jdjordan-35731
Now, this series IS entertaining- I enjoy a lot of UFO stuff; maybe it's the slight frisson of fear I get from people's reports of strange experiences. However, the producers / scriptwriters (and 'expert' commentators) frequently exaggerate the original accounts and include frankly untrue material for dramatic effect. This makes the series utterly useless if you want to be informed about UFO phenomena. For example, the show about the Rendlesham Forest / RAF Woodbridge and Bentwaters incidents of 1980: We are told that a USAF sergeant is the security commander of an airbase with nuclear weapons in a foreign country- rather above his pay grade! The narrator tells us that, because it's during the Cold War, when the USAF men realise that the lights they see are not due to a crashed aircraft, their mission changes from "search and rescue to shoot on sight"- and the dramatization shows us men prowling the woods with M16s. But this just isn't true. ALL the various original (USAF) witnesses state they left their weapons at the East gate before leaving their airbase, just as well as they would have no jurisdiction whatsoever off-base. The idea of USAF men on a shoot-to-kill mission of their own devising on Christmas night in the English countryside is daft- and was never claimed by the USAF witnesses. By 'embellishing' the facts (i.e. lying) for dramatic effect, Close Encounter's producers undermine ALL the remarkable claims made in the series (there are factual inaccuracies and anachronisms in other episodes). This doesn't help us understand the original sightings any better, so the show is for entertainment only.
benjaminwg
Production values and acting are far above the norm for these sorts of recreations. It's not embellished like Fire in the Sky, either. Quite objectively handled subject matter. Those presenting the cases are the most reputable around. My only real complaints are the limited number of seasons and episodes, and the slightly annoying tendency to repeat and recap after each commercial break. There are many more cases worth elucidating for the public in this format, and I can't imagine the recap repetition being that useful -- does anyone start watching a 20 minute show DURING the commercials? DVR is so common that all it served to do was take up the valuable time in these short two-parters.
Peter April
I have to admit that first season contains many events already shown in many previous TV series such as: Malstrom Airbase incident, Kecksburg incident, Phoenix Lights incident, Japanese Airlines incident over Alaska and Rendlesham Forest incident. Although these episode were still interesting to watch due to nice re-enacting of the events with intriguing acting and high quality computer animations (which most of other UFO series lack of). Besides these, there were also many episodes in season which 1 included incidents from 21st century. Thankfully, non of the episodes contained Roswell "incident" (now clearly debunked as Project Mogul balloon), 1800s Aurora Texas incident (debunked as hoax) or even over exploited Betty and Barney Hill abduction. Second 2 is even more interesting as it contains less known cases, including 21st century encounters.In general, this is TV series with high quality animations and with well detailed recreation of events. Episodes are well edited and are full of coherent interviews with investigators giving an interesting perspective. End of each episode contains short and interesting analysis with little assumptions being projected - they give quick opinion of skeptics and briefly show some photos/documents collected during investigation. Series gives clear view of events and leave it to the audience to decide what they think about these encounters. I consider it to be, currently, the best UFO series after Alien Mysteries. Complete opposite to sensationalist, cheap and awfully edited Hangar 1.
eb999
Having read and seen a lot about UFO sightings, I was hoping this show would be informative and interesting. However all it does is rehash already widely known cases - and poorly! It's a 30 minute show which devotes all of 15 minutes to some of the most intriguing encounters ever. If you are totally new to this subject, you may find this interesting but I suggest that everyone else stay away.There are some interviews with "experts" but none with the actual experiencers and they don't even show photos (except briefly at the end) of the people involved. I wonder why this show even exists. I don't mind hearing about old cases as long as they provide new insights or information - but this show doesn't!The only plus is that the graphic representations of craft are very compelling. In fact these are the only reason I've watched a few of these shows. Of course, I have no way of knowing if the representations are close to what was actually seen, but they are "pretty" as an earlier reviewer mentioned.
