What this is, is that it is a post on the Internet. Even on this very website, which is mostly made up of posts that are unimportant, this is even less important. But here it is. Just being a post on the Internet. It is being posted at a point when I have a lot of other posts scheduled to go up, so it will probably be pushed off the main page before anyone sees it. Then it will remain in the archives or whatever of the site, but will anyone ever notice it? Will it be logged in search engines? And even if it is, would it ever turn up in search results? And if it did, would anyone click on it?
This is just a post on the Internet that maybe nobody will ever see, like so many posts on the Internet. That’s all. You can go now.
This is why David Vincent needs to be stealthier. It’s the third episode and the Invaders have already set a trap for him. They are clearly aware he’s out there and he still just uses his real name.
The trap is that he comes to some town where the military have been investigating UFOs and meets some people who claim to be on his side. They aren’t on his side. One of them is named Vikki, who is a sexy lady they were clearly trying to seduce him with. The thing is, she’s the one who gets seduced! Vikki is a “mutated” form of the aliens, capable of feeling emotions, which apparently the rest of them can not. And she has fallen in love with Vincent and his inescapable blue eyes. This, more than anything, felt to me like whenever a female villain on the Adam West Batman show (a contemporary of this show) would fall in love with Batman so easily and question her life of crime. Anyway, as one might expect, Vikki is torn between her people and her love, and Vincent isn’t sure if he can trust her, but does learn some new things about his foes. Naturally, like a Batman villainess who has to fall into a nuclear reactor or whatever to end the episode, Vikki tragically does not survive this one.
Among the things we learn about the aliens in this episode is that when they die on Earth, they disintegrate into a flash of red light, which leaves no remains, so there’s no evidence to show anyone. How convenient for the aliens. I mean, maybe not “convenient” because it means one of them dies, but for their conspiracy it sure is helpful. You know what I mean. What we don’t know is if this is the result of, like, the chemical makeup of Earth’s atmosphere reacting to their bodies or something, or maybe it is the result of being killed while they are in a human form. The former would imply their natural forms are so alien to our world that it really makes you wonder why they’d even bother trying to take over the planet.
A couple Star Trek Thought back I talked about Captain Solok, who was in charge of the T’Kumbra,a ship with a predominantly-Vulcan crew. Although Solok is a complete tool, I am completely a fan of there being Starfleet vessels where humans are in the minority, it they’re there at all.
The T’Kumbra is not the first such vessel. I know that the USS Intrepid on the original series was a Vulcan majority ship that was destroyed. And I don’t remember the name of it right off, but I believe that Geordi LaForge’s mother captain a vessel that had a crew largely composed of Vulcans. That ship was also destroyed. The T’Kumbra is lucky the Dominion War ended before someone decided to say it was a casualty. Anyway, as far as I’m aware, that’s the full extent of what we’ve canonically been shown for Starfleet ships where Humans aren’t the bulk of the population.
Granted, pretty much ALL Starfleet vessels are made up of a mix of species working together, which is as it should be in the Federation, but if 99% of Starfleet is human, it feels like tokenism when we see an alien. Obviously they want a mostly-human cast for the ships that the shows are set on, but you’d think we’d at least get glimpses of ships with crews made up predominantly of the other Federation founding races now and again. Give me a ship with Tellarite or Andorian crews at the very least.
But it isn’t just my desire to see a more diverse Starfleet that makes this make sense. Alien species should also be adapted to different climates or atmospheres or gravitational constants. Surely you’d want a ship for Starfleet officers who are best suited to live in arctic conditions, and why not have one for aquatic species? These would be easy enough to convey by just having our boring human captains talk to them over a viewscreen and it would make the universe feel that much more rich.
As I write this, I’ve watched four episodes of the Invaders and I have not taken notes while doing so, because I only decided to do posts about the show after watching them. But one thing that I’ve noticed in all three episodes that came after the first, including this one, is that protagonist David Vincent is not wandering stealthily from town to town like a lonely fugitive on the run, but instead he operates openly under his own name and meets other people also aware of the Invaders.
Anyway, in this one there’s a Professor who knows about the Invaders and I think he made a public claim of having proof he was going to reveal, which seems like a mistake given the conspiracy. Vincent shows up to do a team-up with this Professor, but things go badly. The Professor is killed by the aliens, leaving only his son (played by young Roddy McDowall) with any idea where the proof may be. The problem is, the aliens have a brainwashing machine in this one! They have the Professor’s son under their control and thus, after Vincent locates the evidence, the aliens get (and I think destroy it), so Vincent loses. He does, however, help the Professor’s son fight against the brainwashing, but he also dies. Basically, Vincent has lost two potential allies here, and gained nothing. Oh well, the brainwashing machine is broken.
