Having just finished watching the first season of Project Blue Book I thought I would write a few thoughts on the show, coming from the perspective of someone who has been a hard core fan of The X-Files for over 25 years and the UFO genre in general.
Project Blue Book is a TV series produced by the History Channel. It aims to depict a fictional story loosely based around the premise of the real project blue book that the US Air Force ran between 1952 and 1969. The first season aired between 8 January and 12 March 2019.
The show has some notable differences to the original premise. For instance, while Allen Hynek was the scientific advisor of the project, the head of the project in 1952 was named Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, not Michael Quinn. It’s unclear why they felt the need to change that. I strongly suspect this is to provide a constant duo of lead characters whereas history had several people leading the project during its 17 years of existence. Hynek is also well known in ufology circles for being the person who came up with the Close Encounter classification system, as in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.
While the core story revolves around Hynek (Aidan Gillen) and Quinn (Michael Malarkey) travelling across the country to gather testimonials and evidence in their investigation of UFO phenomena, there is also a sub-plot involving Allen’s wife Mimi (Laura Mennell) who befriends a Russian spy going by the name of Susie Miller (Ksenia Solo).
The investigations of the two main protagonists are overseen by two rival factions within the top ranking officials of the US military: Secretary of Defense William Fairchild (Robert John Burke) on one side and “the generals” Hugh Valentine (Michael Harney) and James Harding (Neil McDonough) on the other. The motivations of the latter are very murky throughout the series. While they never mention it by name, their first introduction gave a very strong vibe of their being part of Majestic 12. It’s unknown whether this will become more obvious in future seasons but given the context it would make sense to formally introduce the group regardless of whether or not the generals are part of it.
Each weekly case also bring their fare share of what you would expect to see in a show relating to UFO phenomena. Alien abductions make an appearance as something that happens to a man in the penultimate episode Abduction. I thought they were going to feature Betty and Barney Hill but then remembered their story doesn’t take place until 1961. There are also crop circles featured at one point. They seemed a little out of place in the episode it was in as these tend to appear much later in ufology history but it was a fun touch. And then you get atypical “men in black”, which appear at first as just one man in a hat there to provide information to Hynek to lead him towards a certain direction, never revealing what his name his, what he really wants other than Hynek’s help or who he works for. We eventually realise there is more than just him. He almost reminded me as a cross between Deep Throat in The X-Files and The Observers in Fringe.
Of all the episodes, the one which reveals the most about the true scale of the phenomenon and what the military is doing is 1×04 Operation Paper Clip. X-Philes will notice how it sounds like episode 3×02 of The X-Files, due to it relating to a real post-ww2 operation which brought nazi scientists back to the USA to work on special projects. This episode features none other than Wernher Von Braun, the creator of the V2 rocket who helped propel America forward in the space race with Soviet Russia. It also features the only sighting of a grey, though that’s not how they call them there. It’s also set in Huntsville, Alabama for rocket aficionados out there.
Although the show only has 10 episodes, it has been pretty good at raising more questions than it answers as you would expect from something that revolves around the dissemination of misinformation and keeping of secrets of UFO activities for reasons unknown, specifically a thread involving mind control which was very reminiscent of project MKUltra, or at least the military version of it.
However I found the thread around Mimi and Susie to be a little slow and without much purpose. I suppose it is hard to write women into a show set in the early 1950’s in America and mostly centering around the US Air Force. However, despite that they make Mimi a lovable and compelling character trying to get by on her own while her husband is off chasing UFOs. I hope she takes a more active role in the main central plot in future seasons, as unlikely as this would have been then. My problem has more to do with why Susie spies on her, whether this is simply out of feelings she has or something more. Her actions towards the end of the season seem to suggest the simplest explanation and while it places a nice contrast around the concept of who to trust and how easy is it to deceive someone, I’m not sure this was the best way to implement it.
As someone who latched on to The X-Files in 1993 because I was looking for something exactly like this, I found the show quite entertaining and I’m glad they didn’t fall in the trap of Dark Skies and started to reveal too much about what’s actually going on. This is the level of mystery which made The X-Files so fun to watch and I only wish season 2, which has been confirmed by the History Channel, will be able to contain more than just 10 episodes. I can’t say for sure whether Dr Hynek would recognise himself in his portrayal by Aiden Gillen on the show but I give it a solid 8.5/10
Project Blue Book started up on SyFy in the UK on 27 March 2019.