“There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. We are not alone. We have never been alone.”
Ever since Eric von Daniken released his speculative book and its subsequent 1970 film Chariots of the Gods, there has been an entire field of study created around something commonly called Ancient Astronaut Theory, the idea that extraterrestrials have visited many of our ancient civilizations. The theory continues that these visitors had a hand in shaping our development, whether it be through technology or even manipulation of our very DNA. These believers point to a world of evidence to support their claims. There are tons of images from earlier civilizations that could certainly be interpreted as depicting modern devices, concepts, or even spacemen. There is plenty of speculation that some of the knowledge and accomplishments of these peoples could not have been possible without some outside interference. There are even those who believe that aliens best explain our religious beliefs and that God himself was/is an extraterrestrial being. Whatever your own beliefs on the subject, there are certainly some fascinating points to be made. There is no question that the speculations and observations bring up some interesting queries that deserve our attention. This series attempts to document much of this evidence and the beliefs these findings have inspired.
This is a good time to have a large collection of these episodes. UFO’s are very much in vogue right now with the American government. Congress has been holding hearings, and the Washington Post recently exploded the story that they have been investigating these things in secret for years. We now have footage released that actually shows Air Force pilots engaging with very mysterious craft with very extraordinary abilities. The government initially debunked the released videos but have now admitted their reality along with finally officially declaring the existence of the infamous Area 51. Of course, if you’re a fan of this show, none of this will come as a surprise to you. Many of the more recent episodes make heavy use of these facts and the released footage.
I suspect that when COVID came along, production had the same kinds of issues as many shows. The global nature of the show likely created even more issues. So as we get to the later episodes, there are a ton of “Greatest Hits” episodes. Many feature Georgio Tsoukalos doing his best Casey Kasem imitation and delivering a Top Ten. These episodes include a Top Ten: Disclosures, Mysterious Sites, Alien Encounters, Alien Cover-Ups, Alien Artifacts, Pyramid Sites, Mysterious Devices, Mysterious Islands, Alien Craft, Alien Petroglyphs, and Mysteries Of The Deep. Each of these episodes starts with Number 10 and leads up to the final reveal of the Number One in each of these aspects of the Ancient Astronaut Theory. There are also a few episodes called On Location, where once again Georgio gives us a list of some of the show’s best moments. Together that’s a lot of clip shows.
The show has also discovered that one of its most popular contributors is Giorgio Tsoukalos. He’s the guy with the Don King hair. The collection starts out with Season 11, and they smartly decided to send Giorgio out into the field and film his reactions to getting an up-close look at some of his favorite subjects. His road trip begins in Egypt where a new chamber has been discovered through imaging. The chamber has not yet been opened, so the speculation can still run crazy. Giorgio proposes things like a stargate chair or other important clues to finally prove the ancient astronaut theory. He does get to go inside the Great Pyramid, and that alone is likely worth our price of admission no matter what you might think about his theories. The next stop is an island off Italy where it is believed a race of giants once lived. He ties it to the Biblical idea of angels mating with human women and creating the race known as the Nephilim. Thousands of statues were discovered there in 1974, but not publicly displayed until the year 2000. Of course, Giorgio is going to have a field day with that. His next stop was Easter Island and those iconic statues. They have kind of already been done to death on the series, and this time they look at a possible force field they created to protect the island in ancient times. There’s also a part where the ruins depict flying turtles that he proposes represent flying saucers. His evidence? He says that they knew turtles couldn’t fly, so why would they depict them? I guess he’s never seen a Gamara movie. I think the Japanese know turtles don’t fly, but they made movies about one. I don’t think it’s because the filmmakers saw flying saucers. It’s my one big gripe on the show. They constantly bring up the idea that in order to depict something, it has to have been witnessed. There’s no room for the idea of fiction in their narrative, no matter how prominent it is in our society.
There is an episode that explores a secret Soviet/Russian pact on aliens and alien technology. I’m surprised that it’s taken this long, but there’s a two-part episode that profiles Erich von Daniken and his pioneering of the ancient astronaut theory with Chariots Of The Gods. Giorgio travels to see him and visit a church chapel where he first imagined the ideas. This guy is so much a part of the show and the theories behind it that this is a milestone episode for the show. There’s also a two-part greatest hits show that touches on the big elements. It’s almost like this show’s version of a clip show. There’s an episode that deals with steering asteroids and that they might have been used to deliver life to Earth. There’s the obligatory alien abduction episode that coincides with a big convention in 2018. There’s one on robots of both the future and past, and I will admit that one of these glyphs sure looks like C3PO. Finally there’s a two-part episode on Mars and our efforts to discover its secrets.
And here are some highlight episodes from this huge collection.
