Ancient Aliens S18E12: Extraordinary Encounters

​We can measure just how much corporate America really cares about UFOs from the fact that at the moment when Ancient Aliens should be experiencing its greatest triumph and maximum power, it’s throwing out a bunch of clip shows. Recently, an Ancient Aliens star was revealed to be the chief scientist for the government’s UFO investigation. This week, the Senate wrote legislation that would codify the Ancient Aliens/UFO Twitter grievance list, under obviously influence from Chris Mellon, Lue Elizondo, and other History Channel UFO stars. UFO amnesty? Check. Letting aggrieved UFO whistleblowers sue for big cash payouts? Check. Ordering a hunt for undersea objects likes those Ancient Aliens says come from Atlantis and Lemuria? Check. Requiring a comprehensive historical study of every intelligence community engagement with flying saucer-related topics since 1947? Double check. And yet, so little care goes into the Ancient Aliens mothership that not only is its “new” batch of episodes phoned-in clip shows, but unlike in the past when most clip shows were their own separate series, these are passed off as official episodes of the mothership.

​As with last week, I am merely going to point out which segments are repeated and identify their original episodes, where possible.
 

1. “Giants” of Sardinia. This bit was the first segment of the 2018 episode “Island of the Giants.”
2. Wales UFO. The second segment features an interview with a witness to a 1974 UFO sighting in Wales, allegedly involving a crash. I know it must have come from one of the episodes where Giorgio Tsoukalos and Nick Pope toured the UK, but I’ll be darned if I can remember which one.
3. Roswell. The segment discusses government documents related to the Roswell incident. I think t came from this 2016 episode, itself recycled parts of Tsoukalos’s failed In Search of Aliens series.
4. Dennis Kucinich. The segment about Kucinich’s UFO sighting came from a 2020 episode.
5. Mt. Shasta. This segment involving William Henry’s trip to Mt. Shasta was originally the fourth segment of a 2020 episode.
6. Crop circles. The final segment was originally the second segment of a 2015 episode about crop circles.