 |
V
"Unholy Alliance"
Written by Rockne S. O'Bannon
Directed by Dean White
Original air date: February 1, 2011 |
Erica goes after the
leader of the radical faction of Fifth Column; Anna is granted
an audience in the Vatican.
Read the detailed episode recap at
IMDB
Didja Notice?
The three murdered Peace Ambassadors have had their heads
covered by rubber alien masks. The face is that of the classic
gray Reticulans (alleged to be from Zeta Reticuli, the binary
star system in the constellation Reticulum) of alien
abduction lore.

Seeing the murdered Peace Ambassador bodies hanging upside-down,
Director Kendrick comments that the same thing happened to
Mussolini. This is a reference to the fascist dictator Benito
Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922-1943 and who was killed and
displayed in this manner by the Italian resistance of WWII in
1945.
At 2:52 on the Blu-ray,
OOCL (Orient
Overseas Container Line),
Evergreen, and
Triton
shipping containers are seen parked near the riverway.
At 6:25 in the episode, Anna's shuttle is seen to have some
triangular light panels in a V-orientation.

Erica's new partner, Agent Bolling, comments on Erica's last two
partners having disappeared and should he now be worried? She
jokingly replies, "Depends. You a Mets fan?" This is a reference
to the Major League Baseball team the
New York Mets and would
imply that Erica is a fan of the local rival,
New York Yankees
instead.
At 9:51 in the episode, we once again get a glimpse of a
USA
Today newspaper machine. They must be a sponsor of the
show!
The bloody mess Father Jack finds in a box from the radical
faction of Fifth Column is flashed on the screen only briefly,
but it is a butchered lizard head (looks like a large iguana),
symbolic of the killing of Visitors.

At 14:32 in the episode, the news chyron at the bottom of the TV
screen reads: "...positively in Anna's statement...Anna
reiterates message of..."
Anna asks the V sleeper priest, Father Moreau, "Do you believe
the body can exist without the soul?" From this question and her
later discussion with Diana, the meaning of the Visitor phrase
"Those of the body only" seen in
"Hearts and Minds" and
"Serpent's Tooth" begins to become clear. It seems that the
Visitors have come to believe in the existence of the human soul
which gives humanity a sort of eternal life, which the Visitors
do not believe they themselves possess; they have no soul to
continue after the death of the body. The priest's answer to
Anna's question is "...without it (the soul) we would be nothing
more than animals." Anna also looks troubled after hearing his
answer, perhaps fearing her people's own mortality in comparison
to humanity's alleged immortality.
The news headline on the WNT web page on Tyler's laptop is:
ANNA AT THE VATICAN
EXCLUSIVE
REPORTER CHAD DECKER TRAVELLING TO VATICAN WITH ANNA
The text of the article itself is too small to read.
At 18:18 in the episode, a restaurant called Italian Job Pizza
is seen. This does not appear to be a real restaurant in New
York, but there was one such place in Vancouver, Canada, where
the show was filmed. The restaurant is now closed.
Ironically, the first time we see the classic spray-painted
V in
the current series, it is used by pro-Visitor individuals, not
the anti-Visitor resistance.
The symbol on the statue's hand
at 23:07 in the episode appears
to be the Hebrew letter Tsadi,
which also represents Tsadik,
"righteous person". |
 |
 |
Father Moreau's ring has a symbol of four triangles forming a
larger one.
Father Moreau's statement that he will only tell Diana what he's
learned is the first time Anna's mother is actually identified
by name by a character in the series.
Moreau tells Diana that among all those that they have bred
with, the human soul is truly unique. This implies that the V's
have bred with a wide number of alien races and they have not
previously found themselves to be susceptible to the emotions of
those races, as they have been with the humans.
Moreau's statement to Diana about her survival in detention for
15 years seems to imply that by embracing human emotions, the
Visitors can develop souls of their own.
At 38:22 in the episode, a world
map is seen on a computer
monitor in the New York Fifth
Column hideout. A number of
cities are marked on it and it
seems likely that these are
meant to indicate the locations
of the 29 motherships known to
be on Earth (of course there are
more, apparently cloaked ones,
present since the second fleet's
arrival at the end of
"Red Sky").
Actually, there are a couple of cities missing if we accept all
the mothership locations as depicted in various episodes: Sydney,
Australia (as revealed in
"Pound of Flesh"),
and
Florence, Italy (as revealed in
"Red Sky"). From
all these, it would appear that there are more than 29
motherships hovering over Earth cities; perhaps it is simply
that some of the ships have moved around to different cities
over the course of the aliens' visitation? The 29
cities on the map in this
episode appear to be: |
Vancouver, Canada
Los Angeles, US
New York, US
Mexico City, Mexico
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Lima, Peru
Santiago, Chile
Buenos Aires, Argentina
London, England
Berlin, Germany
Paris, France
Madrid, Spain
Rome, Italy
Moscow, Russia
Lagos, Nigeria |
Johannesburg, South Africa
Nairobi, Kenya
Cairo, Egypt
Ankara, Turkey
Baghdad, Iraq
Tehran, Iran
Karachi, Pakistan
New Delhi, India
Bangkok, Thailand
Hong Kong, China
Shanghai, China
Seoul, South Korea
Tokyo, Japan
Jakarta, Indonesia |
 |
At 41:57 in the episode, a bottle of perchloric acid is seen in
Cohn's cabin. This is a real world, highly corrosive acid, which
was presumably used here to dispose of Malik's reptilian corpse.
At 44:10 in the episode, the news crawl on the TV screen is the
same as the one seen earlier at 14:32 and reads: "...the world
react positively to Anna's statement...Anna reiterates..."
The title of this episode, "Unholy Alliance", refers to both the
Fifth Column's alliance with Eli Cohn and the Vatican's bargain
with the Visitors.