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.
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.
I’ve done some posts about going back through sci-fi shows I’ve seen before and giving my thoughts about the episodes, but not for a while. But I’m still watching sci-fi, so why not keep doing posts like that? So I’m gonna do it again!
Except this time, it’s not me watching a sci-fi show from my youth again, it’s me watching a sci-fi show from the 60s that I’ve never seen before. The Invaders aired for two seasons in the ’60s. I know some things about the show (and as of this moment, I’ve actually watched the first four episodes), for example I know that it’s adjacent to the kind of Pod Person/Dire Wraith alien invasion story that I usually find quite fun. But there’s a lot I don’t know too, so I’ll probably just have to shut up and start documenting my thoughts as I watch.
