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The Invaders (1967 - 1968)
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2021 8:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's a shame that that Tales of the Unexpected series is not available as I liked the Bill Bixby episode as well! The David Birney show should have been an extra on The Invaders DVD set as well I'm thinking...
JB
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Krel
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2021 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
David, please look again! The landing gear take up NO interior space!

Bud, I'm not saying that the landing gear takes up too much interior space. What I mean is that the landing gear on your design is out of scale to the saucer compared to the Invader's saucer.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2021 1:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
I like your saucer design Bud. But the landing gear look like they're too large for the rest of the ship. With your design, the landing gear should be about half that size to have any meaningful interior space.

Please define "meaningful interior space" as it relates to fold-out panels on the underside of the saucer. Confused

The size of the assembly is determined by the area of the saucer's bottom. A larger saucer could have longer legs, but the relative sizes of the saucer and legs would be the same. It would just be a bigger saucer.






The actual landing gear in the show seem to be longer than the ones shown in the video I posted. Perhaps that's why you feel they're too long for the modified ship. I'm not sure they're correctly portioned in that video, but I could be wrong.

________ The Invaders Flying Saucer Revealed!


__________


_______


I believe the fan-made model I modified to "improve" it (in my opinion) has the landing assembly the correct size. I didn't alter that part of the model at all.


________


Please note that the men standing under the ship in the screen shot above seem to be more than half as tall as the distance from the ground to the leading edge of the ship. If the landing assemble was half as large, as you suggested, the men might actually bump their heads.

So, I think the height makes it easier for men and equipment to move around under it and maneuver cargo up into the ship. (Although I don't know how they get it through those tiny round airlock hatches . . . Rolling Eyes)

However, what you suggested (shown below) doesn't really look bad.



]


But I predict that Mike won't care for it, because it "streamlines" it even more. And in this case, I'd agree. I prefer the tall, stateliness of the original assembly. It makes the saucers look regal and imposing! Very Happy





But the one thing we all agree on is that it's just a matter of personal taste. Laughing
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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Fri Mar 22, 2024 4:38 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Krel.
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2021 9:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
Please define "meaningful interior space" as it relates to fold-out panels on the underside of the saucer. Confused

It has to do with the perspective differences, or precieved differences between your saucer and the landing gear you copied.

For myself when I look at the tall landing gear saucer, my eyes are drawn to the ladders. The spacing on the ladder rungs says to me that the saucer is small, and doesn't have much interior space. The second version with the shorter landing gear has smaller spacing on the ladder rungs, which say to me that it is a larger saucer.

It's basically a matter of perception, which is often used in SPFX. The buildings on the Disney parks main streets have the buildings built in three smaller scales as they rise to make the buildings look taller than they are.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 17, 2021 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

First of all, David, this is a great discussion which involves both artistic and engineering concepts! I’m having fun debating it with you! Very Happy

I hope my comments below will help clarify my thoughts on the matter.

For example, this statement still puzzles me.


Krel wrote:
Bud, I'm not saying that the landing gear takes up too much interior space. What I mean is that the landing gear on your design is out of scale to the saucer compared to the Invader's saucer.

That's a curious statement, and after giving it careful thought, I think I can explain why I'm confused by it.

My modified saucer has the same circumference as the original — but it’s not as large, top-to-bottom. Like Pow said, I "streamlined" it. I didn't reduce the width of the saucer, I just slimmed down its profile. Apparently that’s why you feel that the landing gear is "out of scale" for the modified saucer.

I realize that it’s your subjective opinion concerning the aesthetic appeal of the landing-gear-to-saucer ratio. I promise I'm not trying to talk you into liking it . . . but let’s consider the practical reasons for why the landing gear is the size it is on the original.

Putting aesthetics aside for a moment, I submit that the same requirements for the size of the landing gear must be applied to both the original and my modified version. The landing gear must fulfill the same practical needs for both versions of the ship.

The factor which determined the size of the landing gear is obviously the headroom the crew needed to move around under it. The fact that I slimmed down the saucer by "lowering the roof" doesn't change the fact that the bottom of the saucer still needs to provide sufficient space beneath the ship.







