The INVADERS

   US tv series (1967-8). A Quinn Martin Production for ABC TV, created by Larry COHEN. Prod Alan Armer. Writers included Don Brinkley, Dan Ullman, Jerry SOHL, Robert Collins. Dirs included Joseph Sargent, Paul Wendkos, Sutton Roley. 43 50min episodes. Colour.

   Roy Thinnes stars as a man who has witnessed a landing by ALIENS in a UFO but is unable to get anyone to believe him. The aliens, from a doomed planet, are trying to take over Earth by infiltration: able to take on human form, they can bedistinguished only by the odd angle of their little fingers; when dead their bodies evaporate leaving only a pile of ashes, so lasting proof of their existence is almost impossible to establish. The rigid formula - in each episode the hero discovers and foils a new alien plot, but remains unable to convince the authorities - meant that there was little variation, and the series was cancelled after the second season. Larry Cohen, whose idea the series was, later became celebrated for hislow-budget independent films, usually, as here, featuring an ordinary man facing horrible incursions on the one hand and an uncaring, unimaginative or conspiratorial establishment on the other. Perhaps TI came too late: it belonged, in spirit, to the PARANOID sf version of the Communist-spy scares of the 1950s, as in Robert A. HEINLEIN's The Puppet Masters (1951), the tv serial QUATERMASS II (1955) and the film INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956).Two short series of books based on TI were published inthe USA (3 books) and the UK (4 books). The 2 to appear in both series are The Invaders * (1967; vt The Meteor Men UK as by Anthony LeBaron) by KeithLAUMER, \#1 in the USA and \#2 in the UK; and The Halo Highway * (1967; vt Army of the Undead US) by Rafe BERNARD, \#1 in the UK and \#3 in the USA. Invaders \#2 in the USA was Enemies from Beyond * (1967) by Laumer; \#3 and \#4 in the UK were The Night of the Trilobites * (1968) and The Autumn Accelerator * (1969), both by Peter LESLIE.Two further ties to the series were hardbound juveniles, Alien Missile Threat * (1967) by Paul S. Newman, and Dam of Death * (1967) by Jack Pearl.

   JB/PN