ALL SCI-FI

[Maurice]

As to the saucer design: All art is not just about what it is but when it was made.

Maybe discussed above, but The Invaders ship is clearly based on the Venusian "scout ship" popularized by the George Adamski hoax photos detailed here.


Photo also here.

The top of it was almost certainly the top of a Sears gasoline lantern as seen on page 11 of this document, possibly grafted onto parts of a chicken brooder lamp.

As well-known as that photo was at the time it almost certainly chosen as the basis for the show's craft because it would fit public conception of what such a vehicle ought to look like and "smell right".

[Bud Brewster]

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Great post, Maurice!

Yep, that silly contraption that was coobled together for the fake photo is definitely the "inspiration" (and I use the term loosely) for The Invaders saucer.







However, I must admit that I greatly admire the clever "landing gear" assembly which folds down from saucer's underside. And it looks great on my modified version, too!



A larger version of the saucer than the one I proposed could have a landing gear assembly that's smaller in relation to the saucer (as shown below), which still allowed room for crewmen to walk around beneath the ship, the way the crewmen of the C-57-D did.





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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[mach7]

I actually prefer the original TV version. It's clean and simple.

As Maurice points out it was heavily based on the Adamski hoax saucer.

The landing gear works 2 ways. It supports the ship on the ground but it also provides a degree of thermal protection on the underside of the ship while retracted.

The heavy landing gear could act like a heat shield in an none normal re-entry. Say a partial power or unpowered re-entry. It also could act as a sort of blast shield in battle, protecting the exposed drive sections of the saucer.

Here is my build of the old Aurora kit along with some of my prop replicas I've built over the years.

[Pow]

Bruce & I are currently enjoying watching The Invaders episodes every Wednesday at 4:00pm. If you're wondering what noted television critic Cleveland Amory thought about the series, wonder no more.

TV Guide review for The Invaders, February 18, 1967, by Cleveland Amory.

Ever since Halloween of 1938, when Orson Welle's Martians invaded Grover's Mill, New Jersey, by radio — at which time an appreciable part of the population of New Jersey took to the hills — it has been only a matter of time before we would be invaded by television. And now that we have been, we think it's only fair to tell what these people are like.

In the first place they're "just like us" — which is bad news to begin with. In the second place, since their own planet "in a distant galaxy" is apparently doomed, they are studying us with the idea of making our planet theirs. You know the type — they think they own the earth. Finally, with their uncanny sense of timing, they have landed, it seems, just in time for the "Second Season" — not realizing, obviously, that it's been a tough TV year down here too.

The only one who stands between us and Them is architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes), who was "lost one night on a lonely country road, looking for a shortcut he never found. . ." Does that remind you of anything? Well, you guessed it — The Invaders is executively produced by Quinn Martin, who gave us The Fugitive.

Anyway, Vincent not only has to contend with Them, he also has to contend with our people who are in the power of Them. Furthermore, you can't tell whether one of Them is one of Them or just in the power of Them unless they get headaches and take pills and things; and, even after you do get it all straight, our guess is that you're not even going to trust the commercials.

In our favorite Invaders episode so far, literally everything happened to Vincent. First, he was hit over the head by a couple of Mexicans. Then he met a strip teaser named Vikki (Suzanne Pleshette), who had actually seen Them. "All of a sudden," she said, "I saw the Thing. Lights flashing, like 20,000 jet engines, it was some kind of frantic!" Well, a girl like that, as you can imagine, is some kind of helpful! Anyway, it turns out she actually is one of Them. "You wanted to help me," he says. "Why? Why?" "You're living," she says. "Why don't you let it go at that? Just trust me." "I can't trust you," he says, "you're one of Them!" "All right," she says, "I'm an alien. But I am to Them too. Ever since I was little I had this difference. My father had it too."

Well, it's differences like that, we always say, that prove the need for better communication. But don't worry, there is hope. The only trouble is, once you shoot Them, they just disintegrate and leave no trace. So, afterwords, there is no evidence for poor Vincent that they were ever there in the first place. All in all, a great show for the kids, but for the rest of you, our advice is to join New Jersey and take to the hills.

[Pow]

Even when I disagree with Cleveland Amory, which can be often, he's entertaining with his reviews. His review for the Invaders takes a swipe at it when he concludes that the kids will enjoy the series, but the adults should flee to the hills.

