One thing about David Vincent is that he is an extremely direct person. I’ve faulted him multiple times for being so open about his fighting of this alien invasion. Well, in this episode he actually uses an alias to disguise his identity! Daniel Baxter he says he is! He gets a job as the driver of the wife of the guy is suspects and says a fake name. He’s learned how to be subtle.

And then he gets to the place he wants to investigate and immediately just runs into rooms he’s not supposed to be in and gets caught. But he’s learning.

Anyway, Vincent read reports in the newspaper of a guy who died claiming he’d seen alien things in the headquarters of Vikor Industries. Vickor is run by George Vikor, a former war hero who has sold out his species and is working alongside the aliens. Posing as her driver, Vincent befriends Vikor’s neglected wife Sherri and brings her up to speed about the invasion and how her husband is a traitor to humanity. They try to reason with George, and it seems like it could work. George lost a leg in Korea, and got a plate in his head, and was lauded as a hero. But still, when he got back home things weren’t enough for him. He may be the owner of a successful company, but it isn’t enough. The Invaders can let him be a ruler of what remains of humanity in the world they conquer. That power is what he needs.

Anyway, thanks to some truly impressive quick-draw-shooting Vincent manages to escape. He leaves a phone message with Vikor Industries thanking Vikor for helping him escape, which the aliens believe and they kill Vikor. Unlike last episode, this time Vincent does report to the FBI, though the aliens have cleaned up Vikor Industries, so there remains no proof that any of it happened. Sherri survives, though. Another in a growing list of potential allies for Vincent, or potential victims for the Invaders.

I need to note that the head villain in this one is pretty good. He’s even got a cool name: Mr. Nexus. He survives at the end and would be great as a recurring opponent for Vincent, but having spoiled myself that we don’t get returning characters for a long time yet, I guess it wasn’t to be.

For the record, they do have the finger thing again in this one. Good.

Okay, this time the aliens are growing something in a big vat! Those dastardly dastards!

The episode opens with a cop pulling over a car that turns out to have Invaders in there. And they’ve got something so shocking that when the cop see it, he basically goes catatonic. What did he see? Well that’s a secret.

Our hero David Vincent hears about this cop going comatose and figures “that sounds like alien work” and comes to town to investigate. He arrives, once again using his full name and not at all pretending to not be an anti-Invader crusader. He winds up teamed up with the cop’s friend, other cop. The first cop dies, so now the second cop gets to be called “the cop” for the rest of this.

Anyway, Vincent gets absolutely almost killed by an alien who know who he is, but the cop saves him and witnesses the disintegration that occurs when the alien dies, and thus learns about the aliens. So, once again, Vincent has an ally in the form of an authority figure. They go on an investigation and learn that the Invaders are taking over a sea lab. I don’t need to go through full details, but fisticuffs at the sea lab result in a fire that burns the place down and foils the aliens’ plans. The cop and another ally who works in the lab both survive and Vincent has two more allies in the world. He really needs to make a team of these people. But in this one, the cop offers to accompany Vincent to the FBI and Vincent basically says “Nah.” I would guess the idea is that he’s worried they have infiltrated the government, but it sure isn’t consistent with how his life has actually been going.

What were the aliens’ plans in the sea lab? Well, they’re doing an experiment that simulates primordial conditions in a vat so they can grow new life, but also they seem to be growing their leader? I guess. Considering I’ve started taking notes while I watch, I’d like to have a better idea, but I don’t. Blame the episode, not me. Or blame me. Either way. What’s important is we learn the aliens also have some sort of hypnotism technology and, even more important, we see some more of the pinky fingers being used to spot aliens. I thought that might have been forgotten, but it hasn’t!

I give David Vincent some crap for not going deeper into hiding as he opposes the alien invasion conspiracy, but I guess there is one upside: when a scientist notices that a bunch of other top scientists have disappeared and he suspects aliens are behind it, he goes to Vincent for help. David Vincent is well known enough by not only the aliens, but the humans, as a guy who is opposing the alien invasion. It’s interesting because, as I’ve said, it is not at all what I expected from the show. I thought it was gonna be a guy wandering from town to town with nothing but the shirt on his back stumbling into alien schemes. But no, he’s public and active and defying my every expectation.

