In the stone chair, Kiki wakes from a doze - these last three days, the snores of her Aunt Stephanie have kept her awake. Visits can be fun. But if you invite someone over, you'd better know what you’re getting into: even a cool visitor can overstay their welcome. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, she calls this story "The Tale of the Unexpected Visitor."
One evening, in a house on the edge of a forest, young musicians Jeff and Perch exchange ideas. With his parents out, and younger brother Bobby upstairs with a video game, Jeff, to his dad’s office, leads Perch.
The large room is set with illuminated star photos and a central ring of five desk-mounted computer monitors. Jeff's dad is at work on a secret test of satellite software - which, Jeff announces, will provide free access to tonight’s broadcast of momentous concert World War Four.
Jeff uplinks to the satellite. Perch looks through Jeff's dad's notes. Curious, he asks about the Peabody Project. It's a secret study of deep space communication.
From the hall calls the Bobby, whose discretion Jeff secures with a banana split. Meanwhile, Perch, having found the instructions for the Peabody Project, enters "Peabody." Onscreen, the blinking numbers are replaced by a digitised image of the Milky Way. Perch enters some random coordinates.
Asked to enter a message, Perch plays several notes of his and Jeff’s recently composed song. He presses enter. The screen flashes with a warning of "INCOMING MESSAGE". Suddenly, nearby speakers thunder a sequence of synthesised notes. Jeff leaves Bobby to his sundae, and hurries back to the office. Has Perch had a close encounter?
Outside, a car horn sounds. Jeff hastily switches off the monitor. In the hall, Jeff’s parents see right through his and Perch's forced calm. Bobby wanders into the hall with a chocolate sauce beard. With a stern look, Jeff and Bobby’s mother warns against giving Bobby ice cream before bed.
Late that night, Montana the golden retriever sleeps by Jeff’s bed. In the night sky outside the window, a disc of dazzling white light glides towards the distant trees. Montana, with his ball, happily wanders outside into the woods, and into a clearing. From above, a web-shaped net, whose strands glow brilliant yellow, falls onto the dog.
Next day, Jeff’s mother goes to a work banquet. She reminds Jeff to make sure Bobby eats, and to look for Montana, who seems to have wandered off.
That evening, while he and Perch search the woods, Jeff directs Bobby to stay on the lawn and play t-ball, in case the dog returns. Bobby whacks the ball into the woods. On retrieving it, he hears, through the trees behind him, a sequence of synthesised notes. From the forest floor behind him, a web-shaped, yellow-glowing net slithers independently into an erect position, and spreads between two trees. Bobby retreats straight into it.
Jeff calls for his dog. Through the nearby trees floats a synthetically echoing recording of Jeff’s voice. Unnerved, Jeff strides forward - and abruptly halts, mere inches before a yellow-glowing web-net.
From nearby sounds a fluting sequence of chimes. Rightward, before the trees, stands a seven foot tall silver rectangular frame. Within its hollow shines a yellowish white-glowing mist. From the frame's base rises a mechanical panel, which, with a hiss and a click, closes the doorway.
The boys approach the weird object. Perch nervously confesses the similarity of the chimes to the transmission he heard last night. They step round the back of the frame, and find it to be flat, less than a foot thick. On its front is a mounted a small dome. On touch of this, the door slides down. Into the glow within, Jeff flings Montana’s ball. Could it have been vaporised? The hatch slides back down. With a whoosh, the ball is flung back at Jeff. The boys run.
As they reach the lawn, Jeff calls for Bobby, who is nowhere in sight. In the office. the monitors seem to have been turned on automatically. Each screen shows a digitised image of the galaxy. A beeping caption announces five messages to have been received. Across the galaxy, each with a beep of sequential notes, appear four line-joined circles. From the final circle, Earth, came the fifth message - whatever replied to Perch's message has arrived. Jeff tells Perch to look for Bobby.
In the empty kitchen, Perch calls for Bobby, and is greeted by a synthetically echoing copy of his voice. Suddenly, behind him is a glowing web-net. He backs into it, and finds himself stuck.
Jeff runs into the front room. Perch is nowhere in sight.
Jeff grabs a big stick; runs into the woods, and back to the detached mechanical door. Into its inner glow, he eases the stick, and retrieves it intact. He cautiously eases in his hand. He braces himself, and leaps over the threshold. Behind him, the hatch hisses closed.
Jeff finds himself in a sterile, brilliantly lit grey hall. In the middle of the chamber stand three transparent, ceiling-high tubes, in each of which, respectively, are Montana, Bobby and Perch. While Montana is calmly erect, Bobby sits in a doze, and Perch leans against his tube's inner wall. Perch reports the air to be bad in here. Jeff tells Perch to cover up, and swings his stick at the transparent material.
With a soft chime, the stick bounces lightly off it. The tubes, says Perch, are made of sound - if d-sharp is played, they'll open.
Jeff runs back to his room. On his keyboard, he plays a d-sharp note, and records it on cassette.
