Depending on your metrics, Ancient Aliens might be the best show in the world – or the very worst. Unapologetically hysterical, consistently inconsistent, joyfully blinkered, its sheer chutzpah is surely to be commended. And if you haven’t seen it, I’m honoured to introduce you.
Are these ‘UFOs’ in the 15th century ‘Madonna and Child with the Infant, Saint John the Baptist’ proof that Europe was visited by aliens?
The basic premise of Ancient Aliens is that, a long-long-long time ago, extraterrestrial beings came to earth and… did things. Each episode explores a Different Thing They Did – from everyone’s favourite conspiracy theory that aliens built the pyramids, to aliens living underground, to aliens fiddling with human DNA and making mythical creatures like minotaurs and chimeras, there is seemingly no end (or coherence) to the alien agenda.
Every premise is equally impossible, equally bewitching, explained with the utmost sincerity over 40 minutes and some pretty spectacular graphics. I also need you to know that we’re on season 16; as such, and by this point, there is almost no phenomenon that Ancient Aliens has yet to attribute to extraterrestrial agendas. And yet, the episodes keep coming.
ArrayCrossed Wires
Of course, the theories are often mutually exclusive. Each episode of Ancient Aliens doesn’t so much build on the last as start afresh. In one, we’re talking about benevolent teachers who want nothing more than to hand over some zippy technology; in the next, we’re looking at ruthless beasts who abduct and impregnate humans while demanding to be worshipped.
Sometimes, contact with extraterrestrials is framed as an accident – a crash landing, or a chance encounter – and sometimes aliens have expressly visited earth to mine gold or enslave us. Why aliens would pop to ancient South America to give the Mayans a maths lesson (season 4 episode 1) thousands of years ago, only to reappear in the wild west to freak out cowboys in the 1850s (season 3), is anyone’s guess.
The talking heads on Ancient Aliens are one of its most wonderful features.
The series seems similarly ambivalent about what aliens look like; are they reptilian (seasons 8, 14) or humanoid (seasons 1, 12)? Do they have huge grey heads and black eyes (season 4) or angelic wings (season 2)? Who cares! We just like thinking about aliens! Man oh man, do we ever. The talking heads on Ancient Aliens – ‘Ancient Astronaut Theorists’, to give them their full title – are one of its most wonderful features.
ArrayAncient Astronaut Theorists Say Yes!
A recurring cast of characters, from crazy-hair meme guy to arched-eyebrow Professor, expound on every theory with palpable excitement. These people have devoted their lives to the pursuit of the unprovable, and that’s no accident – if they proved a theory, they’d have to stop talking about it. One gets the sense that the alien experts would speak to the attendant at the petrol station or the woman sitting next to them at dinner in much the same way that they do to camera: incorrigibly, obliviously, on a single subject.
Nothing brings these guys more joy than hitching one half-baked idea to a non-sequitur (the pyramids are ancient fuelling stations for spaceships, because of this hieroglyph) only for the voiceover to swoop in and Run. With. It. Growling, hyper-American in affect as well as accent, the producers have distilled Ancient Aliens’ commentary to a fine art. God, I love the voiceover.
If the voiceover were transcribed, it would surely be in caps…
Its formula is as follows: open with a preposterous statement, cloaked in the soothing credulity of an infomercial and rhythmic examples in the timeless rule of three. Expertly timed injections of words like ‘really’ (“could ancient aliens really be behind your mum’s car, the five times table, and this fridge?”) conjure the illusion of reasonableness; as though you’re the one being weird, rather than this ramshackle gang of obsessives. If the voiceover were transcribed, it would surely be in caps; the opening lines of season 3 episode 2 seem as good an example as any:
AN ENORMOUS CREATURE, BORN OF A RAGING INFERNO. (Zoom in and out on a drawing of said creature.) A VICIOUS THREE-HEADED DOG, GUARDING THE GATES OF HELL. (Superimpose some flames over a badly animated drawing of Cerberus.) AND MYSTERIOUS SEA SERPENTS, TERRORIZING MANKIND. (Boy, I sure hate being terrorised by those sea serpents.) BUT ARE SUCH MONSTERS JUST MYTHICAL CREATURES OF FANTASY? Buckle up, my friend. You’re about the hear the world’s least compelling argument that they aren’t.
