History Recap / TheTwilightZone1959S2E15TheInvaders

!!The Tropevaders:

* CreatorCameo: The only dialogue we hear in this episode, other than Creator/RodSerling's narration, is that of director Douglas Heyes. He provides the voice of the "alien's" emergency broadcast at the end.

* AssholeVictim: Considering how the "aliens" (human astronauts) spend most of their time pointlessly antagonizing an old farm woman, it's hard to feel ''that'' much sympathy for them after one of them gets beaten to death against a nigthtstand and another is axed to pieces (even with the later reveal that they were HumanAllAlong).

* DeathOfAThousandCuts: The invaders, given how tiny they are (barely coming to above the woman's ankle), are left to try this on the woman, using their laser guns to create a few welts and stabbing at her ankles with a massive knife. It doesn't work, given the woman is bigger and more resourceful than them.

A woman (Creator/AgnesMoorehead) living in an old shack with no modern appliances is cleaning up her house for the night. Suddenly, she hears a loud noise coming from above her and after it drones on for a little while, it stops.

The woman goes up to her bedroom and hears something on the roof. On the top she finds a small UFO that drops down a stairwell and a tiny alien in a spacesuit emerges. Terrified, the woman goes back into her shack and starts hiding.

She hides in behind the hatch only for the alien to follow her into there. She opens a hatch which it falls down and she closes it.

After some time she goes back down terrified that there is another alien there shooting at her. And when she gets back to the inside she finds a small instrument running on electricity and both bruises and welts on her arm, face and chest from where she was shot.

She finds one alien back in her bedroom so she tries to hide from it until she gets a broom to hunt it down. After prodding around, she finds an alien behind her door.

The woman continues to hide until she finds a knife. Once again said alien has followed her and hid in a cabinet, which she promptly closes, but she hears it break out.

As she's retreating, one alien attacks her foot with a knife. Screaming in pain, she now realizes these aliens intend harm on her.

She decides to end it by capturing one of the aliens firing at her in her bed sheet and beating it on her dresser till it dies.

She finds the other alien who blew a hole through her wall prompting her to follow it to the roof.

The woman goes to the roof with a hatchet and starts beating the UFO to scrap metal. After no dialogue the whole episode, we hear the commander of the spaceship notifying central control that the planet is inhabited by giants and this makes the woman beat it harder despite them saying they have no counter attack. After a few final swings, the UFO has been destroyed.

As the woman sags in relief, the audience finally gets a clear look at the damaged ship, and the alien writing on it: ''U.S Air Force Space Probe No. 1''. The spacesuited aliens were humans, and the woman an alien giantess.

-->'''Rod Serling''': These are the invaders. The tiny people 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 learned 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.

* ActionGirl: The woman, despite being a rustic farmer who, in Serling's own words, has never worried about anything beyond "getting enough food to eat," proves herself extremely capable of defending herself against the invaders. She does have an incredibly large size advantage, but she's clearly terrified of what's going on and has to summon a lot of courage to protect her home.
* AliensSpeakingEnglish: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] -- while one of the titular invaders does start beaming a distress signal in English at the very end of the episode, it's because he and his crewmate are only "aliens" in the sense that they're humans from Earth who are on another planet. In order to avert this trope, the ''actual'' alien never speaks.
* AssholeVictim: Considering how the "aliens" (read: human astronauts) spend most of their time pointlessly antagonizing an old farm woman, it's hard to feel ''that'' much sympathy for them after one of them gets beaten to death against a table and another is axed to pieces (even with the later reveal that they were HumanAllAlong).
* BottleEpisode: The whole episode takes place in a small, dark cabin with just one cast member. The space ship is a [[PropRecycling recycled prop]] from ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'', the invaders themselves are simple hand puppets, and there isn't even any spoken dialogue aside from Serling's opening & closing narrations along with the emergency broadcast sent by the invaders at the end. Naturally, Administrivia/TropesAreTools, as this is widely considered to be one of the most iconic, unsettling, and suspenseful episodes in the original series' run.[[invoked]]
* BullyingADragon: It doesn't end well for the astronauts harassing and attacking the woman.
* ChekhovsGun: Or Chekhov's Knife in this case. In the opening shot of the episode, the woman is using a knife to prepare food and hangs it on the wall when she first goes to investigate the noise on the roof. Later, she comes back downstairs and sees that the knife is gone--one of the invaders stole it.

