you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast each week we take a single episode of a science fiction tv series movie or audio and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life welcome to the discussion Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol.

I'm Eugene.

And I'm Kenneth.

And tonight we are going to be starting a new series.

We are going to be looking at 1967's The Invaders, a QM production.

Before we start with this one, though, I will say this.

A couple years ago, I started watching The Invaders again after a very, very long time.

And I thought, oh, I should review these.

And I thought, well, it didn't fit in our schedule.

And so I started writing a series of written reviews, which are on the website.

I don't know.

I think I got to episode 15 or so before I get distracted.

But because of that, unlike a lot of the shows, which I don't, I hate to say it this way.

I've said it this way before.

I don't research a lot of the episodes.

because I like to recreate the experience of watching something new when possible, even if I've seen it years and years ago.

But because I was writing the reviews, I did a lot of research on this show.

So I'm going to try to spread that out over the course of the series.

But just so you know, this may sound sometimes a little more, did you know that so-and-so said, yeah, kind of nonsense.

Anyway, let's start with an episode synopsis of, episode one, The Beachhead, or, sorry, just Beachhead.

Architect David Vincent, returning from a business trip, unsuccessfully tries a cross-country shortcut, which lands him in the middle of nowhere at an abandoned diner.

Too tired to continue, he stops to sleep in his car.

He is soon awakened by an unearthly sound and glowing red lights.

In front of him, a flying saucer descends and lands.

Act 1.

It's 6 a.m.

and Vincent has gone to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office, where Detective Lieutenant Holman doesn't believe a word he's saying.

He's even called in Alan Landers, Vincent's business partner, to take him home.

Vincent will not be deterred and demands that they go to the scene to look.

At the scene, it is clear that Vincent's memory is sketchy.

Bud's Diner, which he so clearly recalls, is actually Kelly's Diner, and there's no sign of a flying saucer nor any disturbance.

They meet a honeymooning couple, the Brandons, who have been camping nearby.

They were up at 4 a.m.

and saw nothing.

They're due to return home that day, but agree to stay until evening if the police have any more questions.

Vincent notices that Brandon has misshapen pinkies.

Vincent returns that night as they prepare to leave, hoping to get more answers.

If they were there, they must have seen the saucer, so they must be lying.

Brandon seems unwell, telling his wife it's past time for him.

Vincent is insistent on seeing Brandon's fingers, and they fight.

Brandon gets the upper hand and is about to kill Vincent when his hands start to glow.

He backs away and escapes in the truck.

Vincent is hit by the truck.

He he sees that he is tagged under a false name, he grows paranoid and tries to escape, but is restrained by orderlies.

He sees Alan Landers and Detective Holman arrive just as he passes out.

Act 2.

Landers put Vincent in a small local hospital under an assumed name for his protection.

The press got hold of Vincent's flying saucer story, and Landers was trying to protect him.

Once again, Vincent's story about the couple doesn't match the event's official story.

Vincent was found unconscious in the mountains, where his car had driven off the road.

Landers will return this evening and take Vincent home.

Watching them is another patient, a little old lady in a wheelchair.

As she cleans her glasses, we see her misshapen pinkies.

Landers takes Vincent home, telling his friend he wants to believe him, but there's no evidence.

Landers does have one thing for him.

He managed to obtain the Brandons' address in Kinney, a small town in the middle of Nowheresville, California.

That night, Vincent's apartment catches on fire and he barely escapes with his life, but not before he sees the little old lady from the hospital in the fire.

He sends the fireman back for her, but there is no sign of anyone.

Act 3 Vincent arrives in Kinney, California.

It's virtually a ghost town.

Eventually, he meets Katie Adams, manager and former owner of the Hotel Palomar.

She tells him Kogan Enterprises is buying up the town for redevelopment.

and that the population is down to 12, which includes two dogs and a cat.

The Brandons gave her hotel as their address.

She doesn't know them, but they may have been one of the many guests brought down by Mr.

Cogan.

They use the hotel as their accommodation.

Policeman Carver arrives to question Vincent about why he's in town.

When Vincent leaves to go looking around, Carver calls Detective Holman's office to tell him that Vincent did show up.

Vincent manages to avoid being seen by Carver and sees Carver go to the hydroelectric plant to check that it is still locked.

Suspicious, Vincent investigates the abandoned building and finds strange alien technology in the form of cylinders that descend from the ceiling when a presence is detected.

He does not see the alien technology that detected him entering the building and alerted an alien base in Bakersfield.

A team of aliens are dispatched to Kinney.

Continuing to avoid Carver, who is clearly trying to find him, Vincent places a call from the local business to his friend Landers, convincing him that he must come down immediately and see what he's seen.

Landers agrees.

Act 4.

Kathy finds Vincent waiting and they talk.

She tells him that Carver told her that Vincent may be a psycho and saw a flying saucer.

She tries to dissuade him and tells him a bit about her late husband.

He, too, was convinced of something similar, but it only ended with him dying of a heart attack.

Vincent cannot return to the hotel, so he asks Kathy to call her aunt, who is at the hotel, to tell Landers to meet Vincent when he arrives.

Unknown to Vincent, Kathy's aunt is the little old lady with the misshapen pinkies.

Landers arrives, and the old lady sends him to the hydroelectric plant to meet Vincent.

Kathy keeps Vincent occupied, trying to convince him that if he pursues his current course, it will lead to ruin or even death, like her husband.

The world's not that great of a place to save anyway.

Landers, meanwhile, has entered the hydroelectric plant, which is wide open, and sees the aliens dismantling the contraptions Vincent saw.

He is captured and forced into one of the chambers, screaming.

When Kathy turns on the jukebox, Vincent realizes the truth.

