Aliens & UFOs : For Entertainment Purposes Only?

Aliens on both the big and small screen have been a popular topic for over half a century now. But are they simply there as entertainment or is there something more to the production of many films and TV Series that have poured out since the early 1950s?

Many of us were first introduced to the concept of alien life by science fiction TV and films. Perhaps they are the reason you are here on ATS?

Some people in the UFO community believe that there is a long term program to condition us to accept the “alien presence” via a manipulation of the media. Others treat sci-fi as nothing more than entertainment.

When Herbert George Wells wrote his classic work “War of the Worlds” in the closing years of the 19th Century he may not have realized what he had started... Or perhaps he eventually did when he chased Jack the Ripper from Victorian London in his time machine to late 1970s San Francisco (only joking but this was part of a 1979 movie - Time After Time ). The book inspired various radio adaptations, TV series, films, comic books, sequel novels by other authors and even a musical version by Jeff Wayne. Although earlier stories have been written encompassing similar ideas, Wells “alien invasion” novel captured the imagination of the public, has become a seminal piece of science fiction and its basic theme has been used in countless other productions.
The original book deals with a Martian invasion of Victorian Britain. Orson Welles transformed the print version for an American audience and adapted it for radio in 1938. The broadcast was made in a style of news bulletins and created panic amongst some of the public. The government(s) of the day obviously took note of the result as the fires of another World War began to ignite. The broadcast media was a tool that could and would be used to influence the masses.
During World War II, Walt Disney was commissioned to produce a number of propaganda films of which this is an example below.



Just two years after the 2nd Great War ended the era of flying saucers began. Kenneth Arnold’s sightings in the summer of 1947 and the announcement that the USAAF had recovered a flying disc near Roswell New Mexico may well have sparked another propaganda campaign. This campaign would have a much wider and deeper objective than simply winning a war. Indeed by 1953 the Robertson Panel recommended that a public education campaign should be undertaken in order to reduce public interest in the subject of flying saucers.

If aliens were real there was the likelihood that there would be global panic, shock and a global economic meltdown? The risk was too high.

So, according to a number of theories, it was decided by the upper echelons of the US Government it’s closest allies (and possibly even the likes of the Soviet Union and China) that a tight lid would be kept on things until such a time that the ordinary people of world were ready to accept the news. The media would not just be used to de-bunk and ridicule the UFO topic in the present, but also subtly change public perceptions through science fiction television and movies for a time in the future when the truth could finally be told…..

Writers like Bruce Rux, who produced the weighty tome “Hollywood versus the Aliens” and Robbie Graham have explored the topic in detail. It is without doubt that the DoD, CIA, FBI and agencies of other nations are all involved in assisting the TV and movie industry when it suits their agenda. Their influence down the years cannot be discounted. The military are particularly keen to show off their hardware and promote recruitment via Hollywood movies that show them in a good light. But in the UFO field if there really is an agenda then what can the ultimate objective really be? We are receiving mixed messages.

There is not enough time or space to look at every popular Science Fiction TV show and movie, then dissect them for every hidden clue. So I will give a brief commentary on a handful and invite other ATS members to add their thoughts on these (or any other)sci-fi productions.


Post Continues below >>>

STAR TREK

I’ve included Star Trek as it is one of the most popular and lucrative TV and movie franchises in the world . First conceived by Gene Roddenberry and produced in various off-shoots since the 1960s. Now there are very few countries in the world where at least one version of Star Trek is not being shown in syndication. Star Trek presents a bold vision of our future amongst the galactic community where humanity plays an integral part. Poverty has been eradicated and we are free to follow careers in whatever pursuit we choose. It is this Utopian future which gives Star Trek its mass appeal. The original series featured a multi-racial starship crew, whilst later versions include alien races as well as humans. Everyone is treated equal and a “Prime Directive” of non-interference with other races is enforced until a time when they are ready to join the Galactic Federation.

There are theories that Star Trek contains subliminal imagery and promotes a militaristic future with the “Federation” being effectively a New World Order on a galactic scale. In the present day, hi-tech and humanity continue to grow ever closer. The Borg in Star Trek are portrayed as a dangerous race who assimilate all species in their path in the pursuit of perfection. Their methods involve violent destruction, abduction, and placing cybernetic implants into those they assimilate.


