"The Invaders"

I remember it, and had one of the original Aurora plastic kits of the UFO model.

YouTube has some videos up from the show. Here's the opening credits (William Conrad of "Cannon" narrating):

A Quinn Martin Production

Oh wow! I had completely forgotten about this show. I mean "completely".

Thank you for jarring my failing memory cells.

Hi Donfield, I had the saucer kit from Aurora as well, and I think it can still be purchased on *bay.

I think I was 14 years old when it first premiered on ABC in 1967. I had a small cassette recorder that I would use to record the opening theme music and as you stated William Conrad's excellent voice-over.

You can't beat that eerie theme music by the talented Dominic Frontiere, who as you know also created the theme music for another great Sci-Fi TV series "The Outer Limits" which preceded the "The Invaders" four years earlier.

WSMNN, It's too bad it only lasted a short while (2 seasons, if that).
I think it was ahead of it's time, and the scripts were intelligently written IMHO. Probably not as action rooted as some other shows on TV at the time, and therefore didn't capture the attention of the masses.

I've just found out that season #1 is being released on DVD in the UK and France as of this month (Sept.17/'07)... only problem is that for us here in North America there is no release date as of yet!
WWW Link

We may have to wait a while for the region 1 release to materialize.

It's a shame really, I mean here where it all started, that we may be last on the list to re live this great 1960's tv series.

I have never heard of it? Not suprising since i live in a country with no imagination! (Australia) and i say that because sci fi never survives for very long on prime time tv in this country. People are too busy watching police, hospital and lawyer shows to have any time for shows with imagination.

I watched that as a kid (born in 1956), and still have that plastic model. Once I even took apart one of those stick in the ground reflector things (red), and glued one to the bottom of the model.

As to why SciFi series don't last long on Network TV (NBC, ABC, CBS):

They have this extreme dislike of anything SciFi, and a tendency to schedule them right after Golf or other sports programming, so they get run over by sports. Rating drop (deliberate) and show is cancelled. No matter how good the show is.

Other reason is that most SciFi shows are totally predictable from episode to episode. One exception was Babylon 5.

Oh that nonsense happens in America as well??

hmmm well then we should send all the 'mundanes' who like watching shows like 'days of our lives' over to one side of the country and all the other people who like watching interesting shows like Terminator 2 and startrek over to the other side so that there are no more mixed messages in the ratings!

We already have that...sci-fi shows thrive on the west coast...California, especially.

I don't think it's so much that Hollywood's here... It's more like sci-fi seems to go hand-in-hand with overdevelopment of technology. Sci-Fi is largest in two prime locations; thriving and proliferating... Japan and California.

I mean, Hell, even George Lucas calls the SF Bay Area home. hehe

Thanks for the tip,,, so if ever i move to America, i will remember to land in California!

If your ever planning to move to Australia, i recommend Brisbane Queensland. New South Wales where i live (Sydney) is a stingy, petty little safety obsessed state.

LOL! Well, if I ever did, Brisbane is where I'd want to go anyway...

There's a little town just south of San Francisco that, once upon a time, everyone knew of, though now almost no one seems to... Brisbane. It's built on the walls of a small extinct caldera between San Fransisco and South San Francisco. I spent from yr 0 - 5 there, and still go back for the occassional visit. I think the pop was...oh... 500? lol That's being liberal with the numbers, too. Beautiful little town, tho'. It used to be a real look back into the late 50's and early 60's until about 10 years ago, once most of the "Old Guard" passed on and all the kids took over.

Anyway! Point was, the name evokes memories of the 60's for me, so I always told myself that if I ever found myself moving to Australia, that's where I'd have to go.

Brisbane (CA) has been pretty much been merged into the mega city at this point. All the little towns between San Francisco and San Jose all still technically exist, but they are really part of "The Bay Area" or "The Peninsula" if you want to specify what part of the bay area. I currently live in Mountain View (one of those towns, but still fairly well known) and I used to live in Burlingame (another one of those towns, but no one has ever heard of it) only a couple of miles south of Brisbane. Burlingame still has a lot of that 50's charm, but it's slowly going and being replaced with too many yuppy shops in it's downtown.

Now, having accidentally proved my membership in the old folks club by rambling about the good old days....I, sadly, don't remember this show!

LOL I was born in Burlingame Peninsula Hospital lo these many decades ago... My godfather was once upon a time the general manager of Metcalf-Reese Ford-Lincoln-Mercury that owned 3 of the 4 corners of the once-great "Auto Row" of the early 60's to early 70's there in Burlingame.

I know the peninsula all too well, even though I'm across the bay in the greater Hayward area now...

A lot of areas of Burlingame, Belmont, and San Carlos still carry that 20's-60's appeal...my grandmother's house (she just passed recently here, unfortunately) was on Brittan Ave., right up the street from the pre-20th century train depot that's, unfortunately, been completely remodeled to only LOOK old while losing all its true historic appeal.

Gods, you could easily get me reminiscing for hours on end about the Brisbane-San Carlos stretch, as a mighty chunk of my childhood was spent traipsing up and down that stretch with my 2 aunts who are only 5 and 7 years older than me (so always took me with them almost everywhere...lol), my godfather, and even alone.

I miss the Redwood City Drive-In...was the first drive-in I ever went to.

Ha. You probably know exactly where I used to live. I was a block and a half off Burlingame ave. on Lorton. Although I'm only a bay area resident for the last twelve years or so, not a lifer like you or my wife. I have to say that putting in the Apple store down there really changed the feel of the Burlingame ave stretch. The building is fine, individually, but it's just too modern for the neighborhood. After it came in, a bunch of prada look alike stores seemed to open...The boom of the late nineties was the writing on the wall. It raised the rents too much for many of the local shops. Next time you are in Burlingame, Zeynos serves a killer dinner with great service. It's as good as any place in SF proper...And it's only a couple of years old, so you might not know it.

Well, it looks like us North American fans of the hit 1967 tv show "The Invaders" (a Quinn Martin Production) will finally get what we want.
Paramount recently announced a May 6/2008 release date (but only the first season , 17 episodes).

Do I hear "pre-order" anyone?

This comes much sooner than I thought it would... must have been more than a few emails sent to Paramount demanding to know why this series was not released here first in North America over their French and UK markets.

WWW Link

Well... they have finally landed!

The North American release is here and my season 1, 5 disc DVD set arrived last week.

Paramount has added some extra features not seen in the European release, namely the extended 60 min. version of the pilot "Beachhead" and episode intros by Roy Thinnes.

The interview with Mr. Thinnes sheds some light on the making of the tv series as well, even if they let him ramble on a bit at times, it's still worth listening to him reminisce about his experiences with veteran actors, writers and producers, etc.

I've watched about three episodes so far and I must say the image quality and sound are quite good, considering at the time of the original broadcast I had only viewed it on a 20" black & white set back in the day, and this is the first time I've seen it in colour.
In fact it's funny listening to the narrator announce each episode... "The Invaders... in color", but don't forget, this was 1967.
The DVD set is very spartan/bare bones with no scene selection for each episode, but hey... the price was right.

More of a series dealing heavily with paranoia (the Red Scare at the time) with a sci-fi sub plot, The Invaders didn't rely on very many special effects, just intelligent writing and good acting which IMO, makes it still watchable some 40 years later.

Hmm... my most recent addition to this thread hasn't shown up anywhere on the "recent forum posts".

Oh well, eventually it'll be found. :NOTSURE: