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- The mass media is being used to condition the human race
for it's first contact with alien life. It's a fact. Someone is manipulating
us, and everything that we see and hear. Why is a question that is still
open to debate &
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- I will show in this report the strange way the media;
especially TV has depicted the entire UFO scene. I am concentrating on
shows from the 60's and 70's in this report. There are so many early episodes
that I want to cover, I hope your favorite is among them &
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- One early example of the media using an alien theme is
Rod Sterling's famous "Twilight Zone" many episodes were based
on our contact with aliens. I have summarized a few of the best examples
below, (submitted for your consideration)
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- Rod's show always starts with "There is a fifth
dimension beyond that which is known to man...
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- The Twilight Zone
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- The Monsters are due on Maple Street
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- In this "cold war" episode, hysteria grips
a small community as residents suspect invaders have caused a power failure
from outer space disguised as Earthmen. (I love the smell of paranoia in
the morning)
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- The Invaders
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- Not to be confused with the TV series "The Invaders"
below, this classic episode, an old woman in an isolated farmhouse must
battle a horde of extraterrestrial invaders. (Nothing like building up
our expectations of what our first encounter would be like. This is not
your friendly "ET" type.)
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- Will the real Martian please stand up?
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- This one is an offbeat entry about a pair of state troopers
who must determine which member of a bus trip is, in reality, a Martian
invader. (I really found this to be a mind-boggling show, I saw it again
recently, and it's still a mind bender. You should try his mind experiment
sometime, go to a busy place, a mall for example, and try to pick out the
aliens in the crowd! I really liked his ending where a Venutian with a
third eye beat the invading Martian here. It just goes to show you the
early ET gets the worm)
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- To Serve Man
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- When aliens come to Earth bearing promises of a utopian
existence, the military's suspicions and skepticism eventually prove justified.
But just a little too late. ("It's a cook-book!!!" This show
first suggests the phenomena of abduction years before the Betty and Barney
Hill abduction incident, and also pre-dates the current cattle mutilations
cases by decades.)
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- (I suggest you see this episode and then read my article
titled "Do we really want to know?" about Human mutilations by
Aliens, please, don't eat first)
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- Hocus Pocus and Frisby
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- The town windbag so impresses a visiting group of aliens
who are masquerading as humans with his tall tale stories that they attempt
to abduct poor Frisby, who finally broke out his harmonica to do battle
with the mean old aliens. (One funny episode!!)
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- The Parallel?
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- Following a routine seven-day space flight, an astronaut
is catapulted into a strange parallel universe. (Hmm, many of our NASA
astronauts have seen strange objects while in space)
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- Black Leather Jackets
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- The three young motorcyclists who ride into a sleepy
community are actually invaders from space who intend to contaminate the
Earth's water supply. (Nothing like Biker Aliens for a change, but seriously,
this story is quite interesting as it shows America's fear of the "unknown"
and the mindset of folks back in the early cold war days.)
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- The Outer Limits
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- Next, I want to move on to "The Outer Limits"
a '60's TV series with many aliens cast in it, this show covered the psychological
aspects of "Close Encounter's" If you have never seen this show,
these are the opening lines &
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- "There is nothing wrong with you television set.
Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.
If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to
make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal.
We will control the vertical. We can roll the image; make it flutter. We
can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity.
For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all you see and hear.
We repeat: There is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about
to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe
and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to ... the Outer Limits."
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- I have tried to include the best episodes &
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- The Architects of Fear
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- A scientific organization creates a fake alien being
from one of their own members in an attempt to scare the world into peace.
(It seems a little disinformation can go a long way)
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- Nightmare
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- During an interplanetary war with the planet Ebon, Earth
POW's are subjected to a series of tortures. The whole thing turns out
to be instigated by Earth officials to test the men's stamina! (Sounds
like our military don't it?)
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- The Mice
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- A convict agrees to participate in an exchange program
with an alien world -- via matter transmitter/receivers. The horrible alien
shows up first, and it turns out his/her/its motives are less than honorable.
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- Second Chance
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- An alien converts an amusement park space ride into a
REAL spaceship, and abducts some individuals who have been specially selected
via mental probing. The idea is to give them a "second chance"
at life by working to avoid a massive catastrophe that will affect the
alien's planet and, eventually, Earth. (I'm on my way to Disneyworld!!!)
