I liked this episode a lot. One of David Vincent’s war buddies, Charlie Gilman, brought in Vincent because he thinks a guy he works with (Fred Wilk) isn’t human. Unfortunately this escalates to a fight between Gilman and the man and Gilman hits Wilk in the head with a wrench of something and Wilk dissipates in the way the Invaders do when they die. Even more unfortunately, this fight took place in front of a big industrial furnace and was partially witnessed by a security guard who has to assume that Gilman killed Wilk and threw the body into the furnace. And EVEN MORE unfortunately, Wilk was married to Gilman’s ex-girlfriend Janet so he has a motive to have killed Wilk that has nothing to do with him being an alien. So now, to free his friend David Vincent has to prove to the court that the dead man was not ever human.

I won’t go beat-by-beat or anything, but here’s some stuff I feel worthy of comment:

Vincent brings in a private investigator named Brennan to help him determine that there is no history of Wilk from more than a year ago. I love a good PI and Brennan may not believe Vincent’s story but he’s willing to help. Shame that he ends up dead (“What did Brennan have for us?” “A cerebral hemorrhage.”)

In their attempt to prove that Wilk did indeed have a past, two more Invaders show up as elderly humans posing as Wilk’s parents. After they do this Vincent follows them away and they mock him (they do, of course, know full well who he is) and poison themselves so they can die and burn away. We’ve seen Invaders who will sacrifice themselves for the cause, to burn away taking their tech with them or whatever, but I know of no reason that these two had to kill themselves after their testimony. It really makes me wonder about the alien attitude to life and death if they can throw it away so casually.

Janet has an infant child! I was uncertain on this one at first. Did it mean that the Invaders can mate with humans? It seemed so unlikely. They don’t have blood, they need technology to even simulate a pulse, I assumed there was no way the Invaders be jizzin’. But it makes sense, because it turns out that the kid was Charlie’s all along. (Charlie Gilman be jizzin’.)

It’s a good plot for not knowing who to trust. Vincent and Gilman prefer a trial by judge rather than trial by jury because that leaves less chance to Invaders to slip in. Until he knows of her romantic history with Charlie, Vincent is suspicious that Janet might be an Invader. There’s even a beat where Vincent can’t be sure that Charlie didn’t actually kill his love rival and call Vincent in to use Vincent’s alien stories as an alibi of sorts. Gilman does shut this down by pointing out that he’s willing to go to jail and if the exact same circumstances had happened but Wilk had been human, he probably would have done it.

But in the end, it turns out that Gilman’s lawyer (played by Russell Johnson, who also played the Professor on Gilligan’s Island!) is an Invader! We’re suspicious of the prosecutor all along, but no it turns out it was the guy we thought was on our side! In fact, we actually have no idea why the Invaders had one of their guys pose as Wilk and marry Janet. Maybe the company that Wilk and Gilman work for is in some way important to their cause, but here’s the thing: Gilman is a friend of David Vincent and they know they hate him. I would not be surprised if the whole thing was done just to strike at Vincent through his friends. And maybe it was a distraction to keep Vincent dealing with that while they did other things. We just don’t know, and I like that.

Anyway, after the lawyer is discovered he gets shot and burns up and Vincent has more witnesses than he usually does. Good episode.

Also, I just need to note that there’s a Black man in this episode. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen exactly one other Black person in this show so far and I think it was a train porter with no lines, so I was already mentally planning on addressing it in my final thoughts post when I’m done with the show. When it comes to diversity, Star Trek this show ain’t, but the guy here had a line. He was just an expert witness on the stand to confirm if a body could have burned up in a furnace. It’s hardly representation at its best, but in a way the fact that is so incidental works to a good end. Now let’s hope we can get a few more before the show ends.

Gale Frazer is a woman who has seen some of the worst that humanity has to offer. Her father and her brother died in WW2 and the Korean War respectively, and when we meet her in this episode she is recently returned from serving as a nurse in ‘Nam. She has a plot of land in a rural area that she clearly hopes she will get to live on in peace, but that plan comes crashing down like a flying saucer when she witnesses a flying saucer come crashing down. When she finds a survivor at the crash site, even though he looks human, she infers he is an alien of some kind. But still, her nurse instincts are strong so she makes every effort to keep this guy alive.

The alien who survived the crash is going by Blake. He was only supposed to be delivering another Invader, one who had a courier mission, but that guy died in the crash so now Blake has to take over. He has to deliver a box to a nearby mine. While Gale keeps him healthy, he forces her to help him. As always I’m interested in seeing things from the Invaders’ point of view, so it’s interesting to hear Blake describe humanity as fighters and killers and betrayers who act that way because of the emotions we have. We know from a previous episode that their kind can develop emotions and the ones that do are ostracized, but Blake believes that his kind’s emotionless style makes things run a lot more smoothly. Gale’s opinion on humanity isn’t so great either given all that she’s been through.

