Pre-59th Anniversary Viewing
The Invaders
"The Captive"
Originally aired November 28, 1967
Frndly said:
David must rescue an alien to prevent an incident that could set off World War III.
Wesley J. Sanders (Don Dubbins) burgles into the UN delegation of an unidentified country with collective farms and caviar; accesses a hidden wall safe for documents; and triggers an alarm, resulting in a shootout in which he's felled. Deputy Ambassador Peter Borke (Special Guest Star Fritz Weaver) summons Dr. Katherine Serret (Dana Wynter), who finds no pulse despite Sanders moving; and discovers a bloodless bullet wound. When Sanders revives and is restrained, Dr. Serret declares that he isn't a human being.
The QM Narrator said:
In a confused and divided world, one thing remains certain: A man must earn his daily bread. And so David Vincent takes advantage of a precious lull in his lonely war.
David's actually doing architectural work this week when he's approached by Josef Dansk (Lawrence Dane) to come look at the captured alien. At the delegation, Borke is skeptical of Serret's assertion that the titular being is an extraterrestrial. He questions Sanders, who unconvincingly claims to have been looking to sell the troop disposition documents that he took; is otherwise evasive; asserts his constitutional rights when roughed up; then unsuccessfully struggles to escape while being put in his cell. David argues for Sanders to be put in U.S. government custody, but Borke believes that he's a home-brewed project and has David taken into custody as well, sharing Sanders's basement cell. As Borke listens in, Sanders talks like David's a confederate in American intelligence. After David finds and pulls the wire, Sanders threatens that is he doesn't get out, his people will blow the place up and the U.S. will be blamed.
David brings this info to Serret, seeking to enlist her aid in turning over or freeing the titular being. A pair claiming to be local police detectives (Douglas Henderson and Jock Gaynor, I think) visits Borke specifically looking for Sanders and asking about the burglary. When Borke doesn't want to take them to the basement, they force him down with them at gunpoint. The guards in the basement room shoot
them after they enter and they glow up. This motivates Borke to question David about the aliens, though he still plays the angle that Sanders is part of an American biological warfare project. Borke shares with David the great motivational failure of his career--having infiltrated the Manhattan Project in 1944 and reported to his superiors that building an atomic weapon was not possible. He's now wary of making another such misevaluation.
Sanders is X-rayed, revealing the same inhuman internal structure that we saw last week. Borke plays the tape of Sanders's ruse in the cell with David and interrogates Sanders about where he was made; while Sanders continues to talk like an American and implies that he's with the CIA. On his way out of the lab, Sanders grabs an oxygen mask in what David afterward indicates was an attempt to kill himself. David argues to Borke that if Sanders was made in the USA, he wouldn't have been given such a vulnerability. When he's left alone with Serret, David apologetically trusses her up, slips out, and manages to circumvent an electric fence...but finds himself surrounded by plainclothes types bearing
their weapons.
After being briefed about developments at the embassy, the head alien, Dorian (Tom Palmer)--not willing to take the chance of waiting nine days until Sanders needs to regenerate--gives David two hours to get Sanders out before
they attack the place with a helicopter. David's observed heading to the State Department, where he tries to tell James Royer (Dallas Mitchell) and his partner, Murphy (Robert Patten), about the prisoner, though he's dismissed as a conspiracy cook on that front. That David was held prisoner motivates Royer to call the embassy, who deny the incident. Having a favorable feeling about David, Royers agrees to take David to the embassy, but suffers car trouble. After another vehicle passes, pulls over some ways ahead of them, and its occupants to get out, Royer drops dead while working under the hood. David proceeds to the embassy on foot, overpowering the gate guard (Alex Rodine), who subsequently phones in a warning.
David sneaks into Katherine's lab and informs her of the now-ten-minute deadline before
they bomb the place; which is corroborated by a helicopter arriving to hover over the compound. While Dorian assembles a device in the copter, Katherine causes a diversion that gives David a chance to get down to the basement; then fills in Borke about what David has told her, pleading for him to take a stand and do what's right while there's still time. After Borke socks her in defiance, she pulls a gun and forces him to call down for Sanders to be brought up. Once Sanders is out of the cell, David jumps the guards and escorts the alien outside. Borke wrests the gun from Serret and unsuccessfully attempts to stop the copter from picking Sanders up; but when an exchange of fire results in a plant glowing up, Borke becomes a believer and resolves to report this matter to his government.
In the Epilog, Katherine visits David at his temp office to inform him that Borke's flight is long overdue for arrival back home, both believing that
they're responsible. David advises Katherine to lay low and arrange alternate means to return home.
The QM Narrator said:
A long and lonely war. And yet, the invaders, seeking to take advantage of the differences between nations, have provided David Vincent with an ally half a world away.
Photos:
The Invaders
"The Believers"
Originally aired December 5, 1967
Frndly said:
David is subjected to hypnosis and elaborate ruses in an effort to learn the identities of his new allies.
David meets with three other titular characters in the basement of a San Francisco computer company--including company head Arthur Singeiser (Warren Parker), Charles Ruselli (Richard Karlan), and a woman named Farnham. They take a call from Ed Scoville (Kent Smith), a group leader who has five others with him in a New York boardroom, about coming out to use Singeiser's computers to locate
their "galaxy," which could allow their movements to be tracked. Leaving the meeting, the Frisco quartet find themselves spotlighted outside and only David gets away from being machine-gunned down, but is chloroformed in his car--the security guard (Mark Tapscott) having been one of them.
