CLASSIC TV - PROJECT UFO 1978 - 1979
Project UFO was a late 1970's TV series which ran for two seasons in the science fiction genre.
It was based somewhat on real life stories from the U S. government's Project Blue Book.
The creator of the show was Jack Webb, former star of Dragnet. He researched many of the files from the Air Force to come up with ideas foe each episode.
The program was shown over the NBC Television Network.
Harold Jack Bloom was also one of the creators in addition to Jack Webb.
The shows were directed by Donald Gold and Robert Blees..
There were in total 36 episodes. They ran for 60 minutes
The cast included:
William Jordan as Major Jack Griffin (1978)
Edward Winter as Captain Ben Ryan (1978 - 1979)
Caskey Swain as Staff Sgt, Harry Fitz ( all episodes)
Aldine King as Libby Verdon (1978 - 1979)
The basic premise of the series is that two U. S. Air Force investigators with the Foreign Technology Division at Wright Patterson Air Force base are charged with the investigation UFO sightings.
The base of the investigations were to not to only prove that the UFO sighting was real by researching and disproving possible alternate explanations.
This series anticipated many of the themes of the X-Files which aired as a series 14 years later.
As with Project Blue Book many of the UFO sightings on the program turned out to have a conventional explanation. But some were left unexplained and suggestive of alien contact. By the second season the investigators themselves had sighted a UFO.
In the second season the two investigators would spend their time uncovering some conventional explanation for the UFO sightings. However in the last few minutes it was revealed that UFO's ( or some similarly unexplained phenomena) were involved in reality.
The opening each week was:
Showing flying saucer diagrams and schematics, while a minor key version of " Ezekiel Saw The Wheel" played.
Then a voice over narrative ( by Jack Webb) spoke:
"Ezekiel saw the wheel. This (UFO Diagrams) is the wheel he said he saw. These are Unidentified Flying Objects that people say that they are seeing now. Are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations from other stars? Or just what are they" The United States Air Force began an investigation of this high strangeness in search for the truth. What you are about to see is part of that 20 year search."
It's a very interesting program and is very watchable.
Since UFO's are still a possibility this series is still relevant.
Though not officially released by NBC, copies are available on the internet with the picture quality ranging from fair to very good.
Too bad Captain Video is not around today. I think that he probably would have enjoyed this show.
Louie The Movie Buff
