Message posted by Peter Merlin on October 10, 2009 at 12:05:44 PST:
Indeed, the latest Area 51 television epic, an episode of MysteryQuest will air on Wednesday, Oct. 14th at 10pm on The History Channel. They lured me in with the promise that their "expedition based investigative series" would focus on the truth about Area 51 instead of the mythology. As usual, it was a lie. Bear in mind that the name of the series is MysteryQuest, not MysterySolved. You will have to wait for my long overdue trip report for full details but, suffice it to say, we are once again treated to the usual hype about extraterrestrials and the standard cammo dude encounters, night-vision cameras, and Tikaboo Peak hike. I will reserve judgement until I find out how they edited the episode but I plan to watch with trepidation. I tried my best to inject some genuine facts but usually got slapped down by the field producer ("No, don't tell us that. We have to preserve the mystery!"). There will be melodrama. Don't believe everything you see. There will be some actual drama, too. The unprecedented air show by a helicopter and an F-16 from Groom during the Tikaboo hike was every bit as exciting as it will no doubt appear on the show. For some of the created drama, I played along grudgingly while trying to slip in as much truth as possible. I felt sorry for Nevada MUFON director Mark Easter, brought on as the token UFO believer and forced to constantly raise the ET hypothesis even though he prefers to avoid such behavior during a real investigation. Mark demonstrated a laudable willingness to study the available facts before jumping to any extraordinary conclusions. For the show, however, he was forced to do things and say things that were out of character. Glenn Campbell chose the path of least resistance. He suggested that we just give them what they want, no matter how ridiculous. I grew up in Hollywood, so I understand how the system works, but I still fight it. Glenn is perfectly happy just playing along and we did mange to have some fun with it. I will reserve most of my comments for after the program airs and I will provide even more detail in my trip report. I will leave you with a few comments: There was never any danger that we would cross any lines or have any actual problems with base security. The night-vision cameras that promised to reveal "anything flying over Groom Lake" were just hooked up to VHS tape recorders and had such wide angle lenses that any aircraft would only appear as a tiny unidentifiable dot. For more information about the crash site in Railroad Valley, see my 2005 trip report or read my book, "X-Plane Crashes." There is no mystery about it. The "biggest lens ever taken up Tikaboo Peak" didn't reveal anything special because it was too shaky and the 26 miles of warm air between the peak and the base was too unstable to provide a clear image. No (well, few) teenagers were harmed during production of the Tikaboo segment. Enjoy, but don't expect this to be anything great. At least it should be better than "UFO Hunters" but that is still setting the bar pretty low.
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