A Tale of Two UFO Shows

A little over two weeks ago, a pair of UFO shows went on the air. One on the SciFi channel, one on the History Channel – both named “UFO Hunters”, both on the same night and time (Wed. @ 10:00pm EST). The similarity between both shows ends there. I was not particularly impressed with either show’s first episode (which is why I held off on this review for another week), but in the second week the differences between the shows started to emerge.

While on the surface, History Channel’s show seems to have better UFO hunting credentials (their team is headed by the editor of UFO Magazine), SciFi’s team seems much more qualified. Instead of having an old codger, a mechanical engineer, some guy with a scuba certification and an intern, the SciFi team has an electrical engineer, a social worker with a masters in psychology, an astronomer, a private investigator, and a respected psychotherapist. When you compare the two teams, it is easy to see which would seem more credible presenting evidence to the world at large. History channel’s team only has a single member with credentials respected outside of the UFO world, where SciFi’s team is littered with credentials and licenses. Aside from the makeup of the teams themselves, their investigations (at least as they are shown to the viewer) vastly vary in perceptible quality.

History Channel’s investigation seems to lack almost any science at all. Instead they do “experiments” that are nothing more than flashy demonstrations that look good on camera. For example in the first episode, they wanted to know if the alien “slag” reportedly ejected from a UFO could have caused a fire aboard a military aircraft. They had no evidence of the make-up of the alien substance, instead they formulated a “slag” that they knew would ignite under controlled conditions and burn through a thin sheet of aircraft aluminum (I suspect what they concocted was in fact thermite – a substance that is well known to burn extremely hot). In the most recent episode, they used a fish tank experiment to try an recreate the drifting of a crashed airplane on the sea floor. Their “experiment” lacked any respect to scale or measurements of any sort. Worse still, while this experiment looks neat on camera, actually calculating the drift of an object on the sea floor is best done by a physical oceanographer (though a mechanical engineer should be able to do the math too) by looking at historical current data and even that would be a best guess. Something that never was mentioned or shown on the show. While I have yet to see an experiment done on SciFi’s show, they pull a lot of hard data while investigating. They pull reports from the police and Coast Guard (and if possible talk to the persons involved with the actual investigation). They request radar tracking data from the FAA and have their astronomer look for any celestial phenomena that could explain the sighting. Even the witness interviews that the SciFi team conduct seem more thorough because they are conducted by a licensed private investigator that is used to having to sort though testimony to find the truth. The history channel’s interviews seem to be done by which ever team member (regardless of experience) is nearest the witness.

In the end, it seems that if you can only watch one of the shows, I would recommend tuning into the SciFi channel for your UFO Hunting fix. The History Channel’s show seems like a cheap dog and pony show, created for the sole purpose of cashing in on the UFO phenomena, versus SciFi’s thorough investigations that portray responsible UFO investigation.

UFO Hunters (SciFi Channel)
UFO Hunters (History Channel)