Next: A story of watching The Invaders (in color!)

I was walking home from school one day in Bellingham, Washington (USA) when I was stopped by 3 older kids who frequently harassed younger kids and pushed them around. Unless you paid them a nickel or made them laugh, you were punched and kicked. They blocked my path and threatened to throw me down a hill. "You have to let me go," I said, my seven-year old mind thinking quickly. "I'm trying to stop an alien invasion! There are aliens on our street who look just like us. I have to point them out to my Dad!" My plaintive emotion and earnest words took them by surprise. I remember a sense of relief when I realized they really believed me. "Aliens live down the street?" one kid asked, his eyes wide. "How did they get here?"

"Flying saucers!" I replied dramatically. "I saw one land in the forest. The only way I can save the planet is to get back there and stop them." Shaken by my intensity, the kids backed off and I began to walk away. But just then, their leader, an older kid, suddenly joined them. "Hey!" he snarled, "Why are you letting that kid go?" One of the other kids replied, "He's on a top secret mission! He's trying to stop aliens from taking over the planet." I took off in a full run because I knew this kid would never believe such nonsense. I heard his angry footsteps chasing after me, but I was a good runner and out-distanced the gasping goon. My inspiration for telling these kids such an imaginative tale? The Invaders! So, a belated thank you to Larry Cohen (creator), Quinn Martin (executive producer), Alan Armer (producer) and Roy Thinnes (star).

Another time, a friend and I were racing bikes outside and we ran into the house for a soda and there was David Vincent, running to safety as his car was vaporized by alien gunfire. It looked like an exciting episode and I asked my friend Steve if he wanted to watch the show. He asked what the series was about and I explained its premise - dying planet, alien beings, flying saucers. "Let's go back outside and race bikes," he said and we did.

But the show was still one of my favorites, especially when it dealt with horror elements, such as an alien (Robert Walker) who froze people with a single touch, flesh-eating butterflies that devoured an alien sheriff, and a little girl screaming to her mother after she sees a truck vaporized by the aliens.

The theme music and narration were terrifying, although as a kid, I always thought the planet seen in the opening sequence was not Earth but rather Jupiter (at least, it looked more like Jupiter than Earth).

One of our favorite childhood games was called The Old, Dirt Road. A group of us kids would shoot toy machine guns that fired sparks. Before the gunplay, I would begin an "Invaders-like" narration about a man who had lost his way one night on a dirt road, inhabited by weird creatures that threatened our world. Once I completed the narration, we scampered up trees, slid down hills and dove over balconies, blasting away at monsters. We played that game for almost a year and I was always flattered when the neighborhood kids insisted I do the Old Dirt Road narration before our battles began. It wasn't The Invaders, but it was certainly inspired by it.

I also bought some Invaders memorabilia at the time, including the Aurora flying saucer model, as well as the Big Little book called "Alien Missile Threat" and the excellent hardcover book, "Dam of Death." As a kid, I was unaware that there were also four comic books, five Dutch trading cards, three American paperbacks, four British paperbacks, stories in TV Tornado books and color postcards. Supposedly, there was also a board game produced, but due to legal problems, it was never released. Viewmaster never produced a 3-D reel package on the series either. In 1968, MAD magazine did a satire of The Invaders in their "science affliction" department called The Invasioners. The spoof ends with David Vincent being thrown out of the White House by President Lyndon Johnson.

I was also unaware of the critical reception for the series at the time. Cleveland Amory reviewed 16 science fiction shows during his tenure as America's TV Guide critic from 1963 to 1976. He gave only two of them, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Sixth Sense, positive reviews. The Invaders wasn't his cup of tea. After lampooning the episode "The Mutation," he concluded that kids would love the show but adults should "run for the hills!" Rex Reed at least tried to be fair. He expressed reservations over the violence and the origin of the aliens ("Who are these aliens? What are they going to do?" he asked, apparently missing the opening narration each week), but he also noted, "It combines far-put plots with just enough horror to make it convincing. It's an unbeatable formula!" Daily Variety praised Thinnes as an able actor who was constrained by a "one-dimensional part" and added that, "the series plays better when it emphasizes adventure rather than science fiction."

