Unsealed: Alien Files

I've been deep into this topic for 20 years. And this series has to be the worst of any of this genre. Its kind of like alien files for Dummy's. To get any thing out of this show and claim to like it, then it would have to be first time watching said subject matter. It skims over the equivalent of two lines of a novel for each story. Not really giving the viewer anything apart from the name of the incident. Instead of fast forwarding through every story and doing ten in an episode. Just do one or two each episode. Then you don't have to recycle it again for the next episode. The genre is far ahead of things like 'alledgeadly in 1947 there was a UFO crash' It's 2016 and now there are whistle blowers from the CIA, NASA, FBI, military, pilots. The credible, modern stories are out there. On record, on video. Nothing new and nothing beneath the surface. You have the platform, you have the rights for pay TV. Do something with substance

This show is reasonably enjoyable as an introduction to the UFO phenomenon for those who are not otherwise well versed in the history of observations and attendant theories. Unfortunately, the utility of the show ends there.

There is rampant misinformation: incorrectly cited personal names; incorrectly cited (or just plain mispronounced) place names; and incorrect (sometimes woefully so) dates. (The biggest offender in this department, by the way, is William Birnes, J.D., Ph.D.) I can almost deal with this.

But what truly turned me against this show was the "revelation" that some loser had "decoded" the string of ones and zeroes that Sgt. Jim Penniston said he received "in my mind's eye" from the Rendlesham Forest UFO in 1980. How could anyone decode a random string of ones and zeroes and have any confidence in the result? What language do the aliens use? Is the binary ASCII or, perhaps, EBCDIC, or do the aliens have their own code? How remarkable that they believe in Roman characters! Worst of all, there are supposedly geographic coordinates --of the legendary island, Hy Brasil, no less! These are floating-point numbers. Amazing that they were decoded! Are they represented in mantissa/characteristic form with two sign bits? Are they fixed-point? Are they recorded in Intel format? PDP-11 format maybe? Why not CDC Cyber-6000 format? Anyone who claims to be able to ferret out useful information from a random bit string is full of it, and anyone who puts this "information" on his TV show should be shot.

Yes I believe in aliens. No I don't believe every story about ufo's. This show is very entertaining but it's as if they didn't think they would have repeat viewers. They repeat themselves over and over. They have about 10 different stories that they retell in various ways repeatedly. But as I said it's still entertaining.

Reliability and quality of the accounts are all over the place. Frequent citing documents that have no pedigree of authenticity. First episode starts with one of the least verified around: Project Blue Planet. It jumps all over even within each episode, repeats itself, and seems downright scatterbrained. Snippets of interviews from various people not even directly related to what they're talking about are sometimes cut between other various footage. There's a lack of objectivity and an undeveloped constant sense of alarm or revelation in the narrator's voice. It feels like a strange rush throughout combined with everything but the kitchen sink.

I could also do without the extremely frequent images of the beings themselves, which, by the way, are more like horror movie versions here. I don't need to be bombarded by that stuff. After watching something thoughtful, restrained, objective, and well organized like the short two seasons of Close Encounters, most of Unsealed was difficult to tolerate. I think the highlight for me was probably the Australian aborigine episode, but they kind of blew it by going on too long about Pine Gap and other facilities. To be fair, some of the supposed witnesses and "experts" are presented here in a more unvarnished manner than other shows and I don't think they come off well. I suppose I should be thankful for that.

Tired of skeptics and disbelievers expressing their opinion on UFO's and aliens? Watch this show. It's for those who actually believe and don't want a critical voice telling that UFO's sightings, abductions, etc. aren't real and can be explained naturally.

The show has great narration, guest appearances from UFO impresarios like Bill Birnes and Nick Pope. It covers every famous UFO case and it covers every imaginable topic about UFO's, USO's, aliens, etc. It also has nice custom CGI sequences which gives the show an idiosyncratic flavor that I love.

I also like that the show is only 30 minutes and not filled with padding and overlong recaps like other paranormal shows.