Review of Ancient Aliens S21E01: “The Top Ten Extraordinary Discoveries”

​Ancient Aliens has been off the air since September, when the last new episode aired. The intervening months were filled with Ancient Aliens: Origins, in which the series rebroadcast old episodes of the show and let its talking heads share their thoughts about how much better the show was in the good old days. It is therefore entirely appropriate that the new season of Ancient Aliens opens with a clip show of segments from old episodes. As has been my policy since Ancient Aliens began padding its episode order with these clip shows, I will simply list the segments that are rerun and link to my original reviews of the episodes excerpted where I can identify them.

​Now that the show has been on for more than fifteen calendar years, and I have been reviewing it since (checks notes) September 2011, it’s probably time for me to do less. I used to review the show on the day it aired, typically posting reviews within minutes of broadcast. Fourteen years of that is more than enough, and I am getting too old to force myself to stay awake and thinking quickly and critically about ancient texts and paranormal beliefs after a long day of work and chasing after a seven-year-old. Future reviews will likely come over the weekend following broadcast.
 
Last night’s episode “covers everything from discoveries in science and archaeology to astronomy,” according to Giorgio Tsoukalos, who hosted the clip show. In other words, it was a random grab-bag of segments chosen because they run in the time allotted. 

​10. Oumuamua. Probably a chunk of a 2020 episode on the Pleiades.
9. The BELAU Spheres. I think this is a bit about Avi Loeb’s alleged alien spheres from last year’s episode on spheres.
8. The Titanium Microsphere. Another clip from the same episode, repeating a 2018 segment, about Milton Wainwright.
7. The Great Pyramid Void. Clipped from the show’s most-excerpted episode in these clip shows, “Earth Station Egypt” from 2018.
6. The Serapeum of Saqqara. From last year’s episode on “Egypt’s Giant Tombs.”
5. The Lost City of El Mirador. From last year’s episode on “The Mysteries of the Maya.”
4. Caral. Excerpted from the 2021 episode devoted to the site, “The Lost City of Peru.”
3. Dwarka. Yes, Dwarka was included in a previous Top 10 countdown in 2019. I am not sure if they reused the same 2015 segment or subbed in the slightly updated recycled version from 2021.
2. The Underground Cities of Turkey. From a 2017 episode, but done better on Ancient Apocalypse.
1. Göbekli Tepe. It’s covered so often on this show that I’m not sure which episode it came from. If I had to guess, based on laziness, it probably came from the same episode as #2, since that episode was titled “Return to Göbekli Tepe.”