Per aspera ad astra
I love this scene from the opening to the TV mini-series V.
Or more to the point I’m a devout fan of that show who is more than willing to overlook the many short comings regarding inherent logic and instead to concentrate on the vast highlights.
One of them being this perfect opening shot.
The first time I saw it, it reminded me strongly of the cover illustration for one of Arthur C. Clarke’s novels, Childhood's End I believe it was, that shows a approaching Spaceship and underneath are gathered people that raise their arms to it. Looking up the cover for this book on Amazon I come to the conclusion that this might even have been intentional, what it is without doubt is one of the more interesting homages to Clarke/Kubrik’s 2001 - A Space Odyssey. A clever nod to the classic opening which lets our ape like ancestors meet once again with visitors from space, for a equally, if in a entirely different direction, life changing experience.
Last but not least it symbolizes the age old dream of human kind that must have started when our earliest ancestor, who’s petrified face now again gazes at eternity in this picture set-up, lifted his eyes towards the sky and began to wonder on to our first feeble stretching out to the stars in the shape of Gagarin, Aldrin and Armstrong to a projected future in which we will become the Visitors which other species will lay their eyes on yearning to once grab for the stars themselves…
Shades of Star Wars...
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