Anyway, the scientists are being kidnapped by the Invaders, who then use fancy machines to drain the information from their brains. The process does a lot of mental damage. So Vincent joins the security team to prevent the main scientist from being taken, but the main scientist absolutely gets taken. The Invaders park a big truck in front of the scientist’s route, then grab him and his whole car and put him in the trailer. Classic. And then, when Vincent and Other Guy try to follow, their car doesn’t work because the engine disintegrates. The aliens have some manner of Engine Destroyo Rays that I bet will never come up again.

But then Vincent keeps searching for the scientist. Other Guy gives up, but Vincent keeps at it. But then, when Vincent is in danger, Other Guy comes back to save the day. He’s like Han Solo, except that he ends up dead. But you know who does not end up dead? The scientist that Vincent was helping! They rescue him and some of the other kidnapped scientists, though those other ones are not doing well. Still, this is probably Vincent’s most successful outing so far! If I had not been spoiled that there are no recurring cast members until the second season, I’d assume that the scientist here becomes a steadfast ally. Instead, who knows what happens to him?

Also, I’m pretty sure this was the episode that had the climactic showdown at the Vasquez Rocks.

This is the last of these episodes I watched before I decided I should post about them on here. Potentially that means that the from now on they will potentially be more detailed, because I’ll take notes while I watch, but also I’m only watching one episode a week, so posting will go more slowly.

This is why David Vincent needs to be stealthier. It’s the third episode and the Invaders have already set a trap for him. They are clearly aware he’s out there and he still just uses his real name.

The trap is that he comes to some town where the military have been investigating UFOs and meets some people who claim to be on his side. They aren’t on his side. One of them is named Vikki, who is a sexy lady they were clearly trying to seduce him with. The thing is, she’s the one who gets seduced! Vikki is a “mutated” form of the aliens, capable of feeling emotions, which apparently the rest of them can not. And she has fallen in love with Vincent and his inescapable blue eyes. This, more than anything, felt to me like whenever a female villain on the Adam West Batman show (a contemporary of this show) would fall in love with Batman so easily and question her life of crime. Anyway, as one might expect, Vikki is torn between her people and her love, and Vincent isn’t sure if he can trust her, but does learn some new things about his foes. Naturally, like a Batman villainess who has to fall into a nuclear reactor or whatever to end the episode, Vikki tragically does not survive this one.

Among the things we learn about the aliens in this episode is that when they die on Earth, they disintegrate into a flash of red light, which leaves no remains, so there’s no evidence to show anyone. How convenient for the aliens. I mean, maybe not “convenient” because it means one of them dies, but for their conspiracy it sure is helpful. You know what I mean. What we don’t know is if this is the result of, like, the chemical makeup of Earth’s atmosphere reacting to their bodies or something, or maybe it is the result of being killed while they are in a human form. The former would imply their natural forms are so alien to our world that it really makes you wonder why they’d even bother trying to take over the planet.

As I write this, I’ve watched four episodes of the Invaders and I have not taken notes while doing so, because I only decided to do posts about the show after watching them. But one thing that I’ve noticed in all three episodes that came after the first, including this one, is that protagonist David Vincent is not wandering stealthily from town to town like a lonely fugitive on the run, but instead he operates openly under his own name and meets other people also aware of the Invaders.

Anyway, in this one there’s a Professor who knows about the Invaders and I think he made a public claim of having proof he was going to reveal, which seems like a mistake given the conspiracy. Vincent shows up to do a team-up with this Professor, but things go badly. The Professor is killed by the aliens, leaving only his son (played by young Roddy McDowall) with any idea where the proof may be. The problem is, the aliens have a brainwashing machine in this one! They have the Professor’s son under their control and thus, after Vincent locates the evidence, the aliens get (and I think destroy it), so Vincent loses. He does, however, help the Professor’s son fight against the brainwashing, but he also dies. Basically, Vincent has lost two potential allies here, and gained nothing. Oh well, the brainwashing machine is broken.