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- Moonstone
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- A military base on the moon finds an odd white globe
a little bigger than a bowling ball. It turns out to contain several alien
intelligences that have incredible knowledge, and are trying to escape
from an oppressive alien tyrants (hmm, odd white globe? Sounds like a UFO
to me)
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- A Feasibility Study
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- Six square blocks from a U.S. city residential neighborhood
are teleported to another planet by a horribly mutated race that wants
to see if Earth people will make good slaves. Why so many abductions in
the media? (This episode was from 1964)
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- The Chameleon
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- A human is altered to appear the same as some aliens
who have landed on Earth, and whose intentions are unknown (but assumed
to be hostile). The alteration is genetic, based on some fingernail scraping
of one of the aliens. The human ends up liking the aliens a lot more than
humans, and leaves with them. (Well, see how you are!!!)
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- Behold Eck
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- A two dimensional alien, visiting this space-time, discovers
he can't find his way back without ripping the continuum to shreds, and
if he doesn't go back the continuum the will get ripped open anyway. He
eyesight is the problem, so he seeks the aid of an optometrist who has
invented some special glasses made of quartz from a meteorite! (A strange
episode, Oh boy, Alien optometrist's, at least he wasn't a proctologist!)
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- Cry of Silence
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- A simple but intriguing story of an alien intelligence
that animates various objects on a deserted country farm in a fruitless
attempt to communicate with humans. (Would this qualify as a CE-3?)
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- Keeper of the Purple Twilight
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- An alien exchanges intellect for human emotion as an
experiment, with predictable results for both parties. (I don't have to
tell you who got the short end of that deal!)
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- The Duplicate Man
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- A man who has brought a highly illegal alien creature
to Earth, which then escapes, has a duplicate made of him to track it down
and kill it. (Darn illegal aliens anyway!)
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- Counterweight
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- A group of people participates in an experiment to test
their reactions to simulated deep space flight. Unknown to them, an alien
creature is also on the "trip", which has a vested interest in
their reactions.
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- The Probe
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- The survivors of a plane crash in the Pacific find their
raft drawn aboard an enormous craft that turns out to be a giant probe
from some alien planet. (An interesting study of extraterrestrial communication,
and intelligence.)
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- The Invaders
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- The Invaders was a 60's science fiction series, which
originally ran for three seasons.
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- The first episode was aired January 10th 1967 and the
last, March 26th 1968.
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- The Invaders is very much a period piece, and reflects
the public concerns of the time: Unlike Star Trek, which ran concurrently
with it, the Invaders is set in the present. It draws influence both from
America's first missions into space, which made ordinary people think about
the possibility of contact with life from other planets, and also from
the paranoia brought on at the height of the Cold War.
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- The series revolves around the character of David Vincent
(played by Roy Thinnes), who has discovered that the Earth is being invaded
by beings from another planet. These beings have taken human form, and
are virtually undetectable from human beings.
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- This is the introduction to the show The Invaders - Alien
beings from a dying planet their destination:
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- The Earth Their purpose: To make it their world. David
Vincent has seen them. For him it began one lost night on a lonely
country road, looking for a short cut that he never found. It began
with a closed deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to
continue his journey. It began with the landing of a craft from
another galaxy. Now, David Vincent knows that the Invaders are here,
that they have taken human form. Somehow he must convince a disbelieving
world that the nightmare has already begun. These are a few of the best
from the Invaders &
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- Beachhead Architect David Vincent sees a flying saucer
whilst coming home from a business trip. He pursues the aliens to
a deserted village, which is being completely taken over by the Invaders.
(I guess if it's deserted, it only takes one alien to take it over!)
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- The Experiment A college professor plans to expose the
Invaders to the world at a conference in New York. He is killed,
and his son becomes the subject of an experiment in thought control
in order to find the evidence his father had amassed. (Though control?
Let's keep the CIA out of this!)
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- Doomsday Minus One The Aliens plan to knock the Earth
off its axis by detonating an anti-matter bomb to coincide with
an atomic test to be carried out by the US Army and Department of
Energy. (oh those nutty guys at DOE)
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- The Innocent An Air-Force captain sets up a committee
to investigate the Invaders activities. While tracking down a man
who has taken one of the Invaders weapons, David Vincent notices that the
aliens are behaving rather out of character & (Would that captain be
named Ruppelt?)