Is there a hidden message for us there?








There is an intriguing episode made in 1991 “First Contact” (not the film which came later). The Enterprise and crew are watching over the Malkorians as they perfect interstellar “warp” technology and qualify for membership of the Federation. Commander Ryker has been disguised as a native Malkorian for an away mission to the planet but gets injured. He is taken to hospital where the medical staff discover he has several physiological differences to them and believe he may be an alien. Ryker is put under armed guard and in one scene claims "It's far more likely that I'm a weather balloon than an alien."

The planet’s Chancellor meets with Captain Picard and is unsure of Picard’s story. He fears the Federation may actually be planning an invasion and debates whether to tell his people. A very interesting spin on modern folklore in a Trek episode. It places the Malkorians in a similar position to humanity. In a twist the crew of the Enterprise become the alien visitors and the Malkorians are unsure of their real motives.


Star Trek grew from Roddenberry’s ideas and tells the story of human aspirations rather than any hidden agenda to acclimatize us to aliens. Trek would often incorporate contemporary themes disguised as science fiction. The original series episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” clearly tackles racism. The Next Generation’s “The High Ground” featured terrorism. Trek IV The Voyage Home, is a comedy with an environmental message.


An impression that Star Trek always leaves me with is that the ‘tech’ never relied on the state of the art of the day and which always looks dated a few years after being first shown. Whilst the original 60s series does look a little worn out after nearly 50 years you can still watch an episode of the Next Generation (which began in the 1987) and believe you are seeing a technology which is still, in the main futuristic looking. Star Trek is not really about aliens it’s the story of us, humanity. It’s influence is massive even if there was/is no real secret agenda to the show.




Further reading : A free pdf guide to Star Trek from Wikipedia: click here

Continues below >>>

THE X-FILES

This series was created by Chris Carter and inspired by the 1970s series “Kolchak the Night Stalker”. Although there are many standalone episodes ,dealing with all manner of weird happenings, the mainstay of the show was a conspiracy arc involving an alien plot to infect humanity with a virus and eventually conquer earth.

A secret government group on earth is covering up the plot and also trying to avert the alien invasion. The X-Files arrived at a perfect time for it to become a hit. Trust in government was at particularly low ebb, conspiracy stories were gaining ground, the Roswell and Area 51 tales were being discussed by the media. This all coincided with the cable and satellite TV expansion across the world in the mid 90s. X-Files began as the Cold War ended and there was no perceived major threat to the Western World.

Perhaps during this period there was a window of opportunity for some kind of disclosure that the secret keepers were toying with but ultimately went cold on? The X-Files was a fertile source of ideas about what was being concealed from the public.

The series ironically ended not long after 9/11, an event that spawned a million conspiracy theories, and was “predicted” in the pilot of the X-Files spin-off “The Lone Gunman” just a few months before that tragic day.

The X-Files introduced us to all manner of stories that had entered the lore, a shadow government, an alien cover-up, abductions, Area 51, experiments with alien DNA, human cloning and bees used as a carrier to spread an alien virus to destroy humanity. Now it’s the bees that seem to be dying out.

The show got a lot of people thinking about what may really be going in the world behind closed doors and way out there in the galaxy. If there was a hidden agenda then the overall impact of the X-Files was to introduce a number of ideas that were on the fringe into the mainstream.

Alas the Truth is still Out there.....

Further reading in this free fan guide to every episode of the X-Files
redwolf.com.au...



Continues below >>>

UFO

UFO was a single season British Sci-Fi series produced in 1969/70 and set in 1980. The brainchild of Gerry Anderson, who had also created the popular children’s TV series Thunderbirds.

In essence it presented the alternate view to that of the X-Files. The good guys were protecting us as part of a clandestine military group. The secret and aptly name SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organization) was based in an underground base below a movie studio complex in Britain with bases around the globe. There was a human moon base and a number of secret military vehicles were used to thwart the alien sorties to Earth. The green skinned, humanoid alien’s motives were never quite established. It sometimes appeared that they were harvesting human body parts for their dying race as the series weaved in abduction themes, and alien autopsies.

