Opening week of the reboot of the ’80s Earth-invaders series, V, was seen by 14.3 million viewers, according to the Nielsen Company. That was the second-best new series premier for the season behind the CBS spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles, and it was the most-watched scripted show of the week among the young demographic networks bend over backwards for.

The audience and the vaunted 18-49 demographic performance for V almost tripled from what the network usually averages with the reality show Shark Tank in that same time slot. The show, “about aliens who seem friendly when they come to Earth seeking water but actually have ulterior motives,” built its audience in the second half-hour, which is usually a great sign that interest in the show held throughout the episode, though it seems the interest in V ended when the credits on the show ran. There was not much of a trickle-down effect from V for the rest of ABC’s all-star lineup. Dancing With the Stars still averaged 14.5 million viewers and finished third in adults 18-49 with a 3.1 rating. The Forgotten drew 7.6 million viewers and tied NBC’s Jay Leno with a 2.0 in adults 18-49.

Three of ABC’s new scripted series, including Modern Family and Flash Forward, finished among the 32 most-watched prime-time shows last week. Behind them was CBS, who had two of its new series within the top 32, Nielsen said. By contrast, Fox’s Bones was its only scripted series, new or otherwise, in Nielsen’s top 32. NBC failed to have any.

Besides V potentially having a built-in fan-base with fans of the original series, the sci-fi drama has had a reputation that it had continuous problems during production. In the past week the studio that owns the show, Warner Brothers, announced it was bringing in a new executive producer, Scott Rosenbaum (Chuck), to run the new series. The news came on the heels of reports that production of the series had been shut down. This resulted in the decision is that only four episodes of V were ready for broadcast. Those four will appear this month and then the show will go on hiatus until March.

It’s usually important for new shows to have a continuous presence to build an audience. It’s usually not the norm to pull new (and expensive!) shows and ask audiences to wait until spring so ABC must have some faith in their product. The network pulled a similar move when it debuted Lost.