"V" Is For "Verisimilitude"

A comment on a series about space aliens requires something with a star theme I think. "V" is about aliens coming to Earth so Starshower seemed like an appropriate image for this commentary.
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Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm an unabashed Science Fiction fan (not quite to capital-letter Fandom but close). I want Science Fiction to succeed on the big screen: more than that I want good S.F. to succeed. That's why I was so uncertain when I found out that somebody had the idea to resurrect the "classic" series "V" and bring it back to television.
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"V" began life nearly a generation ago as a pair of big-budget miniseries and later became a TV series. After a year the franchise came to an ignominious end--crushed under the weight of production expense and the sheer cheese on screen. Still, the show was loaded with eighties hotties so tasty you could eat them with a spoon (and whatever happened to Jane Badler and Marc Singer anyway?) and pretty darn good FX (at least for TV at that time). With the success of Battlestar Galactica on the Sci Fi Channel (now SyFy) decided to bring back another classic.
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The basic premise hasn't changed: "friendly" aliens from a distant planet show up on Earth and make nice. The visitors are welcomed with open arms but the alien visitors have sinister intentions. (In the original series the Visitors were using Earth as a gigantic cattle ranch.) Most (if not all) of the old characters have been jettisoned or re-imagined to the point that I didn't recognize them. The FX are top notch and the show is both well written and acted, I found the many intertwining story arcs and characters to be interesting.
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I wanted to like the show--and I was captured while I was watching it--but then the show ended and it came completely unraveled (for me at least: the TV viewing public game "V" super high ratings). A program like this requires verisimilitude (which is to say it has a sense of truth. The viewer has to have a sense of "yeah, that could happen": they must willing suspend their disbelief. As for me--I could never quite manage that no matter how hard I tried.
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My big complaint is this: why could a group of aliens who have the ability to safely travel interstellar distances (which would require impressive technology even for "generation" ships) NEED to use subterfuge to conquer humanity? And--while I'm on the subject of wondering things--why do the aliens use Earth-type guns with bullets? (Surely they'd have something more advanced...) Why was it that an entire FLEET of truly gigantic spaceships escape ANY kind of detection as they approached Earth? Was there some sort of reaction by government bodies? (Honestly, I can't see Military types all over the globe simply letting these things drop in without some sort of challenge...) I can swallow (or at least ignore) a lot of things (remember verisimilitude?) but these things simply bug me beyond all reason!
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Will these questions be addressed in the context of the series? I don't know: I hope so. Still, I'll keep watching the show--for a while at least. And I'll keep hoping for the best even as I fear the worst...
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'nuff said.