TV Times, September 18th 1968

One of the Hollywood trade magazines reported that actors and actresses at cocktail parties extended their pinkie fingers as they conversed about the show. Actress Angela Cartwright recalled that she and her Lost in Space co-stars (June Lockhart and Marta Kristen) mimicked the Invaders aliens during a third-season episode by sticking out their fingers.

Roy Thinnes took out time to watch other science fiction TV shows and he told the L.A. Herald-Examiner, "The other shows are playing with the dimensions of time and space. We're stressing realism, not monsters. We stay away from the outer space gimmicks."

As a kid, I didn't pay attention to ratings. I had the naive belief that if a show was good, it was safe from cancellation. The fact was, the ABC network was delighted with The Invaders at first. The network was having a terrible time during 1966-67 because its line-up, including The Green Hornet, The Milton Berle Show and The Monroes, were bombs, and old-standbys such as Combat, Batman and Fugitive, were fading. The network needed a hit. The Invaders, scheduled for a September 1966 debut, was delayed because of a sponsor conflict, and finally unveiled January 10, 1967.

Gary Gerani's landmark book, Fantastic Television (1977) claims The Invaders began very low in the ratings and slowly built up an audience. This is inaccurate. It was an immediate success. In its first three months, the show ranked as a top 20 hit in the 30-city surveys. In March 1967, producer Alan Armer told The New York Times that The Invaders had done the impossible by "badly beating" the once insurmountable The Red Skelton Show on CBS and crushing the new Occasional Wife on NBC. Dismayed by how well The Invaders was doing, NBC and CBS executives masked their anguish by plastering "The Invaders are coming!" bumperstickers on their cars. The demographics showed that viewers aged 12 to 35 enjoyed the show. The network had only one complaint - the series was scaring away viewers aged 50 and over.

Roy Thinnes firmly believed in life on other worlds but he noted the series did place extra-terrestrials in a hostile light. When the actor's house was burglarized shortly after the show's debut, he quipped, "Maybe the aliens really are mad at us!"

When I watched films like Earth vs the Flying Saucers, I cheered when the military forces blasted the marauding aliens out of the skies. But I didn't have the same blood-thirsty sense of revenge towards the aliens on Invaders. It seemed tragic whenever an alien was killed. Invaders writer John Bloch explained that the aliens weren't villains but rather explorers who needed a new world to colonize. They considered the earthlings as primitives (he drew a parallel between the Europeans and their conquest of the Native Americans). The aliens were also comprised of many factions - some favored peaceful co-existence with humans, others wanted humans as slaves and others wanted the entire human race wiped out. In later episodes, some aliens even considered the invasion of Earth a mistake and suggested a change of venue.

A colleague of mine recalled that his college roommates kept a running tally on their dormitory door, keeping track of how many aliens David Vincent killed each week (for those counting, a total of 131 aliens were dispatched during The Invaders run). Many prominent people felt that the aliens were the show's weakest link. Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek) said in 1968, "They made a basic error in their most important ingredient of the show - one dimensional bad guys from outer space make for one dimensional stories."

Isaac Asimov announced he was writing an article on the inaccuracies of the aliens' invasion for TV Guide but it was never published. There were also UFO buffs who felt the show was doing a grave disservice to extra-terrestrials by presenting them as aggressive beings.

When the 1966-67 season was over, The Invaders was a success and immediately renewed for a second year. Back then, a TV show had to have at least a 16 rating to be renewed and Invaders had averaged an admirable 20.5 rating and finished 39th out of 100 shows (to put things in context, Lost in Space ended that year with a 19.5 rating, Star Trek a 17.9, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea a 16.9).

When the first year ended, story editor Anthony Spinner left the show, telling executive producer Quinn Martin that, "It's a good show but it's doomed. It has no future." Spinner felt the show's format was too constricting. David Rintels, who replaced him, was interested in having the show move away from horror and address more contemporary topics. "I had never written or even read science fiction before being involved with this series," he said. "I felt that by using this format, I could write about things I cared about. I wanted viewers to feel and think." Vietnam, racism, nuclear war, drug abuse, and other themes were touched upon. Rubber-suited monsters need not apply. The Invaders remains the most adult science fiction series ever made.

