Post-58th Anniversary Viewing
The Invaders
"Inquisition"
Originally aired March 26, 1968
Series finale
Frndly said:
David and Edgar battle a fanatical prosecuting attorney to clear themselves of a murder charge.
David and Scoville bring the Kookshow to the Capitol Building office of Senator Robert Breeding (Alex Gerry), warning him that they suspect a technical advisor to the National Security Council, Arthur Koy, of being either one of
them or a collaborator. Koy's both reputable and a personal friend, motivating the senator to angrily dismiss his guests. His secretary (Mary Gregory) notices an unattended briefcase and goes out to ask David if it's his...and the office explodes, killing Breeding.
The QM Narrator said:
Minutes after the violent death of one of Washington's most beloved senators, David Vincent and Edgar Scoville are hustled to the office of Special Assistant to the Attorney General Andrew M. Hatcher.
Hatcher ([Peter] Mark Richman) has his guest, reporter Joan Seeley (pilot Trek babe Susan Oliver), stick around for the meeting, letting them believe she's a secretary. Hatcher takes an interest in the Believers group and its tracking stations, about which David and Edgar are unwilling to provide information. Hatcher postulates that if his guests believe what they're selling, that would be motive for murder. Afterward, Seely tracks down David and Scoville's location, a safehouse with a manned tracking center in the basement, whose personnel include James Bolin (John Milford). After Joan comes clean regarding who she is, David and Edgar show her film of Koy (uncredited George Hoagland) meeting a known alien and exchanging a report on communication interruption devices for what they believe is an operational plan for Koy to program. Then they get a call that Koy's scheduled to leave for Paris. Joan warns them of Hatcher's devious methods and motivation to use them as stepping-stones, which convinces them to let her accompany David as he sneaks into Koy's home to wait for him to retrieve the documents from his safe. A gun-wielding David gets the documents from him, but Koy goes for his own weapon and ends up being shot into glowing up before Joan's eyes. Meanwhile, Hatcher's assistant, Hadley Jenkins (Stewart Moss), reports to his boss that the bomb was made of a new explosive called caldonite, which only Scoville produces; and brings in Dr. Stanley Frederickson (Robert H. Harris), who says that he's a former Believer who wants to talk.
The story of Koy's disappearance gets written up in the paper, and Joan visits Hatcher, with whom, we learn, she has a personal history. When she tries to dissuade him from prosecuting Scoville, she learns that he's planning to nail the entire Believers group and has convened a grand jury for an indictment. She also makes a date with him. After reporting to David, she sits in on the grand jury hearing, where Frederickson names multiple Believers and testifies to having attended a meeting in which a contingency to kill the senator was planned. When Joan reports this, David says that he's never heard of Frederickson. While she's at the safehouse, Bolin reports a partial decoding of Koy's document, which indicates that a general assault is imminent. Needing to stop the indictment so that they're free to act on details they've yet to decode, David and Scoville confront Hatcher after his date with Joan to persuade him to help them against the alien threat if they can prove it. David shows him the coded documents, tells of what they've learned, and admits to having killed Koy, who incinerated. Hatcher says that he'll stop the indictment, but outside arranges via car phone to have Koy's house investigated for evidence of David's presence and for a new indictment to be drafted for conspiracy to murder Arthur Koy.
The jury produces the indictment, and Hatcher proceeds to obtain warrants. At the safehouse, further decoding indicates that
their plan is to use an ultrasound device to kill every living creature on Earth...which would use three transmitters that have to be found. Joan drops in to update them, and Scoville arranges to have David and Bolin go to one of his facilities to finish the decoding with a more powerful new computer. (This episode specifies that Scoville's business is advanced electronics, which includes guidance systems and defense contract work.) When they see a police car pulling up outside the house, Scoville provides a distraction to enable the others to get away--pushing and running from the officer, which leads to him being shot in the back!
Joan angrily confronts Hatcher, telling him what she saw at Koy's, which he doesn't believe. He takes her to where Frederickson's being kept under guard, to find that the witness has apparently escaped through the bathroom window...though Joan finds ashes on the floor. One of the security men then gets a report via phone that two of the named Believers were stopped at a roadblock, where one of them was killed trying to escape. At the Scoville facility, David and Bolin learn that the attack is only hours away, and that one of the transmitters is at a hotel in town.
