Project Blue Book Episode 8 Review: War Games

This Project Blue Book review contains spoilers.

Project Blue Book Episode 8

This week’s episode of Project Blue Book is dark, and I don’t mean just the lighting. However, as cynical as this episode might have seemed, the most conspiratorial parts of it are based on fact.

In this episode, orbs of light attack a group of Army Rangers. The UFOs are similar to the ones at White Forest in a previous episode. The “Green Fireballs” over White Forest were officially concluded to be advanced secret Russian technology. Hynek and Quinn are shown footage of the Ranger’s encounter by Generals Harding and Valentine and asked to investigate. Hynek and Quinn then head to Camp Knoll in Missouri, near the encounter to investigate.

When Hynek and Quinn gather the Rangers to question them about what happened, the Rangers are openly hostile towards one another. The meeting gets nowhere because the men end up fighting about the details of the event, and they are not just verbally arguing, they go to blows.

Besides their hostile behavior, the men also suffered physical effects from the encounter with the orbs. Most of them have burns on their bodies.

While investigating the forest where the encounter took place, Hynek and Quinn discover many shell casings. It demonstrates there was a firefight, but no indication of anything firing back. They also observe birds in the air exhibiting strange behavior before falling out of the sky dead. This leads to fears that the Rangers may have been hit with some kind of contagion and, like the birds, their symptoms may get worse.

further reading: 9 Facts About Project Blue Book

Meanwhile, Harding and Valentine enlist the help of Corporal Wells. Wells was part of a program to train soldiers to communicate with aliens. This also gives the impression Harding and Valentine believe the orbs that attacked the Rangers is alien. As Wells tries to contact the aliens, the lights flicker, and his coffee begins to boil. Wells says the aliens are here, and then the lights go out, and he sneaks off. As Wells runs off, the overhead lights burst as he walks near them. 

Later, the orbs return to attack the base. Quinn gets in a truck with the Army Rangers to investigate in the forest. The Rangers, still acting weird, turn on Quinn. Hynek shows up to help, and Quinn and Hynek run off into the woods. Eventually, they discover Wells. He tells them about his ability to talk to the aliens, then goes into a weird trance. They are talking to Wells in Hynek’s car, and Wells reached into the trunk and Hynek’s tool chest and takes the odd alien-looking device Hynek smuggled out of White Forest. It is as though something told Wells it was there. The object is now glowing from the inside.

Wells runs into the forest and Hynek, and Quinn runs after him. After an altercation, Quinn is knocked down, and Hynek comes to help, which allows Wells to flee. As Hynek helps Quinn, they discover mortar rounds and Hynek discovers the orbs were mortar explosions that released a gas.

Quinn and Hynek barge in on Harding and Valentine. Quinn is upset that they knew the Army Rangers were part of an experiment to test gas on the soldiers that makes them paranoid and aggressive. Harding and Valentine were not aware. They thought it was aliens. They then confront their superior who says he was tricking them into revealing their alien communication program that was hidden from him.

Wells is then later found dead, and the alien artifact is missing. The Man in Black finds it in the forest as if it was all according to his plan.

read more: Aliens in America: A History of UFO Storytelling

One of the appeals to Project Blue Book is its visual style. The production is great. The forest scenes, for instance, are sweeping as the action is going on, as opposed to close and claustrophobic like many forest chase scenes. The UFOs always look cool, and the special effects thus far are not hokey. 

Another draw for the show I have also seen mentioned in other reviews is the potential that Mimi and her girlfriend are going to hook up. It certainly is teased. In this episode, yet again there is a scene in which it seems like Susie is going to attempt to kiss Mimi. In this case, Mimi is feeling vulnerable, so she asks Susie to help her learn how to shoot a gun. During the training, Susie touches Mimi lightly like a gentle caress and stares into her face longingly. It seemed as though an attempt at a kiss was imminent, but it didn’t happen. I still wonder, is this going somewhere. Perhaps Susie will go against her bosses to protect Mimi because she is in love with her?

I do hope it goes somewhere and these scenes are not just thrown in there to get the fanboys excited. 

Project Blue Book Files

Not very much of what is in this show happened during the real Project Blue Book era, nor were they Project Blue Book files. However, several of the situations referenced, although conspiratorial and a little cynical, actually happened.

By cynical, I mean suggesting that our military would put soldiers in harm’s way to test weapons. The sad part is that this happened. In fact, in 2015, several veterans sued because of lasting effects due to experiments they had been a part of. One Army scientists explained that at least one of these tests was related to learning how to induce “fear, panic, hysteria, and hallucinations.” 