Kathy is an alien, but her fingers aren't misshapen.

She admits it and tells him that not all our fingers are like that.

Don't fight us.

We're going to win, she enjoins him.

But he runs out and finds Lander's car.

He heads to the hydroelectric plant, but is stopped by Carver.

They fight.

Vincent gets away and finds Lander's body at the now completely empty plant.

Carver to let Vincent go.

Lander's death was a heart attack and there is no evidence of anything.

He tries to convince Vincent that it is madness to pursue this further.

But Vincent knows it cannot end here.

He drives off.

The end.

I'll put my cards on the table here as we start this episode.

Okay.

There are very few shows that when I watch them multiple times, hold up.

There are fewer still that when I watch a show taking notes for the podcast that they hold up.

And even fewer that when you watch it multiple times and you're doing that analysis, it gets better.

This is one of those.

This is one of the finest pilots I've ever seen on a TV show.

It hardly misses a beat for me.

So putting it down there for the start, I'm a big fan of this pilot episode.

The rest of the series, that's, you know, that's for the future.

But this is really, really good.

Anyway, so tell me how much you hated it so that we can have an alternative viewpoint.

I did.

I did enjoy it.

I watched the broadcast version twice in two successive days.

And I watched the extended version, which is unfortunately still not the original pilot.

You probably saw the 60 minute cut from the DVD set.

I did.

Yes.

There's apparently a 75 minute cut too.

That's even better, supposedly.

But I've never seen it.

I've seen the 60 minute and I did watch that.

And I've got a few notes about, you know, a couple of scenes that were cut, but mostly, you know, little stuff here and there that you would expect.

but there were a couple of big scenes that they cut there were that that one of them in particular but actually the two main ones that were cut i'd say really shouldn't have been cut i'd have i'd have cut something else but here we go yeah i this is this show is quinn martin production it's uh It was created by Larry Cohen, who had actually very little to do with the show in the long run.

And he basically lost out in a battle of creative differences with Quinn Martin and left the show pretty much with the idea and I think 15 plot scripts that were later converted to mostly converted to episodes by other writers.

And a very fat, lucrative, created-by credit at the end of the episodes and profits of the—before the line, I think.

So, yeah, he was making money off the show, so he was fine with it.

Oh, yeah, and I did look up Mr.

Cohen.

Then went on to do some weird stuff.

He went on to do laxploitation movies, social conscience movies in the horror genre.

Well, he also goes with the exploitation movies in a way.

Yeah.

He also has the story credit on three episodes of Columbo.

Yep.

Yep.

So I don't know which episodes they are off the top of my head.

I wrote them down.

I don't know that I know which ones they are.

I've watched a lot of Columbo over the years, but I don't know if the main.

Let's try this one.

The first one is Any Old Port in a Storm.

Can you tell me who guest starred in it?

Donald Pleasant.

Okay.

Nope.

I, yeah, I'm not sure.

It's the one where wine figures prominently.

Okay.

I don't remember that one.

So Any Old Port as in Port Wine?

Yeah.

Okay.

And then Candidate for Crime.

Uh-huh.

Do you remember that one?

Guest star.

Guest star.

Columbo is all about the guest star.

Jackie wants his face.

Forget him now.

But he was one of the little rascals.

Oh, oh.

Okay.

And he played a politician who was a murderer.

Jackie Cogan.

That's right.

He played a politician who was running as tough on crime, but he was a criminal.

Of course.

Yes.

And then an exercise in fatality.

again guest star guest star robert conrad okay i probably know that one i think conrad was only in like two of them so i might be able to i might have seen that one and that was the one where he was he owned a chain of health clubs yes okay yes i remember that one okay okay don't remember it was a good one but i remember it yeah okay well yeah he went on to to do stuff you know he he has said that this idea was tied into you know yes invasion of the body snatchers but it was also kind of his he was riffing off of 39 Steps, Saboteur, North by Northwest, Hitchcock films, where the guy knows something, but everyone around him doesn't believe it.

And there's a little bit of a commentary there about the communist witch hunts, which I have always found, you know, they make the same argument about Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

It's like they're giving you something about that.

And maybe it's my perspective in time, but today we know those witch hunts were just that.

Witch hunts.

There were nothing.

And so if you want to make social commentary about witch hunts, they have to be fake.

They can't be real.

Yes, it's true.

An invasion of the body snatchers, they're real.

In the invaders, they're real.

Right.

Now, an invasion of the body snatchers, the original version, it's just possible that they were in fact saying, watch out for communists.

Yes.

Whereas in the invaders, it is kind of, I don't think that's what they're saying because of, of Larry Cohen and what we know about Larry Cohen and that he is definitely making.

He's also making another one.

I'm going to throw it here while we're just talking about that.

This is a weird quote I found from him.

I haven't been able to double source it yet.

So, you know but it was in context of a bunch of other quotes that i have seen this is weird okay just going this is weird the extended pinky used to be a symbol of a feminacy you know the effete person holding a glass of champagne with a pinky extended when this show was done back in the 60s the homosexual community was kind of a submerged invisible community people were living secret lives.

I thought, here are these aliens living amongst society, keeping their true identity secret, their true cell secret.

And this is funny because the pinky kind of symbolizes homosexuality in some way.

And nobody will get the gag, but I'll put it in there anywhere.

Anyway.

Interesting.

It's like, okay.

So again, are you, are you, are you saying that, I don't know, are you saying they're a threat i yeah it's interesting is it so would we read it as an exercise in homophobia or a critique of it or something else but even if it's a critique again the aliens are real so yes they are actually a threat and we could make an argument in this episode that they're not a threat i mean yes they try to kill vincent yes they kill his partner but we actually don't have a clue what they're doing.

