The thing about watching the show for the first time and now knowing much about it was that I genuinely had no idea who the protagonist was going to be. The story begins with David Vincent stumbling across a landing alien spaceship and reporting it to the authorities, At this point I found it equally likely that Vincent could be the star (as he is by the fact I remember his name) or it could be a thing where he gets killed off and that makes the cop he was talking to realize that something is up and then HE becomes the star. Even just that little bit of uncertainty increased the tension of the episode

But it turns out that David Vincent (played by Roy Thinnes) with his impressive blue eyes is indeed the show’s star. Vincent has stumbled onto an ongoing alien invasion in which the Invaders are taking human form and infiltrating society. Anyway, the pilot episode lays all the tracks to have him lose any connections to his old home and begin wandering the country, nervous about who he trust. A perfect setup.

There’s a point in this episode where I got the impression that a human character identified someone as his aunt and that aunt turned out to be an alien. Did that mean the alien had replaced his actual aunt? It was unclear to me. Overall, it seems like the Invaders don’t replace existing humans on Earth, but just take a new human form and try to blend in. One thing that comes up in this episode is that their human forms have trouble simulating the pinky fingers of a human hands, and you can recognize an alien if their pinkies are stuck out, like polite little weirdos. This is an interesting start, through the episode takes that away fairly quickly and we’re told that not all of them have that problem. It does make me wonder about the natural form of the Invaders, though. Maybe they have hands with one less finger? Perhaps time shall tell.