Ancient Aliens season 14
release year: 2019
genre: TV documentary (22 episodes)
viewing setting: home streaming 4/22 - 6/23/24
synopsis: Aliens might have been involved in our world's history, as can be seen if you look at all the various potential evidence.
impressions: It's season 14, but the format isn't much changed: they present some interesting ideas and more interesting places/things...and then use imperfect logic to try and tie everything into the concept of aliens. I've pontificated about the faults in their reasoning in reviews of past seasons, so I'll just throw out some new thoughts from this one.
Point #1: not all ancient art needs to have a meaning. It's possible that someone, centuries ago, was simply drawing something they thought was cool. Just because it was unearthed long afterward doesn't make it relevant or meaningful. In another example, a simple spiral carving is immediately said to resemble something from the world of physics, and therefore show that ancient people had advanced scientific knowledge. No...no...no. It's just a fucking spiral carving. Any child could draw this shape, and anyone with a chisel and some time could carve it in a stone.
Point #2: the circular logic is fundamentally flawed. One expert doesn't address the question of whether aliens exist, using the "evidence" at hand. Rather, he starts off assuming they DO exist and then reverse-engineers everything backward from there, tying in anything he can find whether it's actually relevant or not. Another example of this is when discussing something odd, he says "I would not be surprised if this was true, because one of the basic tenets of the ancient alien theory..." Whoa. Stop there, dude. You're basically saying that something proves your theory simply because the theory claims that? Can anyone else see the problem with this approach?
Point #3: it is in fact possible that different people in different parts of the world built similar things. Yes, I know that the well-put-together stone walls on multiple continents look similar...but...we need to consider that there's basically only one way to build a sturdy wall. And that finding big round stones in two different places in the world does NOT automatically mean that they represent the same thing (bear in mind that a simple round object is not exactly the most advanced or unique thing that a person can create.)
There were other, less glaring fallacies. At one point, someone cites a claimed UFO sighting and then says the same thing happened to so many others, it must be true. No. The same thing did not happen to many others; rather, many others CLAIMED that the same thing happened as the first person CLAIMED happened. Regarding the online movement to storm Area 51, the government warned people not to try because they knew it would result in violence and death, and one of the talking heads then fusses about how the government must be hiding something since they warned people not to come. This is just stupid. Words and ideas are openly being twisted around to prove things that there is no evidence for. And by the way, foreign talking heads: it's not just America - no country in the world will let its people know its military secrets, or let them walk onto a military base.
This is mostly interesting material, although they often present it in a rapid-fire way that gives the viewer little to no time to consider what they just heard before the narrator zooms forward. Actual example during an explanation of something: "...is a hotbed of UFO activity..." What he should have said was "...is an alleged hotbed of UFO activity..." The little things make the difference. Anyway, this 14th season had the following episodes/topics (the boldfaced ones were those I found most enjoyable and least insane) :
episode 1: Antarctica
episode 2: a rock formation that vaguely resembles a face is compared with other such things
episode 3: a mysterious theoretical element that allows flight
episode 4: the Sirius stars and their possible meaning
episode 5: how some weird underwater life might be related to aliens
episode 6: tie-ins between Mayan culture and other places (and aliens)
episode 7: druids, and whether they might have crossed the oceans long ago
episode 8: the idea that snakes may be evidence of a reptilian species hiding within the Earth
episode 9: the idea of diseases being intentional efforts by aliens
episode 10: half-human, half-animal mixtures and why aliens did that
episode 11: parallel universes and possible evidence of them
episode 12: all about Hawaii, as it could pertain to aliens and their doings
episode 13: possible relation between zodiac signs, stars, and old sites in the world
episode 14: possible alien involvement in mankind's nuclear weapons tests and incidents
episode 15: strange happenings at a mountain in Italy
episode 16: the wonderful world of ESP and other mental powers
episode 17: Stonehenge and its possible origins
episode 18: food of the gods, and what it might be in human terms
episode 19: the connection between body modification and aliens
episode 20: the 2019 move to storm Area 51
episode 21: all about possible government conspiracies to cover up UFO evidence
episode 22: possible life on other planets
acting: The narration is strong and consistent, and the interviews are usually interesting and entertaining.
final word: Interesting finds and ideas, some of which could be true, depending on how one applies logic.
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