V "Mother's Day" Written by Scott Rosenbaum and Gregg Hurwitz Directed by Bryan Spicer Original air date: March 15, 2011

While Anna is focused on having Lisa breed with Tyler to continue the evolution of the Visitors, Diana urges Lisa to stage a coup against Anna.

Read the detailed episode recap at IMDB

Didja Know?

The character of Lars Tremont introduced in this episode is played by actor Marc Singer, who portrayed resistance fighter Mike Donovan on the original V1980.

Didja Notice?

Apparently V trackers have a weakness to tracking scent through zinc; Erica and Lisa comment that the coffin in which Lisa travelled to the Fifth Column meeting point is zinc-lined for that reason.

Lisa refers to the Visitor gun as an immolation gun, similar to the immolation pills, as seen in several episodes and named in "Serpent's Tooth".

The Visitor-supporter signs seen at the Peace Embassy state such things as "We (Heart) Vs", "Peace, Love and Vs!", "We Are Patriots 4 (Peace)", "MAFC ATTACK-Mothers against Fifth Column", "Peace Is Patriotic Vs", and "Stop the Fifth Column Now".

The old warehouse in which Lisa is being held "hostage" appears to be the same one in which the Fifth Column members met her earlier. Since the location was located by scent by a V tracker, wouldn't he be able to smell that Erica, Chad, and Hobbes had all been there as well and blow their cover?

In her speech to her people, Diana indicates that she had been held prisoner by Anna for 15 years.

Diana and Anna say almost the same line at different times when Diana says "humans and Visitors can live side-by-side in peace" to her people, and when Anna lies about her feelings to Lisa saying, "humans and Visitors living side-by-side".

At 26:29 in the episode, Tyler's flight uniform patch is again upside-down, as it was in some scenes of "Concordia".

We get our first full look at an undisguised Visitor in this episode, during the "adult birth" of Anna's last queen egg. She almost looks more insectoid than reptilian.

Lars Tremont tells Erica he is the head of Project Aries. Aries is both a constellation and the first sign of the Zodiac. It is also an alternate spelling of Ares, the Greek god of war, otherwise known by his Roman name, Mars. The title "Project Aries" is also a reversal of the "Aries Project", the name of a mysterious project that pops up in several episodes of the U.S. version of the TV series Life on Mars.

Tremont tells Erica that Project Aries is "humanity's last, best hope...for a future." Possibly, this is a twist on the tagline of the 1993-1998 TV series Babylon 5, which was that the space station called Babylon 5 was "humanity's last, best hope for peace."

    At 39:34 in the episode, we see a mothership hovering over Singapore in the Republic of Singapore. This city is not seen on the world map of the locations of the 29 official motherships seen in "Unholy Alliance", although it is possible I have misinterpreted the location on the map of a mothership over Jakarta, Indonesia since Jakarta and Singapore are very close together. Or, as I speculated in the study of "Unholy Alliance", it may be that some of the motherships move to other cities on occasion (although this theory may be belied by the revelation in "Birth Pangs" that the 29 motherships are present in the 29 cities because of 29 human boys who were successfully engineered 18 years ago for interbreeding with the Visitors).
   The exact shot appears to be over the Esplanade performing arts centre.

At 39:41 in the episode we see the Tokyo Dome. This is a real world sports stadium in Tokyo, Japan. There is a sign with the words "Giants Pride 2010" on the front of the dome; the Yomiuri Giants baseball team of Nippon Professional Baseball plays there.

The building seen in London at 39:48 in the episode is Westminster Abbey.

Instead of Anna bestowing bliss on the population of Earth, it is the hybrid child, Amy. Does this mean Amy is now the "savior" of humanity, rather than Anna? If Amy were to eventually renounce Anna, could she persuade humanity to rise up against the Visitors? This power (along with her accelerated growth) brings her closer to the idea of her being a starchild like Elizabeth in V80.

Isn't it awfully coincidental that Jack just happens to be caught in the bliss right where Erica emerges to the surface from the underground base of Project Aries?

At the end of the episode, it appears that the previously hidden motherships are decloaking and moving into locations around the globe. 

Unanswered Questions

Is Ryan dead? It seemed that his daughter broke his neck with the coils of her tail.

Why did Hobbes pack up and vanish? Did he receive new orders from the Visitors, whom he is forced to obey due to their possession of Sarah? Or did he decide to cut his losses when yet another of Erica's plans failed? (The deleted scenes on the season two Blu-ray show Ryan discovering that Hobbes was the one who blew up the building that Eli Cohn's Fifth Column cell was using, killing her ex-husband Joe in the process, suggesting a motive for his disappearance.)

Why is the project led by Lars Tremont called Project Aries? Is it simply a reference to the concept of "going to war" ("Ares" is the Greek god of war)? Are the Visitors from a star in the Aries constellation? (In the original V, the Visitors are said to be from Sirius, a star in the constellation Canis Major.) 

I guess none of these questions will be answered since the series was cancelled after Season 2, unless a comic book or novel publisher decides to further the story. Write your congressman!

Notes from the Deleted Scenes on the Season Two Blu-ray

Thomas is killed by Ryan, shot with an immolation gun. Since this scene was deleted, is it still canon? If the series had continued beyond this, would Thomas have appeared, or would there have been an explanation for his absence?

Diana sends her Bliss down from the mothership to Lisa while she is "captive" to the Fifth Column to give her the courage to assassinate her mother.