Season 1, Ep. 1: "Other Voices"

Okay, this is a weird one. Although the original pilot was 'In Search of Ancient Gods' the ongoing series begins with this episode and it's a doozy.

Marcelle Vogel - a 'research chemist' who studies plants with 'sophisticated machines' and his 'mind's inner eye' - is teaching children about how plants can 'speak'. It's very hippy like (and occurs in California) and unconvincing.

This episode details 'scientific' efforts to identify whether or not plants have emotions and can communicate, as well as understand what's going on around them in some way.

There's an interview with a lady who works at Denver botanical gardens - Dorothy Retallic's combined areas of study are classical piano and plant biology. She has a degree in this. She literally plays piano in a huge hothouse. Her experiments involve playing classical music to one group of plants (under scientifically controlled conditions which involve two aquariums being used as mini-hothouses with stereo speakers inside) and 'hard rock' (which sounds like generic early 70's stuff...kind of like the band Vanilla Fudge). Via time-lapse photography we see that various plants (flowering plants and vegetables...again, this is apparently to show that things are being done 'scientifically') grow towards the speakers emitting classical music and shrivel and die when exposed to generic 70's blues-rock guitar. I suspect that Dorothy was rigging this somehow and slipping the hard rock plants some Roundup in their water or something. Then again, I'm cynical that way.

We then see an interview with Kendall Johnson who performs Kirlian Photography on plants. Again, it's portrayed as science but comes across as weird hippy style mumbo jumbo, albeit entertaining mumbo jumbo. There's some talk about people with 'green thumbs' being able to 'heal' plants or something. My opinion is that this guy has been smoking too much of a particular kind of plant which has led him to formulate his 'theories'. Lots of discussion of auras and the like. Fun but silly.

The real showstopper, however, is Cleeve Baxter (the ex C.I.A. lie detector man) and his polygraph machine. He attaches an electrode to the leaf of a potted plant and then deliberately scratches his own hand with a scalpel to see if the plant will 'react' via the polygraph reading. I'm not even making this up. He gets no reaction and then - based on the highly scientific assumption that he has performed the experiment too often and so does not respond 'authentically' - he somehow convinces one of the ISO crew (Kaye Hoffman) to allow him to cut her hand with a scalpel instead. The poor woman looks worried. I can't blame her.

This time the plant 'reacts' (so does Kay) and there's a change in the polygraph reading. I reckon it's rigged and was all done with magnets or something. Then it gets even weirder.

Cleeve Baxter decides to try and attach an electrode to a small test tube filled with yoghurt. He then gets a second container of yoghurt and 'kills' it with some antibiotics. I'm really not making this up. The yoghurt attached to the lie detector machine doesn't react. Then, with a different jar of yoghurt, Cleeve adds some milk, thereby feeding the bacteria in the yoghurt. At this, the test tube attached to the machine 'reacts' because it 'senses' that the other yoghurt's being fed. I remain unconvinced but it's a hell of a thing to watch, and Leonard Nimoy's narration is hilariously straightforward. His description of Baxter's ideas ("All living things feel the pain of other living things in an elemental manner. Scientists call this primary perception") somehow makes it even odder ("Does the simple life form in the bacteria actually have feelings?").

Len, it must be said, is in fine form. He's never sending up the material being presented, as weird as it is even by 70's standards, but plays it all totally straight. How he manages to do this is anyone's guess, but his mannered voice and neutral delivery somehow manage to make you want to listen to this insanity. He even suggests that plants might be "psychic messengers" who are able to send ideas to human minds as we sleep - that this is why people are able to have psychic premonitions and so on. The plants have spoken to us via our subconscious minds. Of course, Len's wardrobe choices are magnificent. He's wearing a black blazer, red turtleneck and grey slacks and he looks a million bucks. I guess a million bucks is overstating things. He looks well dressed for the era.

The other thing about this is the incidental music, which is moog-tastic. I'd forgotten how all-pervading the synth music is in this show (I haven't re-watched it in a long time). It's simultaneously weird and soothing.