William Shatner Meets Ancient Aliens: This is a match made in heaven. Who can we get to play the skeptic and sit down with the show’s regulars and challenge them to convince him? You gotta get Captain William Tiberius Kirk, yeah? This 2-part episode has the guys gathering at the table, and they let it fly. It’s actually really good stuff, and they really make this a give and take. Shatner is … well … Shatner, and it can get both intense and quite amusing. One of the show’s biggest stars after Georgio is David Childress. He can be quite intense, but he’s on fire in this episode. I’d love to see what happened that wasn’t on the show, because Childress gets downright angry at times. He’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore, if you know what I mean. I loved it.
Return To Antarctica: The big idea here is that there could be alien civilizations still living under the ice. In 2018 cosmic rays were recorded coming from the ground and going skyward instead of the usual pattern of these rays coming down from space. The episode introduces us to a “whistleblower” who claims he visited a huge alien structure there when he was working with the United States military.
The Badlands Guardian: When I was a kid I loved to read the old Hardy Boys books. One of the earliest stories deals with the so-called desert giants. I was pretty fascinated by these ancient Native American lines on the ground that depicted animals that can only be seen from the sky, inviting the speculation about their purpose to a civilization that had no means of air travel. This episode revisits these and other of these kinds of places in relation to an apparent face carved into an entire canyon with three-dimensional feature in Alberta, Canada. It’s called the Badlands Guardian, and it leads to Native American stories of sky people and all the way to Mars and the famous 1976 face on the surface of Mars.
Element 115: This episode deals with a whistleblower who claimed to have worked with the alien ships at Roswell. He claimed there was an element called Element 115 that served as the propulsion of these crafts. It allowed the ships to distort space around them and travel in the folds of this distortion. If it all sounds like you’ve heard it before, it’s exactly how warp drives work in Star Trek. The element was eventually discovered through the use of a collider but would not remain stable for more than a fraction of a second. The show spends a lot of time on the entire idea that we’ve been backward engineering the alien technology for decades.
The Star God Of Sirius: Did you know that the word dog has stumped language experts for centuries? Apparently no origin for the word exists. The idea here is that aliens came from the star Sirius B, the companion star to Sirius, the dog star, which cannot be seen with the naked eye. Apparently, ancient civilizations knew all the details we now know of the star, and these origins draw together many ancient peoples who used almost the same word to describe these visitors. It’s mostly a derivation of dragon, and I’ll admit a lot of civilizations use it to describe sky creatures. The idea is that it was from these aliens that this word in its various forms comes from, and that dog is one of those variations.
They Came From The Sea: It is true that very little of the sea floor has been explored or even mapped. We have more details about the surface of Mars than our own ocean. So naturally that means the oceans could be hiding an aquatic race of aliens. They talk about USO’s, which are Unidentified Submerged Objects. One of the guys claims the gulf coast of Florida is a hot-zone for these sightings. He goes on to say that if you hang around the Florida gulf coast long enough, you will see one yourself. I happen to have lived on the Florida gulf coast for nearly 40 years, and so far no USO’s. Some of the interesting points here, however, are the stories of the octopus family, which has no fossil record leading to the current creature. The idea is it came from space, as did many creatures that live on the bottom of deep oceans. Apparently the International Space Station encountered plankton growing on their windows … on the outside in the cold vacuum of space.
Secrets Of The Maya: The ancient pre-Columbian civilizations have been a common topic on the show throughout the years. This time they try to make the argument that Hindu people visited these civilizations hundreds of years before Columbus. Here they really lose me. We’re shown South American Mayan artifacts and then Hindu artifacts that they are claiming are exact. I don’t even think they look a little alike. Yeah, they both have fangs. Wait until these guys see Dracula; they’re going to be convinced that Bela Lugosi is the goddess Shiva reincarnated. Oh boy, I can’t wait to see that episode.
The Druid Connection: I have a particularly keen interest in anything Druid. I was born on the Summer Solstice, so would have been kind of special to those guys. This is another episode like the previous one where they attempt to show American artifacts that match another civilization’s. This time they claim the Celtic Druids came here two thousand years before Columbus. Again it relies on making very tenuous connections.
The Reptilian Agenda: It sure seems like this season was made just for me. Gulf Coast USO’s, Druids who worshipped my birthday, and now a civilization of reptilian aliens who fought a war with other aliens here on Earth. I happen to be a snake breeder and obviously love all things reptile. Here we see old depictions of reptiles that have human form, which obviously means they simply must have encountered these creatures. Hope a thousand years from now scientist don’t see Godzilla. They’re going to think we must have been fighting giant lizards. I mean, according to these guys, why else would we depict them?