As the second year began, Alan Armer announced that David Vincent would show "more emotion and dimension." There was also a discussion as to whether to bring in a youthful co-star, even perhaps an actress, to help Vincent in his battle but that idea was dropped (although the much older Edgar Scoville, played by Kent Smith, was added later).

It was announced that every episode was going to end with the following phrase: "The invader still walks unheeded on the planet Earth. Somehow, he must be stopped!" Luckily, the producers realized that was a hokey phrase and it was abandoned.

The series began its second year in September 1967. The first ratings for the week of October 1-7th had good news and bad news for The Invaders. The good news was that it remained the highest rated ABC show on Tuesday nights. It's lead-in, Garrison's Gorillas, placed a disappointing 59th place out of 100 shows. NYPD was 61st and Peyton Place was 69. The bad news was The Invaders ranked a mediocre 54th place in the ratings. Basically, any show in the top 50 was considered safe, but anything from 51st to 100th was in mortal danger. All of the other adventure shows that week also took a fierce drubbing - Lost in Space was 51st, Mission Impossible was 57th, Batman was 58th, Wild, Wild West 62nd, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 63rd and Star Trek was 70th.

Luckily for me, The Invaders aired on afternoons on Canadian channels, so I could see most of the episodes. As the series continued, I remember the show seemed slower than before. With the advent of The Believers, who helped David in his battle, the stories became less imaginative but more grounded in reality. As an adult, I can appreciate that and certainly episodes like "The Life Seekers" and "Dark Outpost" were classic TV. But as a kid I grew a bit restless. The show just wasn't as exciting or as scary as it used to be. I was looking for man-eating locusts, alien-made hurricanes, deadly red dust, oxygen-destroying crystals and above all, episodes featuring flying saucers.

One person happy with the show's transformation was Roy Thinnes. In February 1968, Thinnes told reporter Don Page, "This series used to be so frustrating. I would come home and say to my wife, `It's depressing. David Vincent is going to lose another battle.' Only in our recent episodes has it looked hopeful for my character. The show is getting better as we go along. It's more of a drama than science fiction."

The character of David Vincent also had new opportunities to show a sensitive side. In "Life Seekers," Vincent is attracted to the benevolent alien woman (played by Diana Muldaur). Muldaur recalled in Starlog magazine that the producers were overjoyed with the romantic effect she had on Roy Thinnes, eliciting a vulnerability from him that he rarely displayed.

Meanwhile, the series continued to fall in the ratings, and it was moved from its 8:30pm time slot to the deadly 10pm berth on Tuesdays. Robert Wagner's It Takes A Thief took over Invaders old slot in January 1968 and Thief became a top 30 hit. By March 1968, The Invaders was a prime candidate for cancellation. Several executives felt that, creatively, the show was finished. In addition, the show's inability to attract older viewers made some sponsors unhappy. Networks were also feeling pressure from Congress to reduce violent programming. That made action shows such as Rat Patrol, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, I Spy, Garrisons Gorillas and The Invaders as undesirables.

The network received many letters of protest from loyal fans when the show was cancelled. One viewer wrote to TV Guide and said, "Quick! Check the pulse of the executives at ABC!" Inexplicably, around April of 1968, The Invaders' ratings began to improve but the network's decision was final.

Interestingly, the spring 1968 issue of Saucer News magazine speculated that the real reason for the show's demise had nothing to do with ratings but rather due to "rumors" of Roy Thinnes's impending resignation from the series, allegedly because he was unhappy with the show's depiction of aliens. However, Thinnes has said he was looking forward to doing a third year and he was surprised to read about the show's cancellation in Daily Variety. Another rumor pointed to executive producer Quinn Martin, that he wanted to turn the show over to someone else but he couldn't find a producer in time. That was false. Martin believed in the show and at no time was he going to abandon the series.

