"Star Trek" of the 1960s inspired the creation of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in the late 1980s.

The 1970s show "Battlestar Galactica" was re-imagined with the same title for an acclaimed post-9/11 series on Syfy.

This week ABC attempts to re-boot the 1980s NBC sci-fi saga "V" as a weekly series. The original depicted a world where reptilian aliens, hidden beneath fake human skin, parked their flying saucers above cities around the world and goose-stepped into human culture. The Visitors promised to cure disease in exchange for water but secretly planned genocide, stockpiling humans in stasis chambers to be used as food. And in a move that was perhaps a little too on-the-nose on the part of the original "V" producers, the Visitors had a symbol that closely resembled the Nazi swastika.

In the new "V," aliens do arrive on Earth, but their aim is initially unclear. It will be different than in the original and will be explained by the end of the first season, according to executive producer Jeffrey Bell ("Harper's Island," "Angel").

"The original show felt very much like a military show almost," Bell said. "It was resistance [fighters] and gunfights and there was a clear and present enemy. [The Visitors] wore uniforms, it was the Cold War, the Nazis. Post-9/11, that's not who our enemy is anymore. There is no single threat. It's terrorists and the guy across the street."

Bell said the show will play on themes of paranoia -- some humans are heroes, some are traitors; some Visitors have an evil agenda, others oppose their plans.

"Not knowing who or what someone is and playing the paranoia that we all experience living in a world where we wake up every day and everything is at an Orange Alert," he said. "We are a country very much fractured and struggling with all these issues."

"V" began in 1983 with a four-hour miniseries and continued in 1984 with a six-hour miniseries sequel followed by a weekly series that lasted just a single season, devolving from thoughtful allegory to a cheesy soap set on a spaceship. (The 1984-85 "V" series aired the same night "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest" were on CBS, which may account for some of the change in tone.)

ABC's "V" condenses many of the introductions and revelations in the original miniseries into this week's one-hour pilot, which moves fast and furious compared to the pace of the original.

"We want to tell the story that is sort of already out there so that we can leap forward in a very quick manner so that we don't sort of build and build and build to something that people already know," said executive producer Scott Peters.

The new "V" (8 p.m. Tuesday, WTAE-TV) introduces a new cast of characters and actors to portray them, but the types hew closely to those in the original, including a Roman Catholic priest (Joel Gretsch), an FBI agent (Elizabeth Mitchell) and a female leader of the Visitors, Anna (Morena Baccarin). Instead of leaving their jobs to become rebel leaders of a resistance movement, as happened in the original, those who oppose the Visitors will stay in their jobs and work within the system to uncover the aliens' true agenda.

Because many of the viewers ABC hopes to draw to the new show were either not alive or too young to remember the original, the new pilot even includes a disclaimer lest any neophytes think spaceships hovering over the world's major cities is a rip-off of a popular Will Smith film.

"Dude, this is 'Independence Day,' " says one kid as he looks at the giant mothership that looms over Manhattan.

"Which was a rip-off of any number of alien invasion predecessors," says his friend.

The original "V" was probably best remembered for scenes of the Visitors dangling rodents over their open mouths and then swallowing the critters whole.

"That's one of the things that everyone mentions," Bell acknowledged. "We want to find a way to do it, but if we just have [Visitor leader Anna] do exactly what happened in the original: Been there, done that."

Peters said the new show's second episode will cover issues not seen in the original, such as, how do you handle diplomatic relations when you have aliens coming off of ships? Do they have visas? What if a Visitor is in a car accident, is it handled in a human court or a Visitor court?

"The show is packed with a lot of story, but we want to be able to give a piece of [Visitor culture] as we go forward and shine a light on what we do and do they do things better than us?"

If the original show explored the dangers of a totalitarian regime, the new "V" is more interested in another topic: Blind devotion.

In Tuesday's pilot, Father Jack (Gretsch) says, "It bothers me they showed up right when we need them most. The world's in bad shape right now. Who wouldn't want a savior?"

"It does cut across all the story lines," Peters said, noting its application to politics, religion and relationships. "What happens when you don't ask questions about the things you believe in?"

Even though "V" was developed during the Bush administration, the show's premiere date -- the first Tuesday in November, a year after the election of President Obama -- might cause some viewers to look at its primary theme as a comment on the devotion of some voters to the president. Producers did not discourage whatever interpretation viewers might bring to the program.

"It's our job as storytellers to put some provocative things out there and leave things open to interpretation to really bring an audience to it and really be compelled by it," Peters said. "If one group wants to claim it as their show and another group wants to claim it as their show, that's their prerogative."

Ultimately, "V" is meant to be an escapist hour of TV -- albeit one with a cautionary tale embedded.

"If aliens were coming to see what our greatest weakness would be, they might think, 'If we could just get them to follow along and give them lots of great things and they'll follow us because we cured your grandmother of cancer,'" Peters said. "Those are interesting stories to show that aspect of us. On the one hand, we think of ourselves as strong, independent voices. But on the other hand, we're a little sheep-y at times."

TV columnist Rob Owen's Tuned In+ is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.