Encounters

As a UFO-buff, I have been excited to watch this show since the trailer came out, especially because of the Ariel School UFO incident involving 60 school-children in Zimbabwe seeing 3 real aliens communicating with them telepathically.

Instead, we are introduced to a very vague "light in the sky" incident, without any compelling evidence at all. Disappointed and sad? No, it's more than that - this is intentional, to ridicule this topic as much as possible and cover this phenomena, which is as real as the nose on your face.

There are so many good encounters out there, such as the Nimitz incident, Travis Walton abduction, Ariel School, the Pascagoula incident, Phoenix Lights, Ingo Swann Moon Penetration, Philip Corso reverse engineering testimonies, Robert Salas Nuclear Missile Station incident, the list goes on and on and on and yet, they choose a "mysterious light in the sky"-incident as the first episode??

This is clearly intended to ridicule this topic further. I give it a 7, because we need to push this topic in the open, even though it means, doing it in a ridiculous way.

These are well done, more thorough documentaries, about subject matter that has been covered many times before. Yet I learned more from each episode than I had previously heard from previous telling's of these stories.. One reviewer said they were boring. They are NOT boring to the more intellectual person, who has an interest in the subject matter, & wants to find out as much as possible about this subject. And now finally, our own US government is finally admitting that there are "things" flying around in our skies, that they can't explain. It's a shame honest investigators, like John Mack were met with such resistance as he tried to get to the bottom of this, especially in the Zimbabwe incident. Moving forward, I hope more people can open their minds to look at different possibilities---which would be good advice in all aspects of life as well. If you are interested in this subject matter, I do recommend watching.

The name "Encounters" is appropriate as it focuses on events with actual witnesses statements, but with Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment behind it there's a purposeful link to Spielberg's own Encounters of the Third Kind. Think of it as branding enhancement as one may be expecting more knowing Speilberg's long standing interest in UFOS/UAPS, even ETS. That said, I wonder how much input he really had?

Encounters isn't too different than better made for TV documentaries on the subject of unexplained aerial phenomena. There is only a few new folks rolled out as witnesses so it's hardly groundbreaking. But, in the four events covered in the four episodes it does bring each up to speed. I will say I enjoyed not seeing the usual "talking heads" ,such as Nick Pope for instance, as in most cases these people suffer from over exposure with almost nothing important being said. Others in the same category often suffer from saying too much regarding "fringe" stories involving abductions and ways of establishing contact through intent. Yes, I'm referring to Steven Greer who has done as much to hurt the credibility of ETS and UFOS as he has to establish concrete inroads. That would be his famous National Press Club event which was a bonafide cry to the government to stop the ridicule and denial through dramatic testimonies by extremely credible people. Fortunately, there's not too much "fringe" stuff here.

With the docu-series focusing on four "big" events the viewer may find some more of interest than others. Personally, I did. My favorite was the update on the Stephenville Texas flap which I always felt was well documented by many credible witnesses and the concrete science of radar data. Deniers gonna deny, but this one has solid legs to stand on. I had previously found Steve Davis to be a believable and likable interview so catching up with his time since was definitely bittersweet as I think the unexplained nature of what he saw took his life over and now wholly for the best. Even so, he relays it was a blessing to have witnessed what he saw and vies to still find answers. In a nutshell this is the conundrum of the whole thing. You have to have some kind of actual experience to really believe UFOS are not of earthly origin...for the most part.

So, for those of us quite interested yet not ready to wholly buy into extraterrestial origins it pushes us a bit closer to thinking "perhaps?". By this measure the series largely succeeds and does bring each of these "encounters" up to the current time. I'd say it lacked the impact of James Fox's body of work while it adds some more needed credibility to remind the world of these widely witnessed events.

After seeing several reviews about how the first episode is just about a few possibly crazy people seeing lights in the sky with no evidence, I actually had to check and make sure this was the same show I watched. The "few crazy people" were actually 100s of witnesses, including prominent members of the community who risked their jobs and reputation by going on record. And after the military said there was nothing on the radar but refused to release the data, a reporter still obtained it through FOIA -- and it corroborated exactly what the witnesses described. Obviously this doesn't mean it was aliens...but it was SOMETHING, and that's compelling enough for me.

The filming and storytelling are really great as well. It definitely had me hooked, and doing some Googling later. I'm not sure where such negative reviews are coming from on here, though. Unless they were expecting the filmmakers to interview an actual alien or something...

When you start your documentary or documentary series about UFOs, or anything else really, with a religious fanatic, your credibility is almost immediately shot by most critically thinking individuals. One could argue that critically thinking people wouldn't watch a show like this, anyway, but that's not true. We are always looking for evidence. Expecting someone who believes in an invisible man of the sky is not the way to present it. This series doesn't really present anything else, either. If you are interested UFO phenomena, then watch it at least for that. Just don't expect anything new or evidentiary.