This one has David Vincent on a mission with Bob, who is a guy he met with the Believers group last episode. I was impressed to see that Bob made it into a second episode. He dies in this one.
Anyway, on their mission Vincent and Bob capture an Invader and intend to take him to Washington for questioning or whatever. The thing is, we’re told, this Invader holds a special rank in Invader society, so they will stop at nothing to get him back. As they run with their captive, the heroes find their way to a cabin where an elderly poet and his granddaughter live. Bob, as I said, dies, so we’ve got Vincent and the old man and the young girl and the Invader Leader Guy prisoner and they’re surrounded by Invaders coming to get their guy back. It’s a siege situation. And to make things even more tense, if the Invader Leader Guy doesn’t get to one of their regeneration chambers within a couple hours, he’s going to die.
We get all these people arguing their various points of view. In particular, the Leader offers Cyrus Stone, the old poet, the chance to rule over humanity in the Invader-controlled world. Stone is a cynical man who is tired of the world as it is, saying of the Invaders, “compared to what we have here, they might not be so bad.” One misstep that the Leader makes is that he praises Stone’s poetry and is asked “Are there poets on your planet?” he says there are, so Vincent says “I’d like to hear one of your poems” and the Leader has nothing. It’s all good stuff until David Vincent gets killed. That’s right, our hero, who we’re followed for all these episodes is having a fight with some Invaders and gets thrown into some sort of generator and is electrocuted. He is dead.
Stone asks alien leader a question. He’s heard them talk about the wonders that their technology can do, including their regeneration chambers, so can bring David Vincent back to life? The leader admits they can, if it is done quickly enough, like within the next couple minutes. Stone says that if they bring back David Vincent, then the Leader is free to go. The Leader agrees, but can’t understand the motivation of the human, giving up a chance to rule for one life. Stone says “We value life, that’s why we endure.” By the time David Vincent is awake again, though weak and confused, the aliens, including their Leader, are gone.
I always like when we learn a bit more about the Invaders. Their lack of poetry doesn’t surprise me at all given their lack of emotion (and I have my doubts they even use a spoken language in their natural forms), but this guy being a “Leader” is something new. He doesn’t phrase it like he is the boss of this operation or whatever, he says “Where I come from, I am a Leader. There is no equivalent here.” He makes it sound as if the word “Leader” is a compromise of language and that he is actually something more important. We probably won’t learn more about this, but I’ll keep it in mind.
Other things I bothered to note: Edgar Scoville, the rich man who runs the Believers group, seems to be very rich. When Vincent was on his own, he worked with the military, sure, but Scoville requests soldiers and gets them. That’s impressive.
Also, they’ve turned up a couple times, but the Invaders have these handheld communicator devices that are just little circles things that light up while you’re talking into them. They’re not particularly special, especially considering the devices we have now, but every time I see them I imagine a world where the people who would go on to create our cell phones and stuff were more inspired by this than the communicators on Star Trek.
