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"The Invaders"

The Twilight Zone episode

Agnes Moorehead and an Invader

Episode no.

Season 2
Episode 51

Written by

Richard Matheson

Directed by

Douglas Heyes

Featured music

Original score by Jerry Goldsmith

Production no.

173-3646

Original airdate

January 27, 1961

Guest stars

Agnes Moorehead: Woman
Douglas Heyes: Invader (voice)

Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"The Whole Truth"	"A Penny for Your Thoughts"

List of Twilight Zone episodes

"The Invaders" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

1 Opening narration
2 Synopsis
3 Closing narration
4 Preview for next week's story
5 Episode notes
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

Opening narration

“

This is one of the out-of-the-way places, the unvisited places, bleak, wasted, dying. This is a farmhouse, handmade, crude, a house without electricity or gas, a house untouched by progress. This is the woman who lives in the house, a woman who's been alone for many years, a strong, simple woman whose only problem up until this moment has been that of acquiring enough food to eat, a woman about to face terror which is even now coming at her from the Twilight Zone.

”

Synopsis

An old woman (Agnes Moorehead) is apparently living alone in a very rustic cabin. She is dressed shabbily and there are no modern conveniences in evidence. After hearing a strange noise from the sleeping loft, she is accosted by small intruders that come from a miniature flying saucer that has landed on her house, equipped with two tiny people in spacesuits. In proportion to the old woman, the intruders appear to be only a few inches high.

She battles them for many minutes, finally killing one and following the other back to his ship. There she hears one of the space-suited intruders, speaking in English with an apparent American accent, send off a desperate warning to other potential invaders that the people from the planet are giants and very difficult to defeat, after which she destroys the ship with an axe. (Before this scene the episode has no dialogue.)

The camera pans and we see the side of the ship display U.S. Air Force Space Probe No. 1.

Closing narration

“

These are the invaders, the tiny beings from the tiny place called Earth, who would take the giant step across the sky to the question marks that sparkle and beckon from the vastness of the universe only to be imagined. The invaders, who found out that a one-way ticket to the stars beyond has the ultimate price tag. And we have just seen it entered in a ledger that covers all the transactions of the universe, a bill stamped 'paid in full,' and to be found, on file, in the Twilight Zone.

”

Preview for next week's story

Announcer: "And now, Mr. Serling."

“

Next week, on this very spot, there commences a very kooky chain of occurrences. The story has to do with a young bank clerk who, for some unexplained and most uncanny reason, finds himself able to read other people's minds, and then finds that the power can get him into a peck of trouble and a bushel of travail. Our show is called "A Penny for Your Thoughts", and it will be here waiting for you next week on The Twilight Zone.

”

Episode notes

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (December 2007)

The original closing narration for this episode (as it appears in Richard Matheson's teleplay) reads: "This is one of the out-of-the-way places; until now, one of the unvisited places in our solar system—the planet Mars. Bleak. Wasted. Dying. But not quite dead yet."
The small ship is one of the miniatures of the saucer shaped United Planets Cruiser, used in the MGM film Forbidden Planet. According to The Twilight Zone Companion, a rough duplicate model was used for the axe-destruction finale.
Both the invader and the space ship used in this episode can be seen at Walt Disney World's Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, but only the invader is seen at Disney's California Adventure.
Director Douglas Heyes provided the voice of the astronaut, whose warning near the end is the only dialogue spoken in the episode.

References

Zicree, Marc Scott. The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

External links

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The Invaders

The Twilight Zone: The Invaders

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