INVASION!
Two peculiar but perhaps related things slithered into the shop recently. To fully understand them, we must travel back to the beginning—
Okay, that would be Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but that's an overshoot, so let's just settle for going back to:
Yes indeedy, a Quinn Martin Production. Quinn Martin himself was an interesting character and worth looking up on Wikipedia when you have some time to waste. First at Desilu and then via his own production company, the man created or produced a remarkable string of iconic television series: The Untouchables, The Fugitive, Twelve O'Clock High, The F.B.I. (In Color! Why does my memory always add that?), The Streets of San Francisco, Cannon, Barnaby Jones...
And in 1967, The Invaders, which ran for two seasons, back in the days when a season in prime time was 24 weekly episodes. This comprises a not inconsiderable body of work.
Still, the series seems largely forgotten now. It's run on the boob tube overlapped with the last two seasons of the original Star Trek, and while ST was busy giving us enlightened multicultural aliens and space hippies and all that, The Invaders delivered pure Cold War paranoia. The eponymous beasties (Aliens? Monsters? You know, we never did get a clear look at them in their true form, and that was one of the things that greatly contributed to the creepy atmosphere) arrived here in classic flying saucers—
—whereupon they immediately set to work strip-mining Philip K. Dick territory and presaging The X-Files. They could assume human form so perfectly that only a medical examination would give them away. They had been coming here for decades, slowly infiltrating their way into positions of power, plotting their takeover. Anyone, anywhere, could be one of them. They had irresistible weapons of the zap gun variety and various other mysterious alien technologies, but their favorite weapon was a little gizmo that, when touched to the victim, induced instant death by what appeared to be a perfectly natural stroke or heart attack. (Much like a Taser.)
They were not invincible. However it was that they assumed human form, they had to recharge periodically or they reverted to their true form, which was instantly fatal to them. They could be shot, bludgeoned, or otherwise killed in most of the conventional ways, but the trick was, when they died, they immediately disintegrated, leaving behind no physical evidence. If they happened to be in physical contact with one of their pieces of technology when they went up, it went poof!, too.
Thus we set up the classic Dickian scenario. Enter David Vincent (played by Roy Thinnes), the one man who quite by accident stumbles onto the whole terrible conspiracy, in the process also discovering the one usually (but not always) reliable other way to spot them short of a medical exam. But given the complete lack of physical evidence and the thoroughness with which they have infiltrated our society, the question remains: is the invasion real? Or is Vincent merely nuts?
Fast-forward twenty-eight years. In 1995 Scott Bakula starred in not the remake, but what we might just as well call The Invaders: The Next Generation. In this made-for-TV mini-series, which apparently was the pilot for a failed new series and which apparently was also cut down to a more tolerable length and sold as a theatrical movie in non-English-language markets, David Vincent is still blundering around the California-Nevada area, spying on the Invaders, taking copious notes, but unable to get either a single piece of physical evidence or a good clear photo.
The Invaders, in the meantime, are equally incompetent at finding Vincent and dealing with him once and for all. They have at least upgraded some of their kit: their spaceship now looks like an outtake from Close Encounters, and they've got an army of obedient shuffling mindless human zombie/slaves, thanks to green LEDs shoved up the victims' noses. But they've given up their zap guns and their jobs in government service; they've gotten so sloppy at trying to pass for human that a ten-year-old could spot them (and conveniently, the film does provide a smart-mouthed ten-year-old, played by eleven-year-old Mario Yedidia, just to illustrate that point...repeatedly); and worst of all, we finally get to see them, clearly, in broad daylight, and whadaya know: they look exactly like a bunch of Hollywood extras in latex monster masks, latex monster hands, and olive-drab Army-surplus jumpsuits.
There's more. There's much more. When I started writing this, I meant to rev up the McCulloch and do a thorough chainsaw job on it. But the thing came into the shop in the form of a boxed set containing two VHS tapes, and about a third of the way into the second tape my own VCR started screaming, "EJECT! EJECT! EJECT!" and I decided to take its advice. So not only do I not know how it ends, I don't find it possible to care. The only thing I felt at all as I watched this was a certain amount of pity for Scott Bakula—not for Bakula's character, but for Bakula himself—as he plods through this mess with an expression that clearly reads, "First I-Man. Then Infiltrator. Now this. What the hell was I thinking?"
However, there is one other point I want to tromp on with hobnail boots, and it is this. In this remaking (reenvisioning, rebooting, rewhatever), the thing that gives the Invaders away is that they're always smoking. After that, they also crave greasy, salty, red-meat foods. And they're always listening to talk radio, because the mindless shuffling human zombie/slaves get their daily marching orders from a ranting, raving, venom-spewing, chain-smoking, nicotine-stained Invader talk show host, played by Richard Belzer. So if you should ever happen to find yourself in, say, a fly-specked roadside diner near Barstow, California, with a bunch of weird-looking people who are smoking like chimneys, drinking coffee black, eating steak and eggs with too much salt, and listening to talk radio, you can pretty much bet your life you're surrounded by a bunch of alien masters and their obedient mindless zombie/slaves.
Wow. This script must have been some Hollywood screenwriter's deepest darkest fear and best wet dream all rolled into one.
Oh, that's right, I said there were two possibly related things that slithered into the shop recently. The other was a copy of UFOs, JFK, and Elvis, by
Or perhaps... a conspiracy.
Anyway, I've run on far longer than I usually do in these "Ultimate Geek Fu" bits. I usually try to end with a provocative question, but today I'll just ask if anyone else has seen either of the TV epics and has any comments on either of them. Or, barring that, what's your all-time favorite irrational paranoid conspiracy TV show or movie?
Me, I think I'll nominate The President's Analyst.
Let the arguments begin.
ULTIMAGE GEEK FU runs every Wednesday. Have a question that's just bugging the heck out of you about Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Gallactica, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Heroes, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Smallville, The X-Files, X-Men, The Man From Atlantis, or pretty much any other SF-flavored media property? Send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com with the subject line, "Geek Fu," and we'll stuff it in the queue.
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