The Twilight Zone/The Invaders

The Invaders
Season 2, Episode 15
Airdate	January 27, 1961
Production Number	173-3646
Written by	Richard Matheson
Directed by	Douglas Heyes
Produced by	Buck Houghton
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The Twilight Zone — Season Two

The Invaders is the fifteenth episode of the second season of The Twilight Zone, and the fifty-first episode overall.

Starring: Agnes Moorehead (Woman)

Uncredited: Rod Serling (Host), Douglas Heyes (Astronaut (voice))

Plot Overview

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

In a desolate, rural cabin, a shabbily dressed woman busies herself making food in a pot when a shrill noise causes her to recoil violently. She follows the source of the noise outside to her roof, where she discovers a small flying saucer parked. Tiny spacemen emerge from the craft, appearing only to be a couple of inches tall compared to the woman. She responds in terror, attempting to evade and kill the creatures as best she can through her house. Eventually, she managed to beat one of the aliens to death in a blanket after it cuts her palm with a knife.

The woman follows the dead spaceman's companion back to his ship, which she destroys with an axe. She only pauses when she hears the voice of the other man, speaking in English with an American accent to central control on Earth. He warns them of a race of violent giants who couldn't possibly be defeated. He advises against counter-attack before succumbing to his wounds.

The camera then pans out to reveal "U.S. Air Force Space Probe No. 1" printed on the side.

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.

Trivia

The Show

• Original Narration: The original closing narration for this episode, from 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."

Behind the Scenes

• Flying Saucer: The saucer used as Space Probe No. 1 is actually one of the United Planets Cruiser models used in the film Forbidden Planet. A duplicate was used in the axe destroying scene.