David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) is your average architect, but the day he stumbles onto an alien landing site, a staging ground for their invasion, his life gets turned upside-down. The first couple of episodes reveal a lot about these aliens. For one, they appear human but, for the most part, show no emotion. When they die on Earth, their bodies glow red and then vanish (as well as what clothes they are wearing). And even though they look human, they don't have a heartbeat and they can be identified by a malformed ring finger. But things aren't all that simple either. It seems there are some mutants in the group that do care, do feel emotions, don't want the invasion and have normal looking hands.
Basically, each episode is a completely independent story. The show can be watched in pretty much any order, and while he might convince a few people of the impending invasion, they never join him in his quest (though women who profess their love to him seem to die before the episode is over). There are a couple of recurring characters, but even they show up in one or two episodes throughout the season, and they were introduced in the premiere.
The shows are divided into six parts, each marked as an Act, prologue or epilogue. Typically, the prologue has some strange invasion-related incident happening (someone dying strangely, someone seeing something disappear in red light, etc.). That story makes it into the news and Vincent shows up at the scene of the invasion in Act I. By the time Act IV wraps up, Vincent has stopped whatever plan the aliens were trying to complete and the epilogue features Vincent talking to the people that helped him and gives some excuse as to why they can't join him in his trek across America.
It's all pretty straightforward, but enjoyable to watch. In one episode, Vincent has to keep a mysterious metal cylinder out of the invaders' hands, while another uncovers a university that is really an alien training ground. Some of the better episodes show a little about the aliens themselves. In one, "The Innocent," they abduct Vincent and bring him to a place that is like a paradise to show him how they can help the humans (but is it real?). In another, Vincent confronts an alien who is sick and (supposedly) inadvertently freezes anyone he touches. Vincent captures him, but makes a deal that might get him even more proof if he lets the alien go to be cured.
Special features are plentiful, as far as older TV series go. Not only is there an extended version of the pilot episode, but commentary on "The Innocent," and each episode has an introduction by Thinnes where he gives a brief summary of the episode's plot. While this last one isn't good if you haven't seen the episode before (he tends to give some plot twists away), it is still enjoyable to watch. In this introduction, he also mentions who the guest stars are, which is always a plus.
While the show itself has been all but lost as far as the modern culture is concerned (at least from what I can tell, hardly any 20 or 30-somethings seem to know of this series), it's easy to see how it could have helped inspired more recent movies and shows like the late 90's series, First Wave, or the Charlie Sheen 1996 film, The Arrival. Stay tuned for coverage of Season 2.