No.

We don't know how long they've been here.

We don't know anything about them.

They may literally just be trying to blend in and disappear.

But we just don't know at this point.

And when they had their backs up to the wall, they would resort to killing.

But is that their universal policy?

Is that just like the district commander?

Who knows?

You truly don't know what's going on here you know you're watching this 1967 you're gonna yeah they're obviously they're they're a menace and they're a threat and vincent's the hero therefore they must be bad but you don't really get that in this episode right you just don't know i don't know the the episode just sets up the premise which is no our hero will spend the rest of the series trying to convince people to believe him.

And the episode does an absolutely fantastic job.

I hate using superlatives, but it does a fantastic job of taking Vincent, who we know absolutely nothing about.

Really, I mean, architect David Vincent, that's what we know.

And he's a guy who's too impatient to drive the freeway.

So he tries taking, he's a little headstrong, he tries taking a freeway to get home a little sooner across, I'm presuming, the mountains on the way to Santa Barbara there.

And that's all we know about the guy.

He doesn't speak a line.

He doesn't anything before.

All we see is we see him pull in, park, fall asleep in his car, and he sees an alien.

So from that moment on, what we see throughout the episode is every last bit of his life being stripped away from him, His reputation, his home, his company, his best friend, everything.

When he walks out the door at the end of the episode, the man has nothing left.

Yep.

Except his car.

And unlike, you know, Richard Kimball and the Fugitive, he at least is not a criminal.

And, you know, presumably maybe he still has a bank account.

Hopefully he's rich.

But, you know, it is, it's just, you know, piece by piece by piece by piece is picked away.

And I think that's one of the strengths of this story is it just gets worse.

Even though he manages to thwart their plan, sort of, in this town, it's not a victory by any stretch of the imagination.

They just move on.

And they have established a, you know, fantastic job of, there's that word again, The paranoia in this episode.

Even now, we've come out of this episode.

Yes, Kathy is an alien.

Yes, her aunt is an alien.

Is Carver?

I guess.

Is Holman?

I wonder.

See, here's the thing, right?

And this is why I, even on rewatch, I thought this is great.

So, for example, the first time we see the weird pinky thing is Brandon points up at the truck and he holds his hand in an odd position with his pinky kind of distended.

OK.

Right.

It's it's an odd way of gesturing, but he's not pointing.

Right.

He's he's using his whole hand to gesture, which he just, you know, you can do it.

But in this case, you wouldn't.

I mean, it's it's the body language is wrong.

Right.

You would just go, we pointed over there and you would point.

People would point.

He uses his hand.

His pinky is distended up.

Vincent, you know, all right, fine.

He does it.

And I'll tell you something.

My granddad, when he was a kid, got his finger caught on a rope that was going through a pulley.

And his finger was his his pinky was crushed and permanently damaged.

And his pinky looked a lot like that.

Yeah.

My whole life.

So in 1967, 1975, you know, seeing somebody with a hand that's slightly disformed would not would not trigger any weird thing.

But a moment later, a couple of moments later, he hands his driver's license over and now he uses the other hand.

And you can clearly see that the other finger is distended.

Right.

This is this is the director giving us left hand, right hand.

You can see they're both the same.

Right.

This is that point where you're kind of obvious.

Tell me about his wife's hands.

You watched it three times, I think you said?

Tell me about his wife's hands.

I went back and triple-checked this scene.

I do.

That is one detail I missed.

Ah, you didn't.

Yeah.

They virtually keep her hands off screen.

She is holding a pack of logs, but they frame her so that her hands are below where you can see them.

We only see them twice.

One time they're clutched around it in such a way, it's just very, very, very brief that you can't tell.

And then the other time, which occurs between the two hand appearances, right?

So between left and right hand on the husband, we do see her holding them.

And her pinky is not grossly distorted, but it is just slightly out.

But that could just be the way she's holding the logs, the shape of the log.

It's brilliant.

And they don't call attention to it as they did.

You know how they wouldn't TV show now.

I mean, dun, dun, dun.

Zoom in on the hand.

Close up on Vincent's eyes, looking at the hand.

Close up at the hand.

Oh, she too.

But they don't.

And there's a scene when Carver, you know, it would be easy for you to look at Holman.

Let's cut back to Holman, who is like, we're not going to do this.

We're not going to do this, right?

This is stupid.

It's ridiculous.

You could easily go, he is one of the aliens trying to prevent this from happening.

But he goes up there.

He's very dismissive, as I think is fair, frankly.

I think it's reasonably fair.

And he takes the ID of the Brandons and he tells them to stick around.

And is he an alien?

I don't know.

But they do stick around.

And we know that he is, that Brandon needs to do whatever it is they need to do.

To hold the form.

To regenerate.

Yeah.

Because he's, something's happening to him.

And so if Holman had been an alien, why would they actually stick around?

That's a good point.

It makes me think Holman is a human.

Yes.

Now you get to Carver, who is a complete jerk of a cop and weird.

Like, why is a cop who drives around in a car wearing a motorcycle helmet?

That's a very good question.

And I was, but then again, he came in.

Well, let's back up.

We could be dealing with the unreliable witness issue because we, because Hathi tells us and David Vincent that he, Carver, arrived a few months ago.

That's right.

We don't know if that's true.

When the company came in.

So it could be a lot for all we know.

It could be a lot.

Yes, but it does seem that Carver and Holman know each other.

Five years.

For five years.

And so if we assume that Carver, as we see him in the episode, is an alien, are the invaders body snatchers?

See, we see no evidence of that one way or the other.

Or is it just literally he is a cop and cops are unpleasant in this part of California?

Could be.

I mean, he used to work with Holman, and Holman is definitely unpleasant.

