Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D
Speaker 1: audio for full exposure, listen with headphones. How did the
Speaker 1: United States develop the technology to pull ahead of the
Speaker 1: Russians in the space race? Many believe that a sophisticated
Speaker 1: guidance system was salvage from a crashed UFO. Not for
Speaker 1: the first time, a motion picture tells the story of
Speaker 1: these incredible events. It started with an accident in space
Speaker 1: and it led to the crash of a large metallic
Speaker 1: disc in the Arizona Desert. Why have the facts been
Speaker 1: kept hidden from the American public? What is it our
Speaker 1: government doesn't want us to know? This new motion picture
Speaker 1: reveals the startling proof that the government actually has the
Speaker 1: wreckage of Appliance Saucer and the bodies of alien astronauts.
Speaker 1: You will learn the incredible story of the most startling
Speaker 1: government cover up ever conceived. See a story of the
Speaker 1: UFO Covered up Hanger eight D. I'm Toby Ball and
Speaker 1: this is Strange Arrivals Episode twelve. Hypernormalization in Pearson's Magazine
Speaker 1: in Great Britain and Cosmopolitan Magazine in the United States
Speaker 1: serialized H. G. Wells The War of the World's It
Speaker 1: was published in book form the following year. It is
Speaker 1: one of the first stories of humans confronted with beings
Speaker 1: from outer space, and its inspired movies, comic books, in
Speaker 1: orson Wells famous radio broadcast. It's safe to say that
Speaker 1: most alien related popular culture doesn't engage to directly with
Speaker 1: the UFO folklore. Classics such as Invasion of the Body
Speaker 1: Snatchers or The Day the Earth Stood still common on
Speaker 1: larger social issues of the time. Abduction accounts have led
Speaker 1: to movies like The UFO Incident and Fire in the Sky,
Speaker 1: which addressed those particular stories, but not the broader UFO context.
Speaker 1: Even Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which borrows some
Speaker 1: from the UFO folklore of the late nineteen seventies, does
Speaker 1: not concern itself much with broader themes of government complicity
Speaker 1: beyond the security around Devil's Tower. The most significant piece
Speaker 1: of popular culture to use the UFO folklore was the
Speaker 1: iconic nine nineties television show The X Files. I had
Speaker 1: an idea way back in the eighties there was a
Speaker 1: show on that I loved when I was a kid
Speaker 1: called cold Check The Night Stuck, and it was the
Speaker 1: scariest thing I've ever seen on TV. So I thought,
Speaker 1: there's nothing scary on TV one, and I try to
Speaker 1: do a show that is as scary as that one.
Speaker 1: This is Chris Carter, creator of The X Files. So
Speaker 1: I sat down and came up with the characters of
Speaker 1: Molder and Scully FBI agents. I was inspired, especially you
Speaker 1: can see Scully's red hair by Silence of the Lambs.
Speaker 1: That was an early inspiration. So I came up with
Speaker 1: these two characters, and I kind of turned the tables
Speaker 1: on what would be the stereotypical believer in skeptic Maiden
Speaker 1: Molder the male the believer, and Scully the female, the skeptic.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make her not only a doctor, but
Speaker 1: a scientist, so she could refute Molder's claims with her
Speaker 1: hard science. It's a take on another iconic duo, the
Speaker 1: Kirk Spock partnership from the original Star Trek, a way
Speaker 1: for the issues of the show to be reasoned through
Speaker 1: the two lead characters. The show is fictionalized, scripted storytelling
Speaker 1: vehicle for these characters, Molder and Scarlet looking for the truth.
Speaker 1: And I said to them, you know, they wanted to
Speaker 1: wrap up the episodes at the end kind of in
Speaker 1: a neat bow with an explanation for what Malder and
Speaker 1: Scully had seen. And I said, that's exactly what you
Speaker 1: don't want. You don't want to have the answers. You
Speaker 1: want to be left with wonder, you want to be
Speaker 1: left with ah. You want to be left with your
Speaker 1: own opinions at the end. And it took me a
Speaker 1: real hard sales pitch to get them to understand that.
