The Invaders is an American science fiction television program created by
Larry Cohen that aired on ABC for two seasons, from January 10, 1967 to March
26, 1968. Dominic Frontiere, who had provided scores for Twelve O'Clock High
and The Outer Limits, provided scores for The Invaders as well.
The series was a Quinn Martin Production.
Premise Roy Thinnes stars as architect David
Vincent, who accidentally learns of a secret alien invasion already underway
and thereafter travels from place to place attempting to foil the aliens'
plots and warn a skeptical populace of the danger. As the series progresses
Vincent is able to convince a small number of people to help him fight the
aliens. It was notable that normally at least
one individual, often a key figure, such as a USAF intelligence officer, a police
officer, a U.S. Army major, or a NASA official would become aware of the alien
threat and survive the episode in which he or she was introduced. In 'The
Leeches' a millionaire survives an alien abduction after being rescued by
Vincent, while in 'Quantity: Unknown' a scientist is convinced of alien
technology, in 'The Saucer' guest stars Anne Francis and Charles Drake witness
an alien saucer's landing. In the second season larger groups of surviving
witnesses were featured in episodes and three scientists in 'Labyrinth', most
significantly millionaire industrialist Edgar Scoville who became a semi-regular
character as of December 1967, heading a small but influential group from the
episode 'The Believers'. Later episodes saw the military involved as Vincent's
claims were now clearly being taken more seriously. In 'The Miracle' after an
alien encounter Vincent manages to retain a piece of alien technology both
as evidence and for examination by both his group and the authorities.
It can be seen that an undercurrent of at least partial credulity among
authority figures regarding Vincent's claims was depicted, even in the first
season, as in early episodes such as 'The Mutation' where a security agent is
keeping an eye on Vincent, while in 'The Innocent' The USAF Officer guns down an
alien who self-incinerates in front of him, tying in with Vincent's
claims,(while at the end of the episode after apparently disbelieving Vincent he
then phones USAF security to run a full background check on an officer Vincent
claimed was an alien), in 'Moonshot' the NASA official is fully expecting Vincent
to arrive, and in 'Condition: Red' a NORAD Officer and staff witness an alien
UFO formation onscreen, and are left convinced. Each of these incidents are
kept to just the individual episodes, yet any possible hinted official backing
of Vincent might explain how with no apparent regular job or income he could
travel all over the USA with expensive cameras, hired cars, and stay in good
accommodation, while taking on the Invaders...with Vincent simply being
apparently 'dismissed as a crank' to the public by the authorities thus viewers
were left to draw their own conclusions as to the situation regarding Vincent's
actual standing. Some controversy arose regarding the
sudden ending of the TV show after season two as it was deemed no proper
ending had been written, yet the final season-two episode 'Inquisition' does
stand as some kind of series conclusion where Vincent finally convinces a key
figure, an initially sceptical special assistant to the Attorney General, that
the Invaders have arrived, after first defeating an alien plan with a special
weapon, the closing narration being that Vincent, Edgar Scoville, and the now
convinced Special Assistant will join forces as the vanguard to watch for any
return of the Invaders... thus this episode could be deemed to have seen
Vincent achieve his goal of 'convincing disbelieving authorities' at least and
the Invaders plans at least temporarily thwarted, leaving the door open for any
possible later sequel or spinoff show, etc.
Neither the Invaders nor their planet were ever named. Their human appearance
was a disguise; they were only shown in their true form in one episode,
"Genesis", in which an ill alien researcher loses his human form and is
briefly seen immersed in a tank of water. Unless they receive periodic
treatments in what Vincent called "regeneration chambers", which consume a
great deal of electrical power, they revert to their alien form. One scene in
the series showed an alien beginning to revert, filmed in soft focus and with
pulsating red light. They had certain characteristics by
which they could be detected, such as the absence of a pulse and the inability
to bleed. Most of the aliens, in particular the lowest-ranking members or
workers in green jumpsuits, were emotionless and had "mutated" little
fingers which could not move and were bent at an unnatural angle, although
there were "deluxe models" who could manipulate this finger. There were also
a number of mutant aliens, who experienced emotions similar to those of
humans, and who even opposed the alien takeover. The existence of the Invaders
could not be documented by killing one and examining the body: When they died,
their bodies would glow red and disintegrate — along with their clothes
and anything else they were touching — leaving little more than traces of black
ash. On several occasions, a dying alien would deliberately touch a piece of
their technology to prevent it from falling into the hands of humans.
