UFO

Finally a well made UFO documentary that doesn't jump to conclusions the way most History Channel documentaries do.

It's nice to see reporters, witnesses and politicians being interviewed instead of "UFO researchers" who are nothing more than writers trying to sell books.

Whether or not UFOs exist isn't the question. Their existence is documented by film, photographs, radar, and by credible eyewitness accounts. The problem is that we just don't know what they are, who made them, and why they are in the sky,

If a new species of bird were as heavily documented by UFOs and UAPs are, biologists would be asking for grants from universities to study and name them. However, what happens in the skies of this country is the business of the US government and not colleges and universities.

The impetus for this four part docuseries was the 2017 New York Times publication of an article called "Glowing Auras and Black Money: The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program." The article revealed that the government acknowledges UFOs and considers them a serious enough problem to dedicate serious resources into investigating them.

The series is NOT one of the hundreds of pseudoscience on cable television programs that purport to tell the "truth" about the impending alien invasion. Nor is it four episodes of satire making fun of the people who study UFOs. In fact, it goes to great length to show to what extent the people who see UFOs are ridiculed, and to remind the viewer that "there is no more credible witness than a trained Navy flyer" while showing a radar view documenting what the Navy flyer saw.

Instead, the series is a straightforward presentation of the evidence we have, and the ragtag group of eyewitnesses, astronauts, and billionaires trying to know more. On the one hand, it's frustrating because most of us have heard at least one of the stories at one time or another. It's hard NOT to believe a Navy pilot and most of the citizens of Phoenix. It's hard to invest the time in the series and come away knowing little more than we knew going into it. On the other hand, this is a docuseries, not a Netflix sci-fi miniseries.

But, what is the alternative? The U. S. government knows but it won't, as we found out in the infamous Obama interview, tell us. Perhaps the only way to find out how this all works is to keep presenting information like this until we know.

Well produced, except I don't like CGI re-enactments. If you have the video, show me the video. The fact is, there is only so much real footage, and so they produce this dramatic "filler." Unfortunately, it is the wide availability of CGI tools that have led to the production of so many fake videos that populate YouTube.

I also wasn't all that pleased with dropping the whole "Skinwalker Ranch" controversy into the video. We are talking about UFO's, not ghosts. The only reason I didn't take more stars away is because the honorable Senator Reid was involved. I have complete trust in Senator Reid, and I know he would never waste taxpayer money. In fact, it is Senator Reid's involvement, and not just The NY Times, that lends the most credibility to this Documentary and the whole subject of UFOs.

Don't get me wrong, I nearly turned this off. It starts as many UFO documentaries do, with the usual talking heads spouting nonsense unsupported by evidence. I was distracted by my phone though so it stayed on, and wow. What a surprise. We got a rational and opposing point of view from some folk with actual critical thinking skills. Not only that, a revelation about The Phoenix Lights incident crops up, that actually cleared something up for me after more than 20 years. This series addresses both sides better than anyone has done before and lets you make your own mind up. For me though the addition of some sanity in the room for once won hands down. If you ask me, the truth isn't out there, it's right here.

This diced spaghetti salad could have been riveting, but leaving out pivotal details and voices in the UFO historical narrative weakens the arguments both for and against the phenomenon in exchange for exorbitant time spent on less significant details, but worst of all the chop suey structuring of the information in this scrambled eggs documentary makes for ADHD broken understanding that jumps from point C to point X to point L to point E to point R to point A, etc. Ever heard of a zig zag? Ever heard of a zig zag that u-turns and ties itself in knots? That's this series. Great music though...