Anyway, I'm not convinced that plants are psychic or that they're intentionally communicating. They may be reacting to some kind of electrical phenomena - which is what the Kirlian photography stuff suggests to me - such as electromagnetic interference or something like that. Or it may be that plants create their own type of EMI and that's what the polygraph and the camera are recording. I didn't see any evidence for the fact that they had emotions or any form of consciousness. Instinct for sure - plants grow towards the sun because of heliotropism - but not any form of intentional communication.

Anyway, I'm going to watch all of these and blather about them whether anyone reads this or not. I dare anyone reading this to watch this show and not enjoy it. It's insane but fun.

I remember watching several episodes, but I don't really remember any of them with any detail.

Is this the Leonard Nimoy narrated series from the 70's?

Ooo, a great complete series viewing! I like this concept.

They're all on Yootoob. Onlookers can watch as the reviews come out.

Yes



I thought you'd like it.





Yes! This is part of what makes this a fun one to do - you don't have to go and buy them (although you should because they're great), so everyone can join in.

It's been awhile since I've heard bacteria being called a plant.

I wish these In Search Of shows actually came with the commercials that were shown during their commercial breaks.

So do I (I'll do another review later this evening, it's only 5:55pm as I type this). You'd freak out at the 70's Australian commercials I would've seen, and I'm sure I'd be equally entertained by the American ones from then as well.

We'll have to be happy with observing 1970's men's fashion through the lens of Leonard Nimoy's sartorial stylings. Not to mention the stuff some of the other people are wearing. Kendall Johnson - the Kirlian photographer - is dressed like an extra from the movie Boogie Nights. Random people in the street all look like characters from The Partridge Family. It's fun just seeing the clothes, cars and houses of that era.

I should mention that, in the first episode, Len does all his 'narrator speaking to camera' stuff in a studio set that's simply an all black background with some random light-coloured panels attached to invisible wires and a sort of podium with a potted fern on it. I'll detail the development over time of the set he's shown on, and I think in later episodes he even does some of this 'direct to camera' stuff on location for particular episodes. The whole show, as a production, fascinates me. I doubt it would've lasted as long as it did (six seasons!) without Len as presenter.

I'm sure the gravitas he somehow brings to even the most absurd ideas stems from his experiences aboard the Starship Enterprise. No one else could've made this stuff seem anything other than ludicrous. I don't know how, but Len manages to make the idea of a test tube filled with yoghurt being attached to a polygraph machine sound plausible. It's still hilarious but his voice and the way he intones certain words just cause you to suspend your disbelief in order to see what happens next instead of saying "This is crap" and switching it off. He really makes the whole show and is very much the star of it. You want to hear Len explain why some clown in a paisley shirt who uses his "mind's eye" to communicate with plants should be allowed to teach this sort of nonsense to impressionable young children. Len makes you feel like it's somehow not as insane as it sounds, even as he's asking questions about whether or not plants are psychic. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever heard or seen - Len makes everything sound as if it's worth considering. Even if you know it's impossible, you sort of hear him describe these concepts and think "Yeah, well...maybe". I don't think anyone else could've gotten away with it for as long as he did.

Season 1, Ep. 2: "Strange Visitors"

Okay, this one is about traces of lost civilisations in North America. Some underwater images are shown, suggestive of sunken Atlantis, perhaps? It continues with some haunting Native American singing and the very first ISO re-enactment. Admittedly, it’s a guy dressed as a caveman moving some rocks around at sunset, but it’s the very beginning of something that ISO became the all-time champion of – the re-enactment. I know they didn’t invent the idea per se but they perfected it, turned it into an art form, and it begins in this episode.

Len – still just a disembodied voice at this stage – discusses the idea of adventurers from ancient times, and then launches into a discussion of Mystery Hill in New Hampshire and the ruins there.

Leonard then makes his dramatic appearance in the same set as before, only this time the backdrop is blue and the various panels feature photos of ‘mysterious’ stuff (Urquhart Castle near Loch Ness, Stonehenge and a generic picture of a galaxy…all in B&W).

