Pre-59th Anniversary Viewing
The Invaders
"The Ransom"
Originally aired December 12, 1967
Frndly said:
In New England, David and an alien leader plead their cases before an aging poet who holds them at gunpoint.
David drives with Bob Torin (Anthony Eisley--continuity!) into the latter's old neck of the woods, Harper County, Vermont, to investigate a closed ski lodge suspected of being a
them lair. The duo manages to sneak in, but a guard dressed as a hunter (Garth [recent Vulcan mating rival Lawrence Montaigne]) spots and follows them, initiating a firefight in which Bob is wounded in the leg and a couple of
them glow up. The alien leader (Alfred Ryder) calls off Garth but pleads with David not to take him for the humans' own good, as they'll never make it to Washington alive. After David and teammate depart with their prisoner, Garth alerts his fellow
them via FIND.
The QM Narrator said:
A surprise encounter in a closed ski lodge. The capture of an alien being whose importance David Vincent cannot know. a leader whose loss jeopardizes the invaders' foothold on the planet Earth.
Back at their motel, David calls Ed Scoville while Bob tells the leader about what happened to his wife on October 11. The leader, who makes himself out to be a bigger cheese in the alien hierarchy than any David has thus far encountered, warns of terrible retribution for his capture and death via lack of regeneration--possibly the destruction of a city. Then Garth arrives outside with backup, looking for the leader...who offers to call off the invasion entirely in exchange for his release, claiming to have the authority; but David won't change the plan.
David: I've been beaten, shot, tortured, and my friends have been murdered. and you ask me to take your word.
The humans are about to make their move when the state police arrive, and the other speaking alien (Kant [John Ragin], I presume) tries to pass Garth off as a drunk. (I feel like we missed something involving either Garth having contacted the police or his transmission having been overheard.) The policeman (Joe Frank) gets a radio call that the ski lodge, which they got a call about, has turned out to be empty, so the police depart. Meanwhile, David and Bob have slipped out into the woods with their prisoner and make their way to a house occupied by a young woman named Claudia (Karen Black) and her grandfather (Laurence Naismith), wanting to use the phone; but
they cut the lines.
After Bob leaves in his car for nearby Fort Belding, the old man comes out of his room with a gun of his own and has Claudia disarm David. David tries to explain that the men swarming the house are enemy agents, but the old man isn't receptive to that notion, so David switches to the truth. This is met with incredulity until one of
them gets in, the leader gives an order to kill everyone, and Claudia shoots the newcomer with David's gun, causing him to glow up. After the leader warns of what will happen to the house and its occupants if he doesn't regenerate in five hours, Claudia pleads with David that her grandfather is Cyrus Stone, whose name David recognizes as that of a once-famous poet, and shares that he has a heart condition. Cyrus expresses curiosity about the leader and where he comes from, and describes how the world has changed too much for his poetry in the last twenty years. Meanwhile, Bob has made it to the fort gate, but makes the mistake of taking a ride in the back of truck occupied by a group of
them, who drive him somewhere other than the colonel's quarters. As David's encouraging the Stones to hang on until Bob gets back, Bob's car drives up and Bob's body is dumped out of a door.
They set up a van with a regen unit outside, hooking it up to power lines. (The show has been getting a lot of use out of this van.) David wants to try to get to the fort himself while Cyrus keeps the leader prisoner, but when Cyrus expresses concern for his granddaughter, the leader, who's been familiarizing himself with Stone's poetry, sees an angle. He describes his world as a relative utopia whose science could give Cyrus another fifty years to create new poetry; but David counters that there'd be no one to read it on a world of slaves. The leader claims that poetry is valued by his people, but goes silent when David challenges him to recite an example. Cyrus agrees to hold the leader if David will take Claudia with him, but the duo is seen slipping out the back by Garth. David and Claudia make it to the motel, where David tries using a payphone but can't get through. Then the Army truck pulls up and David makes the mistake of asking for a lift. During the ride, Claudia tells David of how her father wants to die so that she, who won't leave his side, will move on with her life. The truck takes them back to the cabin, where Claudia is let inside to plead with her grandfather to let the leader go. Outside, David fights back against his captors, ends up falling into the electrical equipment deployed out of the back of the van, and is declared dead.
