PROJECT BLUE BOOK – Season 1 Episode 6 – SPOILERS

The countdown to a nuclear test inexplicably starts too soon, and stops seconds before detonation. Shortly thereafter, the fake town designed to study the effects of the blast is buzzed by several bright green UFOs. Hynek and Quinn are sent to investigate. Unknown to Quinn, Hynek has gone over the heads of the Generals (to the Secretary of Defense?) and gotten his camera-matrix project approved. He arrives well equipped to photograph whatever flies by.

Green Fireballs are a type of UFO that, after Roswell, began to habitually appear in high-security areas. It seems possible that these are reconaissance probes that are less vulnerable to being shot down than their parent craft.

In 2010, U.S. Air Force Captain Robert Salas told The London Telegraph that he witnessed such an event first-hand on 16 March 1967 at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana (which at that time housed Minuteman nuclear missiles). “I was on duty when an object came over and hovered directly over the site,” he said. “The missiles shut down – 10 Minuteman missiles. And the same thing happened at another site a week later. There’s a strong interest in our missiles by these objects, wherever they come from.”

In the fake town constructed to determine the effects of nuclear weapons, Quinn spots someone who isn’t supposed to be there. He gives chase and catches one Edward Rizzuto, whose explanation for being there leaves something to be desired. Later, Quinn pokes around inside one of the houses and finds fake passports and a code book under a loose floorboard. The Generals tell him that Rizzuto is a spy.

Would someone really hide important papers in a place scheduled to be destroyed in an atomic explosion? Rizzuto the Motor Pool Guy is most likely working for the Generals, not the Soviets. (At the end of the episode, Secretary Fairchild confronts Rizzuto, but we don’t get to hear their conversation.) Quinn buys into the Generals’ spy stories and Hynek decides he can’t trust him anymore.

Meanwhile, in Columbus, actual Soviet spies are trying to use Hynek and his wife to get access to classified military materials. Susie (Ksenia Solo) encourages Mimi to find out what her husband won’t tell her about his work. Mimi unlocks the box containing Allen’s journal and reads part of it aloud with Susie in the room. Nosy neighbour Donna (Heather Doerksen), who earlier in the day ran into Susie and her “associate” (Currie Graham) as they were discussing things on a park bench, attempts to pay Mimi a visit, but Susie answers the door. Donna leaves quickly, but Susie’s associate is sitting in his car across the street from the Hynek house, watching.

Susie’s associate wants to pull out of Ohio because they are needed elsewhere, but Susie for some reason wants to continue to pursue whatever secrets Hynek might be privy to. After Susie explains about the journal, the associate (who really needs to be given a name) agrees that they should remain in Columbus, but tells Susie he needs a favour from her. It seems he has Donna’s body stuffed in the trunk of his car and he needs her to dispose of it.

The reason Susie wants to stay in Columbus might be to get out from under the thumb of this “associate”. (He is clearly her boss, and is clearly dangerous.) The murder might be the opportunity she needs to do that, if she can figure out how to kill the guy and pin Donna’s death on him without implicating herself. (She’s already established his violent nature by showing Quinn her black eye.)

Hynek is exhibiting aberrant behaviour. He imagines that he sees the deceased Lieutenant Fuller at the foot of his bed. When the streetlights in the artificial town blink on and off rapidly, they cause him to pass out. It seems possible that more was done to him than he remembers in the indoctrination center at the abandoned amusement park. The Fixer (who might be the guy who led Hynek to the amusement park) arranges to meet Hynek in a church, where he gives the physicist keys to a storage box. Like Mulder stealing files from the Pentagon, Hynek locates and opens the box. In it he finds an odd-looking metal artifact, which he takes with him.

Since he cannot trust Quinn anymore, Hynek has decided to trust only his wife. He takes her entirely into his confidence. When he hands her the artifact, she asks: “Shouldn’t it be heavier?”

From an article in the New York Times dated 16 December 2017: “…the company [Bigelow Aerospace] modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes.”

NOTES

Michael Imperioli (Edward Rizzuto) is Jay Ford in THE LAST FULL MEASURE the true story of U.S. Air force Pararescueman William Pitsenbarger, (played by Jeremy Irvine). Fellow soldier Tulley (William Hurt), and Pitsenbarger’s father (Christopher Plummer) attempt, with the help of investigator Scott Huffman (Sebastian Stein) to have the Air Force Cross he was awarded upgraded to Congressional Medal of Honor. A trailer is available on YouTube. THE LAST FULL MEASURE, will be released in the US later this year.

Christina Radish of Collider asked Aidan Gillen what most surprised him about the UFO cases dealt with by the show. Gillen responded: “What’s so remarkable is people’s rigorous sticking to their stories, no matter how fantastical it seems, or how ridiculous it would make them seem. A lot of these are from people who didn’t want the attention. Of course, some of them can be a hoax, set up by somebody looking for attention. There were commercial pilots, military pilots and air traffic controllers reporting the same thing, with a good degree of reluctance. So, when you put yourself on the line like that, and you stick to your story for the rest of your life, there must be something happening there.”