]


But based on the screen shot above and the cropped version below, if we reduce the distance between the ground and the saucer’s bottom by half (as you suggested) the crewmen would have to walk bent over to get to the ladders.

The designers of the original saucer didn’t want that, and I didn’t want it in the modified version either.






However, David, your statement below puzzles me most of all.

Krel wrote:
For myself when I look at the tall landing gear saucer, my eyes are drawn to the ladders. The spacing on the ladder rungs says to me that the saucer is small, and doesn't have much interior space.

This one has me scratching my head. Shocked

After all, the saucer IS small. I didn't intend it to be bigger than the original. In fact, my version has less interior space because I reduced its height.

Just to demonstrate how MUCH smaller it is, I made this image to compare the two versions. And even though the comparison shows just how small the revised version is compared to the original, I still like the big landing gear!






Keeping that in mind, the ladder’s rungs should be spaced exactly the same in both versions.

So, just to recap: I made the saucer look cooler (in my opinion) and you said you liked it. (Thanks!) Very Happy

But I left the landing gear assembly alone simply because it has all the same requirements as the original design — the landing gear assembly supports a saucer with the same circumference as the original, and it provides the crew with enough headroom to stand beneath the ship.

David, I respect your subjective opinion regarding the appearance of the landing-gear-to-saucer ratio. You think it looks too big, whereas I think it looks cool. Those are just different subjective opinions. Cool

But the landing gear assemble has the correct dimensions for both the "streamlined" ship and the ”original” ship, based on the purely practical reasons I've describe. Very Happy

By the way, I realized that part of the reason I like the tall landing gear assembly is that it reminds of this design.




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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Fri Mar 22, 2024 4:42 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Krel
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay, I see now. My mistake was thinking that it was suppose to be larger, not smaller than the show's saucer. My perspectives were based on a larger saucer.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
Okay, I see now. My mistake was thinking that it was suppose to be larger, not smaller than the show's saucer. My perspectives were based on a larger saucer.

I understand completely, David! Very Happy

Obviously I had the same idea when I posted images like this of my modified version!






I realize now that I displayed it as something which belonged on the flight line of U.S. Air Force bases . . . alongside mammoth aircraft!

Frankly, David, I was surprised when I made the comparison image shown below —






— and realized just how much I'd actually reduced the saucer's interior space! Very Happy

With that in mind, I think the overall size of my modified version needs to be significantly larger than the original!

Such a gorgeous spacecraft should have enough interior room for a sizable crew — and it should include a luxurious Star Trek style bridge under that wonderful transparent dome that Mike doesn't like as much as I do!

The lucky bridge crew should be able to gaze up at the stars and enjoy their journey through the cosmos! Cool

That's what I imagined when I first saw the cover of a novel I read when I was a kid, with the cover art shown below.




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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Having recently watched "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers", I'm always struck how similar the death scenes in this Ray Harryhausen movie are similar to "The Invader."

Whenever the aliens are killed on the ABC TV show there is a wavering glow that encompasses their human bodies. After the shimmering glow they incinerate into ashes.

I've always wondered if the visual FX crew doing TI took their inspiration from Ray's film?

Then again, perhaps from the technical side for such FX, there were only just so many ways to pull off such a scene.


Last edited by Pow on Tue Aug 23, 2022 3:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 10:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Interesting observation, Mike!

One difference which seems worth mentioning is the fact that Ray's alien just faded away with no residue — and for no apparent reason, either. I've always thought it puzzling that the alien corpse did that. And as a special effect . . . well, it obviously wasn't very expensive. Rolling Eyes

Conversely, the dead aliens in The Invaders glow bright red and vanish — a nice FX — and the reason for them doing that was the aliens' clever way of removing any evidence that they were here on Earth.

This assumes, of course, that the "human" bodies were engineered to rapidly decompose, rather that it just happening because of the strange alien physiology.

Either way, it caused poor David Vincent considerable frustration, because it hampered his efforts to convince people about the invasion.

One famous episode (I don't know the title) includes a scene in which an alien is killed in broad daylight and in full view of the citizens in a small town. They gasp in surprise when the body lights up and vanishes.