It's also been reported that executive Fred Silverman mysteriously cancelled The Invaders but the fact was Silverman was employed by CBS in 1968 and he didn't join ABC until 1975 (in 1977, several ABC-QM shows such as Streets of San Francisco and Most Wanted were swept off the air).

What was the truth? Vengeful executives? Violence? Aliens? A lack of older viewers? Exiting producers? An exiting star? No, it was the same old story, ratings. A. C. Nielsen provided the evidence: The Invaders had gone into a steep decline during 1967-68, and failed to finish in the top 60, with a low seasonal rating average of 14.5.

Producer Alan Armer confirmed in 1989 that the main reason for The Invaders' demise were low ratings. I also went to Thomas Moore, who was President of ABC at the time. He recalled the series fondly but grimly reflected, "The Invaders was a highly promising show that ultimately failed to deliver."

By 1969, Quinn Martin had four shows in syndication - The Fugitive (which didn't do well in reruns), 12 O'Clock High (which also disappointed in syndication due to its black and white episodes and limited appeal) and The Untouchables, which was hurt because of its violence. Surprising, with its 43 color episodes and cult appeal, The Invaders became something of a dark horse. It began to pop up all over the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with runs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Seattle, Charlotte (North Carolina), Dayton (Ohio) and New York. Canadian cities such as Vancouver, Victoria and Montreal picked up the series. The series was also running in 30 countries at the time, including England, Australia, South America, France (where its still a huge cult hit), Germany and Japan.

I was eight years old when The Invaders was cancelled, but I don't recall hearing the news. The show just faded from screens. Then in 1971, it seemed to turn up everywhere. Novelist James Gunn wrote an article for TV Guide, "An Author Watches his Brainchild Die," relating his frustrations in seeing his The Immortal ruined as a weekly TV series. In the article he briefly analyzed the history of TV SF, and classified The Invaders as a noteworthy adult show. "It had a valid concept," he said, "but due to the predictability of its plots, it never got beyond its beginning." Not exactly a stellar review but it was the first time I had ever seen the series mentioned in print.

A few months later, a local TV station ran three episodes of Invaders on Sunday afternoon. Being older, I could now appreciate the drama and suspense more. Unfortunately, solar interference (sun spot activity) turned "Inquisition" into a hour of static. I could barely make out the characters and couldn't hear anything. However, I did see "The Miracle" and "The Pursued" and enjoyed them. Then, the series was gone and that was that. That same year, I was watching a show called Thrillseekers, hosted by Chuck Connors, and there was a biker wearing a T-shirt with The Invaders logo. No mention of the show or his T-shirt was mentioned during his interview.

The Invaders flying saucer was also reissued in 1971.

During an out-of town vacation in 1974, I saw two more episodes, "The Leeches" and "Labyrinth." The first thing that struck me was how current the show looked. It hadn't aged all out of proportion. It still played well and the special effects of the aliens glowing and vanishing was remarkable.

In 1977, the pilot of The Invaders was loosely remade as a segment of Quinn Martin's supernatural anthology, Tales of the Unexpected. The episode "The Nomads" starred David Birney as a man who discovers that aliens in human form have taken over a hydro-electric dam and now plan to take over the Earth. Birney's character ends up locked away as a madman and he looks up to the night sky to see some (rather unconvincing) extra-terrestrial ships materializing for a landing.

This episode did raise a possibility. Could The Invaders return? Other shows, such as Mod Squad, Get Smart, Wild Wild West, Star Trek and Gilligan's Island, were coming back with their original casts. Also, since the appearance of Star Wars, science fiction was now a popular genre. In addition, UFOs were a hot topic, all the way from Jack Webb's top 20 TV hit, Project UFO to Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind in theatres. Even The Carpenters' had a hit song, Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.

