Last week, Ancient Aliens surged in the overall ratings, up to 925,000 live plus same day viewers, up about a third from its season 14 average. However, it’s demo ratings among the coveted 18-49-year-old age group fell again, meaning that the surge in viewers was driven by those 49 and up. Since this is also the same demographic that watches Tucker Carlson, who guest starred on Ancient Aliens last week, I’m guessing the Fox News cross-promotion helped goose Ancient Aliens’ ratings. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that its lead-out, In Search Of, which had been outpacing Ancient Aliens for most of its season, didn’t move the needle very much week-to-week while the Fox-infused Aliens soared. I write about this in the introduction to this episode because there are few topics I have less interest in than Earth-like exoplanets beyond our solar system, whose existence I have long assumed and whose properties are for me mostly an academic exercise since there is no chance that humans will visit them in my lifetime, and there is a statistically insignificant chance that space aliens, should they live there, would ever manage to reach Earth, given the vast distances involved.

At the end of the day, maybe the ancient astronaut theory and ufology are all about daddy issues. The concepts come pre-loaded with the notion that punitive and/or loving parental figures will descend from the sky to teach all of Earth’s naughty children important lessons, but it seems that the emotional need for parental validation in the form of government “disclosure” of UFO secrets represents another facet of the same mindset. The same people who tirelessly assert that government is an evil nasty punitive asshole who takes away all our toys and always treats our siblings better than us are also the same people who so desperately want daddy’s love that they believe only a government endorsement will validate their belief in the UFO faith. This is prima facie absurd since government endorses so many ideas that they clearly have no faith in and which they denounce as lies, but deep in their shriveled hearts they still think that if government agrees to something it must be true.

This week, Linda Moulton Howe of Ancient Aliens confirmed that she sold a chunk of the “Art’s Parts” metal slag she claimed fell off the Roswell flying saucer to the brain trust at To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science for $35,000 more than a year ago—before she appeared on Ancient Aliens to discuss To the Stars and its claims about alien metals. She said she cried when she sold it. Needless to say, neither she nor the program disclosed that she had a financial stake in To the Stars when the episodes aired. This kind of undisclosed conflict of interest would be wholly unethical in a newsroom—and Moulton Howe claims to be a journalist—but somehow is just fine for the History Channel, as long as the fake alien claims come fast enough to keep a declining audience (currently 778,000 viewers to In Search Of’s 869,000) entertained. Similarly, tonight’s episode topic, “The Storming of Area 51,” is also a bit of self-dealing since Ancient Aliens was not a neutral party. It heavily promoted the event on social media and streamed live coverage of it online. After helping to drive people to the event, it then produced this show as though it weren’t actively involved in celebrating the alien-themed festival.

The night this episode of Ancient Aliens aired marked the fiftieth anniversary of the broadcast of the pilot episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, the horror anthology series that accidentally triggered the chain of events that would culminate in Ancient Aliens. Night Gallery explored the Gothic, the outré, the Lovecraftian, and the bizarre, all while experimenting with ways to stretch the limits of 1970s television’s format, structure, and production values. The results were mixed. Some exceptional, many good, and quite a few awful segments aired, but NBC wasn’t satisfied with the results. When Serling saw the cancelation writing on the wall, he and Alan Landsburg moved on to nonfiction, adapting Chariots of the Gods for American TV, a special that served as the launching pad for In Search of…, a staple of 1970s and 1980s syndication packages. Its success in reruns helped convince the History Channel to adapt Chariots of the Gods anew as Ancient Aliens, which, perhaps ironically, now airs paired with a new version of In Search Of. This Ancient Aliens episode topic—tattoos that have a sinister connection to space aliens—might have made for an interesting Night Gallery segment. Of course, Supergirl is currently doing an evil alien tattoo plot, so that’s … something.