It's a 'Yeee-esss!" moment for fans of the series, because we know Vincent finally gets to say (figuratively speaking), "HA! I told you so!" Very Happy

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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 27, 2021 7:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Saucer, when we did get to see inside it was small inside! It comprised one control room with a small corridor and probably a room where the aliens could rest in a tube or even regenerate to keep human form! There was also a ladder to connect to different decks. The Jupiter 2 also had this strange size problem with two floors for most of the series and then a third much larger level revealed in season three that truly was preposterous!
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Pow
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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2021 3:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My Gold Key comic book issue number one of The Invaders TV series arrived the other day. GK published four comic books based upon the TV show. This completes my collection.

Always find it interesting when reading comic books that are adapted from television shows to see discrepancies between the TV show and the comic book.

This first issue of TI by GK is titled "The Vanishing Mountain."

The artist correctly draws the alien's space ship, their ray gun, their uniform.

One panel shows the interior of the flying saucer with an alien seated at a console. I don't believe it is an exact match to what the artistic designers created for the TV series.

We only saw the interior of the alien ship on three episodes over the run of the show.

This console as depicted in the comic book certainly fits the look of the show at any rate even if its not a perfect match.

The error that this story makes is how the aliens control an unsuspecting space engineer named Carl Prinz.

One of the aliens attaches a futuristic disc to the middle of Carl's neck which puts Carl totally under their command.

On the TV show the aliens would use a disc that they applied to any human in order to murder them.

The device was a Cerebral Hemorrhage Disc. It would cause a heart attack in humans and kill them. The cause would appear to be natural to the medical examiner so that no one suspected the aliens causing the death.

The aliens did have their Hypnotic Prism gadget which would mesmerize humans. It was used for interrogations by the aliens. It could also erase memories of humans if need be.

It also could be utilized to bend a human to the aliens will and make that human obey the alien's orders.

This could control people for a short period of time.

So the GK comic book got this aspect of the show wrong. The prism is what should have been used on Carl in order to hypnotize him; not the death dealing disc placed on the neck.

There is also a panel where one of the aliens uses an alien communication gizmo. It appears to be similar in shape to the neck-disc but since the story takes place at night in a desert it's hard to see the communicator clearly.

The communication device on the TV show was an egg-shaped device as opposed to a flat disc.

The story was interesting for the comic book.

In thinking about TV shows that could be remastered with their visual effects, as was done with the original Star Trek TV show, I think The Invaders could be a good candidate for an upgrade visually.

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Krel
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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2021 10:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
The aliens did have their Hypnotic Prism gadget which would mesmerize humans. It was used for interrogations by the aliens. It could also erase memories of humans if need be.

I read that the spinning Hypnotic Prism was a off the shelf Magicians trick device. Cheap and effective.

I don't know if it's been mentioned (and I'm too lazy to go back and check), but the creator's reason for the incineration of the Aliens and their devices, was so Vincent couldn't just go the the Authorities with a dead Alien (which might take a bit of explaining), or one of their devices as proof of the invasion.

David Vincent goes to the Feds with a disintergrator pistol.
The Feds: That's just a toy.
Vincent disintegrates a car.
The Feds: HOLY COW!...You know, your'e going to have to pay for that car.
The Feds mobilize to fight the Aliens.

David.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2021 10:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The GK Invaders stories were written by Paul S Newman (No , not the movie star!).
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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2021 4:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Still More Invaders Fun Facts.

In the pilot for TI, David Vincent struggles with an alien in need of regeneration. We see this alien begin to glow while his pupils turn black, courtesy of opaque contact lenses.

That particular effect was not seen in the broadcast version and was never again utilized during the run of the series.

Budget for each episode was approximately $200,000.

In the series we would see episodes taking place throughout the USA from Florida, Colorado, and Vermont to name just a few of the states that Vincent had adventures in.

In reality, the show's production was never more than two or three hours from Los Angeles.

Stunt coordinator (and Roy Thinnes stunt double) Glenn Wilder's hair caught fire during an action scene once.

In future fire "gags" (stunts), Glenn would wear long underwear dipped in ice-cold water, covered by fire-retardant clothing that would match Roy Thinnes's outfits.
Wilder would also douse his face and hair with water.

Item: The men and women who are stunt coordinators and performers are loooong overdue for awards by the industry.

Why is it that neither the Academy Awards or Emmy Awards do not have a Best Stunt Coordinator or Performer Award to this day? Shame on them.

