The Invaders

Wikipedia:

The Invaders, a Quinn Martin Production (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 Network"), is an ABC science fiction television program created by Larry Cohen that ran in the United States 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.

Premise

Roy Thinnes starred as architect David Vincent, who accidentally learns of a secret alien invasion already underway and thereafter travels from place to place, trying 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, most significantly millionaire industrialist Edgar Scoville (Kent Smith) who became a semi-regular character as of December 1967.

Neither the Invaders nor their planet were ever named. Their human appearance was a disguise; they were never shown in their true form except 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. Nearly all 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 (1965) as a soldier court-martialed for cowardice, who traveled the West searching for witnesses and proof that he had acted valiantly, and Coronet Blue (1967) 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 (1956) and the British film Quatermass 2 (1957), 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 (not only had the aliens infiltrated human institutions already, but most humans would dismiss a claim of alien invasion as a paranoid delusion).

The flying saucer design was influenced by two famous 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 09-20-1965. The second is the Adamski case. On 1952 December 13, 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:

(A different shot of Thinnes' face was used for the second season.) This would be followed by the opening narration (by Bill Woodson):

Then in a manner typical of Quinn-Martin productions, Wesson would announce "The guest stars in tonight's story..." (including special guest stars), and finally, the title of tonight's episode.

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 (such as H.R. Giger would later present in Alien).

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 experience of the blacklisting of Hollywood screenwriters for alleged 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. 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 producers and actors.

The Invaders after the first 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 series was reprised as a three-hour television miniseries also titled The Invaders. Scott Bakula (of Quantum Leap and Star Trek: Enterprise) starred as Nolan Wood, who discovered 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 pilot episode of the series, "Beachhead", was remade years later in 1977 for another Quinn Martin series, 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.

Other media

Books

Ten books based on the television series were published.

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.

Syndication outside the US

The Invaders was aired in Brazil in the 1960s and in the 1980s, with its title translated to Portuguese, Os Invasores.

It was also aired in Quebec and France from the 1960s to the early 1980s, with its title translated to French as Les Envahisseurs.

The Invaders was also aired in the UK on ITV in the 1960s and 1970s, on BBC2 in the late 1980s (although the BBC omitted four episodes at the time - the two-parter "Summit Meeting," "The Prophet" and "The Captive") and again (this time the complete series) in the early 90s, and then the complete series on channel "Five" in 2004 (at around 5am on a Sunday morning). It has seen occasional repeats on the Sci-Fi channel.

It was also aired in Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s as Invasion von der Wega (Invasion from Vega). Not all episodes were dubbed in German or shown.

The Invaders was shown on state-run television network Australian Broadcasting Commission (later Corporation) in the 1960s and 1970s, without commercial advertisements inserted.

It was also aired in Italy from 1981, with its title translated to Italian as Gli Invasori.

The series were also aired in Russia on NTV channel in the late 1990s.

There was a very short run of the show in 2010 on the Sci-Fi network, and a similar "marathon" series on SyFy (the new name for Sci-Fi) in January, 2011.

The series were also aired in Argentina in the early 1970s with its title translated to Spanish, Los Invasores. The intro of the show was inserted in the Argentinian movie Kamchatka (2002)

It also ran on TVE in Spain as Los Invasores in 1968.

It was also aired in The Invaders English 1967.

It was also aired in Belgium, in the original version, on BRT (Belgian Radio and Television) in 1968 -1969

It was aired in Bulgaria on BT1 in 1987.

Episodes

Season 1 (1967)

Season 2 (1967-1968)

DVD releases

CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) has released the entire series on DVD in Regions 1, 2 & PAL 4.