Encounters

This documentary explores cases of UFO sightings in different places on earth, from giant noiseless orbs of light seen by over 300 residents of Stephenville Texas in 2008 to a spaceship and big-eyed man-in-black seen by 62 students of Ariel School outside Ruwa Zimbabwe in 1994, spaceships and tall long-armed men seen by residents of Broad Haven Wales in 1977 and lights seen over the Fukushima Power Plant after the nuclear accident in 2011.

Featuring interviews of witnesses including those conducted by psychiatrist John Mack of Harvard University who risked his career and reputation when he made sure the schoolchildren of Ariel School were heard, this series also airs dissenting views about the Ariel School sightings.

The opposing stand of one student from Ariel School is like a splash of cold water over the whole incident because it makes sense. As much as I would like to believe the professed UFO sightings by the other students, I can't ignore the fact that children tend to have overactive imagination. The same argument holds for the UFO sightings of school children in Broad Haven.

The Stephenville Texas sightings are the most credible as they are backed by radar data. And I like to believe the Japanese witnesses of the lights over Fukushima Power Plant who think that the lights reduced the severity of the damage and were generated by non-humans who are watching over us and cleaning after our mess.

I'm sure people saw something they can not explain, but that's the only relevation. One guy talking about knowing and having encoubters at night in his bed, clearing describing sleep paralysis. People are suggestible and have very different interpretations of unusual events and novel experiences. Unexplained doesn't necessarily mean extraterrestrial. This series tilts toward conspiracy and apocalypse cultures merging, and a subtle anti or post scientific pov. People are reaching for connection and creating these hybrid belief structures to replace what they have lost in traditional belief structures. Poignant, credulous revelations from real people and one or two skeptics or experts per episode to make it all 'fair and balanced'. Considering who some of the creative and productive crew are, you might think the final product would be better, but in the end it's just a more refined version of the traditional unexplained phenomenon media presentation that H. G Wells and Orson Welles proved was possible.

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.

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.

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...