Cyrus bargains with the leader to use the regeneration truck to give David the fifty years that he'd offered Cyrus. After an order from the leader through the window, David is carried into the truck and put in a regen tube. When the first attempt is unsuccessful, Cyrus insists that they try again. This time David stirs back to life, and is carried unconscious into the house. As Cyrus is letting the leader go, the leader tells the poet that that he could have had the world but gave it away for the life of one man; and Cyrus counters that it's a virtue of his species that will allow them to endure in the face of the invasion. The leader gets into the back of the van for his regen, and after David comes to, the Stones find the vehicle gone.
Ed--who at an earlier point had gotten to the base and talked to Colonel Gentry (John Graham) without telling him what it was all about--pops up in the Epilog to see that Bob's body is taken out in an ambulance. The Stones exchange farewells with David, Cyrus encouraging him to someday build a city that the architect had described designing in an earlier exchange with the poet about the need to create regardless of whether there's a receptive audience.
The QM Narrator said:
David Vincent, given life by his enemies, continues his search. And an old man and a girl will watch the skies and wait.
Photos:
The Invaders
"Task Force"
Originally aired December 26, 1967
Frndly said:
Seeking control of the news media, the invaders buy into Mace Publications, murder the publisher, and terrorize his malleable successor.
On Wall Street rather than somewhere in California for a change, Mace Publishing Company associate editor Bob Ferrara (John Lasell)--one of the currently seven believers--takes David to a meeting with William Mace (Martin Wolfson). Others in attendance include secretary June Murray (Nancy Kovack); the publisher's nephew, Jeremy Mace (Linden Chiles); and science editor John Nivin (John Stephenson). David and Bob are trying to warn Mace that his key executives have been mysteriously leaving as part of a pressure tactic by
them to gain control of the company. David plays to Mace's thirst for getting to the truth, and is backed by Scoville on the phone, ultimately persuading Mace to support the group with his resources.
The QM Narrator said:
William Mace made the most important decision of his life. And hours later, members of an enemy force began to assemble at an office building in downtown New York--executives of an alien task force, summoned to an urgent summit meeting. Another calculated step in their planned annihilation of our civilization.
At Resources Incorporated, Eric H. Lund (Frank Marth), who's been trying to buy interest in Mace's
Now Magazine, reports to his executive committee on the infiltration of the publishing company. Given recent developments, he gains permission to take out Mace Sr. so that he'll be replaced by his more manipulable nephew. At Mace, Scoville and invasion-skeptical editor-in-chief Emmett Morgen (Barney Phillips) attend a meeting laying out a strategy of how the investigation will be conducted under a cover story involving foreign power infiltration to avoid ridicule and/or causing panic. Soon after the meeting, Mace is intruded upon by Five-O Special-bearing
them, and subjected to CTP by their inside man--Nivin. Jeremy's with June--who calls him Jerry and with whom he's having a thing--when he's summoned by his under-the-influence uncle so that he, too, can be Crystal Them Persuaded.
The Maces are brought back to their senses to meet with Lund at Resources Inc. Lund has Jeremy watch as Mace Sr. is put into a regen tube and killed; then threatens Jeeremy that others close to him, including June, will be harmed if he doesn't cooperate. A cover story is arranged for Mace Sr.'s death involving a heart attack-caused auto accident, though David and Bob are suspicious. Now in control of the company, Jeremy promptly accepts Lund's "investment" and makes him Executive Assistant. Lund announces that, following Mace Sr.'s example, company policy will be tightly dictated from the top; such that when Morgen attempts to raise an objection, he's immediately forced to resign after 31 years. (Our invaders from another "galaxy" can't afford local competition from Venus.)
