Forgotten Television: Project UFO

Ezekiel saw the wheel. This is the wheel he said he saw.. These are Unidentified Flying Objects that people say 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 a search for the truth. What you are about to see is part of that 20-year search.

The above quote is the opening to Project U.F.O. and showed images of what real people recount seeing in actual U.F.O. sightings. The show has two U.S. Air Force investigators, Staff Sgt. Harry Fitz (Caskey Swaim) and Major Jake Gatlin (William Jordan) working with the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on what was known as Project Blue Book.  Their mission is to investigate all U.F.O. sightings. The show is a dramatization of actual sightings recorded by the Air Force in the real Project Blue Book, which was in existence for 17 years. Gaitlin believes he saw something that he can’t explain while an Air Force pilot and that is why he took the assignment with Blue Book.  The duo attempts to prove that each sighting was real by disproving all other possible explanations. The second season Gatlin is replaced by Captain Ben Ryan (Edward Winter). According to my memory, the first season of the show was actually called Project Blue Book but was changed the second season due to ratings and the producers feeling the title didn’t convey that it was a science fiction show.

Project U.F.O. is an American television drama created by Jack Webb and ran for two seasons on NBC starting on February 19, 1978, and continuing until July 19, 1979. Jack pored over the Air Force Blue Book files looking for his episode ideas.  This would be his last show before his untimely death of a heart attack in 1982.  Jack Webb is mostly known for his creation of Dragnet, in which he also starred in as Sgt. Joe Friday.  Throughout his career he created many television shows, mainly focusing on the first responders of the Los Angels area.  Both Dragnet and one of his other creations, Adam-12, had the full support of the LAPD, to the point that when he died, he got a full Police honor and buried with a replica LAPD badge bearing his character badge number.  Co-star, Caskey Swaim, had no significant acting experience but was believed to add diversity to the characters as a southerner with a pronounced accent.  Throughout the series, the recreation of the “flying saucers” was mainly done with miniatures made by the company Brick Price Movie Miniatures, which is now known as Wonderworks. Most of them were thrown together pieces from toy model kits.

There is a reason that this show is mainly forgotten, because it was mainly boring. This isn’t a show about alien invasions or even government conspiracies. It is mainly a recreation of actual accounts given by witnesses of U.F.O. sightings. We don’t get aliens as sympathetic or evil characters and there is no exciting story concerning world domination. Each episode puts a loose plot line around a single incident and tries to drum up some sort of conflict which just ends up feeling artificial and forced.  I do have to remind my current self, what it was like for my past self in 1978. We did not have the plethora of science fiction series to choose from.  There was no streaming services and we mainly have 3 channels to choose from, so looking at this series from the eyes of the 1978 me, I remember loving this show and finding the recreations of true U.F.O. sightings fascinating, giving this 9 year old boy hope that life existed out there!