ArrayStory of Stories
Monsters are a recurring theme. Anything even lightly mythological is Ancient Alien catnip; for this show, there is no such thing as a story. Every account of a deity, from the Vikings to ancient Sumerians to Christian angels and Greek goddesses, can be (unconvincingly) reframed as a FACTUAL record of an ACTUAL encounter in our distant past. Taken as a whole, that’s probably Ancient Aliens’ wildest claim of all – that human beings do not make up anything, in any circumstances, ever.
The fact that many civilisations have watched the stars, lined up their monuments with constellations, and shared ideas about those twinkling lights, isn’t a touching testament to the universally captivating night sky. It is proof that aliens co-opted city planners and gave seminars to our ancestors about space travel. That every society has its particular tales, handed down from generation to generation, isn’t the lynchpin of shared moral standards; rather, those stories – Athena coming from Zeus’ head, Thor controlling lightning – are not only literally true but simultaneously true, too.
ArrayAll Too Human
Duty done, we can turn to what it is that makes Ancient Aliens so singular. Logic duly tossed out of the window, connections firing like a badly wired circuit board, the show’s rotating panel of Ancient Astronaut Theorists exemplify that most human of traits – ironically, it’s the very trait that their ideas write out of our history. Making sense of the world, drawing parallels and finding meaning: they’re telling stories!
For all its purported myth-busting, Ancient Aliens shows myths being generated in real time. Giorgio Tsoukalos, perhaps the show’s best-known face since his meme-ification, has no more evidence for his claim (season 6 episode 7) that legendary Chinese emperor Wang Di rode into the sky in a cauldron than Wang’s own subjects did back in 2700 BC. What Tsoukalos and the ancient Chinese lacked in proof, they more than make up for in passion; a hunger to understand, but also to fit an existing narrative.
I’m not an expert on ancient China (let alone ancient astronaut theory, that most vaunted of intellectual preserves) but I don’t find it hard to imagine the story of a beloved emperor not dying but leaving, in a way that proved his supernatural powers, would be comforting and useful to uphold the legitimacy of his descendants. For Tsoukalos, the story serves another function – another brick in his ever-growing wall of Alien Evidence, which supports not only his (weird) career but also his worldview.
ArrayAliens, aliens, as far as the eye can’t see
That last point, I suppose, depends on whether or not we take Tsoukalos at his word. I’m the first to advocate a healthy dose of scepticism – is this man for real, or has he just stumbled into an easy, well-paid gig? – but some cursory googling suggests he’s as convinced that everything which has ever happened is down to aliens as he seems on the show. Somehow, that’s important.
Incan ruins? Aliens. Kingly sceptres? Aliens. The Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge, Satan, mummies, the American Civil War, Druids, ghosts, tattoos, Leonardo Da Vinci and the number three? Aliens, aliens, aliens.
Incan ruins? Aliens. Kingly sceptres? Aliens. The Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge, Satan, mummies, the American Civil War, Druids, ghosts, tattoos, Leonardo Da Vinci and the number three? Aliens, aliens, aliens. When every question has the same answer, one’s ability to understand the world is limitless. When everything you’ve ever been told – by governments, schools, newspapers – is either a cover up or an error, there’s no telling who you’re smarter than. If only you (and your fellow astronaut theorists) know the truth about life, the universe and everything, you might feel very special indeed.
I’d need to draft in a psychologist to tell me why I love this stuff so much. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be taking trips into similarly bad-brilliant shows – nonetheless, it’s only fitting to begin any conversation about hate-watching with the mother of all rubbish. In an era of fake news and digital overload, it can be hard to know who’s telling the truth. Maybe that’s what makes Ancient Aliens so appealing/appalling: here, there’s no doubt at all.