And I would argue that Holman probably is just a jerk human.

Carver may very well just be a jerk human.

It could very well be.

We don't see any.

Actually, I'll take the other argument.

We don't see any of the aliens in town except for Brandon, but that's kind of that's part of the epilogue sort of.

See, they're still here.

We don't see, you know, Kathy or any of the others who were aliens, who were sure aliens.

So it's possible Carver's just literally, you know, a human.

That is what really, and I watched through this so carefully to see if I could catch anything that would tell me whether Carver is not, and you is or is not a human.

And I cannot decide.

And that makes this good.

Really, really good.

Is that they do it.

They don't pay attention.

You know, in 1967, when they made this show, they expected you to watch this show a couple of times and then hopefully it would go into reruns someday.

They did not make them with the idea that you would be watching it obsessively over and over again and appreciate all the little subtle bits that they put in there along the way.

and yet they did them anyway and that is you know full compliments to them for making a show that you can go back and watch again and still not be able to figure out who is or who isn't except for those that are explicitly revealed to us intentionally by the which you know makes makes Vincent's threat truly credible.

And their, you know, their obsessive detail, their system for breaking him down into a crackpot is great.

All right, well, we'll just, you know, hide this, put some people there, change the name of the diner.

We'll all do that in an hour.

Well, two maybe.

And go on, crackpot, problem solved.

Yes.

Yes.

And this, and speaking of Holman, here's a question that came to my mind immediately when I saw him say, oh, it seems to be Kelly's Diner.

You said Bud's Diner.

Yeah.

Okay.

Wouldn't local law enforcement know their territory?

Crossed my mind?

I cannot say for 1967.

I really, you know, who knows how long that diner has been closed.

And if he's not a beat cop and that's not his beat, and why would it be?

Because it's the end of a dead end road.

I could see, might not even know there was a diner up there.

Okay.

But yes, I agree.

There was my 2024 brain looked at that and said, well, did they like Google it to get the address?

No.

So did they did they look it up in the yellow pages?

But it may have been closed so long it doesn't have a phone number in the yellow pages.

We just don't know.

It's you do have to you do have to look at it and say, well, OK, it's 1967.

Yeah.

I don't know.

So, yeah, that was one of the things I really appreciated about this is how they were just putting those pieces out there.

Kathy is like, she's, you know, why?

She's trying to talk Vincent out of it.

Is she trying to talk Vincent out of it because she's done a really good job of appearing like, I'm doing this for your own good.

Yes, she is appearing to do that.

Right.

She's doing a great job of appearing to do that.

Is that all just part of the alien game plan?

That we're going to try a whole bunch of different approaches to break down his resolve?

Don't know.

Or is there something else going on?

Because I did notice her expression as the camera focused on her as Carver arrested Vincent.

Mm-hmm.

And so there seemed to be a sympathetic expression.

Yes, they're dead.

But she could have been putting it on for any of those people in that space that were humans.

There is one scene when Vincent is meeting with her by herself outside Carver's in the hotel and he's asking her questions about, you know, where do they go?

What do they do?

Anything like that.

And then he he goes off and the camera lingers on her.

And, you know, to their credit, she doesn't instantly go flat and alien or, you know, twirl her mustache or, you know, whatever.

She looks like a woman who has just met a guy who's doing what he's doing kind of thing.

She's like, and maybe even remembering her husband, you know?

So if assuming that story is even true.

Assuming.

I don't know that's true.

We don't either.

Yeah.

So it's all, yeah, it's good.

And they're not going to answer those questions.

We're going to leave this town.

We're never going to come back to this town.

They may briefly mention that they once had a, trying to set up a subdivision or something.

But, you know, that's it.

We're not going to walk away with this with any more answers than we got right here.

And that's surprisingly satisfying because that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

Yeah.

But, okay, here's another question.

Okay.

When they don't have David Vincent in town, I mean, I'm guessing, okay, the owner of the store, I'm going to guess he's human.

Why?

Because he won't sell.

Unless the whole development thing is a ruse, they just want an empty old town where, you know, otherwise then I think he's a real person.

So I guess Kathy could have been out doing her laundry when Vincent came along.

But otherwise, do they have to do that?

Do they just sit around and, you know, commune or meditate or something in their meantime?

They just put on the show for the tourists?

I don't know.

It's, again, a nice little slice of...

But all we know about him, other than what we see with our own eyes in the episode, is that is what Kathy tells us.

Isn't there?

Well, so Carver too.

Yeah.

Carver saying, you know, there's, there's some whole, what's holding it up is there's a few holdouts, but they'll sell enough money.

They'll sell.

Kathy even says that.

And I have a feeling that she is probably telling the truth when she says that, you know, these people have sold out.

And I think there's a thing, it's in the extended version where they, she makes some mention.

And basically the old guy makes it sound like he's trying to hold out for more money, basically.

So that's, but okay, let's, while we're on her comments then, when she's trying to convince David about leaving, but not when she's telling him, I'm an alien.

When she's pretending to be the woman whose husband, and then, you know, died of a heart attack, she talks about this town and she says, You know, they all, they just want to sell at a profit.

We could make an argument that that's an indictment of capitalism.

We could, indeed.

You know, that's somebody saying, look, these people are just in it to make money, which, you know, the communist, that would be a communist talking point.

Hate, greed, ignorance are what killed him.

That's capitalism and tribalism again.

But that's the, once again, you know, we need to get together all kumbaya, you know, kill off the industrialists and then move on as one big united workers group of people without, hey, it's greed and ignorance kind of thing.

Again, the communist thing.

And she says if he'd thought about it, he'd have wondered what he was fighting for.

What is there in this world that is so special, so worth preserving?