Joan heads to the facility to warn David and Bolin that the police are on the way; and then takes their car to act as a decoy. As she attempts to evade police cars converging on her, she slams into a wall; following which David and James get away in her car. Hatcher visits Joan at the hospital, where she asserts that he knows the truth now but won't accept it. At the hotel, David and James bluff their way through a service entrance posing as phone company workers and, after having to slug out a suspicious engineer (George Robotham), use detectors to find a high-voltage area. They pass through a generator area to find a room where two of
them are monitoring the transmitter. David shoots one of them into glowing up, but James takes a slug struggling with the other over his gun, following which David shoots the alien. Bolin's last words...
Tell Hatcher...I'll wait for him in hell...!
David opens a vault door to find the transmitter apparatus, which looks like an antenna dish with a crystal in the center of it. He shoots the crystal, which goes up in sparks and smoke.
In the Epilog, David arrives at the hospital to be informed by a sobered Hatcher that Joan has died. Hatcher rationalizes that he did what he had to do.
David: Sure, I can see that. Put a few people in prison, a few more in hospitals, and a few more in cemeteries.
David nevertheless recruits Hatcher to help stop
them from rebuilding their transmitter.
The QM Narrator said:
And now, Andrew M. Hatcher joins David Vincent in his struggle against the invaders. Edgar Scoville will recover from his wounds, and these three will be in the vanguard, leading the fight against the aliens from space--invaders who must be stopped.
This episode proved to be what I wasn't expecting--an eventful enough installment to serve as a satisfying conclusion to the series while leaving things open for a potential continuation. Given how Scoville's survival was only established in the closing narration, I strongly suspect that he was meant to have been killed. There was a conspicuous lack of acknowledgment of Scoville's fate until that last bit of voiceover, which could indicate that any references to the contrary were edited out of the final cut; though it's also possible that they were leaving that bit of business open during production.
Photos (a couple of which aren't from this episode):
For the record, the guy who took Scoville's fall was obviously not Kent Smith. From his big hair, he appeared to be a stuntman wearing a helmet underneath.
Did we ever see Emily bleed?
Good question.
Ah, yes...and Grandma was in the first episode, IIRC.
I wonder what the original purpose of the experiment was. It seems like it could only be counterproductive from Their point of view.
Probably to better allow themselves to pass as humans.
Wouldn't that have been the original reason for the meeting?
It probably was.
"You glow it, you bought it!"
I could see the character saying something like that.
That's weird. It's unusual for this show to have any intentional comic relief.
Maybe you just haven't seen enough of it.
"You were supposed to sign this back in seventeen years ago!"
I think he'd only been retired for two.
I wouldn't want Suzanne Pleshette to fly into a rage on me. Or maybe I would. I dunno.
I think he was, but he had other priorities motivating him.
Shouldn't there be an ambulance there by now if it's been long enough for Halloway to hear about it and tell Hank?
That was primarily a result of my plot condensation. The nursing back to health occurred before the sheriffs learned about McKay from his son. But indications are that David and Anne didn't call an ambulance...David was assuming that the authorities would be converging on the place after being informed by Eddie. And it's possible that the cabin didn't have a phone.
"Kooky Twin powers-- Activate!"
FTFY.
That's what they seemed to be indicating.
Because the exchange of gunfire wasn't enough to interest the Justice Department.
The Justice Department is worse than the OSI.
Ironically, he was only able to sneak inside with a loaded gun because Scoville had commandeered the Justice Department's security guard.
All of the Justice Department personnel were in Washington, not L.A.
I just don't understand why she was even on Earth. You'd think they would have eliminated her as soon as they realized the experiment was a failure.
Maybe her issues only came out in the field.
Actually, I was channeling my Aunt Janice-- she always had a big crush on him and always jumped to his defense.
I had to look up which team he played for.
I'm not sure I even know which is which.
You've lost your ability to distinguish Little Richard from Not Little Richard?
Nice. I suppose it's too much to hope that they still exist.
They do not. Our '70s record collection got melty in storage when we moved to Florida in '79.