I wrote to Quinn Martin in 1978, asking if there was any way The Invaders could be revived. Within two weeks, I received a letter back from him. Indeed, he was busy planning an Invaders comeback for NBC. "It seems we were ahead of our time with The Invaders," he wrote. "It now seems a likely time to do The Invaders again." That project aired as The Aliens Are Coming, a pedestrian 1980 TV film which re-told The Invaders pilot once again (a hydro-electric dam taken over by aliens in human form, etc). Tom Mason, Melinda Fee, Max Gail and John Milford starred. This time, when the aliens were killed, they glowed green and vanished. It was a slick, bland, typical 1970s budget-deprived production with cartoonish aliens. Needless to say, this film had nothing to do with the original Invaders and was quickly forgotten.

Meanwhile, my opinion of 1970s TV SF was equally low because they rarely did their own opticals or miniature work. They simply cribbed from 1960s shows. Nevertheless, I was surprised when an episode of The Fantastic Journey (a 1977 series about time travellers) showed an out-of-control spaceship careening towards Earth. It was stock footage of the Invaders saucer! It was like a visit from an old friend.

In 1979, I was watching an episode of Mork and Mindy where Raquel Welch guest starred as an alien Queen. Whenever the Queen returned to her spaceship, they used shots of the landed Invaders saucer from "The Mutation." It was a beautifully clean print and the saucer looked incredibly realistic and awesome. I watched the show's end credits, hoping to see an acknowledgment to The Invaders or Howard Anderson's optical company but there was nothing. A younger generation of TV watchers probably thought Mork and Mindy's producers had gone to extraordinary lengths to create these fantastic spaceship shots.

Story Continues - Please scroll back up to the top of the right column for rest of story").

There were other revelations in my Invaders research. When I saw an old Outer Limits episode called "The Forms of Things Unknown," The Invaders music theme played as actress Barbara Rush walked down a corridor. Since this episode (scored by Dominic Frontiere) was filmed in 1964, I realized Frontiere composed this theme long before his work on The Invaders.

In 1976, I wrote KSTW, the leading independent TV station in Seattle, and asked if reruns of The Invaders could be shown. The programming lady replied that it was one of her favorite shows too and she would try to secure the show. It took 7 years, but KSTW finally picked up Invaders for a 1983-1987 run

Most people I spoke with seemed to remember the show but there were some important exceptions. In 1979, as my girlfriend and I waited in the lineup to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture, we began discussing classic science fiction shows. I asked her if she remembered The Invaders - one man's war against alien creatures from another world. She considered the premise for a moment and said, "Oh, yes, I remember that. Wasn't that the one where the alien had antennae behind his head, and he could levitate and turn invisible? His spaceship was out on the garage?"

My Favorite Martian, indeed!

She was only a year younger than I was, but clearly, while she remembered Star Trek and Lost in Space, The Invaders was a blank.

I remember my Uncle and Aunt were visiting with us in 1984 and the subject turned to TV science fiction. My Uncle was a huge football fan and he could recite all kinds of facts and statistics about every player who ever lived. But he was notoriously contemptuous of science fiction and he said to me and my cousins, "Star Trek, Outer Limits, Lost in Space - they're all a bunch of crap! I don't know why you bother with that stuff." Then he said something which shocked me. "There was only one show that was any good," he said. "That was something called The Invaders. I never missed that. It had good stories and Roy Thinnes was a great actor." Holy character reference! But it was true. Many adults who didn't like science fiction did like The Invaders, a Quinn Martin production.

As I continued my research, I discovered The Invaders was never nominated for an Emmy award in the 1960s. Despite the great photography (and moody music by Dominic Frontiere), it wasn't given the recognition it was due.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1981, I was astonished to see The Invaders playing on a San Bernadino station. I hadn't seen the series in 7 years. I managed to see a dozen episodes from year two. There was only one hitch - the episodes were dubbed in Spanish. My friend Laurie knew some Spanish and occasionally translated some dialog but it was hard for her to keep a straight face. "El saucero, el saucero!" she joked as a saucer landed. So I had to make due the best I could, as "senior architect David Vincento" battled Los Invasores.