You still have time.

You can think about it.

And that resonates because I see so many people, young people in particular, who have adopted this, let's call it nihilistic, I guess, attitude is like, you know, what's the point?

Really?

This is it?

This is what's so wonderful?

Whoopee.

Before it's time, maybe?

Maybe the aliens are still working on us.

And they finally, you know, are making that, they're finally getting that point in because if everyone took that attitude, the aliens would be able to move in and take over.

I'm thinking that's how the Nazis got in too, come to think of it.

So, I mean.

It was.

Yeah.

So we're going through the switch.

Yeah.

He's like, eh, you know, whatever.

What's the point?

It's not really worth it.

I can think of a whole, I can think of a whole political party that's adopted that attitude right at the moment.

Yes, so can I.

And probably will not have changed by the time this episode goes out.

So, you know, she's saying live, be happy and ignore what's going on around you.

It is subversive.

They are.

That is a subversive comment on her part.

And therefore, we can say that they are a subversive enemy.

That's part of their game plan.

I appreciate this show.

Yes, exactly.

this episode a lot it's a lot going on i think we should mention the the longer yes a longer version so the two things one apparently the original was 75 minutes i have that from one location the problem is they refer to the version we saw as the 60 minute version and it is not because Because it means 60 minutes with commercials.

Right.

So the extended version that's on the DVD set is 60 minutes, but that is not what they wanted to air as a 90 minute special.

That would need to be 75.

And I have seen that it was aired once, not aired, but it was shown at a film thing or something in the 70s, I believe, in its full 75 minute form.

So it does exist somewhere or it did exist somewhere.

And everyone up to and including Quinn Martin all says, you know, that's what they wanted to show because it's really good.

So even the extended version that we get on the disc, which is, again, basically 10 minutes longer, two key scenes are added.

In my opinion, two key scenes are added.

You may have some contact there.

But the first one is after they leave the diner with the cops and with Holman and his partner, and Vincent goes back to Santa Barbara, his next shot, they're in their offices.

He's shaving, getting rid of that five o'clock shadow.

And he's done out some beautiful illustrations of the UFO because he's an architect and, you know, architects can draw.

And they sit down and they have a conversation.

All right, Landers is like, fine, let's sit down and talk about it.

And Vincent talks about how he's just even saying the words aliens from another world sticks in his craw.

He doesn't want to believe it either.

He doesn't, but he saw it.

And it, you know, he's having a, he's definitely having a skeptic reaction to something that I saw it.

Right.

I saw it.

I, so he's having that conversation with Landers.

at some point we get to the conclusion that he basically acknowledges the fact that if Landers had seen it, he would not believe him.

He would have the same opinion.

I remember that one.

Yeah.

But now the part that was interesting and I think is weird that they cut it out, Landers makes a comment about he's remembering back during the Korean War, a young soldier in a hospital who was going on about what they were up to, right?

He's talking about a soldier who has some sort of PTSD and is suffering from some paranoia.

He's talking about Vincent.

Yes, he is.

Vincent's like, I don't think I have to dig that deep.

It's like, Vincent has a history of paranoia, and that's not good for him.

I mean, this is not good for his credibility in this case.

with Landers.

Landers is going, it's happened to you before, right?

So you totally, that's kind of important because people can refer to that in future episodes.

So you're the guy that was in a hospital in Korea, you know, suffering from that.

So that's one.

I think that's an important personality piece that's been removed from this episode.

And it also shows Vincent is also reluctant, but he can't deny what he's seen with his eyes.

Yes, that should have stayed in.

And the other one that should have stayed in was when he is in the asylum.

So Landers comes and visits him in the morning and says, I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you before because you were unconscious or you're out, but I just put you here under a false name to protect you because the press got hold of this.

And I think I managed to get him to not say anything, but, you know, da-da-da-da-da.

And he says, and I'm going to come back tonight.

And in the version we see, we then see the old lady who turns out to be Kathy's aunt, and I'll put that in air quotes, looking at him with her distended pinkies.

But in the longer version, she calls him out by name.

She comes over.

She says, you know, I believe you.

There's many of us who have met them.

And, you know, she shows in the newspaper article that shows David, an architect, thinks aliens from space or something like that, space invaders.

And they believe them.

And she says, they've been coming to the sea since I was a little boy.

And it's a shame because they're nice people.

And, you know, it's just a shame nobody will believe them.

And then kind of wheels herself off.

And the whole time you can absolutely see that Vincent thinks she's a nut.

Yes, he does.

He sees what it looks like to be the person going on about aliens.

He sees it.

They've staged this for him to, here's another opportunity for you to go, you know, maybe I should just shut up about this and go on.

But of course he doesn't, he can't.

That definitely should have been left in here.

You know, both of those scenes should have been left behind or left in the final cut.

Yeah, I don't know.

I can only imagine what the other scenes are.

there is a little there's the scene where landers swears him makes him promise to let this go for two weeks at least yes but you know it is also a scene where he says well i'm now i'm going because they tried to kill me there's that i mean that's justified right i mean that that cut you can get by without yeah with and there's one where if you watch the broadcast version after having seen the hour-long version without ads that just you notice it's like he's holding a piece of paper in his hand as he leaves the town oh he's torn the notice off the yeah yeah it's like oh then we omitted the part where he tore it off the wall yeah apparently you can we only see it i think we only see it well maybe it's in the background but i only noticed it in the at the at the hydroelectric plant where there's a notice of demolition this to be torn down which i guess you can do that because it's not actually a dam right but which you know usually is what hydroelectric plants look like but in this case it's along the los angeles aqueduct and anyway but yes he he he tears it off the wall of i think the hotel maybe or wherever they're holding the police station and basically implying this won't be needed because the aliens are gone this town is of no use to them anymore they'll never come back here they'll never do whatever they were going to do here this one's dead and gone the town won't be torn down and so they don't need it i don't think the scene really adds much to it frankly to the to the overall thing that that's when i can i can accept that cut yes it has the continuity of him holding a piece of paper but apart from that it's also thinking about how people watched television then i mean the physical act um is that i was watching this on a flat big screen television.