However in later episodes it seemed that they were using human bodies and even animals as a shell and controlling their minds. You can interpret this as a lack of continuity by the writers or that they were merely throwing everything in to the mix to make the overall story as confusing as the real UFO issue was and still is.

UFO also contained a somewhat sexist slant of the times with purple wigged women on the moonbase in tight fitting uniforms, although females do hold senior ranks in the SHADO organization. Another feature was that everyone in Britain appeared to drive on the right hand side of the road in 1980.



The opening scenes of the pilot episode features an odd synchronicity with the X-Files when the character Peter Carlin is taking pictures of a flying saucer landing in a forest circa 1970, his sister and a friend watch with trepidation and are then abducted.

Fast forward to 1980 and Carlin is now commander of the SHADO vehicle Sky Diver after a decade of not knowing what happened in that forest to his sister. By the end of the episode we learn that she had been abducted and her organs used for transplant in an alien corpse. Two decades later FBI Agent Fox Mulder would face a similar uncertain search for his sister.

Did Gerry Anderson, the creator, have assistance from MI5, the CIA, FBI or even the KGB. We will never know as he passed away earlier this year. He worked in the many theories of the day to produce a series that was decades ahead of its time. UFO had a cult following and is still shown occasionally more than 4 decades after its conception. It is a show that I believe was made purely for entertainment purposes from the perspective of the producer and writers. But it most certainly introduced the theories of alien abduction and UFO retrievals to a wider audience whilst using the same theme of a secret organisation that Anderson used in Thunderbirds.


More on the series here: www.shadolibrary.org...


Continues below >>>

DARK SKIES

Dark Skies was another single season series that went deep into UFO mythology. The premise was that history as we know it was a lie. Aliens had been here since 1947 and the US government was covering up the truth.

MJ-12 was a real organization fighting the alien threat. Dark Skies worked UFO mythology into real events of the 1960s with Jesse Marcel, J.Allen Hynek, Bobby Kennedy, John Lennon and many other historical figures from UFO lore featuring in the stories. It could and should have ran for the intended 5 seasons, set across each decade ending on the millennium.

The concept moulded the MJ12 and Roswell mythology alongside JFK assassination into the back story. JFK was really killed for wanting to reveal the truth about the aliens to the world in Dark Skies.


Here’s a scene featuring Art Bell as CBS President William S. Paley at an MJ12 meeting discussing Vietnam and the JFK assassination.



This scene “The Warren Omission” nicely sums up the premise of the series.



Half a century has passed and questions are still being asked about the JFK assassination. Whilst it is unlikely Kennedy was killed for wanting to reveal the “truth about UFOs”, researchers have discovered that he was asking questions about “unknowns” in space just weeks before his death and revealed in documents from FOIA requests. He feared these could trigger an incident with the Soviets.

Bryce Zabel, who produced the series, has stated that linking Kennedy with Roswell was purely a plot device to have two of the world’s greatest conspiracies forming the basis of their series. He has made it clear that there was no outside influence and Dark Skies is a work of fiction for television.

The MJ12 documents were already in circulation in the mid-1990s and obviously provided a lot of influence on the series. These documents are considered fakes by many and a mix of mis-information and a disguised truth by others. Whoever released these documents possibly knew that someone would incorporate them into a movie or TV series. Perhaps an unseen hand really did work behind the scenes?

Because Dark Skies became that series.


Further reading Dark Skies Bible: www.zen134237.zen.co.uk...


Continues below >>>

DISNEY “ALIEN ENCOUNTERS FROM NEW TOMORROWLAND”,

One much discussed item has been a rather mysterious promotional film produced by Disney and shown only once on TV in a handful of US cities in 1995.



“Alien Encounters from New Tomorrowland”, was officially produced to promote Disneyworld’s ‘ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter’ ride. However some UFO researchers believe there was government collusion and the movie was a stepping stone to disclosure of the alien presence. The actual Disney attraction features for just a few minutes at the end of the 40 minute film. The “documentary” narrator refers to the existence of alien life visiting the Earth, government cover ups and Roswell. He even goes as far as revealing that microbial life has been found in a meteor, a good year, before President Clinton announced it publicly.

