“Project Blue Book” A Winner!
Think of a real-life X-Files series set in the 1950’s, and you’ve got the gist of what this ten episode dramatic series on The History Channel is like…and boy, did they get the period atmosphere and flavor right, down to the home decor and guys going everywhere in hats! In addition to careful and authentic detail, there is superb acting and engaging scripts based on actual Project Blue Book investigations. Aidan Gillen known for Game of Thrones gives a wonderful characterization of J. Allen Hynek, a brilliant but underappreciated professor called in by the government basically to put cases to rest but finding that science can’t explain everything away. He is pressured by his assigned partner Air Force Captain Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey) who in turn is pressured by military higher-ups to produce the desired investigation outcomes. It’s all there, including shadowy “Men in Black” figures lurking in the background, and glimpses of a UFO hidden in a government hanger.
Episode 2 concerned an investigation of The Flatwoods Monster, a close encounter of the third kind which occurred in West Virginia in 1952 and about which I blogged here way back in 2010. The incident was previously highlighted in an episode of the late great series, MonsterQuest. Anyways, in this Project Blue Book treatment Dr. Hynek explains away the alien sightings as being of an owl up in a tree so as to appear ten feet tall, but is beginning to doubt his own explanations as the episode ends and he is hustled off the case. Future episodes will probably depict the continuing evolution of the character, and I look forward to seeing it, commending the series for your viewing…
Tags: Project Blue Book series
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FOXSYLVANIA 
January 18, 2019 at 8:20 pm
I haven’t seen this version, yet. But, I remember a two-season wonder NBC did, back in the Seventies, entitled PROJECT: U.F.O.
Executive produced by Jack Webb (of “Dragnet” fame), it gave some pretty balanced dramatizations of the declassified true stories the episodes were allegedly based on. Some sightings exposed as hoaxes. Others as genuine mistaken identity (rare weather phenomena, etc.). And a few that could not be explained, at all!
The chief investigator in Season 1 was William Jordan as Major Jake Gatlin; his replacement in Season 2 was Ed Winters as Capt. Ben Ryan; and their right-hand man was Caskey Swaim as Staff Sergeant Harry Fitz. My favorite was the semi-fictionalized re-enactment of the Hopkinsville Goblin Incident!
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January 20, 2019 at 1:56 pm
OK! I just caught up on the first two episodes via HISTORY CHANNEL ON DEMAND. Interesting semi-fictionalizations, to say the least. Well-acted, too. But, semi-fictionalizations all the same.
Particularly, the Flatwoods case. From the abstracts I’ve read elsewhere, the witnesses weren’t harassed by their paranoid fellow citizens. Just the opposite. They were even flown to New York City for an interview by one of the first radio programs to specialize in armchair UFO research!
Of course, with the passing of time, all that probably changed. The college-educated children and grandchildren of the involved locals don’t want to seen as coming from a town full of gullible “hillbillies.” So, talk about the “Flatwoods Monster” (supposedly just a fog-shrouded raccoon, up a tree, reflecting flashlight glare from its eyes) understandably becomes a source of great reluctance.
I admit it, though. I’m now officially hooked on this series. So, you better believe I’ll be tuning in the eight remaining episodes!
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January 21, 2019 at 1:21 am
Glad to hear that…it’s a good production!
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