PROJECT BLUE BOOK – Season 1 Episode 4 – SPOILERS

Mimi‘s stalker turns out to be Lieutenant Fuller (Matt O’Leary), the guy who chased a UFO with his plane in Episode One. He has been following Mimi in an effort to speak to her husband. Fuller is not a well man, and when Mimi does not humour him in his paranoia, he decides she is one of his enemies. Fortunately, Susie has been listening in through that bug she had planted. (The mike they installed was quite sensitive. It picks up Mimi’s kitchen conversation clearly, though it is located in the study.) Susie shows up with a gun and chases Fuller away. Her timely arrival makes Mimi a bit suspicious, but she decides not to question her rescuer’s motives, at least not very closely.

Before all that happened, Mimi got tired of waiting for Allen to get home, so she and Susie (Ksenia Solo) went to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base together to demand information. They didn’t get much of a response, but, unknown to Mimi, Susie managed to sneak into a few places and copy photos of UFO’s. She contacts someone named Mikeal about them and the two converse in Russian over the phone. It is very probable that she is a Soviet agent. Her code name (or possibly her real name) is Clover.

Meanwhile, for reasons that are not explained, Hynek is flying to Alabama to meet Captain Quin (who must have been sent there to investigate Werner Von Braun’s UFO-related activities). Enroute, Hynek’s plane encounters a UFO.

After talking to a local farmer who tells them a hovering UFO killed 50 of his hogs, Hynek finds and photographs a complex pattern of crop circles. No details are given about the animals’ deaths, but the incident with the hogs (which is fictional) could be intended as an indirect reference to livestock mutilations (though those almost always involve cows and/or sheep). Later, Quinn and Hynek break into Von Braun’s lab and find what appears to be a humanoid extraterrestrial in a tank on life support.

When Hynek returns home, he finds out that Mimi is going to live with her mother for a few days and is taking their son Joel with her. One gets the impression that Hynek is not terribly upset about this development.

In the final scene, a saucer-shaped ship is towed from a hangar at Wright-Patterson. Von Braun and General Harding watch as a struggling pilot is forced inside. (Piloting this ship or another like it might be what drove Fuller mad.) The craft rises into the air and a force field with the appearance of a gyroscope forms around it. Then the craft vanishes.

It has been rumoured for many years that the extraterrestrial craft that crashed at Roswell was at least partly transferred to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (where Project Blue Book was headquartered), along with at least one deceased alien, but those rumours are still unconfirmed. (The Air Force found it necessary to issue an official denial in January, 1985, saying: “Periodically, it is erroneously stated that the remains of extraterrestrial visitors are or have been stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. There are not now, nor have there ever been, any extraterrestrial visitors or equipment on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.”)

This episode’s UFO incident is based on the Chiles-Whitted encounter over Alabama on 24 July 1948. The real Hynek, who worked for Project Sign at the time, blamed the incident on a meteor. Both the pilot and co-pilot of the Eastern Airlines DC-3 agreed that the UFO was cigar-shaped, about thirty meters long, with upper and lower rows of square windows (which makes it sound a bit like an extraterrestrial tourist bus). The incident was the subject of a top secret report by Project Sign that concluded that UFOs were of interplanetary origin. (The report was rejected by then Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt S. Vandenberg; it was declassified, and then destroyed.)

NOTES

Thomas Kretschmann (Werner Von Braun) has an as yet unspecified role in WAITING FOR ANYA, a drama based on the 1990 novel by Michael Morpurgo. Set in Southern France during World War II, the film stars Noah Schnapp as Jo, a young shepherd boy, and Jean Reno as his grandfather Henri. Jo undertakes the dangerous task of protecting Jewish children who have taken refuge at the nearby farm of a reclusive widow (Angelica Huston). Directed by Ben Cookson (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Toby Torlesse), WAITING FOR ANYA has completed filming in Lescun, France. There is no word yet on a release date.

Thania St. John, who co-wrote this episode of PROJECT BLUE BOOK, also wrote or co-wrote nine of the first season episodes of ROSWELL (the original series), and made her only acting appearance as a TV reporter in Episode 1.18 of of that show. (St. John also co-authored “Gingerbread” — Episode 3.11 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.)

Mercedes De La Cruz (Flight Attendant) will be Belle #3 in the second episode of MICHELLE‘S, a comedy web series created by and starring Angela Galanopoulos and Andrew Barber. Michelle owns a restaurant in the small town of Hope, British Columbia. Business is booming until Hank (Cameron Bancroft) a man from Michelle’s past, buys a competing establishment nearby. Hank has no problem using Michelle’s dark past against her, and will stop at nothing to dominate fine-dining in Hope.

Galanopoulos, who plays Michelle, told Emilie Peacock of the Hope Standard: “At least from an outside eye, [Hope] feels very secluded. So there can be this kind of drama that exists there, at least fictionally, where the outside world doesn’t really play a part.” The pilot is available on YouTube. Episode Two, Titled “Lunch is for Troglodytes”, will be available on Brain Bird Productions’ YouTube Channel on 6 February . Four additional episodes should be completed later this year.