I remember seeing an advertisement placed in a book club newsletter back in 1976 from someone who was looking to discuss The Invaders. I didn't reply to it because a) I hated writing letters and b) I thought it was slightly weird to correspond with someone you didn't know. I had shrugged off such pretensions by 1983 and I placed an ad in a SF magazine, seeking "serious" fans of The Invaders. I received several letters from fans. One young lady said she liked The Invaders but since she had a sense of humor, she didn't know if she was "serious" enough! It was great to share memories with other knowledgeable fans, which included Alain Bourassa, Merle Mason, artist Paul Jeffers and British writer Mark Rogers.

When I moved back to Canada in the mid-1980s, there were more signs of invaders on the horizon. The BBC in England ran the show in 1985 to great ratings.

Roy Thinnes appeared on the American game show Trivia Trap in 1984 and he was asked an Invaders-like question, "What alien invasion novel was written by HG Wells?" When Roy missed the answer, he swung his fist through the air in comical frustration.

A year later, Thinnes tried to launch "Invaders 1986" to ABC. The network was interested in a three-hour pilot and six-hour long episodes, with Thinnes as producer. Unfortunately, the project didn't materialize.

Worldvision was also pushing the original series to independent stations around North America and suddenly the series was airing in states such as Utah, Florida, Colorado, Kansas, Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Alabama, New Mexico, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. And I was finally seeing all of the episodes, beamed out of Ontario, Canada. Twelve episodes were also released on professional video.

I also attended a convention where a dealer was selling photos of The Invaders' title sequence, where a quarter of the moon is in the foreground, and the Earth is in the background. As I bought them, the photo dealer proudly proclaimed, "These are photos from the TV show UFO!" I shook my head. "No, they're from The Invaders," I said politely. "Oh, okay," he said with a shrug. "Anyway, the best thing about that show were the girls with purple hair on moonbase." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "No, that was UFO," I said. "Right," he replied. Apparently, this poor guy couldn't keep his shows straight. UFO was the 1969-1970 British series about an organization that battled alien saucers every week. UFO was a much-maligned show that was much better than it was ever given credit for. UFO ended every episode with a shot from the moon, with Earth in the background, like The Invaders. There was also a British Airways TV advertisement in the late 1980s that showed the moon receding as the camera sped towards the Earth. Quite possibly, The Invaders inspired these British visuals.

Seeing The Invaders again from an adult perspective was interesting. It was still a great show but I could see it a little more objectively. There was no doubt about it, Roy Thinnes was perfectly cast as David Vincent. He was intense and believable, someone you respected and admired. That was a refreshing contrast to the many contrived and posturing characters on television. The fans took The Invaders seriously and Thinnes reciprocated with a performance of pure conviction. Some critics accused him of not injecting enough humor into the role but consider this - here was a man who had lost his home, his family, his girlfriend, his job, his architectural dreams, seen his best friend killed, and was often betrayed by aliens who were posing as humans. He was engaged in a lonely battle with advanced aliens who outgunned him. Try to find humor in that situation! It also made sense that an architect, a man who designed for humanity's future, would believe in tomorrows and be its determined savior.

"Why do you keep wasting your life trying to stop us?" an alien (Roger Perry) snarls to Vincent in "The Prophet." But giving up the battle was never an option for Vincent. He was determined, obsessed and in many ways, heroic.

When Invaders art director George Chan complained that it was ridiculous for Vincent to roam around the country without financial support, a scene was written in "The Captive," to show Vincent working on some architectural drafts since, as the narrator says, "a man must earn his daily bread!"

It's admirable that the producers were aware of the show's weaknesses and tried to address them, whether it was in making the aliens more complex, or having Vincent secure crucial evidence or to give him some human allies. Several of the believers, played by Anthony Eisley, Lin McCarthy, and John Milford, were brought back (and tragically killed) in later episodes.

Perhaps one of the most powerful scenes in the entire series was during its first season. In "The Ivy Curtain," the aliens examine Vincent's Santa Barbara drivers license. The picture of Vincent on the driver ID is remarkably poignant. We see a very young, innocent and broadly grinning David Vincent years before this nightmare began. In that fleeting photograph, Vincent is beaming with joy (a sight we would never see from the grim David Vincent again). We realize just how much of a psychological toll this invasion has taken on the space-age crusader.

