Review of Ancient Aliens S17E06 "The Top Ten Alien Encounters"

​As Ancient Aliens grows older and lazier and struggles to produce new episodes during the coronavirus pandemic, despite the show traditionally featuring little more than talking head interviews intercut with off-the-rack b-roll, we’ve been getting more and more episodes made up of rerun segments from earlier seasons. So far, half of season 17’s episodes have been “top 10” lists of segments from past episodes. Tonight’s theme is “Top 10 Alien Encounters.” Since there is nothing new in the episode and Ancient Aliens is putting no effort into their show, I have no interest in wasting my time reviewing segments I’ve discussed in my reviews over the past decade. Therefore, for the sake of completion, I will list the “encounters” the show covered and direct you to my archives for previous discussion of them.

​10. The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings. The discussion of the 1980s sighting streak is taken from a season 14 episode.
 
9. The Abduction of Betty & Barney Hill. This is familiar enough that we needn’t discuss it again. The segment is from a recent episode, but they discuss it too often for me to sift through all of them to find exactly which one. Maybe it was this one. It’s also likely that they mix and match footage from multiple episodes for these brief countdown segments.
 
8. The Kenneth Arnold UFO Sighting. This is another one discussed often enough that I don’t immediately know which episode this brief overview of the classic 1947 UFO sighting came from, maybe this one or this one.
 
7. The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. Yet another one that’s been discussed a few times, going back at least to season five, from which the segment seems to be taken.
 
6. The Phoenix Lights. Once again, this one has been talked about so many times, it’s difficult to identify which episode is excerpted. I’m going to guess this one from season fifteen.
 
5. Constantine’s Vision. Another frequent topic, discussed in past episodes like this one, but this specific segment came from a season seven episode claiming Constantine saw an airplane. My original notes said Tsoukalos made that claim, but as seen here, someone else says those words intermixed with Tsoukalos’s supporting commentary.
 
4. Elijah’s Chariot. I’m not sure if this segment came from one or the other of two season five episodes covering the Bible story, but I think it’s the second one since that one was focused on abductions.
 
3. The Travis Walton Abduction. The show repeats an old segment (I believe from season five) about Travis Walton’s 1975 abduction, inspired by the TV movie version of the Hills’ abduction, but makes no effort to explore the recent controversies that saw various players in the abduction story alleging a hoax, recanting their exposure of said hoax, etc. Charlie Wiser has a breakdown of why the story is a fake.
 
2. The Wheels of Ezekiel. Ezekiel’s vision of God’s throne has been discussed virtually every season since Ancient Aliens debuted. This segment is so old, I believe it is from before I started reviewing the show, and I’ve been reviewing it for nearly a full decade. It’s so old, Philip Coppens, who died in 2012, appears in it. I think it’s the same segment that was previously recycled in a season six clip show. Interesting, I guess, that Tsoukalos’s on-camera talking head bits seem to be from newer episodes, or maybe newly shot, apparently to avoid showing how much he has changed in appearance over the past ten years and thus revealing the show’s patchwork composition.
 
1. Enoch’s Ascent to Heaven. The single most-discussed topic in the history of Ancient Aliens, there is simply nothing that can be said here that I haven’t discussed for a decade. The segment seems to be older than my reviews, but again, Tsoukalos’s bits are newer.