Speaker 1: With this initial conception in place, Carter brought together writers
Speaker 1: to help develop the show and write episodes. I was
Speaker 1: really lucky to hire two teams of smart guys. Glenn
Speaker 1: Morgan and James Wong were a writing team, uh, and
Speaker 1: then a writing team of Howard Gordon and Alex Gonza,
Speaker 1: who were also too smart guys who went on to
Speaker 1: create Homeland together. I'm glad more gonna it's one of
Speaker 1: the exact producers of The X Files and you're one
Speaker 1: two for. And then the last time Morgan wrote with
Speaker 1: a partner named Jim Wong, who had been friends with
Speaker 1: since high school. We were gonna go on some other show,
Speaker 1: a romantic comedy that was the hit pilot of that season,
Speaker 1: and Peter Roth, who was the head of Fox TV,
Speaker 1: had said watch his pilot I demand that you watch
Speaker 1: his pilot, and so sort of career politics, we go, well,
Speaker 1: we'll watch this pilot the X Files and tell Peter
Speaker 1: thanks for thinking of us, but we're gonna go do
Speaker 1: this other hot show. And uh, Jim and I watch
Speaker 1: Exiles pilot, We're like, WHOA, I want to do this show. Carter,
Speaker 1: along with the two writing teams, developed the Molder and
Speaker 1: Scully arc through different types of stories. Depending on the week,
Speaker 1: it could be a horror, suspense, thriller, or paranormal episode.
Speaker 1: So The X Files from the very beginning was not
Speaker 1: just going to be an UFO alien show. It was
Speaker 1: going to be more than that. And I had actually
Speaker 1: created a marketing package before any of these people came
Speaker 1: on when I turned the pilot and originally to twenty
Speaker 1: Century Fox, spelling out what the show was. So it
Speaker 1: just happened that I was able to pair with the
Speaker 1: right people to bring the idea of making it a
Speaker 1: horror show, a suspense show, a thriller, what have you,
Speaker 1: that it became. Really three fifths of the time it
Speaker 1: was something other than aliens and UFOs. The shows can
Speaker 1: be broken down into two types. The monster of the
Speaker 1: Week shows that are primarily standalons, but which also advanced
Speaker 1: the Molder Scully dynamic and the mythology episodes which run
Speaker 1: throughout the length of the series until the ongoing UFO story.
Speaker 1: We did, I think six mythology episodes typically per season,
Speaker 1: a two parter, three two partners actually, and that kind
Speaker 1: of became our formula. The way modern Scully coached the
Speaker 1: other typically sixteen to nineteen cases was by taking positions,
Speaker 1: by taking hard edged science versus a obdurate and determined
Speaker 1: belief in the paranormal on Moulder side, And it became
Speaker 1: kind of competitive, and it became a really a long
Speaker 1: uh nine years flirtation between the two characters and a
Speaker 1: seduction of sorts. These episodes required the writers to be
Speaker 1: able to articulate both a skeptical and a paranormal explanation
Speaker 1: for each phenomenon investigated by Molder and Scully. For Morgan,
Speaker 1: who had grown up very open to the reality of
Speaker 1: the paranormal, writing from Scully's perspective opened his eyes to
Speaker 1: a new viewpoint. Certainly, working on the X Files, the
Speaker 1: Need to be Scully is the first time that I
Speaker 1: started looking at what's the other side of the story,
Speaker 1: Because you always had to have Muhler's explanation. You have
Speaker 1: to have Scullies explanation, and many times you'd have to
Speaker 1: have an explanation was down the middle. So it was
Speaker 1: the X Files and having to write for Scully that
Speaker 1: I started getting a little more grounded, a little more skeptical. Movies, books,
Speaker 1: and television shows that are inspired by or reference purported
Speaker 1: actual events make a claim on some relation to reality.
Speaker 1: When shows are prefaced by, based on a true story,
Speaker 1: or inspired by actual events, the implication for the audience
Speaker 1: is that what they are consuming is not mere fiction.
Speaker 1: It is given a stamp of some sort of factual legitimacy.