* DeathOfAThousandCuts: The invaders, given how tiny they are (just one barely comes to above the woman's ankle), are left to try this on the woman, using their laser guns to create a few welts and stabbing at her ankles with a massive knife. It doesn't work.
* TheEndingChangesEverything: The big surprise--that the invaders were humans--not only flips the perspective of who the audience was rooting for, but also goes a long way to explaining many plot elements. There isn't any dialogue because the woman doesn't speak English--or ''any'' language from Earth--and the lack of technology like gas or electricity is because the planet's dominant species presumably hasn't developed anything more advanced yet.

* FormulaBreakingEpisode: [[SilenceIsGolden Given the nature of this episode]], this is the only time that Rod Serling gave his opening monologue at the ''start'' of the prologue segment, rather than at the end. Also, it's one of the few times that he is clearly seen walking on and off screen.
* {{Homage}}: The story as a whole can be seen as a broad one to ''Literature/GulliversTravels'' -- more specifically, Gulliver's voyage to Brobdingnag, where a tiny human interacts with a race of giants and there are heavy undertones of how HumansAreTheRealMonsters.
* HumanAliens: The planet is presumably populated by human-like giants.
* HumansAreBastards: [[invoked]] The ending after a set up for AliensAreBastards. The astronauts spend a pointless amount of time antagonizing a poor old woman in a lonely farmhouse seemingly for no real reason other than they can, particularly [[FridgeLogic when one realizes that if they're exploring this planet of giants]], it would make more sense to keep a ''low'' profile and just ''stay away'' from the giants if they don't want to be killed.
* HumansThroughAlienEyes: Apparently humans are creepy little space weirdos (whose pressure/environment suits look more like [[Film/ForbiddenPlanet hollowed-out versions of Robby the Robot]]) that like to attack old ladies for no clear reason.
* ImprovisedWeaponUser: The woman, lacking any weaponry beyond a knife (which the invaders steal) and a small hatchet, is ultimately forced to capture one of the aliens in a bedsheet and beat it to death using the corner of a nightstand.
* {{Lilliputians}}: {{Subverted|Trope}}. It appears for most of the episode that the invaders belong to a race of tiny aliens but it turns out that they are actually normal sized humans in a world of giants.
* MinimalistCast: [[LogicalExtreme Only one actor,]] who plays the harassed woman.
* NoNameGiven: We never find out what the woman's name is, or if she even has one. We also only get the name of one of the two invaders (Gresham).

* OurGiantsAreBigger: The ending reveals that the woman in the cabin must be roughly fifty feet tall.
* SilenceIsGolden: Other than Serling's narration and several lines at the very end that are used for TheReveal, there is no dialogue in this episode.
* SquareCubeLaw: The woman in the cabin violates it rather flagrantly, or at least she would if she was on Earth.[[note]]The planet's gravity, atmospheric pressure and composition could all vary drastically from Earth baseline conditions -- and note that the "aliens" never remove their helmets or pressure suits, suggesting that this planet's environment is not hospitable for them.[[/note]]
* TomatoSurprise: It is revealed in the final scene that the seemingly tiny aliens are from Earth and that the woman belongs to a race of giants.
* TwistEnding: The invaders were humans all along.
* VillainBall: The invaders don't seem to realize until ''way'' too late that pointlessly antagonizing a fifty-foot-tall resourceful giant when you're actually supposed to be exploring an alien world is just asking to get yourself killed.
* WhamLine: The emergency broadcast sent by the invaders back home. Not only is it in ''[[HumansThroughAlienEyes English]]'', but it mentions that no rescue should be sent for them and they have invaded a planet home to a "race of giants", revealing that the cabin-woman is actually an alien.