When David Vincent inevitably rolls into the scene and tries to convince Gale to either let Blake die or at least take him to a doctor who can study him, Gale doesn’t go along with it. Not to short-change that aspect, which is the bulk of the show, but Gale eventually learns her lesson after Blake kills her potential love interest and reveals that he would be perfectly happy wiping out all humans on Earth if his plan doesn’t work. After that Gale admits to Vincent that probably she was in the wrong here. (For the record I need to note that the mission Blake was on was part of an experiment that, if successful, would have made the Invaders immune to the toxic effects of oxygen and allow them to exist on Earth in their natural forms. No go for that.)

The episode ends with a chase through some tunnels during which Blake’s human disguise is melting away, which will be slow but fatal since they can’t exist in their natural form on Earth. When some of Blake’s allies show up and find out the experiment was no good, they casually intend to kill Blake because he is no longer of any use, but he kills them first and then begs Vincent to kill him more quickly than the decay of his human form would. Vincent obliges.

As ever I wonder about the true forms of the Invaders. At this point I don’t think we’re going to see them, since this story in which Blake was “reverting” would have been a chance but all we get is his humanoid shell getting all. Probably for the best, since the show would almost certainly have to disappoint me. What we DO get is Vincent making a reference to a human who saw their true form and went mad. Did that happen in an episode? I don’t remember it. I’ll say this, it’s definitely proof that these Invaders are a cosmic horror threat more than standard sci-fi invaders. (I looked it up, it’s a reference to the guy who looked in the car way back in Genesis. I think I must either not have got that that was what happened when I saw that episode, or just forgot.)

David Vincent and the Invaders working together? I never thought I’d see the day!

This one starts with a couple of doctors. By that I mean that they are two doctors, but also they are a romantic couple. One of the doctors is killed (by an Invader, naturally) leaving his fiance Maria behind. The cops do manage to arrest the Invader, though. This is all happening in a small town called Carterville or something, which is in a relatively isolated valley and that’s the important part.

David Vincent recognizes the murderer as an Invader he encountered in some off-screen adventure, so he’s asks the local Sheriff to just check the murderer’s pulse. Vincent knows that the guy won’t have a pulse, proving he isn’t human, but the Sheriff and Maria assume this is some scam to get them to do something illegal to their prisoner that will lead to a mistrial. Vincent also calls in the Air Force to investigate, but that gets intercepted by the Invaders and they come to town posing as the Air Force. But things change when the murderer makes a run for it and gets gunned down in front of dozens of witnesses and then burns up in the manner that the Invaders do. Vincent has what he wants: people are now willing to believe him.

With that, and with people he believes are the Air Force on the case, Vincent is feeling good. But when an earthquake blocks the way out of town and something shuts off everything mechanical, so nobody can escape, our hero realizes that something is up. And the only new faces in town are the Air Force, so he puts two-and-two together and confronts the Invader in command.

This is where the episode becomes fascinating to me. David Vincent and the Invader posing as Captain (or whatever rank) named Taft. Vincent immediately understands the situation, that they’re going to wipe out the whole town to cover their secrets. Taft acts perfectly civil to Vincent and admits that yes, they are going to use some kind of fancy mist that makes humans remain perfectly still (but which the Invaders are immune to) and then blow the dam, which will flood the town and be blamed on the earthquake. Vincent uses logic to say that it’s too many people, it will lead to investigations and the Invaders don’t want that. Taft agrees, and he admits he doesn’t expect to get out alive himself since he has to be punished for messing up enough to let it get this bad. Taft admits he’d love a better way to clean this up, but if Vincent can’t do it soon, it’s flood time.
So Vincent and aliens work together to try to find a way out that works for both sides. Vincent tries telling everyone that it was all a hoax, but their plans keep failing.

Finally Vincent points out that the Invaders could use their hypnotism crystals to make everyone forget, but he is told that it doesn’t work like that, even if the town forgot the day they knew the aliens were here, the memories would come back. In the end what they have to do is have the aliens bring their biggest, most powerful version of their hypnotism tech and mass hypnotize the town into reliving the day they lost, but with Vincent changing his own actions so that the day goes differently. I can’t see this as a perfect result, but it is good enough for the Invaders, who let the town live.

Taft and the other aliens here still come across as the usual Invaders, but they’re willing to work with Vincent out of self-protection and logic. There’s no sympathy to their actions, but it makes sense to them in this case. And it made an interesting episode.