Speaker 1: In a note to open The Da Vinci Code, Dan
Speaker 1: Brown famously wrote that while the characters and plot of
Speaker 1: the book were fiction, the history it referenced was factual.
Speaker 1: This was, to put it mildly, a ratch. Carter had
Speaker 1: to contend with how close he wanted to hue to
Speaker 1: actual cases and the stories that were out there. When
Speaker 1: we first started this show, there was something interesting that happened.
Speaker 1: Fox had bought my pitch, they had liked my outline,
Speaker 1: they had liked the pilot script. We had begun casting,
Speaker 1: and we had filmed the pilot. We had shown the
Speaker 1: pilot to the network. They were very happy with it,
Speaker 1: but they wanted me to put a disclaimer up before
Speaker 1: the show, saying that for the viewer that these are
Speaker 1: all based on actual events. It was as if we
Speaker 1: were creating a kind of documentary in the network's mind
Speaker 1: for the pilot episode. I went along with it, but
Speaker 1: then it's like, I realized that's not what the show is.
Speaker 1: I was trying to create a sense of awe and
Speaker 1: the idea that science doesn't have all the answers, and
Speaker 1: that religion doesn't have all the ans ers, and that
Speaker 1: there are things beyond the pale. I liked all that,
Speaker 1: but I also have to say I come at this
Speaker 1: from more Scully side than Moulder's side, with a science bias.
Speaker 1: I really have a kind of prove it to me philosophy,
Speaker 1: and so really it was me. The thesis was my
Speaker 1: own troubled perspective on what is true and what is not.
Speaker 1: While there were more episodes that were not concerned with UFOs,
Speaker 1: the mythology is what many people associate with the show.
Speaker 1: The X Files did pull from the line of UFO
Speaker 1: folklore that we've been examining centered around government conspiracy and
Speaker 1: cover ups, but it also took from another strain of
Speaker 1: UFO folklore, alien abductions. We looked at alien abductions in
Speaker 1: Season one of Strange Arrivals, and the X Files was
Speaker 1: created during the late evolutionary phase of that narrative. For
Speaker 1: Carter his collaborators, this was the cutting edge of UFO
Speaker 1: studies at the time. There were two things I've been
Speaker 1: reading about UFOs and alien abductions. But also I was
Speaker 1: given just my chance a survey called the Roper Survey,
Speaker 1: which was done by Dr John Mack, who, in the
Speaker 1: UFO afficionado will know well. Mac was a highly regarded
Speaker 1: professor of psychology at Harvard who came to believe, along
Speaker 1: with Bud Hopkins and David Jacobs, that hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: if not millions, of people had been abducted by aliens.
Speaker 1: Back to the Roper Survey, and it said that millions
Speaker 1: of Americans believed in the UFO phenomenon, some millions less
Speaker 1: believed they had actually seen a UFO, some millions less
Speaker 1: believed they had had contact, but that there was interest
Speaker 1: in the phenomenon. And so I thought the first thing,
Speaker 1: and I would like to do is play with that
Speaker 1: in a personal way Molder, making moulder sister an abductee,
Speaker 1: which is what his entry was into the world of
Speaker 1: the paranormal. I had kind of three go to guys
Speaker 1: was Dr John mac David Jacobs and Bud Hopkins. Those
Speaker 1: were the three people that I read mostly and I
Speaker 1: had I really developed my sense of all things UFOs
Speaker 1: and abductions through reading their books. This is Carol Rainey
Speaker 1: Bud Hopkins ex wife and former research partner, talking about
Speaker 1: how Hopkins changed the alien abduction narrative from what had
Speaker 1: been developed over more than two decades, starting with the
Speaker 1: alleged abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in the mountains
Speaker 1: of New Hampshire. He is writing added to it was
Speaker 1: that nobody was safe anywhere, that aliens could enter your
Speaker 1: bedroom at night, coming straight through the walls, coming through
Speaker 1: the windows. I mean his view of alien beings in
Speaker 1: the world was that they were godlike. Really they I
Speaker 1: mean ordinary physics did not prohibit them from doing whatever
Speaker 1: they wanted to do to take advantage of people's helplessness,
Speaker 1: and they were the abductees were used in Budd's thought
Speaker 1: in the same way that we observe, you know, wolves
Speaker 1: out on the in the wild, and we experimented on
Speaker 1: them to some degree from afar, and that's what he
Speaker 1: felt the aliens were doing to us. They might put
Speaker 1: tracking devices in us, what's called an implant these days.
