The Invaders

Several episodes of the classic Quinn Martin TV series have been going up on YouTube this year, and here is the pilot episode Beachhead, in which all the ingredients mentioned in the opening narration for every subsequent episode came to pass. Here is 'the man too long without sleep; and the 'closed, deserted diner'.

This is the kind of series that made real impact on the audience because of its storytelling, intrigue and development – despite some 'goofy writing' (as one commenter to the next episode put it) and relatively low-grade special effects. Now we can re-live the gripping drama of The Invaders as it was properly devised by Larry Cohen, without the peculiarities of the two-part mini-series starring Scott Bakula some years later...