This one has a pretty great cold open. A guy is fleeing from the Invaders, winds up at the airport and tries to get the help of a guy who works there. The airport guy doesn’t know what to make of the guy raving about aliens, so he’s relieved when two official-looking types show up and tell him that guy was crazy. They calm him down (using the hypnotism crystals) and have him walk in front of a landing plane to his death.

Anyway, that poor man was a hotel owner and the whole thing was a plan the Invaders did so they could take over the hotel. Not just for the fun of owning a hotel! Oh my, no. They’re doing it as step one in another plan! A famous scientist named Paul Cook is coming to advise the government in matters of missile defence, and he’s staying at the hotel. The Invaders are gonna do a scheme about that!

I’ve mentioned before that these Invaders are NOT pod people. They can take human form, but they can’t just take over the form of an existing person and pretend to be them. I mean, sure, there was that time in Moonshot that they posed as that astronaut, but that was possible because the real version of that guy had been burned up and got plastic surgery, so the fact he looked different could be explained. That’s a coincidence that isn’t going to happen too often. Anyway, Paul Cook is a bit of a recluse who hasn’t been seen in public for years and was in an accident that scarred up his face and also left his niece Maggie, his only living relative, blind. See? It’s a slightly different scenario.

Anyway, the Invaders are spying on Paul (hence the title of the episode) and learning his voice and mannerisms so they can trick Maggie. Then they bump off Cook’s assistants, so that when Maggie assures the government that this imposter is their man, they’d believe her. Probably would have been a good plan for this very specific scenario if David Vincent hadn’t heard about a man who claimed aliens were after him and then got an airplane to the face. David Vincent notices things like that.

Our man Vincent has never been great at subterfuge. He takes a job as a bus driver, less to pose as a bus driver than just to drive it to the hotel. Once he’s there he absolutely introduces himself by name and explains his job as an anti-alien crusader. There is an admittedly hilarious bit where he sneaks in the hotel room door in the second that Maggie has it open, then just awkwardly tries to find evidence while she absolutely knows he’s there. A flaw in Vincent’s plan is that he assumes that Cook is going to be one of those people working with the Invaders, a traitor to humanity. He was not prepared for the impersonation aspect of their plan.

But, if David Vincent is bad at subtlety, he’s good at being an action hero. Once the imposter makes a slip-up that lets Maggie know he’s not really her uncle, Vincent makes short work of them and Maggie explains things to the government as best she can.

This one starts with a guy named John Carter who has been seeing flying saucers around his town. In spite of his name, he’s no champion of alien fighting, he’s just seen as the town kook. But David Vincent is willing to look into his claims and it pays off, with them locating one of the Invaders’ flying saucers, getting aboard to capture it, and trying to hold onto it when the Invaders come back. It’s a siege situation!

John Carter is a motorbike-driving guy with four cats (mentioned, but sadly not depicted) who has been trying to prove that aliens exist. This guy could have his own spinoff! He tries to help Vincent by going into town (the saucer is out at the Vasquez Rocks location) to get the Sheriff and an expert of some kind who will finally be able to see this undeniable proof of the invasion. Some other characters show up, a couple who are on the run from the law. They stay with Vincent at the scene of siege.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I like seeing Vincent suffer a big loss now and then. He’s had some major victories in the last few episodes, so we were due for it: this time he loses badly. Of course, there’s no real ongoing continuity to the show, so whether he wins or loses in any given episode will not make a difference to his status quo at the next one, but I do feel like many of the episodic shows I watched growing up would have had the hero winning every week and making it look easy. David Vincent struggles for his victories.

Here, not only does he lose the flying saucer to the Invaders, but three of his allies are killed off before they can even arrive to help. I pointed out last time how when the Invaders vaporize a whole car to kill their target, they run the risk that the target could escape and be mistakenly assumed dead. Well, this time they prove that when the targets actually are in there, it’s a quick and effective method of destruction. John Carter and the local sheriff and another guy are wiped off the mortal coil in an instant. So much for that spinoff show.

Worth noting: near the beginning the Invaders try to disprove the flying saucer photos that Carter has taken by showing up with a kid who has been throwing a frisbee around. Who is this kid? Is it an Invader or is it a real kid who has been taken in by the Invaders to be used at times like this. Neither scenario is good for humanity, but the former would be the first time we’ve seen a child Invader. Either scenario is creepy.

Also worth noting: the guy in the fugitive couple has experience with engineering or something and is very impressed by the flying saucer. He thinks it may not even have fuel, and may operate on some kind of magnetic principle. That’s kinda neat.