Sir Griffin's Nostalgia: Project U.F.O.

"Ezekiel saw the wheel. This is the wheel he said he saw.  These are Unidentified Flying Objects that people say they are seeing now.  Are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations from other stars? Or just what are they? What you are about to see is part of a 20-year search."

Those words, spoken by Jack Webb, were the introduction to each episode of Project U.F.O. which ran on NBC for two seasons beginning in February 1978.  The show was based on the files of Project Blue Book, which was a study of unidentified flying objects by the US Air Force between 1952 and 1969.  The show starred William Jordan as Major Jake Gatlin and Caskey Swaim as Staff Sergeant Harry Fitz as two Air Force investigators working on Project Blue Book.  In season two Jordan was replaced by Edward Winter as Captain Ben Ryan and the show suffered greatly.  Winter, who had been brilliant as Colonel Flagg on M*A*S*H*, was a dud here.  His presence and the subpar writing in season two helped lead the show to a premature end. 

Each episode found Gatlin and Fitz making another investigat8ion somewhere in the country.  Their task was to prove that each and every sighting was real by disproving any other possible explanations.  Some episodes ended with the pair coming to a conclusion, but others remained unexplainable and those were always my favorites. 

You see, as a child I had this recurring fantasy that a UFO would land in my backyard and take me away to live a life of luxury on another planet.  Oh sure, I had seen all the scary Twilight Zone episodes, but I figured I’d take the chance.  Night after night I would look out the window waiting for them to zip me away to a planet with advanced technology and night after night I was disappointed.  Oh well.  What were the chances of aliens landing in my Florida backyard anyway?

Anyway I was completely thrilled with this show at the time.  It was one of those that I would always end up talking with my friends at school about the next day.  All of us were secretly hoping for an alien abduction and most of them probably hoped I’d be the one abducted. 

Season one was great with interesting stories and characters.  However season two fell into a

rather bland formula where each episode was virtually indistinguishable from the rest.   They’d spend the whole episode trying to disprove that a true UFO was involved only to find something to question their findings in the final few minutes.  The first season did not fall into that trap and had many stellar episodes including such gems as

• When a Virginia woman saw a strange object in her yard and then started having conversations with a robot. 
• A hunter is pursued by a robot
• Some boys at school find an odd alien substance (You don’t want to know)
• Mexican Nuns spotting a UFO and being told when It will return as the Archbishop tries to cover it up.  (Covering things up in the Catholic Church.  Who would have thought…)

I suppose the show was very good for me as I got myself really interested in reading alien abduction stories, my favorite being the one about Barney and Betty Hill.  (As opposed to Barney & Betty Rubble)  And while I now have much more serious doubts than I did at the time, I am still fascinated by stories about aliens and have fond memories of Project U.F.O., though just not the second season.