Join Giorgio Tsoukalos and other ancient astronaut theorists as they continue their search for evidence of extraterrestrial contact in the distant past as well as the present.
Season 13 of “Ancient Aliens” opens with investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe accessing a safety deposit box inside a bank vault. She pulls out a silver attaché case, sets it gently on a table, opens it, and reveals the contents of a cloth bag. Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, publisher of Legendary Times Magazine, regards two artifacts presumably of alien origin in wonderment. A small layered piece of metal, pure bismuth on one side, magnesium-zinc alloy on the surface of the other – each layer only microns thick. The second object is a small tab of aluminum, 99.5 percent pure. Both items were obtained from White Sands, New Mexico, near Roswell.
The story begins in July 1947, when a purported alien crash just outside Roswell initiated what are still unanswered questions about extraterrestrial visitations to earth. Although first identified as a flying saucer, the military quickly walked back those early claims and said the object was merely a downed weather balloon.
“Ancient Aliens: Season 13” goes on to interview a host of authors and experts who provide tidbits of their research about UFOs across a wide spectrum. For Roswell, one of the first questions posed is whether the government failed to retrieve all of the wreckage from the crash site. If so, what might still be lying in the desert?
Giorgio and Linda eagerly visit the old Roswell area in the hopes of finding more evidence of alien remains. They meet geologist Frank Kimbler, who shows off his collection of a dozen metal fragments from Roswell, “all highly unique.” From there, the most mundane of activities – searching the landscape with a metal detector, for example – elicits oohs and ahhs aplenty. They find a discarded piece of wire, apparently a false alarm. Another hit from the metal detector yields a second length of wire, this one strangely twisted. The content is later examined in a lab revealing selenium and other advanced metals used in high-tech products.
On we go as Giorgio stands ever-ready to proclaim almost anything as yet another nugget of proof in the case for alien visitations. Everything is “amazing.” Nothing less than “astonishing.” “Never seen anything like it,” is uttered more often than a Trump presidential press conference.
A multiplicity of names and faces – all supposed experts – tantalize the audience with hints and rumors, each one wafer-thin. The series tosses out glimpses and fragments of substantiation to UFO enthusiasts, invariably hinting at government cover-ups and smoking guns never quite manifest.
After Roswell, the series moves to the Ural Mountains in Russia where visitors claim to have witnessed UFOs streaking across the sky. Next, the filmmakers go to Chile, which boasts the largest number of UFO sightings anywhere. There in the Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth, geoglyphs – large designs on the ground intended to be viewed from higher altitudes – dot several locations, ostensibly as a signaling system of some kind to unearthly visitors.
Subsequent episodes cover an array of compelling and widely disparate topics. Real-life men in black who guard the secrets of UFOs, giant statues, and ancient monuments serving as portals to otherworldly beings. Civilizations 50,000 years old with advanced technology who fled Planet Earth in starships, destined to return one day. A particularly interesting episode regarding the first-ever encounter with an object from another star system, the Pleiades. A wildly improbably immortality machine, reminiscent of Clifford Simak’s Hugo Award-winning novel entitled “Way Station.” Other episodes take on shapeshifters, UFO ship configurations, Presidential briefings on UFOs, the Divine Number, a lost kingdom, galactic keyholes, forbidden texts, and more – all designed to titillate the imagination, if offering few definitive conclusions.
Produced by Prometheus Entertainment for the History Channel, “Ancient Aliens: Season 13” presents all 16 episodes on three discs. Throughout, the question always begs: what is real, what is fiction? As Giorgio says repeatedly, “I can’t wait to see what we find out next.” Indeed. Though narrator Robert Clotworthy does his best to infuse credibility into the production, at the end of the day, evidentiary confirmation remains mostly in the eye of the beholder.
Now available on DVD