Speaker 1: And you know, many of his people came up with
Speaker 1: those implants, partly to add credence to Bud's narrative and
Speaker 1: because that was the story that was becoming increasingly popular
Speaker 1: in mainstream media during the nineteen eighties and nineties. Carter
Speaker 1: had established that a key point in the X Files
Speaker 1: mythology would be that Mulder's sister was abducted by aliens,
Speaker 1: and he had taken the Hopkins mac Jacobs books as
Speaker 1: the source material for alien abductions. So the question was
Speaker 1: how to portray the actual events in the show? How
Speaker 1: is she gonna be abducted? I think we start with
Speaker 1: a lot of what the accepted mif was that it
Speaker 1: was at night, that there was a bright light. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's real monster movie stuff, really the mythology, and
Speaker 1: then you go, well, people know what it is by
Speaker 1: now because of the Hills story that you know, that
Speaker 1: was a movie of the week. This was the made
Speaker 1: for TV movie. The UFO incident about the Betty and
Speaker 1: Barney Hill story and then Close Encounters is like so huge.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew, you know, the the Barry being abducted is
Speaker 1: just one of the great scenes. And so and what
Speaker 1: can we do different? And you had read some things
Speaker 1: where people had been taken out their window, or so, well,
Speaker 1: let's do that, or let's make something up. How can
Speaker 1: we make it fresh? And it's here that the writer's
Speaker 1: creativity pulled the story a little bit away from the
Speaker 1: abduction narratives that had served as their source material. And
Speaker 1: I think actually that's where the damage to the mythology,
Speaker 1: because you made stuff up because you needed to have
Speaker 1: something different for a TV show. And so people who
Speaker 1: saw this episode came away with a slightly different conception
Speaker 1: of an abduction that had been in the books at
Speaker 1: the time, and the folklore subtly changed. The childhood abduction
Speaker 1: of Molder sister is the er moment of his obsession
Speaker 1: with UFOs. From that event, Carter Morgan and the other
Speaker 1: writers built out the X Files mythology. I had what
Speaker 1: I would consider to be the kind of foundation of
Speaker 1: the mythology that was based in things that anybody could
Speaker 1: read about alien abductions and kind of classic scoopmark stars,
Speaker 1: the triangular shapes, it kind of shape that appeared on
Speaker 1: Scully's back and the pilot episode. So I had the
Speaker 1: ideas that I had taken from all of the accumulated
Speaker 1: science and background on alien abductions, and I created a
Speaker 1: world with the episode. Actually, if you watch the first
Speaker 1: and second episode of The X Files and the season finale,
Speaker 1: which is called the erlen Mere Flash, you really get
Speaker 1: a foundational view of the X Files mythology that was
Speaker 1: established by Chris. You know that Maulder's sister had been abducted,
Speaker 1: and what the background was with Malder, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think those are things that you you have and
Speaker 1: when you're selling a pilot, especially back in those days,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of red meat for executives. And and
Speaker 1: then you get in a room. Nowadays you have to
Speaker 1: have the whole show figured out for five years. But
Speaker 1: back then you gave a piece of paper and this
Speaker 1: is what six episodes we could do, and they okay,
Speaker 1: So it just becomes a process of sitting down and
Speaker 1: going what can it be. Well, we're gonna introduce a
Speaker 1: government conspiracy deep background. So you bring a deep Throat,
Speaker 1: you bring up more UFO stuff. The conspiracy is a
Speaker 1: critical part of the mythology, and in follows iconic characters
Speaker 1: such as the Smoking Man, Deep Throat and the government
Speaker 1: agent Alex Krycheck. I've always been interested in conspiracies, I
Speaker 1: think because I was a child of the Watergate era.
