How good is ABC's "V"? Very, very good.

Watch even the first few minutes and prepare to be sucked in. As characters we'll soon know very well go about their morning's business, they feel rumblings, like an earthquake — first small, then catastrophic. Amid the resulting chaos, they look up to find … Visitors.

Huge spaceships hang overhead, not just in New York and Los Angeles but all over the world. A huge face, the face of a beautiful woman, appears in the sky.

It's all right, she tells them. The Visitors want only peace and, in exchange for a few necessities, they will share knowledge that can help Earth save itself.

The face is so appealing, the message so soothing, that the shaken Earthlings applaud. And that sets in motion an absorbing story that will unfold over 13 episodes in its first season, with four airing in a "pod" this month and the remaining nine in the spring, after the Winter Olympics.

Perhaps you're skeptical, as some Earthlings are about the Visitors. The decision to revisit the 1980s cult miniseries raised eyebrows among purists who remembered how the power of the original was diluted by a sequel and then mostly washed away by a short-lived series.

Another concern: Kenneth Johnson, the original creator, who had been working on his own remake, isn't involved in the ABC project. Instead, the executive producers include Scott Peters ("The 4400") and Jeffrey Bell ("Day Break," "Alias").

"None of us would be here without Ken Johnson, who did the original 'V' miniseries," Peters told TV critics when ABC introduced the series this summer. "We wanted to make sure as we moved forward that we honored and respected the characters and the themes that show envisioned."

At the same time, the intent of the new "V" was to introduce new characters and themes "that would make sense in a post-9/11 world," Peters said.

In fact, without being too on-the-nose, the opening scenes do suggest the shock and turmoil of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. If a beautiful face had appeared in the sky that morning to apologize and offer a soothing explanation, wouldn't many of us have been relieved?

The enemy was clear in the original "V," Bell added.

"The original series, to me, felt very much like a military show," he said. "It was about resistance and gunfights, and there was a very clear and present enemy. You know, it was the Cold War. It was the Nazis, whoever.

"That's not who our enemy is anymore. There is no single threat. It's terrorists, and it's the guy across the street or the woman next door, and who do you trust? … We are a country very much fractured and struggling with all these issues."

The characters of "V" reflect the real-world uncertainty of "not knowing who or what someone is in a world where everything is at orange alert," Bell said. "We have humans, and we have humans who are traitors, we have Visitors who have a nefarious agenda, and we have Visitors who are heroes. Regular people — moms and FBI agents and teenagers — have to figure out what they're supposed to do."

Peters said that figuring out the right thing to do is "the common thread that runs through all of these very different stories."

Much is revealed in the first hour, so much that some viewers may wonder whether the series can possibly have a long lifespan.

"The original was conceived as a miniseries, so it was built that way," Bell said when asked about the failure of the 1984 series. "Knowing that we are built for longer, we've structured the end that way. By the end of the first season, you know what the Visitors' agenda is and where characters end up, on which side of the line."

In the second season, "We have a whole different arc again, but we are very much interested in keeping our characters in their own lives," Bell said, adding that he thought it would be more interesting for viewers "to see someone more like themselves, versus 'We are now on the run from an invading army.'"

The Visitors talk a lot about hope and change, and even about universal health care, but what seem like echoes of the Obama administration are merely "freakishly prescient," Peters said, noting that the series had been in development for a long time and had been delayed further by the writers strike.

"We are not looking to put any sort of agenda onto the table," he said. "But you know, there are wars, there are new diseases being discovered, old diseases that we are still dealing with. The economy is in the toilet. There are people losing their homes.

"Wouldn't it be awesome if 29 ships showed up and they all said, 'We've got this. We'll take care of you. Don't worry about it.' Wouldn't this be great?"