We get a brief description of the fact that Native Americans built in such a way so as not to leave any impact on the land – the builders of the Mystery Hill ruins did not build in the same manner. They built in stone which is (we’re told) uncharacteristic of the indigenous people of the area. There’s some intriguing footage of an indigenous ceremony of some variety as Len’s dulcet tones lull us into a willing suspension of disbelief. I’m readying myself for the outlandish claims and weird theories…they can’t be far away.

We then see Robert Stone – described only as a ‘Bostonian’ (which I don’t think is a job description in the traditional sense) – who has purchased the land at Mystery Hill so it can be studied by archaeologists and be open to the public for “the enjoyment of tourists” (cha-ching!). So far, so good.

Professor Hans Holtzer is with Stone, and they’re wandering around the ruins making various comments as Len’s voice over work weaves its magical spell upon us. Holtzer is a “noted author and student of antiquities”…I suspect Holtzer and Stone see some gold in them thar (Mystery) hills and…well, why not? There’s no harm in that. Of course it makes anything they say next seem less plausible and more motivated by self interest but that’s the price we must pay for the re-enactments and Len’s wardrobe costs. Not to mention that massively expensive set. This was during the days of the oil crisis – carboard was expensive.

We then get a comparison of Pueblo architecture (mud brick) with the ruins at Mystery Hill (stone), and some more atmospheric indigenous singing with footage of Pueblo ruins, the setting sun, and some descriptions of how harsh life is in this area, etc.

Next we see the Medicine Bowl Mountains of Wyoming. Atop one of these peaks is the ‘Medicine Wheel’ – a geometric arrangement of rocks - that appears to have been an ancient calendar. Or so Len assures us. Of course, we believe him without question. He also tells us this is distinctly different from the ruins at Mystery Hill because the Medicine Wheel has no dwellings or other structures in the area.

And…yes there is it. At long last. The bonkers theory…the ruins at Mystery Hill remind Holtzer of ancient temples found in parts of Europe. Specifically, they remind him of a pagan temple.

Leif Erikson. 10th Century. Blown off course. Did he arrive in Newfoundland or…was it somewhere else in ‘The New World’? I love the way this show primes the pump – you know very well the central premise is going to be totally bonkers but they build up a pretence of plausibility for just long enough to get you to the point where you’ll agree that the idea is sort of plausible (maybe) when they actually state it outright. No matter how crazy it is, this show will state it outright at precisely the correct moment to get you to agree with it on principle up to a certain degree…without actually having to commit to agreeing with it 100%. You can sort of equivocally agree with what’s being said without thinking to yourself “I’m a moron for agreeing with this stuff”. It’s a sublime achievement.

So we’re now being told that ships capable of reaching North America existed not only long before the era of Christopher Columbus but also long before the time of Leif Erikson…which is technically true. There’s a suggestion that vessels may have come “From the East”…so I guess we’re talking about China prior to the 10th Century.

Suddenly there’s a room full of vacuum tubes and assorted scientific equipment (complete with 70’s style computer ‘beeping’ noises as simulated by ISO’s trusty synth player). A lab in Massachusetts is burning a piece of coal from Mystery Hill (under scientific conditions, naturally) and the scientist doing this looks exactly like someone working for A.I.M. would look like out of their yellow suit. He’s very, very much a 70’s guy. It’s awesome. He also has various beakers filled with smoking liquid, so you know he’s a real scientist. He’s not just some re-enactor in a white coat, he’s the real deal. You can just tell. He even writes on a piece of paper on a clipboard in front of some blinking machinery. He’s 100% authentic.

So we get a brief explanation of carbon dating, and the determination that the coal sample is “at least 3000 years old”. So someone lit a campfire “one thousand years before the birth of Christ” there. So thank you very much to science.

We now see a guy called Osbourne Stone (who we later learn is the cousin of Robert) who’s the ‘curator’ of Mystery Hill (I swear I’m not making this up) showing Professor Hans Holtzer another area of Mystery Hill.
So the other brother Daryl explains that there are a series of stones which align with the sunrise and the sunset at various times of the year (in a glorious Bostonian accent). There are atmospheric shots of the sun doing exactly that.