Speaker 1: You know, I was a disbeliever in what our government
Speaker 1: was telling us, and they believer that they were keeping
Speaker 1: things from us. So they fit in perfect with the
Speaker 1: UFO literature, which is all about government, you know, black budget,
Speaker 1: secret operations, and all the reasons there are for the
Speaker 1: government to keep the truth about extraterrestrial life from the
Speaker 1: American public and those who you know, things that are
Speaker 1: you know, scientific, cultural, religious. Uh, it would upend a
Speaker 1: lot of the institutions in society. There's this idea that
Speaker 1: the government has been keeping all this stuff quiet secret
Speaker 1: for their own purposes, and that one day somebody will
Speaker 1: get them to disclose, or there will be reason to
Speaker 1: disclose the truth. I think that's where the Expiles mythology
Speaker 1: took flight from the accepted X Files mythology, and so
Speaker 1: we were imagining the world before disclosure and modern Scully
Speaker 1: as the people seeking to learn the truth. Of course,
Speaker 1: the best laid plans and all of that. No matter
Speaker 1: the amount of planning in foresight, there's always the potential
Speaker 1: for circumstances beyond the creator's control to complicate things. If
Speaker 1: you look at it the first year, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of mythology. I think on the twenty two episodes
Speaker 1: five maybe it wasn't a conscious thing. And January of
Speaker 1: the first season, Jillian became pregnant, so she was going
Speaker 1: to have her baby in September, and so that was like, well,
Speaker 1: she wasn't gonna be able to work on the first
Speaker 1: few episodes that we were filming for a year two.
Speaker 1: We scrambled because we didn't know what to do, how
Speaker 1: to if she was going to be pregnant for the
Speaker 1: whole first part of the second season, how we were
Speaker 1: going to do modern Scully. And we figured I had
Speaker 1: a clever way to do that, a way that actually
Speaker 1: played into the larger storyline. But I actually had a
Speaker 1: network executive saying, I mean, you've gotta get rid of
Speaker 1: her in no uncertain terms, and so you have to
Speaker 1: fight against that. You know, you can't establish these two
Speaker 1: characters and then just break him up because he uh
Speaker 1: doesn't want a pregnant woman working on the show. And
Speaker 1: so we all came up with like Skully's gonna disappear,
Speaker 1: and that really began the mythology, the need to tell
Speaker 1: multiple stories near the end of the first year. We
Speaker 1: never set out to be the serialized show. There was
Speaker 1: necessity due to Jillian's pregnancy that we sort of shaped
Speaker 1: it in the end of the first year to go
Speaker 1: into her disappearing for the first few episodes. In the
Speaker 1: second year, strange arrivals will return after the break. During
Speaker 1: our conversation, Glenn Morrigan told me about one of the
Speaker 1: Monster of the Week episodes that he wrote, and talked
Speaker 1: about how a fictitious story seeing on a television show
Speaker 1: could come to enter people's consciousness as something real. It's
Speaker 1: an example of the larger folklore producing dynamic of popular culture.
Speaker 1: I would get a publication every Monday. It was called
Speaker 1: Science News. It was really a pamphlet, no more than
Speaker 1: ten pages of findings in the world of science that week.
Speaker 1: And so, for example, one week I saw they had
Speaker 1: an article that I think they've broken the record for
Speaker 1: drilling into the greenland ice cores I don't remember a
Speaker 1: mile or whatever. And they pulled out this stuff that
Speaker 1: had not seen the light of day for two fifty
Speaker 1: thousand years. That had just happened. That was a fact.
Speaker 1: And then I go, well, what could be in there?
Speaker 1: What could be in that two? It's like, okay, it's
Speaker 1: a creepy show. What's creepy? Like? I find worms, creepy worms, snakes,
Speaker 1: they don't have arms, they have too many arms, like
Speaker 1: a millipede. Forget it. I don't want to near me.