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- Moonshot After several astronauts die in mysterious circumstances,
David Vincent realizes that the Invaders are interfering with America's
first manned Moon shot. (Sounds like our current Mars program to me) &
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- Condition: Red David Vincent prevents a full-scale alien
assault by uncovering a plot to sabotage the Air Force's "Norad"
facility. (As in Cheyenne Mountain? Oh no!)
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- The Saucer David Vincent captures an alien spacecraft
but the Invaders are determined to get it back (They should have
taken the keys!)
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- Valley of the Shadow An entire town learns the truth
about the Invaders presence on Earth. David Vincent tries to convince
the alien leader that there is an alternative to wiping out the
entire town.
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- The Enemy An alien spaceship crashes with one survivor,
who is rescued by an ex-Vietnam nurse. She tells David Vincent we're
the killers. You've seen what they've had to do to protect themselfs
against us. How do you know that they're not here on a mission of peace?
(Yea right lady!!)
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- The Trial Charles Gillman kills an alien being and is
arrested for murder. David Vincent tries to build a case in court
that his friend is innocent of murder because the victim was not a human
being. (Sounds like a job for Peter Gersten!)
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- The Peacemaker After convincing an Air Force general
about the presence of the Invaders, a peace meeting is set up between
a group of Air Force officers and the high command of the Invaders,
but are both sides sincere in their wish for peace? (Did it take place
at maybe Dulce? Or Area 51?)
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- Project UFO
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- Ezekiel saw the wheel. This is the wheel he said he saw.
These are Unidentified Flying Objects that people say they are seeing now.
Are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations from other stars?
Or just what are they? The United States Air Force began an investigation
of this high strangeness in a search for the truth. What you are about
to see is part of that 20 year search. Those were the words, spoken by
radio and television veteran, Jack Webb, that opened the premiere episode
of "Project: U.F.O.". Jack Webb, the talented no-nonsense actor
and highly successful producer of fact-based series such as Dragnet, Adam-12
and Mobile One, looked to the stars for his next inspiration. Not the stars
living in Hollywood, mind you, but the stars of the universe. The series,
which investigated the sightings of U.F.O.'s was based on actual cases
documented in the declassified files of the United States Air Force's Project
Blue Book. The series ran on NBC for a total of 26 one-hour episodes. The
early episodes garnered very high ratings; some of the highest for any
science-fiction television show ever aired!
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- Way before The X-Files, there was NBC's long-forgotten
Project U.F.O., television's first attempt to dramatize UFO sightings.
The show was based on incidents reported in the Air Force's Project Blue
Book, which investigated UFO occurrences for 22 years. The show's creator,
Dragnet's Jack Webb, obtained microfilm of more than 400,000 documents
covering 13,000 alleged UFO encounters.
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- Project: U.F.O. centered around the United States Air
Force's "Project Bluebook", which was formed to determine whether
or not UFO's posed any threat whatsoever to our national security. Each
week, Major Jake Gatlin, and Sgt. Harry Fitz would travel the country to
interview people who had purported UFO close encounters. Some were outright
hoaxes, but some were logged officially as 'unknowns'. Gatlin and Fitz
even had a sighting of their own!
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- Their goal was to determine whether or not UFO's posed
any actual threat to our national security. Produced by Jack Webb's production
company, Mark VII Limited, the show was done in typical Jack Webb style
a la Dragnet, Adam-12 and Emergency.
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- These are a few of my favorite episodes &
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- The Nevada Desert Incident
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- When an Air Force Lieutenant sees four metallic flying
objects and a huge mother ship; he reports the sighting but finds that
his claims have jeopardized both his career and his marriage. He sticks
to his story that, while alone at dawn in the desert, he was stranded when
his car stalled. While checking the engine, he saw four glowing, disk-shaped
objects hanging in the sky. Then they took off in different directions,
followed by a large mother ship. But, upon reporting his sighting, he finds
his wife doesn't believe him, and his father-in-law, a Colonel in the Air
Force Reserve, is sitting in judgment on a hearing board.
