TV Tie-ins: The Invaders

In The Invaders, architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) is the only man on the planet to witness the arrival of aliens and then spends 43 episodes trying to uncover their various plans to take over the planet. The aliens in human form have infiltrated the authorities and industry and Vincent has to try and convince sceptics that the invasion has already begun.

This was a fast-moving, fairly typical Quinn Martin Production. An interesting point to note about the novels is that Keith Laumer, when asked to novelise the origins of David Vincent's battle with the invaders, only agreed to write the book if he could make it a more believable story. So in his first novel—published in the USA as The Invaders #1 by Keith Laumer and reprinted in the UK as The Meteor Men by Anthony Le Baron—Vincent is a civil engineer who learns about the alien conspiracy through a series of events rather than simply seeing a flying saucer landing. Laumer also wrote a second novel (The Invaders #2: Enemies From Beyond, Pyramid, 1967), which was not reprinted in the UK. The first British novel, The Halo Highway, made the reverse journey across the Atlantic and was published as The Invaders #3: Army of the Undead (Pyramid, 1967).

The Halo Highway by Joel Bernard. Corgi GS7742, 1967. [FC: Roy Thinnes]

Highway 640, which led to Auto City, centre of the United States automobile industry, had a jinx on it. Crash after crash occurred--and yet there were few deaths; each time the driver of the car would emerge miraculously unhurt, and though his eyes might be dull and zombie-like, though he might have a misshapen finger, little things of that sort were unremarkable in a man who had escaped death so luckily.
__Only David Vincent recognised that these were signed of the Invaders, that they were engineering the crashes and, at the moment of death, taking possession of their victims' bodies. He had learnt, in his struggles against the aliens, to recognise another sign too—as each driver emerged from his wrecked car, his body was surrounded for a short period by a halo of light. That was why men called it the Halo Highway, a motorway that brought David to his most desperate battle yet against the Invaders.

The Meteor Men by Anthony Lebaron (as The Invaders #1, New York, Pyramid, 1967)
Corgi GS7836, 1968. [FC: Roy Thinnes]

A blue egg... a yellow rod... a cherry red wafer... an irregular green casting...
__These are the pieces which David Vincent finds and, despite the threats of Dorn, puts together...
__They make the most unbelievable weapon ever conceived—a weapon that only the Invaders could have brought to Earth!

The Night of the Trilobites by Peter Leslie. Corgi 7879, 1968. [FC: Roy Thinnes]

It was in Llangwyrnedd, a remote Welsh mining village, that the strange, the odd and curious things, began to happen. The electricity consumption, in a community of 810 people, suddenly leapt to enormous proportions... and no one could discover who—or what—was using it.
__There were rumours of ghosts and monsters wandering at night on the mountain... and then events changed... instead of just strange, they became horrific.
__David Vincent, always watchful and alert, recognised that the macabre incidents around the old mining shaft were signs of the Invaders. And once again he had to fight the powerful aliens who were planning to subdue the earth...

The Autumn Accelerator by Peter Leslie. Corgi 8085, 1969. [FC: Roy Thinnes]

Over the hills of Provence a huge silver ship glowed in the sky... from its featureless hull came eight small circular craft—that dropped—and landed their cargo—and rose again into the stratosphere...
__David Vincent, the only man who knew and believed in the existence of the Invaders, began to watch and study the wooded terrain of southern France. And when the forests began to die, the trees to shed their leaves and blacken, he knew that once more he must fight the alien invasion of the Invaders.