The Invaders was a thoughtful and well written series. Kids may well have liked seeing the alien starship, weapons, and immolations. However, the rest of it was more sophisticated and adult than they would have comprehended and appreciated.

And he repeats the urban myth about how the Orson Welle's radio version of H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds frightened much of the American public who listened to the radio dramatization and totally bought into it. That has been perpetuated for decades. The reality is that while some folks thought we really were being invaded by creatures for Mars, many more realized it was merely a dramatic presentation. Probably even more weren't even listening to the show that night. The media, as it usually does, blew it all out of proportion regarding how large numbers of the populace were losing their minds over the fictional invasion and shooting at everything in sight. Sells newspapers better that way. The truth and news reports often don't go together. After all, the old saying still hold true today, bad news sells.

[Bud Brewster]

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Wow, Mike . . . thanks for transcribing Cleveland Amory's blantantly anti-science fiction review of this enjoyable series

I was appalled by the way he used bad writing to ridicule scenes in an episodes that we recently watched, just by making the script and the acting sound ridiculous. You and I know from our Wednesday chats that this isn't true.

Instead of making intelligent comments which criticized aspects of the series (the way you and I do during out Invaders chats), he just jumbled together portions of the dialog and made the scene sound witless and confusing!

Armory passed away in 1998. Too bad. You and I could have given the poor man writing lessons.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

DYK? Production Models Shop, which created the Invaders alien saucer, also constructed the eleven foot model of the starship Enterprise for ST: TOS.

Even more interesting is that when the job came into the Production Models Shop, the crew were all on vacation with the exception of miniature builder Mel Keys. He was the one responsible for the building of the vessel.

[WadeVC]

I had never heard of this series until just recently when it started playing on MeTv on Sunday mornings. The few episodes I saw were terrific, and I am looking to get the box sets on Amazon at the end of the month.
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"You look like a pooped out pinwheel."
-Robot Monster

[Bud Brewster]

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Pow (Mike Powers) and I just finished watching the complete series together on a weekly basis, synchronizing our DVD's each week and discussion the episode in All Sci-Fi's Chatzy Room (< — link).

That's unfortunate timing on our part, because we would have loved to include you in those chats!

Now we're watching season 1 of Star Trek Voyager. If your a fan of that series and have access to the episodes, you're certainly welcome to join us each Wednesday at 4:00 pm Eastern (1:00 your time).

Next week's episode will be S1.E6 ∙ Eye of the Needle
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[WadeVC]

[Pow]

From a recent interview with series star Roy Thinnes at a convention.

"No, I wasn't interested at all when offered the pilot for The Invaders. I wasn't a science fiction fan at all and was afraid I'd get typecast into doing nothing but sci-fi stuff. I was also highly skeptical about the whole UFO sightings by people."

"I turned down Quinn Martin's offer several times. I highly respected his work and his productions, but I just did not want to go near a science fiction series. Quinn finally asked to meet with me to discuss the show, which I did. I told him my feeling about science fiction. He told me that the series would be about a study in paranoia. How it was focused on one man against the whole world trying to prove they're here but no one believes him. All he's doing is trying to save our world."

"I said to Quinn, that does sound intriguing. But rocket ships, ray guns, I don't wanna deal with that stuff. Quinn said that they'll barely see any ray guns, plus the aliens look just like us."

"One day we were on a bus riding out to a location for an episode. I was talking with our Director of Photography, Andrew McIntyre who had served in WW II as a bomber pilot. He told me that sometimes he'd go on missions and spot ufos following his plane. He'd talk to the other pilots in his formation and ask if they saw these things and they did."

[Bud Brewster]

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The mystery of the Foo Fighters is intriguing.

Like Roy, I'm skeptical about UFOs, partly because so few the alleged photos and videos are convincing. Even the Big Deal declassified of UAP looks like a old Atari video game!

Can somebody please explain to me why the object being tracked is simply moving sideways against a cloud background that looks like its on a loop!

If the pilot is chasing the object, the clouds should be coming towards the camera. But if the object is flying passed the aircraft, why doesn't it look like its approaching and then retreating?

Pentagon declassifies Navy 'UFO' videos (VIDEO 2/3)


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However, it just occurred to me that the two famous events in 1952 which involved a group of UFOs which pursued by fighters AND were tracked on radar above Washington D.C. might have been an example of the Foo Fighter phenomenon.

The two events were similar in many ways to the Foo Fighter reports. Wikipedia has a terrific article about the event at this link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Washington,_D.C.,_UFO_incident
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)