The Invisible Enemy

The first manned expedition to Mars has successfully landed, and the two-man crew explores the surface of the planet when something goes horribly wrong, and all contact is lost. Three years later, Earth tries again, this time sending a four-man crew to re-investigate, when tragedy strikes again, and two more men are lost. Major Merritt(played by Adam West) and Captain Jack Buckley(played by Rudy Solari) discover the true nature of the mystery, voracious sand sharks that may prevent them taking off again...Paper thin story with outdated science(an atmosphere on Mars?) still manages to be entertaining on a Halloween-viewing level. Not to be taken seriously of course, but watchable.

The first manned expedition to Mars lands, but all contact is lost, three years later a second expedition goes up, led by Major Merritt and Jack Buckley. Buckley makes it his mission to discover what happened to the first crew.

A real space chiller, more than average shades of horror about this one, and it worked very well, for the time this packed in the scares, I bet this caused a few sleepless nights.

Shades of Dune and Doctor Who, this seemed like a highly original episode, way ahead of its time. I keep expecting the standard in this second series to drop off, it hasn't.

Very good performances throughout, Adan West of course stood out. Rudy Solari did a fine job also, no complaints here.

Production wise, they did a very fine job, I thought the sand monsters looked very good, they definitely looked menacing, great job on a relatively low budget. Dated now or course, just remember this goes back all the way to 1964.

7/10.

Parts of the plot are similar to the movie TREMORS. Unfortunately, for the story to work, the trained military crews of the space flights have to be even more dumb than the simple and humorous main characters in that very entertaining movie. I found it really tough to enjoy seeing this episode again after many, many years because the characters behaved do stupidly, in spite of their very simple and logical orders to always stay in sight. I kept wishing the writer had tried a little harder to set up the dangerous and scary situations without having certain people in the story be so dim-witted. A potentially interesting idea that just wasn't handled very well.

A pair of idiots are sent to Mars. They are killed due to incompetence. Five years later, another group of equal idiots are sent to see what happened. The space program has been put in the hands of men who have no discipline, no dedication to duty, nor respect for each other. There is all this talk about doing things by the book but when the first chance is there to explore, they ignore all their training. They are to remain in sight. They don't. One guy gets another one killed while he hunts for Martian diamonds. Since these are military men, the survivors should be court martialed the minute they arrive back on Earth. There is this steady comic byplay even after a colleague has been killed. One of the characters is such a miserable jerk that he shouldn't be allowed to tie his own shoes. Throw in two oddities: Adam West, Batman and Ted Knight, Ted Baxter from The Mary Tyler Moore Show are principle figures. They do nothing the least bit interesting in the show.

Adam West goes to Mars and encounters a crab monster.

Whenever this hour is mentioned one thing enters my mind: the studio set for the surface of Mars. Who cares if some of the spaceship crew are not so interesting, who cares if the crab monster in the sand looks terrible, you just remember the look of Mars. It is these visual things that often make an Outer Limits show so special and that is the case with The Invisible Enemy. But there is suspense as well.

Adam West is fine in the lead role but you will not see any of Bruce Wayne or Batman in his character here, he is just playing the concerned spaceman who keeps looking out the window of his rocket.