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The Invaders (1967 - 1968)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 14, 2016 10:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Quinn Martin was one of the first producers in television to insist on his various shows having location filming. The majority of TV series would either shoot scenes in a studio sound stage or on the studio backlot. It saved time & money.

QM Productions would leave the confines of the studio to find real locations for filming.This added a fresh look to the QM shows that other shows lacked.

That is definitely one of the strong points of this great show. It also elevates the quality of Route 66, and of course the other QM production, The Fugitive — which I've been watching downloads of recently. Great show.

About those saucers, last night I realized that my redesigned version was lacking a very important component.

A dome!

Makes a big difference, I think. Here's the new version and the original together, for comparison.
Very Happy





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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Thu Jan 17, 2019 3:30 pm; edited 4 times in total
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sat May 14, 2016 3:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robert (Butch) Day wrote:
Wayne, turn it 90 degrees. it's a piece of the upper portion of the saucer. There was no top piece. That was added by a matte.

This is what I was taking it to represent.



(Side note: I love it when you upload an image to Photobucket and it doesn't show up in the gallery. So you upload it again, then it shows you two of the same image side by side.)

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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sat May 14, 2016 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would take your "Klaatuized" design one degree further, Bud.


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 14, 2016 5:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Sweet! A nice variation on my altered version! Very Happy

I actually pictured the area that you gave the slope to as being a bit recessed below the visible outer lip and the inner boundary, rather than level with it — like this.



So the slope is a significant and interesting variation.

I kind of miss the additional layer you removed to make the slope work, so it's hard to like either one more than the other — which is fine, 'cause we've got both! Cool

Here's a side-by-side (sort of) comparison.






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~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Fri Mar 22, 2024 5:03 pm; edited 4 times in total
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sat May 14, 2016 6:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
I actually pictured the area that you gave the slope to as being a bit recessed below the visible outer lip and the inner boundary, rather than level with it...

Hmm... Looks like it would collect rainwater. Wink
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 14, 2016 6:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Hey, that's funny! I had the same thought. Laughing

But that might be good thing! Water can be separated into hydrogen (a highly efficient fuel source) and oxygen (which is also very useful).

So, the saucers have a built-in cistern! Cool

Damn, I'm really good at this science stuff!

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


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Fri Mar 22, 2024 5:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2016 11:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

My God, these alien saucers are landing all over the place!




Here's a better look at this newest version of my Invaders saucer re-design.



Meanwhile, the Air Force is preparing to use captured saucers with enhanced weaponry in the coming battle.




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


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Fri Mar 30, 2018 1:45 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Randy
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2016 7:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
My God, these alien saucers are landing all over the place!


Background musical lyrics sung by Julie Andrews:

"The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Saucers"
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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2016 8:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd be more concerned when the Cups, Creamers, Sugar Bowl, Tea Pot and Tray decide to join the Saucers!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2016 10:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

And how, you may ask, did I make the masterpiece above? Well, I'll tell ya!

I took this picture —






— and expanded it with a reversed duplicate —





— then I painted out the planes and modified both the clouds and the taxiway so they wouldn't be just mirror images of each side —





— and then I added the saucers and painted the shadows under them.





Finally I decided to trim the left side to make the picture less wide so that it could fill the display a bit more, vertically.





But I realized that it was still so wide, relative to it's height, that it needed a bit more sky. So, I painted that in, too! Very Happy





Oh, I forgot to mention that I made the saucer using this. Wink





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


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Fri May 01, 2020 5:31 pm; edited 5 times in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu May 19, 2016 12:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Here's a nice video in which Roy Thinnes talks about fans of the show and how nice they've been to him.


________________________________

__The Invaders Roy Thinnes talks about 67th Birthday Party


_____________

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


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Fri May 01, 2020 5:32 pm; edited 7 times in total
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Thu May 19, 2016 8:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay, I checked out the "Beachhead" pilot and instantly (that's really quickly) recognized the filming location. The town of Kinney in that episode was actually Temecula, CA, the town that shares city limits with the town where I live.

Temecula was used for depictions of small, remote towns and for period pieces up until the later 1970s, when it began to outgrow its small quaintness. (For example, it was used about seven years after this episode of The Invaders in Big Bad Mama (1974 - Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, Tom Skerritt), a movie influenced by the success of Bonnie and Clyde.)