Speaker 1: And so I'm like, okay, oh, there's these worms. And
Speaker 1: then without two years of evolution, what would that do
Speaker 1: to us? And then that part I would make up.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it was. It gets into your
Speaker 1: brain and makes you paranoid or some stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So that's how you make an next him. You take
Speaker 1: that science truth and another truth and you try to
Speaker 1: fit them together by making stuff up. Inevitably, people would
Speaker 1: go I read about worms and make it crazy, and
Speaker 1: I'd say, no, no, I made that up, and they no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I read that in a nastro geographic like I know
Speaker 1: you didn't because I made it up. It isn't even
Speaker 1: a thing. It lodged in my head, I just flat
Speaker 1: out made it up. And it always fascinated me how
Speaker 1: often people would say not I read about the ice
Speaker 1: or from Greenland, or the evolutionary traits of these worms.
Speaker 1: I heard about the stuff you made up, and it's true.
Speaker 1: And so when I look at these abduction myths, where
Speaker 1: some of the conspiracy theories that are floating around now
Speaker 1: you can see where there's both that are people are
Speaker 1: believing in fact. There's an X Files where a deep
Speaker 1: throat specifically says a lie is the best delivered sandwich
Speaker 1: between two truths, and I just I'm sure I didn't
Speaker 1: make that up, but that's to me, I always thought
Speaker 1: the best way to go about the mythology. So if
Speaker 1: you know that aliens come at night, and you might
Speaker 1: take some other scientific fact the position of the moon
Speaker 1: or something and make something up, that's that's how you
Speaker 1: did it. That's how I went about it, and I
Speaker 1: see that approach and other myths contemporary. There have been
Speaker 1: other shows that focus more directly on the themes that
Speaker 1: we've been looking at during this season. The History Channel,
Speaker 1: for instance, has a show called Project Blue Book, which
Speaker 1: features a more action ready version of Alan Heinek leading
Speaker 1: UFO investigations. Another show focusing on a highly fictionalized blue
Speaker 1: book style program was Dark Skies, which ran on NBC.
Speaker 1: In its tagline was history as we know It is
Speaker 1: a lie. The show was launched based on the popularity
Speaker 1: of the X Files. It was created by Brent Friedman
Speaker 1: and Bryce Sable. Zabel in particular, is active in the
Speaker 1: UFO scene. I think in the case of Bryce especially,
Speaker 1: but Brent as well, uthology was something that very much
Speaker 1: interested them. And I think that between the two of them,
Speaker 1: and Bryce having done a lot of the table reading
Speaker 1: as it were, and Brent having had one or two
Speaker 1: experiences that he was, that between them, they and it
Speaker 1: came together and figured out this is what they wanted
Speaker 1: to do. I'm Matthew Cressell. I'm the author of the
Speaker 1: Silver Archive Dark Skies on the television series from the
Speaker 1: ninet nineties at the same name. The series follows two agents,
Speaker 1: John Loane Guard and Kim Sayers as they investigate and
Speaker 1: try to foil the activities of the Hive, an alien
Speaker 1: race already among us. The government knows about the aliens
Speaker 1: and is involved in a massive cover up to hide
Speaker 1: from the public their presence and the fact that we
Speaker 1: are actually fighting a kind of covert war against them.
Speaker 1: The show presents an alternative history, with major events such
Speaker 1: as the Kennedy assassination the result of actions taken by
Speaker 1: the Hive. The series begins, perhaps not surprisingly with Roswell.
Speaker 1: Obviously Roswell is the big one, but you know, Roswell
Speaker 1: is uthologies, Jack the Ripper. It's this big thing that
Speaker 1: everybody knows what it is. You can say just that
Speaker 1: word and it evokes imagery. You know, if you say
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper, people are gonna think, you know, fog
Speaker 1: shrouded London streets, guy walking through the shadows. You say Roswell,
Speaker 1: people think soldiers in the desert, crashed flying saucer, little
Speaker 1: gray aliens thrown across the ground, weird debris. So it's
Speaker 1: I think if you're going to write anything since we'll
Speaker 1: say probably the mid eighties that deals with the UFO
Speaker 1: topic in a big way, Roswell is going to be
Speaker 1: your touchstone. I think what Bryce and Brent do that's
Speaker 1: interesting with Roswell in terms of what Dark Skies does
Speaker 1: with it, is it becomes the starting point of sorts
Speaker 1: for their history in sort of engaging with the phenomenon.
