Capsule Review of Ancient Aliens S22E04 “Extraterrestrial Engineering”

It’s become a running joke that Ancient Aliens has run out of ideas, but after three “original” episodes of Ancient Aliens this season, we have slipped into the show’s favorite comfort zone: clip show mode! I was starting to worry that we might almost have had a real season of Ancient Aliens this year, but fear not: This episode is listed as S22E04 but is technically labeled “Special Edition,” which features Giorgio Tsoukalos introducing rerun segments. In past years, “Special Edition” clip show episodes were not considered part of the mothership’s episode tally, but this year they seem to be. Unlike the past few years where such shows were organized around a “Top 10” theme, this episode makes no pretense of even trying. It does, however, take inspiration from my previous reviews of their clips shows and helpfully labeled each segment with the original episode title. This cut my workload for this capsule review down to nothing, since I didn’t even have to try to remember where I saw each segment before! The segments, which I previously reviewed, are drawn from:

• Segment 1 is from “Resurrecting Puma Punku” (2024), about the Andean site.
• Segment 2 is from “The Giants of Malta” (2023), about legends surrounding megaliths there.
• Segment 3 is from “Mystery of the Stone Spheres” (2024), about the golden spheres beneath Teotihuacan.
• Segment 4 is from “The Mystery of Nan Madol” (2020), about the titular site’s blocks.
• Segment 5 is from “The World Before Time” (2020), about Noah’s Ark as a pyramid and medieval pyramid legends.
• Segment 6 is from “The Star Gods of Sirius” (2019), repeating the fifth segment, which covered Newgrange in Ireland.