The Invaders: The Complete Series - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

The Invaders: The Complete Series

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
The Invaders, alien beings from a dying planet. Their destination: the Earth. Their purpose: to make it their world. David Vincent has seen them. For him, it began one lost night on a lonely country road, looking for a shortcut that he never found. It began with a closed deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey. It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy. Now David Vincent knows that the Invaders are here, that they have taken human form. Somehow he must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already begun.

I remember growing up as a young boy watching episodes of The Invaders on some late night channel that I really don’t remember. The show stuck with my 6 year old self due to the terrifying idea of alien invaders and the fact that it was something my parents actually let me watch at that age (we didn’t watch a lot of TV until I was much older). The show may seem a little quaint from modern perspectives on alien interactions, but it was a cutting edge show at the time of it’s inception (1967-1968) and garnered a fairly popular set of ratings. Sadly the show only lasted two seasons, but it did a lot with those two seasons, and is considered a solid 60s sci-fi classic show to this day.

Ironically, me seeing this show as a kid was considered a miracle, as The Invaders season and a half run fell short of the episode number needed for syndication rights and most channels wouldn’t carry the show. Most people I know who appreciate classic 50s and 60s sci-fi had mentioned wanting to see it, but their TV market just wouldn’t play it (that is, until the DVDs came out around 2008). I still have no idea how my parents got ahold of the series on TV, but I still have those vivid memory of the beguiling show. Created by Larry Cohen, the show ran a full 43 episodes (the first season being a shortened 16 episode season, with the final 26 episodes being in the 2nd year), and was a fun mixture of serialization and episodic storytelling. Many of the episodes were self contained, but they ALWAYS focused around David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) and his quest to foil the invading aliens at taking over the earth.

The premise of the show is rather simple. An architect by the name of David Vincent accidentally witnesses an alien spacecraft landing one night, and as a result is labeled crazy by his friends and the police. SURE that he saw what he saw, David continues to look into the situation, slowly peeling back layers until he comes to the undeniable truth. That there is an alien race here on Earth, and they are hiding among us while they strive to make our home their home. The series plays out like a mixture of The Fugitive and Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, with David Vincent staying just ahead of the cops who think he’s crazy, while alien beings assume human form and walk among us like the Leonard Nimoy sci-fi classic. The series uses the Quinn Martin style of storytelling, complete with a deep voiced narrator and 4 acts, playing the series out like a deep and scary mystery. The method has been over used to the extreme over the years, but back in the day, it worked extremely well and gave the series a serialized feel.

The second season really is more of the first season. Even though the show is serialized, it’s more like Star Trek in the way it plays out with Vincent hunting down more clues to the aliens, and searching for answers. The episode “The Trial” does deviated from the norm a bit, playing out like a court room trial episode, with the murder of an alien invader on display. Returning to Star Trek, it reminds me a bit of the episode where Q puts Picard on trial for humanity. It’s a simply formula for the series, but it works so well as simple sci-fi entertainment, and even with some slight deviations in the 2nd season, the show is very homogeneous all the way through




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

The Invaders comes to DVD with a perfectly acceptable 1.33:1 MPEG2 encode that looks rather nice considering the age of the show. You can definitely tell that the series was never really remastered much, as there is some print damage present, with mild striations on the picture as well as some slight judder in a couple of episodes. It’s nothing to write home about, but the image is generally rather crisp with good colors (the colorization of the show has given faces a bronze and orange tinge) and decent fine details. Much of the blame is laid at the feet of the series being a cheap sci-fi production from the 60s, and isn’t worth the money for paramount to re-do everything form the ground up like Star Trek: The Original Series was afforded.






Audio:

The 2 channel Mono track on the DVD set is effective, but never really a power house due to the time period of the mixing, as well as the simplistic nature of the show. It doesn’t have a whole lot of wild action, but rather a simplistic design that puts all of the energy into the dialog with some spillover to the ambient noises in the episodes. Voices are distinct and clear, while the mild sound effects are evenly balanced with the rest of the mix, creating an affable and well designed track for the show.








Extras:

• Extended 60 Minute Version of the Pilot
• Interview with and episode introduction by Roy Thinnes
• Commentary by Series Creator Larry Cohen on "The Innocent"
• Commentary on "The Peacemaker" by Alan Armer

Final Score: ​

The Invaders seemed to be just “another sci-fi show of the week”, but it ended up being a nice character based show that introduced new guest stars each week, but still continued to focus on the core group of people. It stayed very much the same for most of its run time, but the series did some nice deviations here and there that made it a unique show among all of the rest. The DVD sets are the same 12 discs that were available in the 2008 single DVD seasons, but have been packaged together into a single clamshell case for space saving reasons. Much like Jericho, I don’t believe The Invaders have ever had a complete series boxset before, so this is a first for the show. If you’re looking to upgrade your individual DVD seasons, then I would pass. However, if you’ve never seen the show, Paramount has brought both season out for a great price for a classic series.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Roy Thinnes, Kent Smith, Max Kleven
Created by: Larry Cohen
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 MPEG 2
Audio: English: Dolby Digital Mono
Subtitles:
Studio: Paramount
Rated: NR
Runtime: 2269 Minutes
DVD Release Date: June 5th, 2018

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Highly Recommended​

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Never saw this but after reading the review, I am interested in checking it out.

 

[Michael Scott]

it's one of those semi classics, just under real true classics like The Twilight Zone ... good watch though

 

[tripplej]

Cool. I do love The twilight Zone so will check this one out as well.