“This is an actual spacecraft from another world. Piloted by alien intelligence”



“As early as 1947, large alien ships began to arrive”
“A government cover –up was immediately initiated with a disinformation campaign”
“For nearly fifty years, officials have been documenting routine alien encounters here on earth”
"More than one alien craft crashed and was recovered for secret U.S. military research. The most famous case took place in July of 1947 just outside the community of Roswell, New Mexico
"Indications are that government, military and scientific leaders will soon release nearly a half-century of official documentation of ongoing alien encounters on earth."
“Riding inside a stone cocoon of a meteor, life can travel virtually anywhere, and a good deal of it lands on planet earth”.

The fact that this movie was distributed with no advance notice and given a restricted one off showing alerted UFOlogists that there may be something more to the project.

In 2011 after the video was made available via Youtube Robbie Graham interviewed the writer of the documentary Andrew Thomas. Thomas had a background in reality shows like Cops and also worked as head of special marketing on Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. He told Graham that Disney had wanted a TV special about the history of UFO sightings with the last five minutes focusing on the ride. The TV special was to be "seeded” into independent television stations across the country. Thomas claims that he wrote the script over a few hours with no government intervention. His only source material being document archives. Even the meteorite story came from NASA information available on the internet.

However Andrew Thomas did find it strange that Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney at the time, personally filmed an introduction and vetted large parts of the documentary. This is despite the fact that he had considered it a minor marketing project. The film was shown just once and broadcast between 2pm and 3pm in the afternoon when hardly anyone was watching.

What was the point of the whole project?


Continues below >>>

UFO & ALIEN MOVIES

There are so many numerous cheesy 50s B-movies, punctured by the occasional classic like “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or “The Thing” for example. Certain conspiracies make links to the film industry of the era and the military/secret services. We have to remember that some of those who fought in WWII later found careers in the motion picture industry and so had direct contacts back to the military. That may mean nothing or an awful lot depending on the individuals and the movies concerned.

Thousands of sci-fi movies that tackle the UFO/Alien issue and it is impossible to look at more than a few. So again I’ll put a few out there and invite others to state what they think about these and the plethora of others that exist.

INVADERS FROM MARS

This is a cult classic from 1953 which has an unusual scene filmed after the original movie was wrapped up and was omitted from the US version of the but added for the UK release.


The scene goes into vivid detail of how the government has been studying flying saucers and that life can, and does, exist on other planets (and as long as the Youtube link remains you can watch for yourself.)








Perhaps it was felt foreign audiences needed more guidance on what Flying Saucers actually were? Or it could have been intended for (but then censored from) US audiences during a paranoid era of the Cold War to dampen down their excitement for the flying saucer phenomenon.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

The mid-90s blockbuster replicated the giant saucers hovering over the global capitals of the world from the original TV series “V” a decade earlier. An idea first imagined by Arthur C. Clarke in his novel “Childhood’s End” in the 1950s . The production team received no help and assistance from the US DoD due to references to Roswell and Area 51 and its weak portrayal of the military.




A Department of Defense (DoD) memo rejecting requests for assistance concluded:

"The military appears impotent and/or inept; all advances in stopping aliens are the result of actions by civilians."
Source: www.guardian.co.uk...

It didn’t need them it was a massive hit anyway. Independence Day was and is pure entertainment. A huge shoot ‘em up movie. The aliens are bad guys who want to come here to destroy us but we prevail. It’s not for everyone but helped perpetuate the never ending debates about Roswell, Area 51 and that some US Presidents actually can fly fighter aircraft.



Which brings me onto …..



Continues below >>>

I wouldn't get cause and effect mixed up. Rather than some mysterious cabal presenting us with UFO/alien entertainment in order to condition our minds for alien contact, I tend to think that it's just another genre of entertainment trying to reach a particular market and make money.

Besides, while the science fiction audience has grown a lot over the last several decades, how does cultural programming explain the massive popularity of stuff like Latin American telenovelas? What kind of programming is being done there? That's not part of the conditioning, while the alien stuff is?

ROSWELL: THE UFO COVER UP

This 1990s ,made for cable TV movie, pretty much covers the main points of the Roswell story. It’s mainly from the eyes of Jesse Marcel (played by Kyle MacLachlan) in retrospective from a re-union in the late 1970s of the 509th Bomb Wing of the 8th USAAF.