Mm-hmm.

So I could clearly see the piece of paper.

People are watching smaller screens with less resolution.

Mm-hmm.

Might not have been able to tell.

Right.

And, you know, you're just not, probably not even going to think about it, frankly.

True.

It's like, so he's got something in his hand.

Eh.

Could be his release papers from the prison, you know, from Ian Jeliga, you're out, kind of thing.

So it's, Yeah, but I would love to know what the other 15 minutes of this episode are.

I'm told it's, you know, building up more character, which I think in this episode is good.

I don't know if it's Vincent's character or whether it's just a shame.

I wish they would have put that out.

Or spreading it around because we get a little bit more of Holman's character in one of the cuts.

There was an ex...

Oh, yeah.

Sarcav, yeah.

He's an important person.

Well, that's an interesting question.

I mean, is David Vincent a prominent architect enough that people think of him as a top citizen in the town?

I don't know.

I don't know.

You know, that's one thing we don't really get about.

Is he a successful architect?

You know, is he a big guy?

Yeah.

So, yeah, Holman just seems to be a bigger jerk.

He does.

In that extra scene there.

I halfway expected him to start yelling at his cop from Texas.

Because J.D.

Cannon, the actor, was in McLeod.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

All of these people are so, you see him in everything.

James Daly and.

was was flint in star trek flint in star trek yeah amongst amongst so many of all of these people were in the con oh the guy who played carver i mean he was in yeah he's a usually a bad guy or a bad cop and tons of shows i i point out i think i didn't mention this part as part of the is carver an alien there is a scene where vincent is running to save landers at night and he's crossing the bridge and carver drives up pulls in front of him yes and blocks him off and the two of them get a fight and and he stands up and he puts his arm out like hold it right there vincent he puts his hands out and his pinky is straight out extended a little bit this is right after we saw the scene where or kathy says you know not all our fingers are are messed up right you're like so is that is that alien pinky or is that a fairly natural pose if you hold your fingers slightly splayed so if you right now you kind of just pretend like there's a rampaging horse coming at you and you're just like whoa or so you put your hands out in front of you like that i am there's your pinky is going to be slightly extended yes natural that way right so but again he did it that way so that we could see his hands.

The director did it that way so we could see his hands, but you can't make an assessment as to whether or not that means anything at all.

No, you can't, yes.

And that director, Joseph Sargent.

A competent and quite a few shows under his belt, as I recall.

Yes, and ironically, he directed one of the great stinkers of old time, Jaws the Revenge.

Oh, that was a...

That's Jaws 2, isn't it?

That's 4.

That's 4?

Wow, there's one worse than Jaws 2.

Okay.

Oh, that's right.

Jaws the Revenge is the one where the wife of the first shark comes back.

Or something like that.

Whichever shark it is.

The Siskel and Ebert review of Jaws the Revenge is a hoot.

It's on YouTube.

You can find it.

And it's worth watching the review just for the comedy value.

Fair enough.

Let's see.

What do I got here?

Larry Cohen was a believer in UFOs.

He did believe.

Roy Finnis.

I have several comments there.

Some people kind of put his comments about seeing a UFO as being publicity.

But there appears to be enough information along the way that he did believe that he had seen something.

And he does subscribe to the theory that so many people are seeing them.

There is something there.

It was kind of a, we don't know what it is.

So he wasn't really in the, it's definitely aliens from another planet.

But he was definitely in the, there is something there and it's a mystery to be solved.

And, you know, great minds are working on it.

I saw that interview with him on disc five for the first season of the set.

And so, in other words, he believed that those are objects, they're flying, and we don't know what they are.

Yes, they're planes and Venus.

But we do know what they are now.

They were planes and they were Venus.

But as far as I know, it could be some top secret experimental aircraft, right, that officially does not exist.

Right.

Well, many UFO sightings have been tracked back to testing of like the stealth fighters and the stealth bombers and whatnot.

But it comes back to their planes.

Yes.

And of course, also we're dealing with untrained observers much of the time.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

It is also a myth that trained observers are much better.

Yeah.

You know, they say, oh, pilots, you know, trained observers.

Nope.

Not really.

You know, you still, the limitations of the human eye are the limitations of the human eye.

And so it's like, yeah.

you know, color me a skeptic.

I would definitely, I'll just come out here and recommend if you haven't seen it by now, I know it's available on like Amazon and places, maybe even YouTube, the UFO movie.

They don't want you to see.

That's definitely worth watching.

It's, it's a, it's an eye opener and you may see my name in the credits as, as one of the donors to get it.

Okay.

I am.

I had nothing to do with the production except for some cash.

Okay.

Gosh.

But, yeah.

Okay.

So, this show was originally envisioned to be like Peyton Place.

Oh.

It was intended to be like two nights a week, 30-minute episodes with a cliffhanger in the middle.

This was a format that had come about with Peyton Place and was being quite popular as a sort of nighttime soap opera.

And then Batman adopted it.

Yes.

around this time too.

That was the original pitch.

That was the original idea when they took it into ABC and Quinn Martin Productions and that got dumped.

But interesting idea.

Looking at this episode, would, if we'd broken it up where Act 2 goes to Act 3, would it have worked as a cliffhanger?

I don't think so.