Speaker 1: The other thing that Dark Skies does it's interesting with
Speaker 1: Roswell is in a couple of episodes it brings Jesse
Speaker 1: Marcel It as a supporting character. Remember, Marceau was the
Speaker 1: major at Roswell Army Air Force Base who went to
Speaker 1: mac brown Ussele's ranch and was later photographed with the
Speaker 1: debris he found there. In the nineteen seventies, he was
Speaker 1: tracked down by UFO researcher Stanton Friedman and by then
Speaker 1: his story had changed. It became the foundation for the
Speaker 1: new Roswell narrative that emerged in the late nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: in early nineteen eighties and that continues to evolve today.
Speaker 1: They turned him into a supporting character, which is really
Speaker 1: interesting for them to do. So they used Roswell and
Speaker 1: him to sort of set it up. But it's almost
Speaker 1: in some ways the original sin of the series. It's
Speaker 1: at this point that Freedman and zabels alternate history diverges
Speaker 1: from the one we know. It's made everything wrong in
Speaker 1: that in some respects, at least at the beginning, John
Speaker 1: loewen Gard and Kim Sayers are trying to set right.
Speaker 1: Is bringing this out to the world Roswell is just
Speaker 1: one tiny part of the UFO mythos that Dark Sky's
Speaker 1: the sides they're going to run with. Another aspect of
Speaker 1: the folklore we've looked at that Dark Skies picks up
Speaker 1: is Majestic twelve, and while the show retains m J.
Speaker 1: Twelves role as the deeply mysterious keepers of the UFO secrets,
Speaker 1: it also takes artistic license. Here's Matthew Krazel talking about
Speaker 1: how the show portrays the Majestic twelve. What Dark Skies
Speaker 1: does is interesting with that is, not only are they
Speaker 1: the ones covering everything up, they're at the soldiers on
Speaker 1: the front line fighting the secret war. So they're not
Speaker 1: so much a group of twelve guys sitting in a
Speaker 1: shadowy boardroom somewhere, smoking on their pipes and puffing away
Speaker 1: on cigars. They're the ones controlling the generals and what not,
Speaker 1: fighting this whole secret war. They become the if you
Speaker 1: want to use the term for TV tropes, there, the
Speaker 1: sinister government agency, rather than just being these guys in
Speaker 1: the boardroom, and that's certainly something that separates them, the
Speaker 1: Majestic Twelve of Dark Skies from the Syndicate. For example,
Speaker 1: of the X file us. Friedman and Zabel are also
Speaker 1: much more specific in their references to the UFO folklore.
Speaker 1: One such instance involves a callback to UFO Cover Up Live,
Speaker 1: which we looked at in the last episode. As a
Speaker 1: side note, it's interesting that Kruszel identifies Falcon from the
Speaker 1: show as Doughty. Remember Doughty denies that he was on
Speaker 1: this show anyway. There's a particular reference that Doughty makes
Speaker 1: when he's on UFO Cover Up Live in talking about
Speaker 1: the alien who's a supuzzling an Area fifty one who
Speaker 1: likes strawberry ice cream and listening to Buddhist chance aliens
Speaker 1: enjoyed music, all types of music, especially ancient Tibetan style music.