The QM Narrator said:
Finally, it has happened. A group of people have banded together. Believers who have seen, who know what David Vincent knows--that alien beings have found their way here and that they must be destroyed. A group of believers who, by their very nature, become the aliens' chief target for extinction.
David is taken to a secure basement on a campus, where he's revived and questioned by a pair of
them--Harland (Donald Davis) and Dr. Torberg (Than Wyenn)--about the identities of his other confederates, who've assembled threatening research about things like weapon systems. Under CTP, David gives six names and locations, but some checking reveals that these individuals are dead, names apparently planted via hypnosis to thwart
their interrogation methods. Under orders, a friendly and regretful guard (Hal Baylor) takes David to a room to shoot him, but the sound of gunfire breaks out and gas fills the room from air vents. David overpowers the guard before passing out, and a pair of gas-masked soldiers burst in to extract him.
David comes to in a ward where he's tended to by Lt. Sally Harper (Kathleen Larkin) and greeted by Colonel Newcomb of US Military Intelligence (Byron Morrow), who says that he's a confederate of Singeiser's and talks of needing to get the other believers into protective custody. David doesn't trust them and finds that the nurse doesn't have a pulse, upon which Harland enters and it turns out that David's still in the secure facility. In a cafeteria occupied mainly by uniformed
them, David meets a woman in civilian clothes--psychologist Elyse Reynolds (Carol Lynley), who arranges a meeting in the facility's library and warns him of how
they captured her to use her research about crowd behavior in an impending scheme to sew panic by causing disasters in major cities. David initially assumes that she's another plant, but she cuts herself and lets him feel her pulse. She helps him get to a storage room with a shaft that leads to an aboveground office, where the pair escapes through a window.
From an airport, David calls Scoville, who arranges to put David and Elyse up in a company suite while he sends two of his group out. David and Elyse are pursued by a pair of
them with FINDs, but lose them in a cab. At the suite, Elyse insists on staying with David though he feels she'll be a liability to his work. She elaborates further about how
their plan in L.A. involves eliminating key officials and using an earthquake warning to instigate an evacuation. David takes her to see a believer who couldn't make the meeting--wheelchair-bound Professor Hellman (Rhys Williams), who plans to use Elyse's notes to come up with a counterstrategy to the alien scheme. Back at the suite, Elyse tells David of how the teenage brother she was raising was killed in an accident when she was captured three months prior. David then gets a call that Prof. Hellman has died of a heart attack.
David and Elyse proceed to a motel to meet up with Bob and Mary Torin (Anthony Eisley and Maura McGiveney) about coming up with a plan. As the Torins are showing their visitors out, a pair of
them open fire with rifles from a distance, killing Mary and wounding Bob. David calls an ambulance and proceeds to escape with Elyse through a back window. Back at the suite, David reports by phone to Scoville, who underscores how the aliens keep finding them and picking them off. David confuses Scoville when he ends the call by referencing a Dr. Jensen. He then sends Elyse out to make contact with Jensen. After a muffled voice on a payphone instructs her to meet Jensen at a closed bus depot, she dials a number. Two of
them show up at the depot, calling for Jensen. David steps out of the shadows, and when they draw their weapons, shoots them, causing them to glow up.
When Elyse arrives at the depot late, David confronts her, revealing that he was the voice on the phone and sharing his deduction that the alien plan the group has been concerned about was a sham to help draw his confederates out. She explains that
they're holding her brother, but when he presses her, it turns out that she hasn't seen him, and he confronts her with research he did into the car wreck kidnapping showing that he's dead, and thus David's confederates died for nothing, which causes Elyse to break down. A trio of
them arrive outside the depot, Harland using his FIND as a bullhorn to call for David's surrender. Elyse comes out and tells Harland how they can get in to David. When Harland and another go in, David's ready for them, shooting them into glowing up.
In the Epilog, David finally takes Elyse to see Scoville's group, where she faces tough questioning about wanting to join, but David backs her.
The QM Narrator said:
There are seven of them now...believers, aware of the presence of alien beings here, determined to destroy them. Perhaps for us, it is the end of the beginning. Perhaps for the invaders, the beginning of the end.
Apparently David getting chloroed isn't as much of a turn-on:
No, it was a manual timer. You would plug something into it and then plug the other end into the wall. This was a long time ago, when I was living with my parents. I'm not completely sure what I used it for, but it may have been to turn my regular radio into an alarm clock.
Interesting...maybe this was just supposed to be the real McCoy. Re. the one in the show, the circle of lights would light up one per second in sequence, while the sweep hand on the right went around once per second.
Now that would be interesting, considering who was on the list.
Just wait until
their Newman's Own scheme pays off....
For him to teach a course in UFOs. The position would give him some gravitas and would be a way to spread the word, and it would be a channel for him to receive tips about alien activity.
It might also change
their strategy for dealing with him.
Oh, man,
Xanadu. That's worse than
Saturday Night Fever.
It had some great music, though--Olivia and ELO. It's been decades since I've watched it, but I'd consider it to be one long-form music video.
I never saw any of those. I think the only X-Men cartoon I ever saw was an unsold pilot adaptation of "Pryde of the X-Men" that came out on VHS back in the 80s.
Well, you just saw that Sub-Mariner episode, didn't you? Possibly the first time that the "new" X-men appeared in a cartoon was
Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends...that was a red-letter Saturday morning.
Just imagine if Nixon saved us from an alien coup! 
Happy 70th, Barry! 
No, it was an ordinary plant, which was shot by one of their ray guns, which conveniently produce the same effect as they suffer when killed by other means. Seeing this opened Borke's eyes.
