really enjoys hurting people.
• Sleeping Their Way to the Top: Diana boasts that she got her position in the invasion fleet because she's one of the Visitor dictator's favorite mistresses. However Pamela points out that the Leader has become wary of Diana's ambition, is rumored to have found a younger Hot Consort, and the fact that Diana has been sent billions of light years away to Earth hardly implies that the Leader can't bear to be without her.
• Torture Technician: She perfected a brainwashing procedure that plays on the subject's primal fears and which she often carries out herself, both for her expertise and fun.
• The Vamp: She usually doesn't fool anyone, given that most people are aware that she's a reptilian alien underneath her human suit. However, in the weekly series she seduces a random driver to kill him and steal his car while she's on the run.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Subverted. She exits the second miniseries by taking an escape pod, but in the weekly series Donovan quickly catches on and chases her down to stand trial for war crimes.

Brian

Played by: Peter Nelson

• Ambition Is Evil: A young, opportunistic Visitor who rises quickly through the ranks
• Distaff Counterpart: While not as vicious, he is every bit as ambitious as his Superior Diana
• Odd Friendship: Became close friends with Daniel.

Lydia

Played by: June Chadwick

• '80s Hair: One of the most egregious offenders is that blonde hair metal cut, topped only by Diana.
• Alpha Bitch: Not as much as Diana, but she can be just as cruel and selfish.
• Captain Obvious: When she and Diana are preparing to duel to the death, she states that she has never been defeated in mortal combat. Diana lampshades this by calling her an idiot.
• The Starscream: Seems to be this for Diana.

Charles

Played by: Duncan Regehr

• The Casanova: He has both Lydia and Diana scrambling over each other for him.

Philip

Played by: Frank Ashmore

• Always Identical Twins: Even when they wear human-like masks.
• Heel–Face Turn: Joins the resistance as The Mole when he realises that Diana killed Martin.
• You Killed My Brother: Towards Diana.

Collaborators/Others

Eleanor Dupres

Played by: Neva Patterson

"I know the Visitors aren't saints. But they're in power! They are power..."

• Even Evil Has Standards: As Donovan points out, she wouldn't shoot her own son.
• The Quisling: Played entirely straight — she joins them purely because they're the new power in the land.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: A Visitor officer pleads with her to intercede with the Resistance surrounding her house. She runs out and tells the Resistance she's being held prisoner only to get shot In the Back by the pissed-off Visitor.

Nathan Bates

Played by: Lane Smith

• Papa Wolf: Even though he and his son pretty much disagree on everything, and he's more than willing to set Mr. Chiang on his son to teach him a 'lesson', he'll do anything to protect Kyle from any trouble he gets into with the Visitors.
• The Quisling: Strikes a deal with the Visitors and maintains control of Los Angeles as a result.
• Redemption Equals Death: Dies saving his son.

Mr. Chiang

Played by: Ali Aleong

• The Dragon: To Nathan Bates.
• The Starscream: Betrays Nathan, killing him. Before he dies, Nathan lampshades it, noting that Chiang was "hungry."

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