I think they'd have had to shift it to the fire, you know, burning his house down and seeing the old woman there.

but yeah but with with quinn with this being a quinn martin production there had to be a certain pace it at had to finna had to get to a certain point within a certain time frame because there was going to be an advertising break right and i mean they're they're right on the mark that is one thing about quinn martin productions if you look at those i can't swear to it on the fugitive with the FBI, Barnaby Jones, Cannon, A Man Called Sloan, The Invaders, Streets of San Francisco.

They are all heavily regimented.

This is the thing about Quinn Martin, heavily regimented in his production techniques, heavily regimented.

And we'll talk about in a later episode the way Quinn Martin productions worked.

But they all had that act one, act two, act three epilogue format.

It was pretty much inviolate in in in vol in vol yeah inviolate cannot be violated yeah that's that's it so no no room for creativity and cliffhanger in that in that format but on the flip side quinn martin productions were extremely well produced money on the screen on location the invaders are shot largely on location as are many of the other shows they they did not shoot they did not shoot outdoor studio sets they shot in locations they if they had to shoot at night they shot at night they didn't do day for night they they did their they put their budget into it and they did it and it shows on the screen and they are well well produced i guess this we can point out a moment here that this episode the town of kenny is actually temecula california And so the sheriff's office is there too.

Yeah.

And the Hotel Palomar is real.

Yes.

That's not, that's not, we painted the side of the building Hotel Palomar.

The Hotel Palomar is there.

It's still got the same sign and the same, the same wall.

It's now a touristy wine town in the Temecula Valley.

But yeah, they, they shot that there.

And the other one is, I think, I'm not 100% sure, but from some things I found on sign and then online and then trying to track down some photos of the original structure.

That appears to be powerhouse number two, San Francisco Canyon.

San Francisco.

I've never heard that name before, but it's like Francisco and Mosquito jammed up against one another.

Okay.

So that name bugs me.

and uh funny 19 built in 1937 along the la aqueduct which was built in 1913 they built a they built the la aqueduct and then they built a series of power stations along it to take advantage of the of that so when did los angeles pave over the la river i don't know i don't know okay i didn't go that far into it i just i do know that the that appears to be that building i found somebody who said that was what the building was and i went and looked and there was some confusion there's like powerhouse number one which looks nothing like it then there's powerhouse number two which does and has the pipes going up the hill i'm like yeah it's probably powerhouse number two i'm i'm not going to swear to it but but you can you can look the place up powerhouse number two san francisco canyon and there are some pictures of it online usually old pictures so i don't know if still there or not let's see goring here's another plug oh yeah la la land records if you've never heard of these guys listeners they are a company i assume they're probably out of los angeles i don't know that does very nice sometimes really obscurely weird television soundtrack releases like they're the people who put out all of the star trek music yes from the original season series they they've put out several bond soundtracks recently that you know extended to two and three discs and you know this then that score i mean really a lot of stuff with a lot of background outs they have now four volumes of the quinn martin collection if you are into quinn martin music canon barnaby jones all that stuff out there 12 o'clock noon i think that's one of them volume two is the invaders and it's a lovely it's a lovely score and the music from this by dominic frontieri yes i think it's mentioned well i've heard it frontier but it could be frontieri i have no idea it's i've only seen it written but he was all over the 1960s and 70s yes but you want to know what he didn't do he didn't actually really write the music for that i mean he did but he didn't when they made the pilot he just used some of his own music from a leslie stevens pilot called the unknown oh and that leslie stevens pilot got reworked and done as the episode the form of things unknown on the outer limits and if you listen to the episode, The Form of Things Unknown, it's this music.

Now, Fronturi did take, Frontier, Fronturi, did take Frontois, did take this music and he wrote three more soundtracks for the first season and he reworked these themes so that it now, there is original music for the invaders that is this incredibly distinctive and constantly recognizable music that they play for the aliens.

That three note kind of thing with the, whatever instrument that is some sort of horn or something.

It it's, it's one of the most, well, you can get it in three notes, two to three notes and you instantly know it's the invaders.

So just another piece of this, Even though it was originally intended, he was originally intended to score it, but they put it together from music that he held the rights to, to get the pilot done.

And then it just ended up going out that way because they just didn't have time or whatever.

So it was fine.

Which unfortunately does mean that the music from The Beachhead, which was released on a different soundtrack as I think The Unknown, is not on the Invaders soundtrack.

Makes sense.

That sort of makes sense, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Although the opening theme is, and the closing titles are, but not the incidental music for this particular episode.

The other episodes he did, yes, but not that one.

So that was kind of a bummer because this is the one that really drives home what you expect from the invaders.

So, all right, what else have we got on this episode?

Well, we have Anthony Wilson.

He was the writer of this episode.

Okay.

Some of his other work with which you may be familiar.

He was the story editor on Lost in Space.

Yeah.

Now, I read that and I'm getting great vegetable rebellion vibes.

Yeah, it's not something I'd put on my CE.

Okay.

Okay.

He went on after this series and he went on to become the executive producer of The Immortal.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The structure at Quinn Martin Productions, the way they did it, I guess we'll go into detail and I don't have it right in front of me, but the producer was actually basically the man who was in charge of scripts.

Okay.

And then Quinn Martin Productions actually had teams that did all the other stuff.

So there was a casting team and there was a locations team and there were all these teams.

So the producer didn't have to deal with hiring anything.

He was given a script or his job was to get scripts, to get the scripts, and then the other teams to do the work.

So it's not quite like a producer in other shows.

I have the IMDb page open here.

Quinn Martin is the listed executive producer.

Ellen Armour is the listed producer.

I'm also familiar with the rewrite where you have someone else's name on it.

So anyway.

Cohen wrote this originally.

Okay.

Okay.