Speaker 1: And you eat vegetables, they might vegetables, and your favorite
Speaker 1: fish or snack is ice cream, especially strawberry. And there's
Speaker 1: an episode Late and Dark Skies where they've captured one
Speaker 1: of the Grays and the Gray has a craving for
Speaker 1: strawberry ice cream, and one of the characters makes a
Speaker 1: comment about how strange that is. It becomes an almost
Speaker 1: in a way, it becomes a very kind of meta
Speaker 1: in that kind of postmodern way that you know, everything
Speaker 1: is influencing everything. Dark Skies was canceled after just one
Speaker 1: of an anticipated five seasons. It didn't achieve the ratings
Speaker 1: or cultural haft of The X Files, but it was
Speaker 1: a primetime network show and it did put these concepts
Speaker 1: and themes in front of a mainstream audience. Things like
Speaker 1: Dark Skies make great entertainment, don't get me wrong, but
Speaker 1: I think that they add to in a weird way,
Speaker 1: add to the mudding of the waters in that once
Speaker 1: it enters the pop culture consciousness. You know, if you
Speaker 1: say Area fifty one to somebody, they're gonna think, you know,
Speaker 1: lying Saucers UFOs. Same thing if you mentioned Dulcie Bass
Speaker 1: or Roswell, for example, And it becomes almost in a way,
Speaker 1: sort of an agent for putting those ideas out there.
Speaker 1: And I don't think necessarily through in that case, through
Speaker 1: any kind of deliberate act on anybody's part. It's just
Speaker 1: something that's in the ether and it's out there. It's
Speaker 1: an idea that's just waiting for somebody to come and
Speaker 1: pick it up and run with it. Robbie Graham and
Speaker 1: his books Over Screen Saucers talks about hypernormalization and the
Speaker 1: idea that you things become the brain becomes so stimulated.
Speaker 1: The idea of the basic idea of it is that
Speaker 1: that the brain can't tell reality from perception. Perception becomes reality,
Speaker 1: and you can't tell fact from fiction. And I think
Speaker 1: that that is a great descriptor for where uthology stands today.
Speaker 1: The X Files peaked in the Nielsen ratings at number nineteen.
Speaker 1: Shows above them included the blockbusters Seinfeld and e R
Speaker 1: in decades long franchises like Monday Night Football, Sixty Minutes
Speaker 1: and Dateline NBC. The group also includes the show's Veronica's Closet,
Speaker 1: Union Square, and Just Shoot Me. Much like Star Trek,
Speaker 1: the X Files reach has extended well beyond its initial run,
Speaker 1: and it has become a shorthand for interest in the
Speaker 1: paranormal and in particular UFOs. Think about the poster in
Speaker 1: Molder's office with a photo of a flying saucer and
Speaker 1: the message I want to believe, the phrases the truth
Speaker 1: is out there and trust no one. Even the distinctive
Speaker 1: theme music signals UFOs. What makes the X Files so
Speaker 1: iconic certainly the quality of writing and acting in the
Speaker 1: Molder and Scully partnership. But I think it also has
Speaker 1: to do with the way they kept or a certain
Speaker 1: nuance about the UFO myths in American culture, a combination
Speaker 1: of conspiracy in the sense that while things can be
Speaker 1: found out, they can't actually be known, and maybe things
Speaker 1: aren't really in control. Even if you are a UFO skeptic,
Speaker 1: it speaks to a narrative that makes sense, and because
Speaker 1: it makes sense, it indoors. I think people look up
Speaker 1: into the sky at night and wonder if the truth
Speaker 1: is out there, if there are other civilizations. So it
Speaker 1: has a kind of human component to it, and the
Speaker 1: idea that the aliens have in many cases humanoid qualities,
Speaker 1: and that they actually seem to have some steak and
Speaker 1: humanity and they have some either good or bad purposes
Speaker 1: for being here. It's our fear of the other that
Speaker 1: is natural, and in this case, I think it's the
Speaker 1: fear of a another that has either a good or
Speaker 1: evil intent. What is the source of the fear that
Speaker 1: finds its expression in Ufo folklore? Why does this story
Speaker 1: continue to maintain public interest when other paranormal subjects have
Speaker 1: ebbed in popularity. Next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart three D Audio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. This episode was written
Speaker 1: and hosted by Toby Ball and produced by Miranda Hawkins
Speaker 1: and Josh Thame, with executive producers Alex Williams, Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: and Aaron Mankey, and special thanks to Wendy Connors, creator
Speaker 1: of the Faded Discs archive of UFO related audio on
Speaker 1: archive dot org. Learn more about Strange Rivals over at
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild dot com, and find more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio by visiting the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Step