Review of Ancient Aliens S22E07 “Underwater Alien Bases”

​Oh, my, we’re back again. After a months-long hiatus, Ancient Aliens resumed its twenty-second season with … well, another episode that rehashed material from a decade ago. You can pretty much guess what the topics of an Ancient Aliens season will be based on what topics were in the news and on social media about nine months before air time. Underwater bases were a big theme for a time in ufology last year, until the conversation shifted to orbs and now “sentient plasma.” (Coming next year to Ancient Aliens!) Viewers with a long memory might remember that Ancient Aliens did an episode on “Underwater Worlds” back in Season 2 in 2010, but the closer similarity is to the 2019 episodes “They Came from the Sea,” which covered underwater alien bases better than the episode bearing the name of “Underwater Alien Bases,” an episode with almost no underwater bases in it.

​Segment 1
The show opens with a 2024 US military video about a “mysterious craft” flying over Yemeni waters, released—as I said—nine months ago, in September 2025. A Hellfire missile was fired at it, but the object continued onward. Skeptics claim it may have been a balloon or bunch of balloons, and there is no corroborating evidence of claims of alien technology. Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Eric Burlison make their debut as an Ancient Aliens talking heads to claim the object cannot be explained and the oceans are full of alien spaceships, joining other members of Congress in bolstering the dignity of their office by joining Giorgio Tsoukalos to speculate about space aliens on basic cable. Travis Taylor, from sister show Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, says that he was on the government team that analyzed the video, and he admits that even his team believed it was a balloon, though Taylor insists it moved faster than any balloon he could imagine. Nick Pope, who recently died, appears posthumously in videos.
 
The segment goes on to discuss more military UFO videos with commentary from Tim Galludet, who has a special interest in water-based UFOs, since this show is apparently now an extension of Congress’s UFO investigation. Jeremy Corbell shows up next to discuss “transmedium” UFOs.
 
Segment 2
By the second segment, we’re already into rehashed territory. The segment rehashes material from the 2019 episode about an alleged alien base off Malibu, which was already recycled once before, in a 2024 clip show. But first they discuss the 2013 Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, military UFO footage, speculating about its transmedium “alien” characteristics despite the US government determining in March 2025 that the objects were not transmedium in nature, were traveling about 8 mph, and were probably two sky lanterns. “I’m sorry,” Tsoukalos said, “it’s extraterrestrial!” Richard Dolan claims that Puerto Rico is a hotbed for UFOs that disappear into an underwater trench. The show also rehashes the Baltic sunken “saucer” claim from 2011, which geologists determined, using samples gathered from the site, was a glacial rock formation, not an abandoned Millennium Falcon. The late Nick Pope claims it is a spaceship, and Travis Taylor alleges that the ship has “jamming” technology that stops humans from analyzing it correctly. The Malibu claim returns next, and as I wrote back in 2014 (!) when the claim was first made by Jimmy Church, “The so-called alien base is a known geological feature called a thrust fault, according to the Geological Society of America.” Nick Pope implies that the government ordered Google Earth to blur the site in 2025 because of its alien connections, but it appears that the actual reason for the blurring is more mundane: Routine updating of the data used for constructing the maps, with the newer set coming from a different source and being lower in resolution. (Google has not confirmed a reason.)
 
Segment 3
The third segment continues to recycle military UFO sightings with tangential connections to the supposed topic of underwater alien bases. Gary Voorhis, Jr., who participated in the 2004 USS Nimitz UFO sighting and has been touring the ufology podcast and lecture circuit regularly since 2011, appears on the show to discuss—what else?—his UFO sighting. Then Gallaudet tells us about a 2019 military sighting of a UFO off Catalina island, with video taken from the USS Omaha, which Mick West identified as a plane distorted by camera movements. Tsoukalos claims the video shows that an “artificial bubble” surrounds an orb that can move through air and water without disturbing either or losing velocity.
 
No underwater bases are discussed, but Rep. Luna claims that underwater alien ships can outpace our submarines by 200 mph.
 
Segment 4
The fourth segment discusses the story about Soviet divers allegedly encountering swimming space aliens in silver suits deep in Lake Baikal back in 1982. The men who saw the aliens all conveniently died of the bends immediately after telling their story. While it’s an interesting legend, there is no evidence that it is true, and no documents to support the claim. The show relates this to a local legend of an underwater silver castle in the lake. Pope notes that 50 percent of Russian UFO files are associated with the ocean and 15 percent with lakes. “Again, water is the key!” he says. Yes, but probably not how you think. It’s an intriguing cultural difference, but it probably tells us less about alien behavior and more about where Russian culture locates the unknown. Slavic mythology has a wide range of water spirits and views water as the threshold and bridge between our world and the supernatural realm. We would entirely expect such a culture to associate UFOs with water if UFOs are a cultural more than a scientific phenomenon.
 
Segment 5
The fifth segment deals with ancient encounters with water beings in mythology and legend. A story with no evidence to support it claims the Stalin’s workers found non-human bodies and ancient structures while building an underwater tunnel. The Jomon “alien” statues are shown again, and this time the “spacesuits” they wear, and which ancient astronaut theorists often cite as evidence of space travel, are revised to be “diving suits” for underwater alien exploration. Then Tsoukalos tells us about Oannes the fish-man sage who gave culture to the Babylonians. Tsoukalos confuses the Babylonians with “the first Sumerians” while trying to retell the story given in the fragments of Berossus. The segment also covers the Technines, Greek fish-men previously covered in a 2014 episode, and Triton, Poseidon’s son. Tsoukalos says such mythic creatures are “flesh and blood extraterrestrials wearing diving suits.”
 
At last we finally get a mention of an alien base when Tsoukalos calls Triton’s golden palace a “base.”
 
A Hindu myth about creatures living in an underwater city is next discussed.
 
Segment 6
The final segment tells us that we have only significantly explored five percent of the ocean and that the world’s superpowers are going to fight for control of the oceans. China is planning an underwater base 6,500 feet below the surface. This has nothing to do with aliens, but it fills time, with Pope insinuating with no evidence that China knows “something” about aliens under the water and is secretly building the base for some ET-themed reason. Gallaudet thinks that studying “USOs” (the acronym for underwater UFOs) will allow us to revolutionize the energy industry—an increasing claim among government-affiliated ufologists, who all seem to be advocating for investment in various energy schemes, as we saw in Age of Disclosure last year.
 
The episode ends with a dedication to Nick Pope: “You inspired us to seek the truth.” Sadly, this episode poorly represented that truth, picking some of Pope’s least defensible speculation with which to remember him.