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    Ancient Aliens

    Who on Earth* watches this shit?

    It's not the first time I've seen it but it is the first time I've given it five minutes of my undivided attention. I think the question I most want answered is, just how much of a money-grabbing tosser is the narrator? The talking heads are all on it because they genuinely believe the bollocks they're spouting, clearly, but the narrator too?

    And the folk they get on as 'experts' to (to pick an example I've just seen) reconstruct the face of a 3,000 year old elongated skull - do those people know what show they're going to be used on, do we think?

    A new episode has just started which from the look of the intro spiel is going to be about CERN. I wonder whether they've got any CERN scientists on for a chat (I don't really).

    *Open goal I know.

    #2
    Ancient Aliens

    I think the one I saw was about the "landing strips" in the Atacama desert.

    Spurious bollocks of course, and IIRC that German geezer was in it... von Dannekin?

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      #3
      Ancient Aliens

      Erich von Däniken, Gero.

      This episode's big reveal is that the invention of the Large Hadron Collider was foretold in the Vedas. And obviously the gods who handed the Vedas down to humans were actually aliens. (Also apparently 'hadron' is pronounced 'hey-dron'.)

      Imagine being one of these people. Imagine reading Plato or the Bible or Gilgamesh or the Vedas and only being able to find them interesting if you pretend they're all talking about aliens.

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        #4
        Ancient Aliens

        I love a good bollocks theory, me.

        If Jesus was an alien basilisk*, who could take the form of a human, I can understand why they killed him.



        *A basilisk (Jesus lizard) being chased by angry Romans.

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          #5
          Ancient Aliens

          Caveat emptor, Sam: isn't it reasonably foreseeable that a series called Ancient Aliens is going to be a bit shonky?

          The thing I find most disappointing in documentaries is when shows purporting to be about ancient history are padded out with endless sequences of people scuba diving. Oh, and dramatic reconstructions too.

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            #6
            Ancient Aliens

            Oh yeah undersea archeology shows (always the Med, never off say, Orkney) and their shit CGI reveals bring me out in hives almost as quick as hearing the Tristram Hunt like tones of Dan Snow.

            The worst though is the Beeb's full tilt rush to embracing speculation and at best contested theory as Science Fact (and this seems to have got worse since they sold their soul to Discovery). That awful ex Apprentice goon had a pisspoor show on Vesuvius, which was more or less making shit up. Then there's the mad haired Sheffield sounding Egyptologist, always discovering some Important New Evidence about one of the Sexy Pharoahs (Cleo, Nef, wee Tut).

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              #7
              Ancient Aliens

              Ancient aliens are very passé. Secret Nazi weapons are where it's at.

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                #8
                Ancient Aliens

                Benjm wrote: Caveat emptor, Sam: isn't it reasonably foreseeable that a series called Ancient Aliens is going to be a bit shonky?
                Oh of course, but it's shown on something called The History Channel, for crying out loud.

                Mind, History doesn't actually ever show any history stuff at all, just awful reality shows and shit like this (and, Stumpy will be pleased to hear, a hell of a lot of made up stuff about the Nazis). It would be more accurately called The Conspiracy Theory Channel.

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                  #9
                  Ancient Aliens

                  I think they have a very strange definition of what History is.

                  For example, today the shows are: Pawn Stars x6, Counting Cars x10, Counting Cars Supercharged x2, Forged in Fire x2 (making blades out of weird stuff), Milwaukee Blacksmith x9, which takes one from 10am to 1am tomorrow.

                  Not much history.

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                    #10
                    Ancient Aliens

                    Exactly. Right now down here they're showing Ancient Aliens, followed by something which shows up on my TV guide as Búsqueda Alienígena (which translates as 'Alien Search', but they change the titles slightly in Spanish so I don't know what it's called really), then Decoded Miracles, then something that from the description looks like a reality show in which a bunch of people have to live on an island, then a Treasure Hunters double bill, then a The Price of History double bill (think Antiques Roadshow but with American guns rather than fine bone China) then a bunch of things which (from the ads I saw last night) look like Dragons Den rip-offs.

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                      #11
                      Ancient Aliens

                      We don't have The History Channel but a fair amount of this guff turns up on Channel 5 further down the line, which is itself a helpful warning sign to approach with caution.

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                        #12
                        Ancient Aliens

                        I believe that by showing all repeats, the History Channel is giving us the history of the History Channel, and is therefore adhering to its core identity of being a channel about history.

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