----

* BottleEpisode: The whole episode takes place in a small, dark cabin with just one cast member. The space ship is a [[PropRecycling recycled prop]] from ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'', the invaders themselves are simple hand puppets, and there isn't even any spoken dialogue aside from Serling's opening & closing narrations along with the emergency broadcast sent by the invaders at the end. Naturally, Administrivia/TropesAreTools, as this is widely considered to be one of the most iconic, unsettling, and suspenseful episodes in the original series' run.

As the woman sags in relief, the audience finally gets a clear look at the damaged ship, and the alien writing on it: ''U.S Air Force Space Probe No. 1''. The spacesuited aliens were humans, and the woman a giantess.

----
-->'''Rod Serling''': These are the invaders. The tiny people 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 learned 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.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: [[SilenceIsGolden Given the nature of this episode]], this is the only time that Rod Serling gave his opening monologue at the ''start'' of the prologue segment, rather than at the end. Also, it's one of the few times that he is clearly seen walking on and off screen.

After some time she goes back down terrified that there is another alien there shooting at her. And when she gets back to the inside she finds a small instrument running on electricity and bruises on her arm and chest where she was shot.

The woman goes to the roof with a hatchet and starts beating the UFO to death. After no dialogue the whole episode, we hear the commander of the spaceship notifying central control that the planet is inhabited by giants and this makes the woman beat it harder despite them saying they have no counter attack. After a few final swings, the UFO has been destroyed.

* BottleEpisode: The whole episode takes place in a small, dark cabin with just one cast member. The space ship is a [[PropRecycling recycled prop]] from ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'', and the invaders themselves are simple hand puppets.

* CreatorCameo: The only dialogue we hear in "The Invaders", other than Creator/RodSerling's narration, is that of director Douglas Heyes. He provides the voice of the alien at the end.
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: The invaders, given how tiny they are, are left to try this on the woman, using their laser guns to create a few welts and stabbing at her ankles with a massive knife. It doesn't work.
* TheEndingChangesEverything: The big surprise--that the invaders were humans--not only flips the perspective of who the audience was rooting for, but also goes a long way to explaining many plot elements. There isn't any dialogue because the woman doesn't speak English--or ''any'' language from Earth--and the lack of technology like gas or electricity is because the planet's dominant species hasn't developed anything more advanced yet.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: The lack of dialogue is cool, but is also crucial to TheReveal.

* HumansAreBastards: The ending after a set up for AliensAreBastards.
* HumansThroughAlienEyes: Apparently we're creepy little space dudes that like to attack old ladies.
* ImprovisedWeaponUser: The woman, lacking any weaponry beyond a knife (which the invaders steal), is ultimately forced to capture one of the aliens in a bedsheet and beat it to death using the corner of a nightstand.

* OurGiantsAreBigger: The ending reveals that the woman in the cabin must be, oh, fifty feet tall or so.

* SquareCubeLaw: The woman in the cabin violates it rather flagrantly, or at least she would if she was on Earth.[[note]]The planet's gravity, atmospheric pressure and composition could all vary drastically from Earth baseline conditions - and note that the "aliens" never remove their helmets or pressure suits, suggesting that this planet's environment is not hospitable for them.[[/note]]

* WhamShot: The United States Air Force's name on the saucer, revealing that the invaders were from Earth.

* SquareCubeLaw: The woman in the cabin violates it rather flagrantly, or at least she would if she was on Earth.

* AliensSpeakingEnglish: [[SubvertedTrope]] Subverted--while one of the titular invaders does start beaming a distress signal in English at the very end of the episode, it's because he and his crewmate are only "aliens" in the sense that they're humans from Earth who are on another planet.