Anti-Hero for the People: V’s Ham Tyler

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Photos copyright Warner Brothers

If there ever is an alien invasion, then you will find that normal people are suddenly thrust into an extraordinary situation where they are fighting against a superior enemy in order to protect what they love.

This was the state of the Los Angeles resistance in V when the Visitors arrived. They were hornets in the lizard’s collective asses but they were poorly organised with Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) and Julie Parris (Faye Grant) cast as leaders.

So you really need someone like Ham Tyler on your side. Gruff, sarcastic, ready to do whatever it takes no matter who it offends, Ham arrives together with his closest friend and fellow mercenary, Chris Farber. However his arrival is not welcomed by all.

He and Donovan have a long standing dislike of each other. Having covered many volatile situations in other countries, Donovan has met Ham several times before and disagreed with his methods. Ham has a nickname for Donovan, Gooder which is short for Do Gooder. Donovan grudgingly admits they need Ham’s help when their base is discovered and destroyed by the Visitors.

Ham and Chris reveal there is a world wide resistance now and Los Angeles must become a part of it but only with his help. He begins to organise their attacks to become more efficient. Ham’s knowledge of weapons and tactics are invaluable. He trains the resistance in stealth attacks so they can get closer to Visitors and their bases. As a result the Los Angeles resistance become a serious threat to Diana and her army.

Ham and Donovan’s feud comes to a head in a brutal fistfight which Ham concedes because he has underestimated Donovan’s resolve.

Ham has no issues killing any Visitor so when they need a subject to test the Red Dust on, he is about to use it on Willy (Robert Englund) before he is stopped by the others. To Ham, all Visitors should be eliminated regardless and it is clear he does not want Willy around.

Ham is a very violent person but he has a righteous part to his nature. He knows right from wrong and while his style is not always acceptable, his motives are based in love and loyalty.

It is revealed that Ham and Chris were in fact CIA operatives. When they were betrayed by their superiors, he they both left to become mercenaries for hire. On a mission for the government Ham met and married a woman with whom he had a daughter. They were to be evacuated during Ham’s mission but they were caught in the bombing raid and presumably killed. Furious, he became said mercenary and never trusted the government again. His grief drove him and still ran deep when Diana tried to programme him and used these memories to mould him into a Manchurian Candidate. This career change led him to cross paths with Donovan. And Ham was not shy about causing any type of inconvenience to the government every chance he got.

He never took credit for his heroics and kept people at arms length. But if Ham liked you then you could count on him for life. Part of his drive was to stop families feeling the pain he felt every day. He was alone. When they died his life was over so perhaps his mercenary career was really a death wish. When he died he would die having done right by people.

His grudging respect for Donovan may have formed part of his personal plan. He organised the hot air balloons to spread the Red Dust right under the Visitor’s noses when in fact he spearheaded the attack on the Visitors headquarters in the final battle. He took great pleasure in emptying a bag of Red Dust into Visitor commander, Steven’s mouth. The only expression on his face as the lizard convulsed in agony, choking to death was…satisfaction.

Steven has destroyed Donovan’s family by manipulating then murdering his mother and being part of taking Donovan’s son to be brainwashed by Diana. So that is justice in Ham’s eyes.

When the Visitors were driven off, we go forward to a year later when the world is recovering from the Visitor invasion. Ham has begun his own private security company. He now wears a suit which is so not Ham. When questioned by Bates about how valuable Diana’s knowledge would be in curing diseases, Ham growls that Diana is the disease. He is offered half a million dollars to do what Bates wants. Ham as lost none of his skills as he fakes Diana’s assassination and transports her to Bates where he gives her a proposal. He even arranges for the ambulance to drive into a pick up lorry and driven away unnoticed. But Ham has a condition to his deal with the devil; once Bates has drained all her knowledge, she is to be given to Ham. He may even make her into a pair of boots. Bates, now in control of, the new neutral city of Los Angeles where both Visitors and humans are welcome, pays Ham to bring Diana to him. But it all goes wrong and she escapes.

It doesn’t take long for the old Ham to jump back into service when he discovers that Bates messed up and Dina is now free again. He quickly ditches the suit for a weapon. He is a man on a mission again. When bates asks how will he know if ham has klilled Diana, he replies that bates will still be alive. And when he tells you he will stand on your neck if he doesn’t get what he wants, Ham says it so casually, it’s almost on a serial killer level. When he says it, you believe him.

With the Red Dust no longer a threat, Diana intends to finish her mission and drain Earth of all its resources and take revenge on those who thwarted her the first time round. Turning on Bates, Ham again joins the struggle as he is partly responsible for the Visitors getting a second chance to destroy humanity.

Now when the series went weekly, the main core of characters suddenly began to dwindle. V works because it is an ensemble show. It doesn’t work if you break that apart. In one episode, Ham and Chris leave to take Robin to Los Angeles…

And that is the last you see of Ham Tyler. It is a disrespectful and lazy exit for one of its most important characters. The rest of the episodes limped to cancellation but I always wondered why they did that.

So when I got the chance to finally meet Michael Ironside at Dublin Comic Con 2024, I asked him. He told me the producers wanted rid of him which just said to me how little the producers of the weekly series understood the show. Ham is one of those characters like Data, Spock or Alexis Carrington. It just doesn’t wok without him. No one else could have played ham bar ironside and he will forever go down as one of best characters in sci fi. But then again, Ironside never gives a poor performance.

Needless to say we can still enjoy the show and those great Ham moments.