Although it also deals with the death of James Forrestal, the stories of Mac Brazel, Glen Dennis and other characters involved.

Overall it’s an enjoyable watch and Martin Sheen appears as a mysterious character near the end to sum up to Jesse Marcel about what we really know about Roswell, UFOs and aliens.

It doesn’t answer all his, or our questions, about Roswell. How could it?

But it blends a lot of the speculation about what happened back in 1947 into the story as well. It may have even influenced the USAF to reconsider their Roswell report “The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert” to include their rather unconvincing explanation of the alien bodies that had been reported at the alleged crash site(s). It seems they were influenced themselves and then could not tell fact from fiction.

STEVEN SPIELBERG

Steven Spielberg is one Hollywood producer perhaps best known for his alien related movies. The comments that Ronald Reagan made to him and the rest of the audience during a screening of ET at the Whitehouse have gone down in folklore.

He just stood up and he looked around the room, almost like he was doing a headcount, and he said, “I wanted to thank you for bringing E.T. to the White House. We really enjoyed your movie,” and then he looked around the room and said, “And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.”

www.huffingtonpost.com...

Spielberg is convinced he was joking. But admits he is a bit of a UFOlogist and his many movies include Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T, Evolution, Cowboys and Aliens, Super 8 and the mini-series Taken with an alien theme to them. Spielberg’s underlying message though seems to be that aliens are both benevolent and malevolent. For me there is that nagging doubt that he may know a little more than he claims to.


Continues below >>>

THEY LIVE

Of all the sci-fi B-movies I have seen. This is one that has always intrigued me more than any other. Perhaps it feels more relevant today than it did in the late 1980s/early 1990s. John Carpenter’s 1988 movie is set in a world where a global elite rule and there appears to no longer be a middle class.

Subliminal messages are disguised and distributed via TV, billboards, newspapers and even dollar bills to keep the population asleep. The hero is a nameless drifter who finds this horrifying reality. A reality that can only be seen through “truth seeing sunglasses” that the main character stumbles upon. He finds that people do not want to really know the truth. They get a headache, from viewing things as they really are wearing the sunglasses, and prefer their cozy world of ignorance.



“They Live” is a low budget throwback to paranoia movies of the 1950s and we find that our media, police and the political parties are all controlled by “alien” overlords. The movie appears to be more than a 1980s commentary on consumer culture. It is also a frightening vision of the future and one that Richard Dolan appears to have embraced in recent years and worked into his “Breakaway Civilization and Secret Space Program” theories.

An interesting clip :




Treatment of UFOs and aliens on TV has, until recently, still tended towards the smirk factor in most news items. Documentaries from main broadcasters tend to give the last word to the skeptics. This suggests that there is still some influence that has permeated down the decades (even when there is no real direct interference from government). If there is some kind of overall education program via the entertainment industries before they reveal the big secret then it’s taking a long, long time and we can only guess what it will be.

I’ve not even scratched the summit of the iceberg here. Science Fiction is such a massive genre now. If there are any influences on TV series and movies ,telling us some hidden truth, then we’ve known we are not alone for decades.

If a “Day of Disclosure” finally comes then I suspect we’ll be told we’ve found a microbe on Mars or one of the other bodies in the solar system. Perhaps we will get confirmation of an intelligent signal from light years away. Maybe we’ll find a powerless alien probe drifting past the moon?



But I’ll guess we won’t see the US President greeted by two ETs for a photo opportunity?








Hang on! Haven’t I seen that in a movie as well?


This thread was produced for all those people that decide it was or it wasn't for entertainment purposes only

reply to post by mirageman


It doesn't come out often but .....


UFO was probably what turned me on to this subject when I was a kid , must have been reruns though as I'm sure I saw it in the mid 70s , Closely followed by Space 1999 .... That's funny watching it now though...not good funny either ,
I watched UFO again a year or so ago on ITV4 and I thought it's stood the test of time well .

The only Star Trek that bests the original in my opinion is TNG , it seemed to have hit the sweet spot with actors , characters and story lines .... And it had Deanna Troy

love this thread S+F for you my friend great job :-)

no one ever really thinks about it but star wars was what REALLY truly opened my mind up to the idea of aliens.

the millennium falcon for one. just the design alone. WE created that, humans. 10,000 years into civilization.

