The Visitors rumble into town in their massive spaceships, causing worldwide havoc and anxious feelings. Such silly humans. These aliens have come in peace! They’re just here to pick up some water, some minerals and some culture before zipping off again.

"Don’t be frightened," Visitor leader Anna says. "We mean no harm. Please accept our apologies."

Much of humanity gratefully responds with a collective "don’t mention it," and eagerly lines up for high tech health care. In this pilot episode, though, we see a resistance movement begin to develop. And we see TV journalist Chad Decker growing increasingly suspicious of Anna. Erica, for her part, hasn’t believed a word of the V’s propaganda from the very beginning.

Their fears are justified when a group of resistors—including Erica and Jack—are brutally attacked. And when that happens, V viewers quickly get a whole new understanding of the old saw Beauty is only skin deep: We catch several glimpses of the Visitors’ inner reptilian shell—often through gaping and gory wounds. Humans, too, are cut deeply. And they take to slicing V-shaped wounds behind their ears to prove that they’re human (by exposing bits of their skulls).

Other carnage involves a man bleeding out on a church pew, hand-to-hand combat, machine gun fire and a huge explosion when a fighter jet crashes into a city street.

Language isn’t great, either, with folks carelessly tossing out "a‑‑," "d‑‑n" and God’s name.

V does appear to have higher goals in mind than to just turn your stomach, though. Parenting issues come up when Erica’s forced to grapple with how much attention and time she’s giving to her son. And Chad, while failing the test on his first go-round, looks like he’s working up the nerve to challenge the V’s notion that "compromising one’s principles for the greater good is not a shameful act, it’s a noble one." The series has also begun to probe the questions wrapped around devotion and demagoguery. And that last bit has caused some critics to say it’s pointing political fingers:

"This is not just a right-wing worldview but the worldview of the paranoid Tea Party movement," writes Jonathan Chait for The New Republic. "I’m really not sure how this made it onto network television. Maybe the calculation is that Glenn Beck will start urging his viewers to watch and a ratings bonanza will ensue."

In the Chicago Tribune, Glenn Garvin says of V, "Nominally a rousing sci-fi space opera about alien invaders bent on the conquest (and digestion) of all humanity, it’s also a barbed commentary on Obamamania that will infuriate the president’s supporters and delight his detractors."

We’re not as yet convinced that V is getting funding from the GOP. More interesting, actually, are its spiritual overtones and how they’ll get worked out over the next year. Father Jack appears to have his faith tested by the very existence of Visitors. And it’ll be an easy jump for some viewers to think of the series as an extraterrestrial riff on the antichrist. Jack might agree: To him, the fact that the Visitors showed up when they did isn’t providence, it’s manipulation.

Where did these Visitors say they were from, again?