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- The Wild Blue Yonder Incident
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- Student pilot Kay Galloway sights a UFO while flying
a T-34 and recklessly dives to Earth trying to chase it, and then faces
expulsion from school and humiliation from her fellow students. Because
of the unique configuration of the T-34, Galloway's teacher doesn't see
the UFO, and doesn't believe her story. Accused of buzzing a restricted
area, Galloway is brought before an honor board at school that could recommend
her expulsion. With no other witnesses to her sighting, Galloway is certain
she'll be expelled, not realizing her boyfriend, is keeping important information
from her and the honor board.
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- The Rock-and-Hard Place Incident
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- While dining at a restaurant with Theresa Ball, Major
Gatlin is alerted to a UFO sighting at Wright Patterson Air Force Base,
less than 30 miles away. Within seconds, Gatlin, Fitz and more than 100
diners have a spectacular sighting of their own as a UFO leaves a trail
of exploding colors over the restaurant. As Gatlin and Fitz probe the amazing
sighting, they find themselves under investigation by the government. In
trying to desperately prove their sighting, they come to a startling conclusion
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- The Camouflage Incident
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- When a UFO attacks 3 prominent businessmen, 1 of them
manages to successfully film the craft. Ryan and Fitz talk to the 3 men
involved and find 2 of them willing to cooperate, but Charles Robinson,
the man who took home movies of the UFO, mysteriously refuses to reveal
any information or part with the film. The team's search leads them to
citrus grove owner Harold Moon, who also sighted the UFO, and claims to
have a piece of it in his garage.
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- The Whitman Tower Incident
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- Shortly after an air traffic controller at the Los Angeles
Airport spots a mysterious blip on his radar screen, several residents
of a luxury apartment building, known as the Whitman Tower, are startled
by the appearance of a UFO outside their windows. Ryan and Fitz fly to
Los Angeles to question the witnesses and ascertain the facts in the case.
One of the witnesses, Mr. Rashoon, reports he saw only some red beams of
light. The other residents, a family named Ryerson, give a more detailed
description of what they saw. Their version includes the sighting of 2
beings with horse-shaped heads and medallions around their necks bearing
horse images. Ryan and Fitz next head to San Pedro to search for additional
witnesses and try and separate fact from fiction in this bizarre case.
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- The Atlantic Queen Incident
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- Steve Rollins, Executive Officer of the luxury liner
Atlantic Queen, has a UFO sighting while the ship is returning home from
its latest crossing. Ryan and Fitz are notified and fly to Boston and are
taken by helicopter to the deck of the Atlantic Queen. Once there, they
encounter the ship's Captain, who believes the Executive Officer has invented
the UFO story to further his own career. That night Ryan and Fitz are visited
in their cabin by former tv comic Ollie Hyers, who provides confirmation
of Rollin's story and adds his own incredible account of a night-time encounter
with a visitor from the UFO.
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- The Scoutmaster Incident
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- A Vietnam veteran with a dark secret has a dangerous
encounter with a UFO, but insists that Project Blue Book is making too
much out of the sighting. High School teacher Andy McMurtry had been leading
a group of Explorer Scouts when they saw the strange lights and a flaming
crash. When Andy went to investigate, he received mysterious burns from
the craft. Ryan and Fitz find Andy a cooperative witness at first, but
then the Vietnam veteran becomes strangely reluctant to reveal any more
information.
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- The Devilish Davidson Lights Incident
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- Dr, Samantha Klein is enjoying a barbecue at the home
of 2 fellow college professors when they sight and photograph 2 strange
bluish-green V-shaped UFO's. The California coastal town of Davidson is
abuzz with the news. Ryan and Fitz arrive the following night, just in
time to miss a second mass sighting. While the Blue Book team investigates
the mysterious appearances, the residents of Davidson turn off their lights
to wait for the return of the UFO's. (Sounds like The Lubbock Lights Incident
to me)
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-
- I recently uncovered a long lost interview with one of
the principle actors in Project UFO, Actor William Jordan, who played Major
Jake Gatlin on the show's first season, recalls that Project: U.F.O. was
not the show he hoped it would be. "What was unfortunate was Jack
was a very bright, innovative mind, but he was unable to go in any other
direction other than his success with "Dragnet", explains Jordan.
