The Miracle

In the beginning, a teen boy and girl are snuggling in an open field. The girl then goes to a nearby church to drink some water. At the same time, a man is bitten by a snake and disappears in front of her while carrying a bag which he offers to her. She sees what's inside and suddenly feels converted as she then prays to the female statue she's standing next to. Cut to David Vincent in a New Mexico town as his car goes to a place that seemed to not have changed since the 19th century. In a bar there's a crystal object that attracts the attention of several Native Americans. The owner offers to sell it to David but his daughter, that same girl from the beginning, refuses believing it to be sacred having retrieved it from that bag...This ep of "The Invaders" made more sense to me than others I watched before this one. Among the guest stars were Barbara Hershey as the teen girl and Ed Asner as her father a few years before becoming Lou Grant on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show". I really enjoyed "The Miracle" so that's a recommendation.

In a run down New Mexico town, Vincent is after a rock the aliens want, but he must deal with Church-types who have the wrong idea about the rock.

Not a great deal of science fiction is going on in this hour, instead it looks like QM's The Invaders has pinched a script from the recently axed QM's The Fugitive but added a creepy alien nun to keep the sci- fi element going.

In a nutshell: if you are after sci-fi thrills, you may struggle with The Miracle, but if you want a Fugitve-type experience you will like this episode.

The Miracle can hardly be called powerful television, but it was not meant to be, these kind of hours take viewers back to more simple times. At the end of the 51 minutes the viewer feels like they have spent time with interesting poor people in a town of the 1960s.

The only negative about the episode is the town itself, an obvious backlot set that has been seen in 100 western TV hours...when a 1960s car drives down the main road it looks a bit odd because the town set is in the 19th century.