Ancient Aliens: Season 6, Volume 1 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Ancient Aliens: Season 6, Volume 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 8, 2014

Ancient Aliens continues to be a somewhat guilty if increasingly implausible pleasure in its sixth season. Like many longer running History outings, it’s striving more and more to find relevant content that hasn’t already been covered in some way, shape or form previously, but aside from some of the sillier talking heads and the general whimsy of its premise (derived largely from Erich von Däniken’s bestselling Chariots of the Gods), the series finds a surprisingly consistent tone of interest and bizarre little factoids that it is able to fold into the overarching theory of “ancient astronauts” who visited Earth and did everything from build inexplicable monoliths to hand out scientific knowledge to Man’s shamanic ancestors. History and its various home entertainment partners have been weirdly spotty in releasing the series in high definition, with only the following volumes (and reviews) available:

Ancient Aliens: Season 1 Blu-ray review

The Best of Ancient Aliens Blu-ray review

Ancient Aliens: Season 4 Blu-ray review

Ancient Aliens: Season 5, Volume 2 Blu-ray review

This two disc release contains the following episodes:

Aliens and Forbidden Islands departs from the infinite reaches of space to underwater lairs in this relatively interesting episode. As with virtually every Ancient Aliens outing, each sequence is typically introduced with some anecdote or vignette, often with a somewhat tenuous connection to aliens, ancient or otherwise. While this episode traffics in typical Ancient Aliens fare like sightings of UFOs (including a segment that goes way off track to get into the history of the Pacific Theater in World War II!), there is some intriguing material presented, especially with regard to the little known island of Pohnpei, some 2500 miles southwest of Hawaii. This completely isolated island contains a supposedly cursed and now uninhabited “lost” city of Nan Madol. Nan Madol is home to absolutely incredible (and incredibly large) stone structures, all of which were built on a coral reef. Nan Madol is actually comprised of 92 man made islands connected by canals that span more than 200 acres. Of course the episode wants to make the case that these structures were facilitated by aliens from long ago.

Aliens and the Lost Ark may find some cynics wondering if Steven Spielberg was slumming as a consultant on this episode. The enigmatic Ark of the Covenant is proffered here not as a mere container, but as some kind of quasi-magical (and potentially alien) energy source that can do things like part the Jordan River so that the “Israelites” (as this episode terms them) can enter the Holy Land. The most interesting part of this episode treks far away from Israel some 6000 miles to Japan, where Shinto worshippers carry an elaborate golden chest in one of their central religious rituals. Their sacred text, Kojiki, supposedly has connections to the Torah which lead some (“some” is always unspecified on Ancient Aliens) to believe that there’s a connection and that Japan’s Mount Tsurigi may indeed hide the Ark.

Aliens and Mysterious Mountains plays like something of a flip side to Aliens and Forbidden Islands, journeying to a bunch of iconic peaks around the globe that are posited either as sacred sites or portals to the beyond. This sort of altitude based whimsy has been present in other Ancient Aliens episodes, and so this is a bit repetitive feeling, though as is typical in any given Ancient Aliens outing, there’s usually a segment or two that has interesting information. Here it’s a piece on some incredible human carved caves that are in a recondite location in the Kingdom of Mustang. There are some 10,000 of these caves, many filled with religious texts and murals of the Buddha. As is also typical of this series, trying to tie admittedly interesting facts and history to actual aliens is a bit of a stretch.

Aliens and Stargates is another pretty fanciful episode, though one that at least tries to deal with some actual science, courtesy of the 1935 Princeton work of Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen. Their published findings detailed so-called Einstein-Rosen Bridges, shortcuts through time and space that have come to be known as wormholes in common parlance. This historical account of science contrasts pretty markedly with attempts to make mythic figures like the Greek Goddess Cybele a guardian to a Stargate, or to be more accurate in terms of her myth, the Gate to Hell.

Aliens in America. No, this is not some portentous news report about the United States being overrun with illegal immigrants, but is instead a kind of meditation on the word “could.” The Americas are full of legends that could have to do with extraterrestrials (this particular “could” is augmented by an actually funny quick zoom in to the talking head espousing the potentiality). The rash of cow mutilations across America’s farmlands could indicate (rather weirdly motivated) aliens are performing experiments. While this episode kind of careens from hypothetical to hypothetical, as usual there are occasional factoids or anecdotes that are interesting enough, including a relatively recent mass sighting of a UFO in Texas that was also caught on radar.

The Star Children is an episode tailor made for any parent who has ever gazed at their kid and wondered if he or she were an alien. Some of this frankly kind of exploitative episode details various accomplishments of a coterie of genius children around the world (like one tyke who started talking at two weeks). The working hypothesis here is that these may be the vanguard of some new alien race, though of course there’s no thought of an actual DNA test. There is quite a bit of interesting information about these kids, but it may strike some (parents especially) as odd to be positing these highly accomplished youth as something other than human. There’s a frankly very amusing segment here about so-called Black Eyed Children, alien beings of malicious intent.

Treasures of the Gods is another episode that wanders pretty far and wide to get that all important connection to aliens. This episode deals with secret buried treasures that could (that all important word again) be related to ancient aliens. One sequence details the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and how one (and only one) scroll was (to borrow a phrase from the Seder) different from all the rest. The so-called Copper Scroll isn’t a piece from the Hebrew bible but is instead a huge list of treasure that may be buried in 64 different locations that could (ahem) be worth billions. There’s also a kind of funny sequence on fortune hunters in Kanab, Utah looking for Montezuma’s treasure (and hopefully not his revenge).

Aliens and the Red Planet starts out with what History does best—nuclear holocaust (and/or any other incipient apocalypse). There are looks at various NASA missions including everything from Viking to Pathfinder. The reigning scientific theory that Mars was once covered by oceans full of water and therefore able to support a variety of life is also explored. Tenuous connections to the Mayan culture are also explored, though as is typical of the series, it’s the actual history of the culture rather than those connections that provides the most interest.

Ancient Aliens: Season 6, Volume 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ancient Aliens: Season 6, Volume 1 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Liongate Films and History with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is another mixed bag in terms of video quality, very much in line with previous seasons of this series. Contemporary interview talking head segments look best overall, with good contrast and a stable, clear image with accurate looking colors. Stock footage is all over the place, obviously sourced from all different sorts of formats (including films of various millimeters and video). Some is relatively clear and damage free, while other elements are very ragged looking. CGI can be soft looking at times.

Ancient Aliens: Season 6, Volume 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with prior seasons of the show on Blu-ray, Ancient Aliens: Season 6, Volume 1's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 offers decent immersion in the episodes' use of sound effects. Otherwise, the series is largely narrated or features talking heads, which doesn't offer a lot of opportunity for "wow" sonics. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is rather wide courtesy of the sound effects.

Ancient Aliens: Season 6, Volume 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Despite the fact that both discs in this set purport to have "Special Features," all that is really here are trailers and bookmarks. Consider me underwhelmed.

Ancient Aliens: Season 6, Volume 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ancient Aliens almost always stuffs in some interesting anecdotes and good historical data, but then it is required by its format (not to mention its title) to tie things into long ago (or maybe not!) aliens, and at that point the series tends to become forced and quite often silly. Those who are willing to wade through the "little green men" content to get to some nuggets of actually interesting information will find this season about as entertaining as prior ones. Technical merits here are very good to excellent for those considering a purchase.