One disappointment I had with some episodes was that Vincent, usually an extraordinary intelligent man, was "written" as careless by some writers so that a plot contrivance could flourish. I recall my Dad once yelling to Vincent after fighting an invader, "Don't just run away! Pick up the alien's gun!"

It's a credit to The Invaders that viewers believed its premise but it also meant the show had a responsibility to play fair with viewers. I don't mean Vincent should have been written as a perfect man. Besieged by alien marauders, it's reasonable for a character to react impulsively and not always rationally. But research surveys in 1967 indicated viewers were becoming frustrated by Vincent's lack of progress and that stalemate would have been less bitter had David Vincent always been "smart" about his situation. Occasionally, a formulaic script made him trust strangers too easily (having him check the pulse of people every week would have been ridiculous, but Vincent could have been more wary).

This way, even if Vincent had lost at the end of an episode, viewers would have felt he had done everything in his power to win. Their frustration would have turned to self-speculation: "Geez, Vincent did everything I would have done in that situation, but he still lost. What could he do next time to avoid that?"

Examples of Vincent's carelessness include "The Betrayed," where he repeats a secret rendezvous over a phone in a restaurant, overheard by his scheming girlfriend. In "Labyrinth", Vincent allows a man he doesn't know (an alien) to pick up a important witness at the airport, where the alien effectively threatens the woman from testifying. In "The Saucer," he debarks from a captured flying saucer with a camera around his neck to meet with the aliens. The aliens, realizing Vincent has taken photographs of their spaceship, force him to expose the film.

Small things, but for a show that had done so well in building up a compelling format, important points.

There were several other things that caught my attention about the series. In episodes like "The Mutation," "The Innocent" and "Dark Outpost," the saucers looked fantastic. Forget today's cartoony CGI effects, these saucers looked as if they were really there and the effect was incredible.

There were also rumors of the existence of a 75 minute pilot film, but I suspect the 1966 pilot was permanently edited down before the series debuted (a version shown at a 1969 TV retrospective was probably the alternate pilot, which is only a few minutes longer than the aired version).

Celeste Holm was advertised as an upcoming guest during The Invaders first season, but the actress never appeared in an episode. I was also surprised to see Theodore Sturgeon, one of the preeminent SF authors of the 20th century, credited for the story of "The Betrayed."

There were surprising story twists as well. Critics claimed Vincent never convinced authorities of the invasion but in "The Peacemaker" the Pentagon is clearly aware of the invasion and even negotiates with the aliens. In "The Miracle," the episode ends with David driving off to Washington D.C. with an alien crystal as evidence. Vincent video tapes the immolation of two aliens in "Counterattack" but curiously, he never goes back to retrieve an alien rifle he had used against an alien.

On set for "The Enemy"

Many have said that "The Enemy" was the only episode to show an alien losing its human form (Richard Anderson in creature makeup), so I was surprised to see the squid-like creature in "Genesis," which is definitely the best look we ever get at an alien's true form. John Bloch, who scripted that segment, recalled that he and the producers spent much time researching marine biology for the segment and discussing how the extra-terrestrials might look.

The series also made contemporary references to places and people such as the Watts Riots, Vietnam and football star Johnny Unitas.

Interesting guest stars also made appearances. Barry Williams (later Greg Brady on The Brady Bunch, and a real life fan of Invaders) played an alien newsboy in "The Pursued," future Oscar winning actor Lou Gossett, Jr. played a bar owner in "The Vise" and Peggy Lipton, later of Mod Squad, was a doomed newlywed in "Wall of Crystal." Roy's wife at the time, Lynn Loring, appeared as a sullen hillbilly in "Panic."

The Invaders continued to rack up bonus points from the media: In John Javna's 1987 book, The Best of Science Fiction TV, one hundred critics and SF authors voted Invaders as number 10 as best SF series ever. On Rick Dees talk show, Into the Night (1991), Roy Thinnes enjoyed speaking about Invaders and sharing his real-life UFO experiences. "They're still among us," he quipped.