Next comes the inevitable footage of white-robed ‘druids’ wandering about in Stonehenge, as Len describes how the druids of old performed human sacrifices and the like in bygone days. They mumble something about ‘cultivation of the mind’ as Len warbles about human sacrifice.

Then we see it…an altar at Mystery Hill which the other brother Daryl describes as the ‘sacrificial table’. Then he mentions the ‘oracle tomb’ and the ‘oracle chamber’.

The theory goes that the previous assumptions about Mystery Hill (a failed British colony that had been forgotten by history) are contradicted by the presence of these ‘oracle’ things and the ‘sacrificial table’ (which could’ve been used for butchering animals for all we know).

Then the comparison with the ‘Delphic Temples of the Mediterranean’ is made. Just when we thought we’d heard it all, Len hands us that one. Boom.

Enter Harvard Archaeologist Barry Fell. Expert on unexplained North American ruins. He sounds like an Australian (which made me proud). He claims that America was a ‘melting pot’ of European people for much longer than we currently believe. Ancient Greeks in Mississippi. Vikings in Canada. The whole thing. It’s wild, but somehow presented as being totally plausible to the point of mundanity.

Now we’re getting to the meat & potatoes of the whole idea…something only hinted at previously…Minoans, Phoenicians …and…(wait for it)….but no. They stop short of mentioning Atlantis. They’re not ready to unleash that one just yet. They just mention the fact that there were various oceangoing civilisations, ones which might have collapsed. Maybe into the ocean. Like ancient civilisations often tended to do, apparently.

Then it’s back to Barry Fell who admits to Professor Holtzer that his colleagues at Harvard have “very mixed feelings” about his theories. He points out various carvings of ships that were found in North America which resemble ancient Phoenician vessels.

Osbourne then shows Holtzer something called the ‘G Stone’ (a weird carving on it looks kind of like the letter G). Holtzer identifies it – very confidently – as something from the Phoenician alphabet. So these guys all back each other up. Which is pretty cool of them, really. Len assures us all that it’s significant that Holtzer and Fells have agreed about the Phoenician link, and says there’s “doubtless more hard evidence to come”.

Then Len says “Everything feels right, and seems to fit” (which could just be him describing his outift).

Speaking of which, Len’s ‘to camera’ bit at the end sees him seated in his nifty but minimal set, and dressed in a black blazer, grey turtleneck and grey slacks, with some rather nice black boots. He looks very much like a TV host of the time – urbane and contemporary (by 1976 standards), but also reassuringly traditional.

He tells us that –

“The same curiosity which may some day take us to the stars has apparently propelled mankind throughout its long centuries of wandering on this planet. We have evidence now that America was known to great civilizations which had become dim memories long before the birth of Christ. Much of what those strange visitors knew may be lost to us…forever”.

Deep.

I’m fairly convinced this isn’t an ancient temple. It doesn’t look especially like one and the rock carvings could’ve been added later for all we know. I think it has a more recent origin – it’s not that difficult to place a stone on a hill where the sun rises and sets. You just have to be there when it happens to see where to put the stone. It seems dodgy to me, so I remain unconvinced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Stonehenge

"Then Len says “Everything feels right, and seems to fit” (which could just be him describing his outift). "

I laughed.

I may watch this just to see the brief mentioning of Viking stuff.

It's very brief, I must warn you. Like the amount of evidence they based this theory on.

Season 1, Ep. 3: "Ancient Aviators"

Well, here we go…the Peruvian Andes. The suggestion that “thousands of years ago, man may have known how to fly”. So the theory is now just being thrown out there. I guess the Chariots of The Gods concept was no secret by now so they just decided to lay it on the line right from the get-go.

I suppose the episode’s title is a giveaway.

Then we get some classic narration from our old mate Len –

“The desert plain called Nazca is host to a strange menagerie; a nine-fingered monkey, a huge ungainly spider, giant birds and mammoth lizards. They are cut into the dry earth, visible only from the sky”.