"Most of his storytelling cramped in terms of his dimensions. My character,
Major Jake Gatlin, had no other life than just being with his Sergeant
and traveling around and interviewing people. He had no family life he
had no dimension. I think that was the fault of the show. There was never
any further dimension. It made them out to be cardboard characters."
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- "We were the number one rated show for a season.
This was about the same time that Close Encounters Of The Third Kind came
out. It was very timely, and people were very curious. The first several
shows were very promising of what might be revealed that the Air Force
perhaps covered up for years. Jack, even though he was a very talented
man ... didn't want input into his ideas."
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- Jordan candidly reveals, "Jack and I parted in that
series after about a year, because he was intolerant, not wanting suggestions.
What about showing that we have a life of some kind other than just Air
Force staff? Don't I have friends? If you give people the same thing every
week, in that same tone of voice like Dragnet, for two, three or four years,
that's pretty boring stuff."
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- Jordan is kinder to his co-star on the show, Caskey Swaim.
"Caskey was a very pleasant, cooperative actor ... He did a very nice
character that he developed, and he had a very nice quality."
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- To properly adapt case files for a prime time TV series,
it was necessary to "dramatize" the events and structure them
to be entertaining and accessible. As Jordan explains, "It's not so
much fictionalized as Jack chose to put them together in a fashion that
fit his purposes at the time. There were some liberties taken. The way
they compiled, so to speak, the story construction. It's part of television
to be aware of the constraints of time and the needs for the hour to fill.
I never got to be a contributor in the sense of seeing the original Project
Blue Book stories. I was never given that opportunity."
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- Jordan laments that if the producers had been more creative
and allowed the show wider parameters, "we would have been a much
more profound experience for everyone." Jordan also wanted stories
that were more pointed about the phenomenon of UFO's. "I felt there
was more to be learned had we sought the direction of trying to be bold
in storytelling. In the outcome of the episodes, a lot of the resolutions
were very matter-of-fact and there were no abstractions. In my way of thinking,
it would have been better had there been more mysterious stories rather
than the indirect reference to balloons and gases. In many cases, we had
open-and-shut cases."
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- As to his own thoughts about UFO's, Jordan wonders if
Air Force personnel know more than they are revealing, "and don't
quite know how to disseminate to people. I think they don't know how to
make them palatable."
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- Lots of viewers thought Jordan did know all about the
project Blue Book. He reports that fans assumed he knew much more than
he ever revealed on the show, and they would write to him asking for more
information.
-
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- "If I wrote back and told them I didn't know, a
lot of them would be disappointed or be angry that I would not be forthcoming
with information. There was resentment sometimes that I would not be able
to answer their questions about the phenomena. Because I'm on television
playing an Air Force officer doing this, I must have knowledge of a lot
more than I would be able to tell them."
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- If Jordan looked official and well cast in the role of
Major Jake Gatlin, it was because he did serve in the Air Force and served
time in the Korean War in 1959. "It was not like I needed training
to be an Air Force officer," he says. "I spent three years and
nine months as an officer." As a result of Jordan's background, he
rightly could call himself an authority in the portrayal of such military
men. "I used to have a lot of differences [with Webb] about military
bearing and behavior I would have as an Air Force officer, as opposed to
nuts-and-bolts, stilted kind of Dragnet qualities that were sometimes imposed
on me. I felt I had a beam on the character and what this character might
think as opposed to military bearing imposed on certain projects like this.
After all, these characters are people first."
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- When Jordan left the show at the end of its first year,
actor Edward Winter took over as Captain Ben Ryan, while Caskey Swaim carried
on. The show was cancelled after 13 episodes of the second season.
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- In the end, Jordan remarks, "Every time I run into
someone who was at NBC and knew the show, they would say, 'we're sorry
we didn't listen to you more closely, and that we let Mr. Webb influence
us so drastically.'"
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- So for at least 30 years now we have had aliens shown
to us in about all types of situations by our own television sets in the
comfort of our living rooms. The NSA advises in its article titled "UFO
hypothesis and survival questions" (http://www.nsa.gov:8080/docs/efoia/released/ufo/ufo35.pdf)
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- To survive we must "Adapt as many of the advantages
of the opposing people (aliens) as you can as fast as possible, while still
protecting your own identify by molding each new knowledge increment into
your own cultural cast"
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- Are we being molded into a new cultural cast that includes
UFO's?
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