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Apr 2, 2016

Incomprehensible Alien Invaders

1967-68: 43 episode series
(alien invaders in green jumpsuits)
I've previously blogged about a sorry science fiction theme: incompetent alien invaders. Hollywood has produced many stories about aliens with advanced technology who can travel across vast interstellar distances, invade Earth and then fail to conquer the primitive humans. Of course, alien invaders might have some goal other than subjugating Humanity: maybe they have invaded Earth for some purpose that is beyond human comprehension.

In The Invaders, some aliens take on human form and hide among the population of Earth. I've never seen this television show, but in one episode, "The Life Seekers", viewers were told that there might be different factions among the aliens, including some who are opposed to the faction that has invaded Earth. This is a taste of what might provide a sensible backstory and a rational explanation for what is happening in the show.

1995 miniseries
Sadly, I don't think the creator of the The Invaders had any interest in explaining anything about the aliens. Larry Cohen expected viewers to suffer constant doubt and dismay along with David Vincent, the unfortunate architect who is aware of the alien invaders and trying to resist the invasion while the rest of Humanity thinks he is some kind of UFO crackpot, or, worse, a psychopathic killer who is responsible for all of the dead bodies that accumulate in the wake of the aliens.

dissension among the alien invaders
Chris Carter later adopted the same approach in The X-Files. In The X-Files, most people who see a UFO are brain washed or killed, protecting the secret that lies behind the UFOs. In stark contrast, FBI agent Mulder is allowed to endlessly investigate the secret conspiracy that lies behind the UFOs.

Sedronite
In the Exode Trilogy, aliens first arrived on Earth 2 billion years ago. Those aliens had a plan for how to treat Earth as a Garden World. Under that plan, technology wielding primates would never have been allowed to exist on Earth and cause damage to Earth's ecosystem. Then something went terribly wrong.

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the blue "sedronite" who is in the image shown to the left.

A cadre of telepathic robots took control of Earth. When the ensuing warfare between those robots and the aliens finally ended, the humans of Earth had been given an opportunity to survive, develop a technological civilization and reach for the stars. Since human knowledge of the aliens still must be constrained and restricted, the only widespread source of information about the presence of aliens on Earth became stories that the people of Earth viewed as science fiction.

source
Related Reading
This blog post (above) is the 4th in a series
 looking at forgotten Sci Fi stories.

Earlier posts in the series:
Gunther Primes
Drunken Zombie Aliens
Sound Science

Next: a tribute to Jack Vance
visit the Gallery of Posters

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