Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Ancient Aliens: Season 7 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 27, 2015

By this point in the increasingly preposterous history of Ancient Aliens, the speculative nature of the program has assumed such outsized proportion as to make the series something kin to performance art at times, often to unexpectedly hilarious ends. Once again Ancient Aliens traffics in all sorts of “might have beens” or “some conclude” strategies, with a number of otherwise interesting anecdotes shoehorned into various episodes that supposedly have to do with little (or big) green (or gray) men (or women or gender neutral beings). The series doesn’t stray from its already well developed approach of offering a series of vignettes in various times and places that it hopes will help elucidate whatever any given episode’s often rather ephemeral theme might be. Some of those vignettes are quite interesting on their own terms, but within the context of Ancient Aliens often assume outright absurd tendencies. Former seasons of Ancient Aliens have been reviewed here:

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

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

Ancient Aliens: Season 6, Volume 2 Blu-ray review

This two disc Blu-ray set contains the following episodes:

Forbidden Caves. Regular viewers of Ancient Aliens are going to have quite a bit of that old “been there, seen that” quality on their hands (and/or eyes) in this season, starting with this episode which revisits the series’ by now hoary trope of “sacred spaces” either on or within mountains. Though repetitive (at least for those who have seen previous seasons of the series), this episode does feature some interesting anecdotes (as, frankly, do most of the episodes in this season). There’s some emphasis on India this time around, with cave paintings that (of course) seem to depict aliens and their spacecraft, and an interesting visit to an insanely high shrine in a cave atop the Himalayas.

Mysteries of the Sphinx. While hardly revelatory in its information, and ultimately only tangentially related to supposed aliens (ancient or otherwise), this is one of the more generally compelling episodes this season, recounting both the relatively recent as well as the more ancient histories of the famous icon. There’s some interesting information about the actual excavation of the Sphinx starting in the 1920s (an era more commonly thought of in terms of Howard Carter and King Tut when it comes to Egyptology). Along the way, old wives’ tales like the Sphinx’s missing nose being attributed to Napoleon’s sharpshooters are debunked.

Aliens Among Us. This episode starts out with the whole NSA surveillance issue and Edward Snowden’s leaks, and then makes the predictable course correction insisting that all this high tech paraphenalia in our modern lives actually came from ancient aliens. Just for good measure, conspiracy theorists can find a segment dovetailing the Illuminati with a logo recently used at the Hague.

The Genius Factor. This is another generally fascinating episode which would have done better completely divorced from any supposed alien connection. The episode deals quite forthrightly with a whole host of unexplained phenomena—within the context of actual ideas, inventions or concepts that rather unlikely suspects have come up through the years. One interesting vignette deals with a guy who received a bad beating one evening and then became miraculously able to hand draw fractals.

Secrets of the Mummies. This is another fitfully interesting history lesson that has some salient information but which just seems silly when it’s all stuffed into a shaky thesis involving aliens. The episode details not just the expected efforts of Egyptians, but even older customs that predate the Egyptians (sometimes by as much as centuries) in a number of unlikely locations like Peru. There’s also a kind of disturbing segment on “self-mummification,” a practice of certain Buddhist monks in northern Japan in days of yore.

Alien Resurrections. Well, you have to give this episode props for one thing: it manages to go from Jesus to zombies in its pre- credits tease. Again the alien connection is tenuous at best, but some of the anecdotes, like that of an Arizona woman named Pam Reynolds who was kept in surgical stasis for well over an hour during a brain operation, are quite interesting. Probably the best segment deals with an Indian girl named Shanti Devi in the mid-20th century who insisted she was the reincarnation of a woman from a neighboring village. Mahatma Gandhi actually got involved and proclaimed the girl truthful. This real life Bridey Murphy story has nothing to do with aliens, but provides the episode with one of its more involving stories.

Alien Messages. Okay, here’s the thing, Ancient Aliens producers and (especially) its talking head contingent. If you’re going to go around espousing theories that are questionable to begin with and then repeatedly reference the Bible as your source of information in support of your theses, you probably need to get the name of the book correct. It’s Revelation (singular), not Revelations (plural). The rest of this episode plays out at about the same general intellectual level as that issue, with visits to places like the Nazca Lines.

The Great Flood. Though this episode starts with the famous Bible story, it soon broadens out to include a number of other cultures which have had similar tales as part of their folklore. There’s some data about “asteroid diversion technologies” that may interest some viewers, and another sequence about the Dead Sea Scrolls, including a scroll which details an unusual Noah birth story which suggests (to one talking head, anyway) that Noah “may have been” an alien.

Hidden Pyramids. While this episode ultimately gets to the famous trio of structures at Giza, it spends a considerable amount of time globetrotting to a number of unusual locations (including far underwater) where huge monuments have been discovered. The oft repeated thesis of a global energy grid which includes the pyramids takes up a significant portion of this okay episode.

The Vanishings. Okay, let’s just cut to the chase: it was alien abductions that caused all of the strange disappearances documented in this episode. With that stunning revelation (singular) out of the way, this episode actually has a number of rather interesting segments, including one about an Inuit tribe in the 1930s that apparently disappeared among a lot of disturbances in the sky. Some of the episode, including yet another trek to Easter Island to discuss the giant monoliths there, seem to have little to do with either vanishings or, frankly, ancient aliens.

The Alien Agenda. Well, it’s taken Ancient Aliens seven circuitous years to get around to it, but finally the “ultimate truth” about what all these visitors from other realms are up to is revealed in this episode. Or not. This episode has the flat out funniest segment in this season, and perhaps every season, with former Canadian defense minister Paul Hellyer opining to a room full of befuddled elders that there are scads of aliens, all with competing strategies, running around the Earth at this very moment. Performance art indeed.

Ancient Aliens: Season 7 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ancient Aliens Season 7 is presented on Blu-ray by a coalition including Lionsgate Films, A&E Networks and History with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As with previous seasons of this series, there's a patchwork quilt quality to the various source elements utilized. The contemporary interview segments look decently sharp and well detailed, with a natural looking palette and relatively well defined contrast and black levels. CGI is kind of hit or miss, with some elements (like a binary code transforming into Hebrew) looking pretty spiffy, and other elements (a lot of the animation involving things like spacecraft or asteroids) looking pretty soft and ill defined. Archival footage can often look pretty ragged, and the series has the tendency to utilize less than pristine stock footage to establish various locales.

Ancient Aliens: Season 7 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ancient Aliens Season 7 features a frequently bombastic DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that tends to exploit LFE probably a bit more than it actually has to, courtesy of a glut of sound effects that tend to whiz through the surround channels like an arcade game ball that's slightly out of control. The bulk of the series is the narration and/or the talking heads segments, and while those are obviously narrow, fidelity is excellent. There are no issues of any kind to warrant concern.

Ancient Aliens: Season 7 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

While both discs in this set have an "Special Features" menu choice, that choice only points to bookmarks.

Ancient Aliens: Season 7 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm personally praying for the aliens (ancient or otherwise) to reveal themselves as soon as possible, not just to shock the living daylights out of Mankind and hopefully usher in an era of peace and goodwill, but to finally put this increasingly ridiculous series to bed forever. There is data of passing interest in virtually every episode in this season, but the whole alien connection is, well, too far out to ever generate anything other than rolling eyes. Technical merits are okay (video) to excellent (audio) for those considering a purchase.