First Contact: An Alien Encounter

I did not mark this as a spoiler because it says VERY LITTLE more than the description in the PBS schedule does. If you consider anything more than a program's title to be a spoiler, then don't read my last paragraph.

I found this interesting and did not mind watching for the entire length, but it supposedly contained SOME facts and archival footage and I would have preferred that those be noted somehow, maybe in an unobtrusive manner like a date on the bottom left of the screen during archival footage. As is, other than a few well-known facts like there is a James Webb space telescope (and presumably the other telescopes they mention do exist), one is just left to assume that ALL the rest of it is fictional. However, if you take it as total fiction merely based on actual scientific POSSIBILITY, but produced to "make you think" rather than just for pure entertainment, I'd say it accomplishes that.

I would actually like to see a little "making of" documentary about this documentary. Well, the genre of this is said to be documentary, but that doesn't sound quite right. However, "mockumentary" would not be appropriate either as it is not satire. Maybe a "conjecturmentary"?

As an example of "fact or fiction?", it is clearly fiction that there was an unnatural artifact for which they calculated its trajectory in order to have the James Webb space telescope look for a possible origin, BUT has that telescope actually seen such a sun and busted-planet configuration somewhere since it has been looking "everywhere"? If so, that would be irrelevant to this story line, but would be interesting to know!

Lots of scientists discuss the possibility of intelligent life contacting us in a signal picked up by radio telescopes like the famous "Wow!" signal in the 70s (of unknown origin). These discussions are woven into a fictional account of an alien signal reaching us now and how people would react to it. Unfortunately, since this viewer knows that it's all in the service of the writer's fake story, there's not a lot of suspense and there's certainly no more information than we've picked up over the years on various PBS Nova programs. Eerie music doesn't so much heighten the message as leave me wondering when it will please stop!

In my opinion, if we look at this as fact we're missing the whole point. It is not meant to be "Fact" or "Fiction". It is made to make us "Think". As first I thought it was real. Then I thought it was fake. Now I know it's both. It also blew my mind when some of the "facts' were revealed about the age of solar systems etc. Actually, this subject always blows my mind. Sometimes I feel amazingly lucky. Sometimes I feel like a complete victum of my own existance. So, exploring the possibilities of the Universe, I'm all for! By the way. Excellent production in most of the show. Very high quality and sometimes sooo good it's hard to tell which is which, I think it's brilliant.

I just watched this movie and thought it was very good - unlike some of the other reviews. It was realistic and not just another adventure film like Star Wars, but more like some of the better Star Trek TV shows. After watching this film, I realized that this is probably like our real First Contact would be like - viewing remnants of some far away past civilization - instead of actually being visited by aliens - much like what this movie tried to point out. It also showed how the whole world would come together in response to the encounter - seeing TV clips from other countries showed the commonality of the total world. I liked the film for its education benefits - I was not looking for the same old sci-fie stories!

I had wacky confusion over what PBS did with this show. It never clued us in clearly what they were doing, so I kept wondering "when did this happen? How did I miss the rioting and drama? What???!!" And I'm a science fiction writer and social media adept. Do not call it a documentary, PBS. It's an imagining using technology already present. Give us a clue of real vs fiction as we're watching it. Or, know what? This demeans true scientific discovery when you present "truth adjacent" stuff as real. Politicians do that; PBS be different.

Science fiction, in case these producers are confused, is worthwhile & does JUST what they pretended to do.