A crowd gathers to gawk at a huge spaceship that has appeared in the sky over Manhattan. The bottom of the ship turns into a screen (à la “Blade Runner”) showing the leader of the alien visitors. She announces that they mean us no harm, that they just need some water and a mineral “common and abundant on Earth” before they shove off.

The assembled New Yorkers digest this, look at one another  and start to applaud. That’s an early scene in “V,” the new science-fiction series beginning on Tuesday on ABC, and the only logical reaction to it is: on what planet does that happen? Certainly not ours, where a more natural reaction would be “Who does she think she’s kidding?” or words to that effect.

Applause makes sense on Planet Television, where the producers of “V”  working with the premise that only an underground network of rebel humans suspects the visitors’ true intentions  need the aliens to win over the rest of humanity before the third commercial break.

It’s a small point, but it’s indicative of a larger problem. The ideas in “V,” about alien encounters and mass delusion and media manipulation, are enticing. It’s too bad that they’re floating around in a show that at this early stage, is so slapdash and formulaic in its storytelling.