​Almost anyone who has an interest in ufology knows of the Majestic-12 documents, a cache of alleged U.S. government documents outlining the government’s secret involvement with space aliens in the middle twentieth century. The first of these documents began circulating in 1984, with a second set of papers released in 1994, and all but diehard true believers understand that they are fake. That did not stop Ancient Aliens from devoting an entire hour to them. I’m not sure whether it is an improvement that the show is now being honest about its willingness to accept any lie that can be spun into entertainment, or whether it should be considered a further diminution of the History Channel brand. Considering History is currently promoting a blurry undated photograph showing either a teenage boy or a mannish woman as alleged proof of Amelia Earhart’s fate, I’m not sure they can really fall any further.
 
I remember reading the Majestic-12 documents online back in the 1990s, when it seemed like a big deal and an exciting thing that the internet had given me dramatic access to. I remember thinking they were pretty stupid back then, and I don’t feel any different now. However, I still lack a passion for modern ufology, so it was something of a slog to sit through an hour-long discussion of a topic that bored me back when I still cared about UFOs.It is for that reason that I also had no interest in watching the two-hour UFO documentary that followed this episode.

​Yesterday I mentioned that the story promoted by Gaia TV about the preserved remains of an “alien” corpse found in Peru has created a great deal of controversy because it has not been examined by qualified experts and appears at first glance to be a rather crudely sculpted statue. But more importantly, it has created a rift in the fringe community between those who want to embrace the “alien” as proof of extraterrestrials and those who are wary about embracing yet another in a long series of hoaxes. This week Nephilim researcher L. A. Marzulli tried to have it both ways but was clearly covering his bases for when this thing inevitably goes south. That wasn’t as interesting, though, as his new claim that the so-called “Deep State” is actively working to destroy him and other Nephilim theorists.

​Former Ancient Aliens talking head and self-described psychic Sean David Morton is today a fugitive from justice after he failed to show up for his sentencing for tax fraud. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
 
Yesterday Ancient Origins published a new article by Ryan Stone claiming that “recently” scientists have begun to examine Flavius Josephus’ The Wars of the Jews for evidence of flying saucers. That claims sounded familiar, and it took only a few seconds to discover that Stone was baldly summarizing a 2007 article that had already appeared on Ancient Aliens and claiming the resulting paraphrase as new work. Maybe I’m just getting tired of the low quality of ancient astronaut material, but it’s really starting to annoy me how much material is simply copies of copies of copies. 

​Before I begin today, I have an announcement: This past week, I welcomed into the world my son, and it has been an exciting and hectic time for everyone! He is a healthy and active newborn, and he weighed in at almost 10 pounds, which was quite a surprise, and as you can imagine, it has been a bit of a transition. As a result of my new arrival, I will no longer be able to review Ancient Aliens episodes in real time as they air. Depending on the baby’s schedule, I will try to fit it in sometime over the weekend, but I can’t guarantee it. Over the next few weeks, you will see the number of blog posts decrease while I take some much-deserved paternity leave, and also because I don’t think I can write on zero sleep.
 
Now, on to today’s discussion of the American Heroes Channel’s efforts to compete with Ancient Aliens.

​Billionaire aerospace and Budget Suites magnate Robert Bigelow announced his belief that Earth currently is home to space aliens who have infiltrated our planet, and he claimed to have spent more money than any other private individual investigating UFOs. When CBS’s Lara Logan asked him if he was worried about being labeled crazy, he replied “It’s not gonna make a difference. It’s not gonna change the reality of what I know.” Oddly, despite all of the resources he had devoted to finding space aliens here on Earth and in space, he somehow had no proof. [Update: According to Skeptical Inquirer, Bigelow has been funding MUFON UFO research, and he told Coast to Coast years ago that he hoped to imitate UFO propulsion systems in his own spacecraft.]

​A couple of weeks ago, Ancient Aliens brought up the unusual but not entirely interesting case of Dorothy Kilgallen, a gossip columnist and sometime reporter who published an article on the UP (now UPI) newswire on May 22, 1955 in which she claimed that a British source had confessed to her that UFOs were real alien spacecraft. The article began this way:

​Las Vegas-based journalist George Knapp, who specializes in UFO coverage, interviewed ex-Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge about UFO disclosure, and in fluffing DeLonge with fawning praise, Knapp revealed that DeLonge has once again reframed his claims about the upcoming UFO disclosure announcement he promised months ago and has yet to deliver. That announcement, postponed first to June and now to “later this summer,” has also subtly changed in content as well. Once upon a time, DeLonge was promising a major UFO revelation that would change the nature of disclosure. Now he tells Knapp that he concedes that there will never be formal government disclosure of UFO information (“There will never be congressional hearings on this. I understand and accept that…”). Instead, his major announcement is actually going to be … wait for it … “some sort of announcement about his business plans.” Talk about lowering expectations!

​Welcome to another one of Ancient Aliens’ increasingly regular forays into modern ufology in place of ancient history. Tonight’s topic, “The Mystery of Rudloe Manor,” looks at the title property, a onetime British country estate that sits atop an old quarry that was used as an RAF bunker and base during World War II. After the war, it continued on as an RAF communications hub, serving as the control center for Skynet, among other functions. It is connected to a large installation two miles away. In the 1990s, Rupert Matthews alleged that the secret operations that occurred at the manor were related to space aliens, thus launching a rumor perpetuated by fringe writers ever since, among them Ancient Aliens’ own Nick Redfern and Nick Pope.
 
As you might imagine, I don’t really care about this rumor whatsoever, so this episode was a pretty lengthy slog, more so than usual. It seems that this year the show is trying to burn time by going even more slowly and focusing on ever narrower topics. This episode is rather light on talking heads, and in its single topic and Tsoukalos-fronted on-location focus, it is much closer to a lost episode of In Search of Aliens, the short-lived Ancient Aliens spin-off, than a regular episode of the mother ship. 

​On Wednesday, L. A. Marzulli appeared on Prophecy Watchers to discuss “The Great UFO Deception” as host Gary Stearman calls it, or The Watchman Chronicles, as Marzulli titled the DVD he is hawking. Marzulli was on to discuss the impact of UFOs on Christianity, and he calls the tendency of Christians to see UFOs and lights in the sky “even after” finding Jesus “this dirty little secret in the church that no one talks about.” Marzulli claims that between 5% and 33% of churchgoers have seen UFOs. If these two gentlemen are to be believed, Christians are deeply worried that space aliens are seducing the faithful away from demonology and thus threatening evangelical Christianity. 

​Welcome to the twelfth (!) season of Ancient Aliens, which at this point is less a TV show and more of a thought experiment in how a TV production crew of cockroaches might survive a nuclear holocaust that destroyed all facts, evidence, and reason. There isn’t much to say about this episode, “The Alien Hunters,” by way of preface, as it is as much as possible just more of the same. This episode hews away from the show’s title adjective in favor of its recent devolution into freshman dorm room bullshitting about anything vaguely related to space aliens.