Inspiration The series was produced by Quinn Martin,
who was looking for a show to replace the immensely popular The Fugitive,
which was ending its run in 1967. Larry Cohen, the show's creator, had conceived
two earlier series with similarities to The Invaders. Chuck Connors starred in
Branded as a soldier court-martialed for cowardice, who traveled the West
searching for witnesses and proof that he had acted valiantly, and Coronet Blue
about Michael Alden, a man suffering from amnesia who was being pursued by a
powerful group of people. All he could remember were the words "Coronet Blue".
Another inspiration was the wave of "alien doppelgänger" films which had
come ten years before in the 1950s, typified by Invasion of the Body
Snatchers and the British film Quatermass 2, known in America as Enemy
from Space. While these paranoid tales of extraterrestrials who lived among us,
posing as humans while planning a takeover, are usually linked with a Red
Scare subtext, Martin simply wanted a premise that would keep the hero moving
around and that would explain why he could not go to the authorities, however
as the series unfolded the various 'disappearances' of people in episodes,
those installed alien figures revealed to be aliens by Vincent thus having to
withdraw plus the surviving one or two key human witnesses in most episodes did
rather alter the basic premise of the show to something deeper and more
thought provoking early on. The basic idea of just one man standing
between Earth being invaded by an entire alien force with advanced technology,
rather stretched viewer credulity. The episodes do however have curious
undercurrents both regarding the political overtones and quite subtle
hints that more was going on than at first appeared, making it a far more
compelling show than it first might appear, anticipating later such shows as
The X Files and Dark Skies etc., which were clearly influenced to a degree by
The Invaders. The flying saucer design was influenced
by two UFO photographs. The first case happened in 1965 in Santa Ana,
California. On August 3, the highway traffic engineer Rex Heflin took several
pictures of a flying craft, while working near the Santa Ana freeway.
Heflin did not report his sighting, but the photographs were published by the
Santa Ana Register on September 20, 1965. The second is the Adamski case. On
December 13, 1952 in Palomar Gardens, California, USA, the contactee George
Adamski took a series of photographs through his telescope, of a bell-shaped
craft, today well known as the Adamski Scout Ship. The upper hull, and flat top
from the Heflin case were combined with the bell-shaped outer flange and three
rings of the Adamski case. The five hemispheres in the bottom of the craft
seem to emulate the three semispheres in the Adamski Scout Ship.
Opening sequence Before each episode, an "in color" promo
bumper, typical of most ABC programs of the era, appears, as ABC was the last
network to adopt color programming: Next... The Invaders, In Color!
Then, following the bumper, each episode begins with a cold open, to help set up
the plot of the episode to come. After the prologue, the main title appears,
announced by Dick Wesson: The Invaders! A Quinn Martin Production.
Starring Roy Thinnes as architect David Vincent.
(A different shot of Thinnes' face was used for the second season.) This would
be followed by the opening narration: The Invaders, alien beings from a dying
planet. Their destination: the Earth. Their purpose: to make it their world.
David Vincent has seen them. For him, it began one lost night on a lonely country
road, looking for a shortcut that he never found. It began with a closed
deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey.
It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy. Now David Vincent
knows that the Invaders are here, that they have taken human form. Somehow he
must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already begun.
Then in a manner typical of Quinn Martin productions, Wesson would announce "The
guest stars in tonight's story...", and finally, the title of the episode about
to be viewed. This format, curiously, served to abruptly undermine the
viewers' suspension of disbelief that had just been painstakingly established
in the voiceover introduction. Alien technology
The type of spaceship by which the Invaders reach the Earth is a flying
saucer of a design derivative of that shown in the contestable early 1950s
photographs of self-proclaimed UFO "contactee" George Adamski, but instead
of having three spheres on the underside, the Invaders' craft has five
shallower protrusions. It was a principle of the production crew to not
show them with set and prop designs and control panels that were utterly alien
from the conventional human ones. They use a small, handheld, disc-shaped
weapon with five glowing white lights applied to the back of the victim's head
or neck to induce a seemingly-natural death, which is usually diagnosed as a
cerebral hemorrhage. They also employ powerful weapons to disintegrate
witnesses, vehicles and - in one episode - a sick member of their own race whose
infection's side effects were resulting in unwanted notoriety. Also in their
arsenal is a small device consisting of two spinning transparent crystals joined
at their corners which forces human beings to do the aliens' bidding.
