Those Ancient Astronaut Theorists!

Copyright 2018, InterAmerica, Inc.

I caught the extended, new (but actually repeats) History Channel programming of its Ancient Alien series Friday night [1/5].

I find the AA speculations imaginative and creative but ultimately loony.

(The Earth is too punk to have gotten all the ET attention that the AA crowd suggests it got and is still getting; that is, Earth is a remote planet in a non-descript part of our Galaxy and even more insignificant when one looks at the whole panoply of galaxies and planets that suffuse the Universe.)

My main problem with the series are the hosts, aside from my pal Nick Redfern who does it more for the money and entertainment than the edification of the masses (boobs) who tune into the programming, me among them.

Any psychiatrist watching the show – and I doubt any do – will pick up on, I think, the palpable madness in the eyes of the shows regulars: Childress, Wilcock, Martel, et al.

Wilcock, with his cockeyed mouth, comes off as loonier than everyone else, because he proselytizes more vigorously than the others.

Childress is a nice guy – Paul Kimball likes him – but he, also, strains credulity with his tepid, but head shaking pronouncements that aliens (extraterrestrials) have been all over the Earth since time immemorial.

His suppositions are presented as if they are established facts, even when he uses the show's categorical catch-all, “Is it possible …?”

Radio show host Noory is in place to footnote his radio show’s essential grasp of all things odd.

Then there is Philip Coppens who died several years ago. (I loved that guy.)

And what bout Philip Imbrogno who fudged his academic credentials and was outed by Lance Moody? Imbrogno shows up in the series still. Even though his fraudulence should have submersed him from any presentation pretending to be a pillar of truth and factual content.

And then we have the primary AA propagandizer, Giorgio Tsoukalos.

I like his hair and find him to be a superb mouth piece for Erich von Däniken’s original theory of alien visitation in his explosive (sales-wise) book Chariots of the Gods.

(And old friend of mine [John Reid] gave the book, years ago, to the students in his Lit class at MSU for their reaction: they liked it.)

Tsoukalos is a TV presence that doesn’t offend – well, maybe that hair – but a smooth operator who holds viewer attention with his seemingly moderate belief in the possibility that ancient visitations by space beings have made us humans what we are today.

The show is treatise on entertainment, not a program about historical or academic certitude. But do dopes tuning in know that?

Yet, there is some validity afoot: the presentation of various human artifacts and places where civilizations once thrived before being cancelled out by time and/or irrational existences.

I enjoy speculation, obviously – UFO Conjectures! – but not those housed in a format where loopy people get to present their views as if they are sane.

The series is a sham, not on the face of it but in essence, yet not one to eschew out of hand. There is the photography and Nick Redfern.

RR