Whatever it was they used on these guys worked. One veteran explained how he hallucinated for 40 hours. During that time he had thought there were bugs under his skin he wanted to cut out with a razor, and he says he saw “animals coming out of the walls,” including “a huge rabbit” with red eyes. 

This is, to me, the scariest part of the episode. It seems that the most terrifying stuff happening to people is a result of other humans, not aliens.

As for the Army Ranger’s UFO encounter, Hynek was associated with a similar alleged incident. Although I do not find it in the Project Blue Book files, the incident took place in May 1951 during the Korean War. The witness recounted the event to an associate with Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies. Hynek created this organization to continue serious UFO research after the U.S. Air Force closed Project Blue Book. 

The transcript of the interview is online. In it, Francis P. Wall recounts an encounter he and his fellow soldiers experienced about 60 miles north of Seoul. 

The interview begins with Wall stating, “This event that I am about to relate to you is the truth, so help me God. It happened in the early spring of 1951 in Korea.”

Wall says the encounter lasted about 45 minutes to an hour and began during the bombardment of a village. He says a large “jack-o-lantern come wafting down across the mountain.” The object was moving very fast and flew right into artillery air bursts without being affected. The object then turned towards Wall and his group and “turned a blue-green brilliant light.” He requested permission to fire on the object and then did. He says he hit it and could hear a metallic sound when one of his bullets hit the object. However, the craft was not damaged. 

It then retaliated. Thus far the object had been silent, but it began “revving up.” Wall described the sound as “like, diesel locomotives revving up.” He says they were then attacked. 

“We were swept by some form of a ray that was emitted in pulses, in waves that you could visually see only when it was aiming directly at you,” Wall explained. “Now you would feel a burning, tingling sensation all over your body, as though something were penetrating you.”

Wall says they all ran and hid inside of bunkers and watched the object from their “peep holes.” He says the object hovered over them for a while and then took off at a 45-degree angle.

Three days later, Wall says, “the entire company of men had to be evacuated by ambulance.” 

“They had dysentery,” according to Wall. “Then subsequently, when the doctors did see them, they had an extremely high white blood cell count which the doctors could not account for.”

Researchers checked Wall’s military records, and he was in the military in the unit he claimed to be. However, no other witnesses have come forward.

According to the History Channel, soldiers submitted dozens of UFO reports during the Korean War, and “as many as 42 were corroborated by additional witness reports—an average of more than one a month in just over three years.”

Besides the odd UFO encounters and the Army testing on soldiers, you may be shocked to know that there is even some truth to the military program that wants to talk to aliens. The project was not set up specifically to talk to aliens, but it was set up to train and utilize psychic powers. Also, several of those trained on this project have gone on to use what they learned to gain knowledge about UFOs and aliens, allegedly.

I am referring to Project Stargate. The U.S Army initiated it in conjunction with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI)in the late 1970s. A psychic was enlisted to help develop a skill called remote viewing. Subjects would use a protocol in which they could “remote view” locations or people mentally. 

A declassified CIA document describes remote viewing as “the acquisition and description, by mental means, of information blocked from ordinary perception by distance, shield, or time.”

According to insiders, this method was already being utilized by Russians to see what the U.S. was up to, so the U.S. decided to use it to develop psychic spies that could watch them. Although this project was not used to communicate with aliens, many who were trained by the program used the skill to spy on aliens, and most of them believe they found something. 

One final UFO nerd observation I had was that in Hynek’s house there was a painting. The painting is very similar to that of Budd Hopkins, an artist, and alien abduction researcher. Watch the scene early in the show in which Mimi and Hynek are talking in the living room, then look at these pictures of Hopkin’s paintings and let me know what you think. Incidentally, the next episode is going to be about alien abduction.

Although the Project Blue Book series strays far from the more boring truth of Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s life, the real-life stories of UFOs and the military’s involvement are often stranger than fiction. The show continues to be exciting, and although most UFO Incidents have proven to be non-alien related, there is still what Hynek referred to as the “alien artifact” and the mysterious Man in Black. And, with the next episode focused on alien abduction, perhaps more information about the aliens is only one week away. 

Keep up with Project Blue Book news and reviews here.

Alejandro Rojas writes and blogs about science, entertainment, and the paranormal. Alejandro has spent many hours in the field investigating anomalous phenomena up close and personal. You can find him on Twitter here.