Ancient Aliens: Season Four [Blu-Ray] by A&E Entertainment

Actors

• The History Channel

Format

• NTSC

Editorial Review

This History Channel series, which moved to H2 for season four, revolves around the idea that earlier civilizations developed their most advanced ideas by means of extraterrestrial influence. A range of speakers, from respected scholars to more conspiracy-minded thinkers (“ancient alien theorists”), sift through the evidence, while a dramatic score juices each revelation. The most famous participant, Erich von Däniken, whose 1968 bestseller Chariots of the Gods encouraged this mode of thinking, figures prominently. Viewers who've watched previous seasons will be familiar with the basic format, as well as the primary theories about alien-inspired architecture and the like, since there's significant repetition from year to year (“Alien Devastations” from season two, for instance, prefigures this set's “Aliens and Mega-Disasters”).

Shock-haired, dandily dressed editor and consultant Giorgio A. Tsoukalos presents some of the more colorful, if questionable hypotheses (to Tsoukalos, a close-fitting cap on a Mayan figurine represents a flight helmet). As he exclaims in “The Doomsday Prophecies,” an examination of the Mayan Long Count calendar, “Knowledge is the currency of the universe!” He also believes that aliens built Bolivia's geometrically precise Puma Punku. The most science fiction-like episode, “The Greys,” revisits abductions through the ages, including the testimony of a woman who claims medical experimentation by tiny bug-eyed men, while the farthest-reaching episodes involve Bigfoot and Leonardo da Vinci (some suggest he was a time traveler). As with Tsoukalos, author David Childress (Technology of the Gods) seems convinced that aliens have been mucking about in human history, even natural phenomena like tsunamis. Reenactments and computer-generated reproductions show how some of these scenarios might have played out. In drawing from archeological artifacts and historical data, there's educational value here, but if you're skeptical going in–you'll probably leave the same way. –Kathleen C. Fennessy