The Invaders


The Invaders is an American science-fiction television program created by Larry Cohen that aired on ABC for two seasons, from 1967 to 1968. Roy Thinnes stars as David Vincent, who tries to thwart an in-progress alien invasion despite the disbelief of officials and the general public. The series was a Quinn Martin production.

Plot

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.
In many episodes, at least one individual, often a key figure such as a U.S. Air Force 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, as in episodes "Dark Outpost" and "The Pursued", and three scientists in "Labyrinth". Most significant of these is millionaire industrialist Edgar Scoville, who became a semiregular character as of December 1967, heading a small but influential group from the episode "The Believers". Later episodes had 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.
The series depicted an undercurrent of at least partial credulity among authority figures regarding Vincent's claims, even in the first season, as in early episodes such as "The Mutation", where a security agent is keeping an eye on Vincent and ends up inclined to believe him. In "The Innocent", the USAF officer guns down an alien who 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 whom 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 is kept to just the individual episode, with hinted official backing of Vincent. Elsewhere, Vincent is shown as being publicly 'dismissed as a crank' by the authorities, while behind the scenes they apparently take him seriously—for example in "Doomsday Minus One", where Vincent has been invited by an Army intelligence official and then is given classified information; in the two-part "Summit Meeting" where he is present at a top security meeting without any question; and in "Condition: Red" where he is allowed into NORAD without question. 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 television series 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 skeptical special assistant to the Attorney General, that the Invaders have arrived, after first defeating an alien plan with a special weapon. The aliens had withdrawn all their key personnel from Earth prior to its use, and the closing narration is 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 can be seen as showing Vincent achieve his goal of 'convincing disbelieving authorities' at least, and the Invaders' plans temporarily thwarted, leaving the door open for any possible later sequel or spinoff series.

Cast

Development

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 series' 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 10 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 flying saucer design was influenced by two UFO photographs. The first case happened in 1965 in Santa Ana, California. On August 3, 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, 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.
Season one was produced in association with the ABC Television Network or as it was listed in the end credits, "The American Broadcasting Company Television Networks".

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:
This would be followed by the opening narration :
Then, in a manner typical of Quinn Martin productions, Wesson would announce, "The guest stars in tonight's story…", and announce the name of each guest star over a series of close-up clips of the guest stars. Wesson would then announce "Tonight's Episode", and say the title of the episode about to be viewed, which would also appear on screen.
Dominic Frontiere, who had provided scores for Twelve O'Clock High and The Outer Limits, provided scores for The Invaders, as well.

Cold War allegory

For many viewers, the theme of paranoia infusing The Invaders often appeared to reflect Cold War realities 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. 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 documentary" of the fear of the 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; 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.
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 invaders to communists.

Contemporary TV Series Cold War Themes

The reference to the Soviet Union training their spies using American settings was a popular plot device in the mid-1960's television shows. Besides The Invaders episode "The Ivy Curtain", a play on the Iron Curtain, Mission Impossible 1966 episode "The Carriers" has the IMF infiltrating a Communist training facility, which is a replica of an American town behind the Iron Curtain. The British series Danger Man episode "Colony Three" has M4 agent John Drake infiltrating a replica English village behind the Iron Curtain.
The 1951 Howard Hughes film ''The Whip Hand" depicted a Wisconsin small town populated by Soviet agents engaging in a plot to poison the American water supply.
Boris Korczak, a former double agent who worked for the CIA, spying on the KGB from 1973-1980, has stated that the Soviet Union training their spies in American settings is not a product of McCarthy-era paranoia, but is based on fact.

The Invaders

Characteristics

Neither the Invaders nor their planet were ever named. Their human appearance was a disguise; they were shown in their true form in two episodes. In "Genesis", an ill alien researcher loses his human form and is briefly seen immersed in a tank of water. "The Enemy" had a dying, mutated Invader revert to his true appearance. 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 or heartbeat and the inability to bleed. Most of the aliens, in particular the lowest-ranking members or workers in green jumpsuits, were emotionless and had deformed little fingers that could not move and were bent at an unnatural angle, although "deluxe models" could manipulate this finger. Black aliens' palms were not pale, like humans of African descent, but were the same shade as the rest of their skins. Also, a number of mutant aliens experienced emotions similar to those of humans, and 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 burn up 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. In episode three, one of them tells David Vincent, "That's what happens to us when we die here on Earth."

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. Numerous pieces of alien technology featured "penta" or five-sided designs. It was a principle of the production crew not to 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.

Episodes

Season 1 (1967)

Season 2 (1967–68)

Home media

has released the entire series on DVD in Regions 1, 2 & PAL 4.
On June 5, 2018, CBS Home Entertainment released The Invaders: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1.
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. 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.
On May 5, 2019, "classic-TV" digital/basic-cable network MeTV began weekly airings of The Invaders as part of its "Red-Eye Sci-Fi Saturday Night" late Saturday evening/early Sunday morning programming lineup.

Spin-offs and remakes

Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected (1977)

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".

The Invaders miniseries (1995)

In 1995, the premise was used as the basis for a four-hour television miniseries remake titled The Invaders on Fox. Scott Bakula starred as Nolan Wood, who discovers the alien conspiracy, and Roy Thinnes very briefly appeared as 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 first part aired on November 12, 1995; part 2 aired on November 14, 1995.

Reuse of footage

Several seconds of footage from the opening sequence of the flying saucer approaching Earth from space appears in the opening of the episode "The Innocent Prey" of the series The Fantastic Journey. It aired on June 6, 1977. In the plot of that final episode of the series, the saucer was a prisoner transport ship of the future operated by humans that malfunctioned and crashed on Earth at night in the heavy vegetation of a jungle. The full-scale saucer used in ground scenes, however, was physically different on the outside and inside from The Invaders one.

''The Invaders'' abroad

The series 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 also met with success in South America and Germany.
It was popular in the UK; it was shown there on ITV in the 1960s, with several repeat runs on BBC2 from 1983 onwards to Sunday mornings in 1993. It appeared on SciFi Channel in 2004 and 2013, and the seasons played throughout on Horror Channel during summer of 2017, 2018 and mid summer of 2019.
Very popular in Spain, it inspired the name of a weekly street market in Albacete, still called Los Invasores as the market stalls invade the streets.
Despite its alleged allegory of the Cold War, the series also made it across the Iron Curtain into Hungary, where it was dubbed and aired under the title "Attack from an Alien Planet" between July 4 and September 5, 1980. The whole series was never shown, with only the black and white versions of the following 9 episodes making it to the TV screens after prime time on Friday nights, in the sequence indicated : 1/1, 1/11, 1/13, 2/12, 2/14, 1/4, 2/7, 2/6, 2/21. These 9 episodes were described in the media as the complete series, with no reference made to the existence of any other episodes. Newspaper reviews tended to be critical of the show being "more fiction than science". It was nevertheless well received by viewers, as attested by references to it in popular culture at the time. Romanian state TV also broadcast both seasons sometime around 1970.

In other media

Books

Ten books based on the television series have been published.