Invaders, The (ABC 1967-1968, Roy Thinnes, Kent Smith)

Scifi drama series The Invaders takes on the whole Invasion of the Body Snatchers genre and gives it a delicious Fugitive like spin. Architect David Vincent is witness to a flying saucer landing and soon learns that an alien bid for world domination is afoot. The problem being that the aliens are able to assume human form (although they do need “re-charging” every 10 days or so or else they revert back to their amorphous self) and once dead they handily disintigrated, which made Vincent’s job of porving their existence all the more difficult. His one clue to whether someone was an alien or not was the way their little finger stuck out at an odd angle.

The series only ran for two seasons (Vincent never did get to tell the world about the aliens) and in the second batch of episodes loner Vincent joined forces with a septet of fellow alien spotters who styled themselves The Believers.

Writers on the series included Waltons creator Earl Hamner Jr, Robert sherman, John W. Bloch, Art Wallace and William Blinn. The series also attracted its fair share of high profile guest stars including the likes of Roddy McDowell, Ed Asner (who crops up a couple of times in different roles), a young Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, Suzanne Pleshette (again in two different roles), Diana Muldaur, the brilliant WIll Geer, Sally Kellerman and Burgess Meredith.

production details
USA / ABC – Quinn Martin Production / 43×60 minute episodes / Broadcast 10 January 1967 – 17 September 1968

Creator: Larry Cohen / Theme Music: Dominic Frontiere / Producer: Alan Armer / Executive Producer: Quinn Martin

cast
ROY THINNES as David Vincent
KENT SMITH as Edgar Scoville (from midway point of season two – from the episode The Believers)