For the alien disintegration pistol, it was remade to be smaller and more streamlined in the second season of the show compared to the larger and bulkier iteration used in the first season.

Today on television shows there is a staff of in-house writers/producers. These are large staffs.

The producers of The Invaders, like the TV shows of that era, had a very small staff and needed to rely heavily on outside writers for scripts.

Associate Producer David Rintels said that not too many of the freelance writers hired were well-versed in science fiction.

Item: So exactly why would a first rate production company like QM not hire some of the fine proven writers from other sci~fi TV shows who had provided fantastic scripts?

Writers from "The Twilight Zone," "The Outer Limits," and "Star Trek," were all alive and writing for series television at that time.

Here's an idea gents: go and hire 'em for TI. Not rocket science folks.

Working on The Invaders would require 14~16 hour days.

Item: Interesting with all the incredible technological advances with visual effects, cameras & lenses, sound systems and other stuff; television shows today in the 21st century are still 14~16 hour days. Ya'd think that the high tech of today might shave off some of the time it takes to shoot a show.

Apparently not.

The two-part episode "Summit Meeting" took place in Europe in a mountainous stronghold near the Baltic Sea.

The actual exterior location was a former US government missile silo (that had been privatized). The silo base was located in a mountainous region of Palmdale, California called Fry Canyon which was located 75-miles north of L.A.

Item: I well recall being very impressed with the filming location scenes for this particular episode.

The scene had a large crowd, reporters, television news crews, helicopters. So it really made TI look like an epic scene from a feature film.

We then see people taking these platforms that descend beneath the ground to the underground complex. Very impressive stuff for 1960's TV.

Another nifty location used was from the episode "Dark Outpost." This was an old abandoned US military base in the Mojave Desert.

This really enhanced the scenic look and feel for this episode that TV shows rarely did back in the 1960's.

On that episode, it became so darn hot that (guest star) Dawn Wells' sneakers began to melt into the concrete floor!
Yikes! What actors do for their craft.

Quinn Martin's insistence that TI---as well as all his other TV productions---get away from the studio sound stages and backlots and find visually interesting locales to shoot at really paid off handsomely for his shows and the audience.

Another production aspect to TI was that Quinn Martin would not accept "day for night shooting." He felt that scenes that were supposed to be taking place at night on an episode but really filmed during the day just did not look right.

Placing a filter over a camera lens so as to make it appear as evening rarely fooled the audience.

Quinn insisted on "night for night" shooting which was costly and time consuming.

Item" Yep, you can always tell when a TV show or film resorts to day for night shooting. For one, the sky is always lighter looking. Kinda hard to miss.


The Invaders creator Larry Cohen was initially elated when he heard that Quinn Martin was being brought onto the show as the producer.

Larry had written a script for one episode and the teleplay for another for Martin's "The Fugitive" TV show.

Larry and Quinn had gotten along very well at that time and had a good working relationship.

However, Cohen and Martin had a number of creative differences over The Invaders. Larry was paid off and left the show. He found that Martin was THE BOSS and you definitely worked for him and not with him.

Cohen was enough of a rebel and freethinker that such a relationship like that with Martin would never have worked for him long term on the series.

Cohen had ideas for the series that he wished to develop that did not fit in with Quinn's vision.

Larry wanted the show to have a film noir feel and look; he wanted it to address topical issues; he wanted it to have areas of gray within the stories.

Quinn turned it into another one of his detective shows, Cohen felt.

Every issue was black & white without any nuances. The show fell into a formula that Martin applied to his other series. TI should have been unique and in a class all by itself and not simply just another QM Production rolling out on an assembly line , according to Larry.

"So I left the project because it was gonna be Quinn's way or the highway."
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2021 6:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Mike, several of our members (including you) have often thanked me for the time and energy I've spent adding content to All Sci-Fi.

But I'm certainly not the only one who also appreciates the remarkable work you do by adding interesting posts to ASF. Fascinating comments like yours often don't receive replies simply because there's nothing for us to say except, "Thanks, Pow!"

And that seems like a poor response to such a carefully crafted piece of writing. Sad

In short, sir . . . consider yourself thanked by one and all. Cool

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


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