Then we see Len walk onto his blue set with the enormous photographic blow-ups. Echoing the show’s credits, he’s got a huge picture of Amelia Earhart behind him as he tells us – in his dulcet tones – about “discoveries that don’t seem to fit our comfortable notions about the past”. Standing between a photo of Amelia and the generic ‘distant galaxy’ one, Len is resplendent in a black jacket and white turtleneck as he looks seriously into the camera and tells us this stuff.

“We want to believe you, Len…please tell us more” we think to ourselves as we ponder the import of his words. Surely Len wouldn’t speak to us of inferior theory and conjecture? Len would only present theory and conjecture of the highest standard. We’re sure of it. We know it in our hearts.

He says that our distant ancestors knew about flight. That they “…may have had help in realising their dream”. Help? But who was there in the ancient past to help them to fly? What could Len be referring to. We are left to ponder as we see some footage of someone in a hang glider.

As we’re told that every ancient culture has legends of men who flew, the incidental music takes on its own ethereal beauty as the man in the hang glider soars over mountain ranges to the strains of a monophonic synthesizer. It’s almost as wonderful as the old Blue Stratos commercials I remember from my childhood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VScLgjuAsM

At this point Len relates the standard Icarus & Daedalus myth about human flight being known to the ancients so as to imply that the idea was more than just myth. As ever, we’re asked to suspend disbelief in order to entertain the notion of “maybe” or “what if?” so we can enjoy the conjectural mystery tour Len’s taking us on.

Damn, this hang glider thing is going for ages and ages.

We’re then treated to a brief mention of Leonardo Da Vinci’s design for a flying machine, before we get some footage of the Jantar Mantar, an ancient building in India designed as an astronomical observatory, the records of which describe a flying machine called a Verana (I think Len’s been misinformed – he’s either meaning to say Vimama or Revana. I think the writers made a mistake).

Cue the Ancient Egyptians (it was only a matter of time), and Osiris. Pyramids are landmarks for aviators, etc. Dramatic minor-scale synth music. Ancient cultures all associate stargazing with flight (both things are to do with the sky, so it makes sense). Various assertions are made o that they can be conflated into another conjectural ‘theory’ which Len’s building up to. I think we all know what that theory is, but Len’s not giving anything away…not yet. He must’ve been a hell of poker player, Len. He’s playing this one close to his immaculately tailored chest.
The Maya! They flourished for fifteen centuries! Yet…they used no roads to connect their “lavish” cities. They might have flown (or walked, but…well)! It’s all quite mysterious.

Now we get to the Wright Brothers. They produced a mechanical solution to the problem of heavier than air flight…but was theirs the only possible solution? Not according to Len. He’s still not willing to come out and reveal the totally bonkers theory as yet. He’s letting it brew.

Back to Nazca. The lines and animal carvings are “…intended to be seen from the air…but by whom?” Len intones. Inviting us to engage in theory and conjecture.

The Mojave Desert near Barstow California – a drawing of an ancient man “stares upward”, carved into the ground. How did a “Primitive Indian tribe” create this drawing (watch it, Len…it’s a lucky thing political correctness wasn’t a thing back then)?

We now see a practical ‘experiment’ in the Mojave Desert. Some guys in hot air balloons want to direct some other guys on the ground to see if similar drawings to the ones at Nazca can be produced. What this proves I’m not sure (it doesn’t prove the ancient Mojave people had hot air balloons, that’s for certain), but it all looks like a lot of fun and they’re outdoors in the fresh air so what’s the harm? At least there’s no hang gliding going on. We’ve seen enough of that for one episode.

Now for a brief history of hot air balloons: 1783, in France is where they were first demonstrated and the technology is virtually unchanged to the present day and…now we get an actual piano playing the incidental music! That’s new.

We hear a stirring speech about the “Purity” of balloon flight “…an exhilaration undampened by the drone of engines or the blur of supersonic travel”. Apparently it has now been demonstrated that balloons “could have” been launched by ancient North American people...but that there are “other explanations”. I wonder what those could be?

