Ellen Gray: An updated 'V' debuts tonight

V. 8 tonight, Channel 6.

JUST WHAT would you be prepared to sacrifice for universal health care?

That's one of the questions posed tonight as ABC resurrects the sci-fi thriller "V" from the ashes of a couple of quarter-century-old miniseries (and a one-season spinoff) and sets it loose on a post-9/11 world.

Sleeper cells and hospital bills, not Nazis, supposedly haunt our dreams now, and creator Kenneth Johnson's original vision has been reconfigured accordingly to include health benefits, though the bones - and the reptilian skin - of the Visitors' agenda appears intact.

I first saw the pilot for the new "V" months ago, and remembering the original only dimly, failed to see what the fuss was about. So many alien spaceships have cast their giant shadows over the Earth on screens large and small since 1983: What makes these so special? And given the stuff that's been swallowed whole on CBS' "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race," will watching someone eat a small rodent - something that doesn't occur in the first episode, anyway - ever excite the same fascination?

But then on Sunday, Syfy ran a marathon of the miniseries "V" and "V: The Final Battle," sucking me in for more hours than I care to think about (at one point, shifting between "Battle" and Game 4, it occurred to me Phillies pitchers might keep hitting A-Rod because they were hoping to expose his inner lizard).

Now I sort of understand the anticipation. Those first two editions of "V," cheesy as they seem now, had something to say about human nature and, yes, about the Holocaust, an event that was then a generation closer.

The new "V" is shinier, with better special effects, but somehow less frightening. If you've seen "Battlestar Galactica" or this summer's disturbing "Torchwood: Children of Earth," you've seen science fiction employ modern politics more effectively than in "V," which has the aliens throwing around words like "hope" and "change," but doesn't yet hit us where we live (however much it might fuel rumors that President Obama really isn't from around here).

The characters are new, though many have parallels in the original. This "V's" Catholic priest (Joel Gretsch) is younger and cuter. The ambitious reporter, still a pretty young thing, is now a guy named Chad (Scott Wolf). There's no one quite like Diana, the slutty Visitor played by Jane Badler, but Anna (Morena Baccarin), the new group's high commander, looks terrific while addressing Earthlings on a very big screen directly above their heads. And in place of the biochemist/medical student who helped lead "V's" resistance, we have "Lost's" Elizabeth Mitchell as an FBI counterterrorism agent and single mother.

Because what TV's really missing these days is the FBI.

What is missing? The role scientists played in the original, where they were treated the way the Nazis treated the Jews - first as scapegoats, and then as an enemy to be exterminated - before emerging as humanity's saviors. In 2009, it's law enforcement we're expected to trust and mistrust, as the Visitors themselves offer to save us.

"The world's in bad shape, Father. Who wouldn't welcome a savior right now?" Gretsch's Father Jack asks his superior, warning, "Under the right conditions and with enough time, gratitude can morph into worship. Or worse, devotion."

"V" tries to dismiss all those other, less worship-worthy aliens.

"Dude, this is 'Independence Day,' " declares one excited youth interviewed on TV, only to have his friend add, "which was a ripoff of any number of alien-invader predecessors."

For sci-fi fans, the new "V," like a Visitor, clothes itself familiarly, with actors from "Lost," "The 4400," "Firefly" and "Smallville," but until we see something we haven't seen before, we should probably go easy on the devotion.

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.