In 1995, there was an Invaders mini-series, where Thinnes returned for a cameo as David Vincent but unfortunately it was a terrible show. The writer of this update, James Parriott (who used a pseudonym) admitted, "I wasn't a big fan of the original series. They ran out of stories quickly. It was only about paranoia, so it had nowhere to go." Certainly, the original series was light years ahead of this dreary update.

Criticism of the original Invaders always seemed disconcerting, since it was clearly an adult, quality show. Harlan Ellison claimed The Invaders was, "part of a video universe singularly dedicated to retarding science fiction's acceptance as a legitimate art form...it has dealt science fiction a crippling blow." On the other hand, the good reviews outweighed the bad. "A fascinating series and a compelling drama," marveled TV historian Larry James Gianakos. SF critic John Baxter claimed it was, "An excellent series." Even SF author David Gerrold noted, "it was a fairly well produced series with an interesting premise."

Roy Thinnes with Anne Francis

Reruns of the series began on The Sci-Fi Channel in 1992, and it was sad to realize that guest stars such as Diana Hyland, Alfred Ryder, Michael Rennie, Susan Oliver, John Milford, Diana Van Der Vlis, Jack Lord, Susan Strasberg, Charles Drake, Charles Aidman, Donald Davis and Kent Smith had all passed away. Quinn Martin died in 1987.

Roy Thinnes later appeared in several cult productions. He starred as the astronaut in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969), was critically acclaimed for his role as The Psychiatrist, then went on to star in several supernatural TV movies, including the excellent The Norliss Tapes in 1973. He was one of the major stars of the feature film Airport 1975, and later co-starred as Reverend Trask in the updated version of Dan Curtis's Dark Shadows in 1991. Chris Carter cast Thinnes as the mysterious Jeremiah in several X-Files episodes and Thinnes also had a supporting role in the Oscar-winning film, A Beautiful Mind (2001).

In 1994, I had the good fortune to interview 20 surviving Invaders writers for a two-part feature in Starlog. Most of them had enthusiastic memories of working on the series. However, not everyone wanted to talk. Howard Merrill ("Valley of the Shadow") denied he had ever written for the series. Rita Lakin, the show's only female writer, ("Moonshot") barely remembered her story. Sadly, several others had passed away, including Meyer Dolinsky (aka Michael Adams), Dan Ullman, Anthony Wilson (who had scripted the pilot film and was, incredibly, story editor for Lost in Space at the time) and John Kneubuhl. Also, despite my efforts, I was never able to locate writer William Blinn ("The Vise").

That same year, I was awakened by a phone call at 7am. Half-asleep, I picked up the phone. "Hello, Mark Phillips?" inquired a familiar voice. "This is Roy Thinnes." Holy wake-up call! We had a good 30-minute chat, discussing everything from The Invaders to L. Ron Hubbard.

A few years later, I chatted with the narrator of The Invaders, William Woodson (courtesy of his son, Bill Woodson). Woodson was the deep, ominous voice who said in every episode, "alien beings from a dying planet...their destination: the Earth." (Hank Sims was the other voice who introduced the guest stars). Woodson, a former child actor, was perhaps best known to TV viewers as the bombastic narrator at the beginning of every Odd Couple episode (1970-1975). Woodson hadn't heard his Invaders main title narration since 1968, so when I played it over the phone, he was surprised. "My word!" he said "It does go on, doesn't it? But it's a good piece of work. I'm very happy with it." Woodson was a big Invaders fan during its original run and recalled, "My youngest son Raymond liked to pretend he was an alien. He walked around the house with an extended pinkie finger!"

Larry Cohen, who created the show, told Frank Garcia in 1998, "It's a show that is well remembered, even though it was not as good as it should have been. Fans never stop writing me letters about it or talking to me about it at conventions."

There has also been talk of Warner Brothers, who own the rights, developing a feature-film version of The Invaders. On second thought, maybe it's best to leave The Invaders as it is: an unforgettable show fondly remembered by a generation of fans.