The Alien Infection: It has been a long-running part of the series that aliens have been manipulating our DNA. This episode suggests they didn’t do it in a lab, but through bacteria and other diseases. They believe the early 20th-century flu epidemic was intended to cull the human race so that it would survive. They also look for clues in the DNA that we’re being slowly transformed into them. We’re told there are likely many aliens among us who look just like other humans. Better keep an eye on your spouse, neighbor, and coworkers.
Project Hybrid: This could easily be a second part to the previous episode, as it also deals with alien manipulation of our DNA and even our environment. Could aliens be terraforming the Earth? Apparently scientists are stumped why some of us (yeah, they’re targeting me again) are RH negative. There is also a huge spike in abductees who are RH negative. When they told me I was a universal donor, they weren’t kidding.
The Relics Of Roswell:This is the kind of episode that is most compelling. While many episodes feature a ton of talking heads, reenactments, and animated graphics, I think I like the episodes most that have people go out and do real field work. There’s not a lot of it here, but it’s the most compelling stuff. The show has also discovered that one of its most popular contributors is Giorgio Tsoukalos. This season they decided to send Giorgio out into the field to find artifacts still in the ground from the Roswell crash. There are some pretty interesting pieces on display here with interesting properties. We’re also introduced to something called the Russian Roswell high in the Ural mountains.
Destination Chile:Apparently Chile has the most UFO sightings in the world. Plenty of those desert giants can be found here as well as other structures and symbols that can only be fully appreciated by air in a time when we were thousands of years before the first flight. The terrain here is used to test Martian rovers because it has the closest landscape and properties to the Red Planet.
The Real Men In Black:While Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith aren’t really a part of this episode, it explores the tales of real black-dressed men who have been reported to visit folks who make claims that might cut a little too close to the “truth”. The episode dovetails into Project Bluebook and other official UFO-type investigations. The episode also folds in sightings of the Mothman and black helicopters. Those of us who remember Ross Perot and his runs for the presidency will smile at those stories. I’m surprised he wasn’t mentioned here.
The Mystery Of The Stone Giants:The speculation here goes beyond some of the alien or astronaut images and talks about the special properties of many of these statues throughout the world. Some have magnetic or electrical properties, while some are believed to store data within its materials like an ancient flash drive.
The World Before Time:
This is one of the more compelling episodes that strikes on a theory I have always believed myself. Rather than believe in ancient aliens, I believe it’s likely advanced civilizations have existed on this planet and are now long gone. Of course, they tie it in with ancient aliens, but it’s not necessary to believe that to believe they existed. There are a lot of Biblical references here, particularly those of mass destruction. There’s also the existence of underwater ruins, some as much as 2000 feet below the surface.
They Came From The Pleiades:The show has gone here several times before. The speculation here is that somewhere in that star cluster is the origin of at least some of these ancient alien visitors. Some interesting new stuff here focuses on the discovery in just the last couple of years of the first recorded objects from outside the solar system. The idea is they could be probes of some kind.
The Immortality Machine:
Meet George Van Tassel. He was a guy who claimed to have been in touch with aliens. He ended up living under a giant rock called … wait for it … Giant Rock. It was the largest free-standing boulder in the world until someone decided to use a few sticks of dynamite to make a cozy little home beneath it. It’s way out in the desert. So this guy ends up building a domed structure that he claimed would use magnetic fields to extend your life if you walked through it. He only got it 95% finished before he … you guessed it … died of a heart attack. I guess he didn’t read the warranty carefully. It’s called the Integration, and researchers are trying to complete it.
The Shapeshifters:Of course they’ve touched on this subject many times in the past, but it’s one of my favorite themes here. This time they try to link vampires and werewolves to the alien theme. It brings out some cool stuff. It ends up with an examination of human genes and speculation that aliens have been manipulating our genes. What makes this idea so cool is the chilling thought that these aliens or whatever they are can easily hide in plain sight.
The Ultimate Guide To UFO’s:The episode focuses on the structure, mechanics, and engineering of a flying saucer. We get to see some attempts to build a working model. Some of the science is pretty interesting here as they try to explain why this might have been a good design for alien ships.
Aliens And The Presidents:Several presidents have reported seeing UFO’s. George Washington told of an encounter with a light that allowed him to see the future of America. Jefferson took down the first official UFO government report. Lincoln reported an experience much like Washington’s just weeks before he died. Carter reported a UFO before he was elected, and Reagan saw one from Air Force One. Apparently Gorbachev claims Reagan approached him and they agreed to mutually defend each other from an alien attack. Speculation here is that Truman signed a treaty with aliens and that Richard Nixon took Jackie Gleason to a Florida base where he saw ships, artifacts, and even an alien body. One guy claims that the military only shares the secrets with Republican presidents because they tend to be more loyal to the military.