I cracked open Google Maps to grab some quick shots of scenes from this Invaders episode to show how the town looks now. Google uses a wide angle lens for their street views, so everything in the distance is going to appear farther away than in the TV images. The opening shots of David Vincent arriving in Kinney, followed by a view from Google Maps in approximately the same location (you can't be too choosy with Google Maps), looking in the same general direction...





Some of the buildings seen in the episode are still recognizable. One landmark for orientation is the two-story boxy building identified as "The Bank" in the modern photos. It's seen on the far right-hand corner in the two images above. It was originally built as a bank, but is now a restaurant. The bank vault is still in there.







Above: The big brown wood-clad building above with the white side wall now stands where the old brick gas station was. I included The Bank in the Google image for reference.





Above: Reverse angle as David parks his car. The street going up the hill behind him is the street he supposedly drove into town on from the main highway (I caught the image when a semi with a white cab and gray trailer was passing by). That street actually dead ended without connecting to the highway. Pardon the delivery trucks in the Google image.



Above: Here's where the director pulled a switcheroo. David is looking around for the local residents. He goes to the middle of the main intersection (The Bank on the left) and looks down the street. Point-of-view shot showing that he sees a hotel down thataway...



Now go back to the close-up of David and notice the white building out of focus in the distance just over his shoulder. That's the actual location of the hotel. Now the Google views... In the close-up of David, he would have been standing about where the street lamp and stop sign are.



As for the hotel, some things don't change much!



The bridge below seen in the episode has been completely replaced. This was a view looking back toward "downtown".





This last TV image is a three-frame panorama of the end of the episode when David is leaving town. The white guard rail of the bridge from the shot above is barely visible over the rear deck of David's car. The new bridge can also be seen in the Google image.





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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri May 20, 2016 12:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Wayne, what a magnificent post! Thanks for sharing all this with us. Very Happy

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Pow
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 2:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Invaders Trivia } The show debuted on January 10,1967.

It was on opposite The Red Skelton Hour (CBS), the first half hour of The NBC Tuesday Night Movie.

So TI wasn't given much of a chance to succeed against the competition.

Uber television producer Quinn Martin was not that excited about his Invaders series. He felt it was too close to his other show The Fugitive.

Famed writer Harlan Ellison almost wrote for the show. Ellison got involved in a huge argument with QM's assistant, Adrian Samish, & ended up leaping over a table & socking Samish.

Pity, Harlan is a brilliant writer & would have contributed top-notch scripts for the series.

The show's creator, Larry Cohen, came up with the idea of the aliens having an extended finger as a subtle commentary about 1960s gays in Hollywood.

Almost no one working on the series felt it was a good idea & found the concept silly.

As with many television shows from the 60s & 70s The Invaders never created a story bible for the series. That lead to some episodes taking a long time to shoot due to halting the show in order to have lengthy story conferences in order to resolve problems regarding the alien's saucer capabilities, biological background, alien tech.

The producers wanted the star of the show, Roy Thinnes, to make his David Vincent character more likable & warmer for the viewing audience.

Thinnes felt that his angry man approach was more realistic.

Roy's reasoning was that Vincent was forced out of his successful career (his partner was killed by the aliens in the pilot) in order to stop the threat of the alien invasion.
People treated him as a nutcase, his life was in danger, he was seeing humans killed by the aliens, he was unsure if it was too late to defeat the invaders.

Roy did not think that Vincent would be Mr.Rogers after suffering all of those ongoing threats & challenges.

Lynn Loring, Roy's real life wife, was a guest star on the episode ''Panic."

Art director George Chan created the alien saucer & regeneration chambers along with many other alien gadgets.

Transporting the huge spaceship to various locales was a headache for the production staff.

They were required to get permits whenever they went anyplace off the studio back lot.

Weather factors like rain & mud made things difficult. People did not want the film crew shooting near them. And it took the crew time to travel, set up the saucer, load it back on to the truck & go back to the studio.

Time is a precious commodity for a television show.

According to QM productions, they received more calls from the public over TI than any other QM TV series.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 2:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Pow, that is one terrific post! Very Happy

I didn't know 99% of the info you provided, even though I'm a big fan of the series and I own the box set. Thanks for sharing it with us.

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