​Having spent four hours over the last few days reviewing Ancient Aliens and offering an extra bonus post to review Project Blue Book, today I have to keep my posting short in order to make time for some other work. I have two quick hits to share, the first surrounding To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and its claims to be testing exotic metals from outer space. The second is about Hindu nationalists’ efforts to revise the history of science to place primacy in the hands of Vedic Indians thousands of years ago.

Let’s start with the recent posting of a transcript of a conference call that To the Stars officials held with investors last month. In the call, Steve Justice explained that the company has “limited” resources for scientific investigation, and he then explained the only actually relevant facts, which were, as expected, disappointing. He references here the so-called Project A.D.A.M. launched last year with splashy YouTube videos heralding the company’s efforts to analyze alleged UFO wreckage:

​Ancient Aliens has long had a bit of a fetish for the planet Mars, one born of the ancient astronaut theory’s historical position as a product of the middle twentieth century, when “space alien” and “Martian” were largely synonymous in pop culture discussions of aliens. In fact, going all the way back to 1898, Martians were the first space aliens given the honor of being named the true builders of Egypt’s monuments, albeit in a novel. However, more directly relevant to our current episode of Ancient Aliens is the fact that this episode reprises material already covered in a Mars-centric 2016 episode, which in turn repeated similar material from a Mars-themed 2014 episode.
 
With two previous episodes fully devoted to the ersatz mysteries of Mars, not to mention countless segments of other episodes, it’s hard to find anything really original in this latest effort--or at least that part of it that has anything to do with the episode title. Like most episodes now, the title is largely ceremonial, and the real theme was a different repeat, revisiting relatively sedate ideas about colonizing space.

​Ancient Aliens has never been a show overly concerned with facts. This is a program, after all, that released its tenth anniversary commemorative DVD set a year early. So, it is unsurprising that this two-hour special edition of Ancient Aliens was designed to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods, which was actually early last year. It is not as though they could have prepared ahead for such an unexpected event. But Ancient Aliens has always been concerned with creating a celebrity culture around itself. It has assiduously cultivated celebrity fans, and in this episode, we see the series start to draw in other fringe history show hosts to create a sort of extended Ancient Aliens television universe. Thus, tonight’s episode features Star Trek legend William Shatner, who hosted the paranormal program Weird or What?, and actress Megan Fox, fresh off her low-rated Travel Channel series Legends of the Lost, which featured appearances from several regular members of the History Channel’s traveling circus, including Jim Vieira and Graham Hancock. Now they have been beamed to the Ancient Aliens mothership, turning their programs into satellites of the black hole at the center of fringe universe, and implicitly recasting their shows as extensions of the Ancient Aliens theme and brand.