I assume that at some point you made a point to your argument stated in the title. So I'll address that and avoid/ignore the scrolling you would have me do.

Yes, the UFOs/Ets of all sorts have found a home in entertainment. The quick answer to your headline is that was/is that the only refuge they could fit in the current world that is controlled by government and its henchman, Science and where the legitimacy of the topic is flatly verboten. In practical terms, the UFO/ETs are a myth since neither government, Science and a major aspect of supposedly free human minds have failed to take up the topic seriously.

A study aid very much its worth to changing your view would be the writings of the late social philosopher Joseph Campbell. He dealt at length with the topic of the process of myth and how it relates to the forming of cultures, societies and finally, civilizations.

Because I feel the need for brevity by someone, I'll simple let it go at that and hope that some thinking souls can see beyond simple psy-ops programs and glimpse the bigger picture.

Robbie Graham is good. Brice Rux is a hack. His very long book is wrought with inaccuracies and down right wrong information. His title is something about Hollywood Government in cahoots to address UFO issue but he offers no proof in his several hundred page word salad of a book.

reply to post by FlyingTeacup


I picked up a copy of Bruce Rux's book over the weekend in a 2nd hand shop. I was quite impressed after a quick flick through. However I am tending to agree with your thoughts on him being a hack. The index is terrible and there is absolutely nothing to back up his claims as much as I've read.

Personally I think that the influence over TV and movies that was possible in the 1950s has become a totally pointless exercise nowadays. Too much sci-fi is now out there. Although the knowing smirk still tends to prevail whenever alien and UFO stories hit the major news channels. Not as much as it used to though.

Haven't read through the entire thread yet, it's a lot to digest.
Just wanted to say S&F.
Now watching the disney nazi vid.
Didn't know it existed.
Thanks for bringing it to my (our) attention.
Your posts will keep me entertained for quite some time.
Thanks!

You've done a lot of research and kudos for that, but you're missing all the actual evidence of real UFOs and possible alien encounters which have occurred, regardless of the entertainment industry, furthermore if anything, a lot of the incidents were inspiration for the movies or series. Close Encounters for example was done under the direction of J. Hynek from the Governments official UFO programme, Blue Book, to me that says there's some factual stuff in there.

Another observation, even at the turn of the 20th century there was always something more to the story, Aurora, Texas 1897 and this incident is reported in the press:

photos1.blogger.com...

Additionally, American astronomer Percival Lowell (1855 - 1916) believed the lines on Mars' surface to be irrigation ditches dug by aliens in order to get water from the polar caps. Now obviously you don't think that unless you already think something about extra terrestrial life existing already.

War of the Worlds was apparently written between 1895 and 1897, so the fascination with alien life was already instilled in peoples imaginations, especially aliens from Mars

Originally posted by Zcustosmorum

You've done a lot of research and kudos for that, but you're missing all the actual evidence of real UFOs and possible alien encounters which have occurred, regardless of the entertainment industry, furthermore if anything, a lot of the incidents were inspiration for the movies or series. Close Encounters for example was done under the direction of J. Hynek from the Governments official UFO programme, Blue Book, to me that says there's some factual stuff in there.

Great point mate, there's a good video here of folks on the set of the film discussing Dr Hynek's involvement and, when it comes to the factual stuff, the police UFO chase at the beginning of the movie was based on the Portage County incident from 1966 where cops chased a very bizarre object over 86 miles from Ohio to Pennsylvania - I don't think I've ever heard anyone offer a reasonable explanation as to what that object actually was and Easynow's made a bloody good thread about it below:

"When they started talking about fighter planes, it was just as if that thing heard every word that was said; it went PSSSSSHHEW, straight up; and I mean when it went up, friend, it didn't play no games; it went straight up."

Police officer Dale Spaur

*Above BlueBook* - Ohio UFO Chase , Portage County April 17, 1966

This UFO article which was published in a peer-reviewed academic journal is also a relevant one to the thread as it mentions that the U.S. Department of Defense has worked extensively with Hollywood in exchange for the right to edit scripts for sixty years.

Cheers.