And then Wilson is the credited writer.

Correct.

Okay.

And he did do a lot of work on it.

Don't get me wrong.

But Cohen turned in the original script and got no credit for it except for created by.

Yes, exactly.

And Wilson was, as I said, executive producer on The Immortal, a series that had its ups and downs.

And shall we say, he went on to create the Planet of the Apes series.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

And I'm getting a vibe here.

The Immortal, Planet of the Apes, both had very much a fugitive vibe.

We're on the run.

Another Quid Martin production.

yes yes is biggie some would say wilson seemed to have worked with a number of the same people across one series to another probably with the same company a lot of the time yeah i know probably true i i should say a couple other things i just want to mention david vincent leaps to that whole I think these devices must be some sort of regenerating device.

Yeah.

Awfully fast, fast.

And I'm wondering if there's something in that missing 15 minutes that, yes, there is the bit where the guy is like, Oh, I'm past my time.

And then he starts glowing.

But Vincent doesn't know beans.

What?

Yeah.

He doesn't know beans about this.

He's just seen a guy glow red and his eyes shine weirdly, which it will never happen again.

They, they dumped the contact lenses to give it that eye look later on but yeah that part is probably my biggest complaint in this episode actually it's like you just you're pulling that from nowhere well i haven't written in my notes that he's pulling it from somewhere but i can't tell you where it is yes but we do know that those are apparently fatal to humans yes they cause heart attacks.

If you put a human in one of them, it would appear.

There's also something that you, it isn't quite so obvious in this episode, and this is me talking about, in a way, talking about the future, but I think this is a non-spoilery talking about the future, is that David Vincent does not get killed in the course of this series.

So you ask yourself, if he's such a pain in the rear to the aliens why they didn't kill why they don't kill him and in this episode of course they do try to kill him and he says they had their one free shot they had their one free shot and they failed it and they can't try again because it would be too obvious that if i die in mysterious circumstances that other people will believe it and that comes back to if lander's got the papers to play along and not publish the story, then Vincent isn't branded as a crackpot.

But the old lady shows him the paper to show him.

She does.

You're a crackpot.

Look, you're in the news.

You're a crackpot.

And she didn't call him that, but basically by acting like one, she says, you're one of us now.

Get a tinfoil hat.

So, and he tells that to Kathy.

He says, I think that was their one free shot and they blew it.

So now they can't kill me.

Will that hold up through the course of the episode?

Will there be times when you go, come on, just kill him?

I think we may come across situations where that may happen.

Okay.

But, yeah.

But, you know, his friends aren't safe.

His family, does he have family?

Does he have, I mean, apart from Landers, does he have friends?

Did he have a girlfriend?

You know, they're not safe.

They could go down and be ended.

Yes, a way of getting to him by proxy.

So that's, you know, that's the question we have to ask ourselves going forward.

Is it credible that they don't kill him?

And is it credible, you know, is he the crackpot who pulls into town and people go, oh, you're the crackpot who thinks he sees a UFO?

Or is he just David Vincent Architect who pulls into Marana, Arizona, and they don't know him from Adam?

You know, in 1967, that's believable.

Yes.

2024.

It's not.

It's not so much.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Again, looking at a distinction, but the question is, does the series sell it well or does it or does it not?

And that's one we can ask ourselves as time goes on.

Yes.

Yes.

I also found a reference when I was checking the actor credits, and I did find a reference to Ray Thinnes reprising the role in 1995.

Oh, yeah, that.

The Invaders movie.

Or was it a series?

It was a miniseries.

That was it.

It was a miniseries.

That's why I was getting confused.

Yeah.

I think we should point out, because this is necessary for all things, I know that we have spent a lot of time over the years, not you necessarily, you and I, but Simon and I, making commentary about the fact that the X-Files was heavily influenced by Kolchak the Night Stalker.

Yes.

But it is also undeniable that it was also heavily influenced by the invaders.

Oh, obviously.

so much so that in exactly the same way they had to have Darren McGavin in the X-Files, Roy Thinnes was also in the X-Files as an alien.

Ah, clever.

He was one of the aliens that was trying to help Mulder, I think, find his sister or something.

And I don't remember how that turned out.

I think he may have shown up more than once because the aliens can be clones of one another.

Right.

So, yeah.

Another question we have to ask ourselves.

Yes.

I think you asked it, but we'll put this for things to look for in the series.

Can the aliens replicate a specific person?

I mean, I don't think they're body snatchers.

I think we can safely go with they're not body snatchers per se.

They're not like the pod people that grow a new human being.

These are aliens who come to Earth and do something to themselves to appear human.

But can they appear like a particular human?

Could one of them come down and make themselves look like David Vincent and then they kill David Vincent and he takes his place?

We don't know.

Obviously, we don't know that in this episode.

But, you know, Carver could, in fact, be an alien who has replaced the real Carver who is dead and knows enough to know that he hasn't seen Holman in years.

kind of thing that was a theme in a short-lived series called the invasion yeah well i remember that one many many many a theme has been reused well many yeah so uh the next episode the mutant the next episode is the experiment oh the experiment All right.

I think the next one filmed was the mutant.

That may be why I'm confused.

Okay.

Well, unless you have anything else?

I do not.

Genneth, thank you for joining me.

Thank you.

Listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.

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This has been a Lone Locust production.

On our next review of The Invaders, we'll be looking at The Experiment.

And next week on Fusion Patrol, we'll be looking at the Bugs episode.

Season 4, Episode 7, Jewel Control.

When we discuss electricity billing, Beckett's impressive Chinese reading capabilities, and whether Bugs is part of the same universe as Torchwood and whether it shares some of the same strengths and flaws.

Come join the conversation on Fusion Patrol.

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