Cold War overtones For many viewers, the theme of paranoia
infusing The Invaders often appeared to reflect Cold War fears of communist
infiltration that had lingered from the McCarthy period a decade earlier. Series
creator Larry Cohen has acknowledged that this was intended, along with a
political theme for the series as a whole. In audio commentary for the
episode "The Innocent," included in the first-season DVD collection, Cohen said
his knowledge of the blacklisting of Hollywood screenwriters for their
communist connections inspired him to make "a mockery" of the fear of
insidious infiltration of society, by substituting space aliens for
communists. Cohen also acknowledged he was not the
first to turn Cold War fears into science-fiction drama. As noted above,
such fears had influenced such films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and
especially I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Cohen also stated in his
commentary that the political intent inherent in some of his creations,
including The Invaders, was not always appreciated or shared by left-wing
producers and actors. It should be noted that in an interview shown in the
special features segment included on the DVD release of Invasion Of The Body
Snatchers, star Kevin McCarthy strongly denied any desire by director Don Siegel
or the film's writer to connect the invading Body Snatchers to communists.
The Invaders after the original series Since the 1960s, recurring public
interest in UFO lore may have helped to revive interest in the television
series, and commentary on the DVD collections acknowledges that, in
private life, Thinnes has kept up a strong interest in UFO-related
information. In 1995, the premise was used as the
basis for a three-hour television miniseries titled The Invaders. Scott
Bakula starred as Nolan Wood, who discovers the alien conspiracy, and Roy
Thinnes reprised his role from the series of David Vincent, now an old man
handing the burden over to Wood. The miniseries has been released in some
countries on home video, edited into a single movie. The miniseries bore very
little similarity to Quinn Martin's TV show, however; the aliens had no
characteristics in common with their predecessors besides just 'looking
human', and their technology differed. David Vincent's character - who made
little more than a cameo - exits the story without explanation and the
miniseries has no continuity with where the TV show left off.
The pilot episode of the series, "Beachhead", was remade in 1977 for
another Quinn Martin series, Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected, where
it was retitled "The Nomads". Thinnes also provided audio commentary
for the official The Invaders DVD releases. He has also filmed special
video introductions for every episode, which are an optional "Play" feature on
the episode menus. The "in color" bumper follows each of these introductions.
The Invaders abroad The show proved to be enormously popular
in France, and it is still a local favorite, inspiring books, comics,
songs, comedy skits, and even TV advertising commercials.
In Italy, it became a popular "filler" for syndicated TV stations in the 1980s.
The series had also a good success in South America and Germany.
Other media = Books =
Ten books based on the television series were published.
Army of the Undead by Rafe Bernard – the same story as Halo Highway
The Autumn Accelerator by Peter Leslie, 1967)
Enemies from Beyond by Keith Laumer Halo Highway by Rafe Bernard – the same
story as Army of the Undead Invaders by Keith Laumer
Meteor Man by Keith Laumer Dam of Death by Jack Pearl, 1967)
The Invaders: Alien Missile Threat by Paul S. Newman
Night of the Trilobites by Peter Leslie The Invaders by Jim Rosin
= Comics = Gold Key Comics published four issues of
an Invaders comic book based upon the series in 1967-1968, years before Marvel
Comics published their own, unrelated Invaders superhero series.
In popular culture The struggles of David Vincent are
referenced in the Frank Black song "Bad, Wicked World": "An architect named David
Vincent / A man too long without sleep / He took a wrong turn and people just
laughed / [...] / Fist-throwing crusader / Against invaders"
MAD magazine issue #119, presented a TV satire of The Invaders titled “The
Invasioners”. Episodes
= Season 1 = = Season 2 =
DVD releases CBS DVD has released the entire series
on DVD in Regions 1, 2 & PAL 4. References
External links The Invaders at the Internet Movie
Database The Invaders at Classic TV History
The Invaders informational episode Guide The Invaders informational web site
The Invaders television trailer at YouTube