Our trio of believers are certain that Jerry's being controlled and decide to get to him through June; who's upset with him over firing Emmett despite Jerry's protests about how much Morgen meant to him. David and Bob surprise June in the parking garage to stage an intervention, despite her skepticism about the alien invasion angle. She agrees to a rendezvous Jerry's been trying to make with her at a borrowed photographer's studio; but Lund is screening Jerry's calls, and when June arrives with David and Bob, they're ambushed by
them. In an exchange of fire as David gets the trio out of there, one of
them glows up and Bob is mortally wounded.
June learns from Emmett that Jerry's being kept on ice at Lund's ranch, which she and David proceed to sneak into despite helicopter surveillance. The two of them get to Jerry and update him about Bob. David tries to enlist Jerry's cooperation in making an attempt to grab Lund, though Jerry appears to get cold feet in Lund's presence. Lund suspects from Jerry's nervous coughing habit that David and June are around, and the two of them find themselves shot at and surrounded trying to escape the premises.
But per a bit of foreshadowing by June, Jerry's been holding back to make a grander play. As David and June are being brought back, Jerry wrestles a gun from one of them guards, resulting in a glow-up, and holds it on Lund. He forces Lund to go back to his helicopter, while Lund tries to talk the nervously coughing Jerry out of it. When they board with David and June, Nivin--having conferred with Lund's superior (Walter Woolf King)--orders the guards to open fire on the chopper. Jerry manages to lift off, though David is winged. Then Lund, in an effort to avoid capture, struggles his way past David to dive out of the chopper...which Jerry has to land to get David off the strut.
In the Epilog, Emmett is back on the job as a confidently in-charge Jeremy Mace launches the investigative effort agreed to by his uncle, and asks to be considered a member of David and Scoville's group.
The QM Narrator said:
Two more to be added to the handful of believers: a cool young woman and the editor of an important magazine. And they will go on, with David Vincent, watching, waiting, fighting the invaders.
I saw a formula emerging at this point--they keep the number of card-carrying believers consistent even while members are killed and replaced. Thus far, only Scoville shares David's character armor.
Photos:
Natalie Cole, Captain & Tenille, and ELO are all good. I don't really know the others.
Pratt & McClain did the theme song to "Happy Days," which is dropping off the chart this week.
What do they mean by a salute to Jethro Tull? Do they do covers of their stuff?
The salutes consist of a mix of footage of the artist talking about their career; song clips accompanied by still photos; and performance footage. The Jethro Tull salute is at 23:40 in the posted video of that full episode; the Donovan salute is at 23:20 in its video.
So Billy Crystal was known as a standup comic before
Soap. I hope somebody told him that the Amazon River is in South America.
He seemed to be playing to a crowd of kids, or at least there was a large group of kids there.
A salute to Donovan on Midnight Special. That's nice.
I was a little surprised to see him getting the attention at this point, though he is still putting out records.
I'm not remembering any specific Bicentennial-themed stories, though. The one thing that's coming up is a vague memory of Steve Englehart using the word, hyphenated (Bi-Centennial), in an issue of
Captain Marvel as he was evolving the relationship between Mar-Vell and Rick Jones. Which I think caused some snickering at the time.
Superman got knocked back to 1776 in a fight with an alien, assumed a temporary identity as a colonial reporter, and stopped a plot to blow up Independence Hall from an underground tunnel.
The Cap issue:
I did see it, but
Voyager is where my mind always goes when I see that name.
Are you thinking of Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar's half-Romulan daughter on TNG?
Let's see. I paid attention to the title sequence to hear the word galaxy and I also noticed that they refer to him as architect David Vincent, as if that had some significance.
Could he be considered an architect...of
fear?
I got a kick out of the launch room where the rocket is sitting about five feet away on the other side of a window-- I think they underestimate the power of a rocket launch.
Pretty standard business for TV special effects in those days.
But I thought that the Halvorsen character was well written and well played. The guy did a good job of playing a reasonable character who meant well and was reluctantly convinced by evidence, and took responsibility for his misjudgment.
Might've been nice if we'd gotten to see him on his game before he was being played, though that wouldn't have fit within the limits of the story.
