The Insect Aliens are the main antagonists of "A Day in Beaumont", the first segment in the 24th episode in the first season of the 1985-1989 run of The Twilight Zone, which aired in 1986. The insect aliens are an unnamed humanoid insectoid species, with heads somewhat resembling ants, native to the planet Altair IV. They have differing eye sizes, which may be a mark of their differences in sex. Undisguised, they are seen only wearing one type of clothing, a white pantsuit covered by a brown vest, which may be a military uniform. It was unknown if this attire is decorated or has some means for segregation by rank.
Named insect aliens were portrayed by Victor Garber, Stacey Nelkin, Warren Stevens, Jeff Morrow, Kenneth Tobey, and John Agar.
History[]
At some point in the 1950s, the insect aliens sought to invade Earth. To accomplish this, they set up an elaborate simulation of a small desert town named Beaumont, modeled after a typical US town in such an area. Insect alien trainees were given different roles in the simulation, some being uniformed soldiers, others playing the roles of infiltrators disguised as humans, and some playing the roles of humans, the last of which had their minds "reprogrammed" to believe they were humans and forget their alien origins. Two insect aliens in human roles, a male in female, were given the names of Kevin Carlson and Faith, and made to believe they were a couple on their way to Beaumont.
In the simulation, Kevin and Faith sighted an insect alien spacecraft land behind a nearby hill, its magnetic pulse disabling Kevin's watch. The pair investigated, finding the uniformed trainees exiting the craft and planting alien seed pods, soon sighted by the trainees, who began firing at them with energy weapons. Evading the trainees, Kevin and Faith got to Beaumont to alert the authorities, met with an infiltrator posing as "Sheriff Hansen". The sheriff said he has known Faith "since she was knee-high to a tadpole" and that if Dr. Carlson is with her that it is clear he is not a nut; suggesting that Faith was programmed to be a lifelong resident of Beaumont and Kevin was her boyfriend from some other town. Hansen informed them that the spaceship was actually a crashed army plane, taking them to the site for proof, where disguised insect aliens had already covered up the site with a fake plane crash. One infiltrator, "Major Whitmore", shook Kevin's hand in an odd manner, leaving his pinky extended, and Kevin promptly revealed them as aliens with a flash from his camera. With that, Kevin and Faith quickly fled back to Beaumont, where they split up and try to get the warning out two ways: Kevin contacting a journalist named H.G. Orson, and Faith contacting her uncle, a HAM radio enthusiast, both of whom were also alien infiltrators. Quickly discovering that the two were aliens, Kevin and Faith tried to leave the town to warn the world, only to be abducted by the spaceship, ending their role in the simulation.
Outside the simulation, "Orson", "Whitmore", and "Hansen" had the couple put into reprogramming pods to restore their minds, removing their masks and reprogramming Faith, making her remove her mask as well. Horrified, Kevin angrily declared that humans would band together and defeat the invaders, only for "Orson" to tell him that he had been acting "too human", telling him that they are on Altair IV, not Earth, and that Kevin was another insect alien, before reprogramming Kevin while pulling his mask off. Later, the insect aliens restarted the simulation, where a man comes rushing into Pop's Diner claiming to have seen a UFO land. Kevin, now wearing the sheriff's uniform, reassures the man that all that happened was a plane crash.