The Divine Number:The next time you’re picking those numbers in the lotto, be sure to include the number 12. These guys are convinced it’s connected to the ancient aliens and has a huge significance in the clues left behind. There are 12 musical notes, 12 apostles, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 months (but only because the Romans considered 13 unlucky), 12 tribes of Jacob, and they claim base 12 would be an optimal mathematics system rather than 10. Nothing too convincing here, but somewhat interesting.
The Lost Kingdom:
Tibet is the focus here. That means Yetis and other cool stuff. Tibet is a natural for this stuff. It’s isolated and hard to reach. There’s 40% less oxygen in the atmosphere, so the natives have adapted to it over the centuries. There was also a village of 100,000 people who vanished overnight. One of the best stories involves a metal statue called Iron Man that was stolen by a Nazi expedition in the 1930’s. It had a swastika on its belly and was made of meteorite materials. Of course, it’s important to remark, and to their credit they do, that the symbol was appropriated from the Hindu traditions and was once a symbol of protection and good.
The Galactic Keyhole:This is the kind of episode that always has me scratching my head. It examines the thousands of keyhole shapes in monuments and places. The truth is, it’s a very simple shape and could represent anything from people to artistic design. When they show two locations and call them identical, they lose me, because I’m not seeing anything of the kind. It does guest star Rick from The Curse of Oak Island, but I’m not sure exactly why he was there. So there is that.
The Giants Of The Mediterranean:It’s true that the four earliest civilizations all sprang up around the Mediterranean Sea: the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians. All of them have stories of giants. Now, the show has told us about giants before. The speculation is they are hybrids of alien and humans. They locate tombs that are large enough to fit a giant but really haven’t found any giant mummies.
The Forbidden Bible:The episode looks at the Dead Sea Scrolls and also the Book of Enoch, which is part of Holy Scriptures but not included in any Bible except in Ethiopia. Enoch was Noah’s grandfather, and the writings are extensive. They include, according to these guys, the first reported alien abduction. Enoch claims to have been taken to Heaven, and the story is interpreted to mean by a spacecraft. Enoch also tells a more extensive story of the flood. Here it’s claimed the flood wasn’t created to kill off humans because God was pissed. Instead it was to kill off these creatures and protect humanity. They even have Enoch, not the Egyptians, building the Great Pyramid at Giza thousands of years earlier than believed.
Impossible Artifacts:This is kind of a bread-and-butter episode for the show. They look at some things that when found challenged the history of the planet that conventional science has painted. A hammer was found encased in rock over 140 million years old. A mechanical device with gears and levers was found in an ancient Greek shipwreck. It apparently can be used to calculate the position of celestial objects at any given point in the future. There is much more on the idea that data can be embedded in artifacts and that the secrets of the aliens might have been coded into our DNA to retrieve when we reach a point where we can decode it.
If you are trying to figure out what makes a season … good luck, because I can’t figure it out. That’s a mystery as deep as the alien elements. IMDb has them up to the 20th season, and none of it matches up with the disc releases. If you go to their own website, they have an entirely different season structure, and neither of these lists matches the release seasons. It’s just one of those deep mysteries we might never see answered in our lifetime.
Recently the show suffered a tragic loss. Kevin Burns was the mastermind behind the series from the start. He created the show and brought together the elements that make it as good as it is. In 2020 he had a heart attack and passed away at only 65 years of age. There was a nice dedication to him at the end of the William Shatner episode.
You get 104 episodes; that’s a little over 70 hours on 21 discs. I don’t like the case. It’s typical, however, of big sets. Discs have to be pilled on top of each other, and that makes them easy to scratch, and also they tend to fall out of their slots. I also would have liked to see some extras here. There’s gotta be some good stuff out there that the fans would love to have. I think that’s particularly true of the Shatner episode. If you have been looking for an alien fix, this is going to set you up for a good long while.
Look, I would love to believe this stuff. Like Mulder, I want to believe. I certainly do believe there is plenty of life out there. It seems impossible for there not to be. I don’t know that I believe they visited Earth in ancient times, and I’m not sure I believe they ever did. In spite of having my own UFO experience, there’s just not enough evidence to turn me around … yet. What I will admit is that there are things explored here that certainly make you stop and think. And maybe that “smoking gun” is right around the next dig or discovery. One of the ideas they are starting to promote is that the government is starting to get us used to the idea before they spring the big reveal. I certainly believe our government knows more than they are saying. Who knows what we’ll discover in the future. I’m sure Ancient Aliens will still be there to cover it. But sometimes, “It’s just beyond belief.”