Back in the unearthly chamber, he plays his d-sharp recording. The tubes slowly slide upwards. Bobby quickly rouses. Perch stands up right. Jeff leads his bandmate, brother and dog outside.
Outside the mechanical door, they find themselves closely surrounded on all sides by yellow-glowing web-nets. From nearby sounds a chime of the space-message. They find themselves approached by a dazzling blaze of whitish yellow.
Suddenly, it fades. The web-nets are now gone.
With a fluting, shivering whistle, ten feet ahead, two regions of air are each filled with a bloom of soft yellow light, each of which quickly brighten into two person-sized shapes; these then condense into two yellow-glowing ethereal figures. Within each aura stands a partially faded, spindly body - one tall, one short; each with a fetally bulbous cranium and large, tilted black eyes.
From the taller figure issues a softly echoing female voice, which speaks in French, Spanish, and then English. She explains herself to have come to take her son home - he came to this planet when he heard a message. There sounds a playing of what Jeff now realises to be his and Perch’s song. In the language of the Visitors, the sequence means "we are toys." The Mother Visitor then sounds the chimes of the response message - which means "I’ve come to play." She apologises for the misunderstanding. With that, mother and son fade into their yellow radiance, which dematerialises.
With relief and awe, the boys look up to see two white discs glide across the sky.
Jeff and Perch didn’t get in trouble, closes Kiki, because Jeff’s dad was so happy to find that the Peabody Project worked. Meanwhile, they found themselves inspired to write a new song - which they played to a very special audience. With her story well-received, Kiki asks around if anyone has a spare couch for tonight - but Sam’s parents are painting; Betty Anne’s cousin is already sleeping over, and Gary and Tucker’s dad is himself a legendary snorer. Stig approaches Kiki with a playful smirk...
This episode provides examples of:
- Alien Abduction: Yellow-glowing web-nets, installed throughout the vicinity by some seemingly omnipresent hand, are used to ensnare Montana, Bobby, and Perch.
- Alien Invasion: In response to a piece of music transmitted by Jeff’s dad’s satellite software, an interstellar visitor lands, and proceeds to ensnare local life forms.
- Aliens Speaking English: Justified; the Mother Visitor also tries French and Spanish, implying a fantastically swift grasp of human languages.
- Bigger on the Inside: The hatch of a silver mechanical door frame leads into a hall-sized sterile chamber.
- Cheerful Child: While Bobby exploits the leverage offered by knowledge of Jeff’s intrusion into their dad’s office, he’s quite amiable about it, and merely does so for a chocolate sundae. He also seems to take in his stride a brief Alien Abduction.
- Don't Go Into the Woods: The otherworldly threat first manifests in mysterious lights seen in and around the nearby woods.
- Energy Beings: The Visitors seem to manifest in both light and sound waves.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Subverted: While the first to see the spaceship approach, Montana investigates in apparent hope that the Visitors might play Fetch with him. In any case, they’re far from evil.
- Freaky Electronic Music: In response to Perch’s transmission, the hardware speakers blast an unfamiliar synthesised refrain - sent from across the galaxy.
- Giving Them the Strip: Jeff gets caught by a net but slips out of his jacket, leaving it stuck to the net while he runs.
- The Greys: With their spindly bodies, fetally bulbous craniums and large, tilted black eyes, the Visitors evoke the image. Their embodiment in sound and light waves recalls the reputed ethereality thereof.
- Honking Arriving Car: As Perch and Jeff are meddling with their dad's computer and the Peabody Project to send a message into deep space while their parents are out for the night, the sound of a car horn outside signals their parents' return back home and prompts Perch and Jeff to shut down the computer in haste.
- Metal Head: Perch, with his long hair, Guns N' Roses tee shirt, and flair for unfettered guitar riffs.
- Organic Technology: A possible variant: the Visitors, whose bodies seem able to recreate any form of sound, operate their devices via tones: the transparent containment tubes in their chamber seem to be made of concentrated sound.
- Poor Communication Kills: Just for a laugh, Perch uses new satellite software to transmit into space a few bars of his and Jeff’s new song. It travels across the galaxy, and is received by the child of a species who interprets it to mean "we are toys."
- The Professor: Jeff’s dad, by virtue of his research field, has, in his office, equipment capable of interstellar communication.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Flighty, adventurous Perch and sober, measured Jeff.
- Scenery Porn: Some lovely shots of the woods.
- Shout-Out:
- Perch wonders if the Peabody Project will enable them to "dial up Captain Kirk."
- Although it’s an actual bodily language rather than a coded signal, communication by musical notes with aliens recalls Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as, somewhat, do ominous glimpses of yellow light.
- Revelation of a detached mechanical door to lead into a disproportionately large interior recalls Doctor Who’s TARDIS - the sterile look of the chamber somewhat evokes the Console Room sets of the original run.
- The Visitors themselves evoke The Greys of ufology.
- Some Kind of Force Field: The tubes which contain Montana, Bobby and Perch, seem, rather than material, to be constantly generated.
- Starfish Language: The Visitors, whose ethereal bodies can produce a seemingly limitless variety of sound, communicate in musical notes.