Now we hear from Dr. William Clewlow (Chief Archaeologist at the University of California, who was present at the ‘Barstow Experiment’ we’ve just seen…where some guys went up in a hot air balloon and spoke to some other guys on the ground via walkie talkie) who states that Shaman in indigenous American cultures were believed to be able to project their spirit selves out of their bodies and ‘fly’.

Now we get the actual showstopper. Finally. It’s bonkers theory time and Len outlines it with gusto. Like a food reviewer describing a gourmet meal, he tells us –

“Perhaps the symbolism of myth refers to flights that really occurred? Indian Shamen may have been intermediaries who travelled between a primitive culture on Earth and a more highly advanced one in the sky”.

There we have it, served on a silver platter. The theory laid bare in all its demented glory.

Back in Peru we see some drawings on a rock “…more than ten thousand years old” that (might) depict people welcoming visitors from the sky.

Incas had roads but not the wheel…were the roads for other kinds of vehicles? Could the Incas (who did not have the wheel) have had aircraft?

Cue some footage of the circular ruins of Sacsayhuaman (which looks suspiciously like a wheel to me), which could’ve been…well, literally anything. A calendar? Who knows?

We now see “the most convincing” evidence for ancient flight at the National Museum of Aeronautics in Lima, Peru. It houses some stones with Nazca style art on them. They feature something that resembles a Space Shuttle (if you squint) and the Peruvian authorities are “reluctant to discuss them” (who can blame them?). There’s some freaky pictures of people riding giant birds…but this is more like John Norman’s Gor novels than anything Erich von Däniken ever wrote.



We see little golden statuettes that look like aircraft…but they could represent literally anything. They sort of look like toy aircraft, but they could be stylised birds or fish. It’s portrayed as a big deal but it’s not conclusive by any means. The Moog music’s back in full force and they’re laying it on with a shovel.

Then Len says that the Nazca lines were accidentally discovered by a pilot “in the 1920’s” but that “nobody really knows” what they mean or why they were made. No theory or conjecture…just cold, cruel factual information. Even Len can’t hypothesize his way out of this one.

Dr. Maria Reich is a German mathematician has spent thirty years studying the Nazca lines and “…after nearly half a lifetime of sleeping in an Adobe hut and working under a blistering sun” even she doesn’t know what they mean. Bummer.

Len wonders if future generations will look at the ‘ruins’ of Cape Kennedy and understand that 20th Century civilisation was “reaching out to the stars” (sad synth music with some electric piano).

It’s not until Len’s final ‘direct to camera’ bit that he finally plays the Ace he’s had up the sleeve of his turtleneck all along when he states –

“There’s evidence that man has lived on this planet at least three million years…were the inhabitants of other worlds idle all that time? Or were they too reaching for the stars? Perhaps realising their dream long before we could even speak it? And could it be that what it has taken us so long to do was merely to copy something we saw in our remote past? The answer may await us in the stars – a reunion of pupil with teacher? It’s not so wild a dream”.

Amen. Or…perhaps A-Len would be more appropriate.

Either way, we don’t see Len from the waist down so his jacket and turtleneck are all we see this episode. Maybe the chair had been stolen so he didn’t get to sit down?

I’m always unconvinced by the Ancient Astronaut stuff, even though I loved the idea as a kid. I can accept ancient human civilisations having aircraft (the science works now so it could’ve worked thousands of years ago), or even being able to go into earth orbit in a spacecraft (same deal). I can’t accept alien visitors and stuff, however. I think – and this is my own pure theory and conjecture – that there have been technologically advanced human cultures in the remote past, and that less advanced cultures saw them as supernatural beings and told stories about them. That’s my opinion, based on no actual evidence whatsoever.

Series 1, Ep. 4: "Bermuda Triangle"

Swirling synth music, a list of aircraft and ships that have vanished without a trace off the coast of Florida. Len's setting the scene.

The Coast Guard are shown responding to a crisis of some sort (one of 25 a day, Len tells us). This seems to be legit and isn't a re-enactment. They're probably just doing a drill and letting ISO film it but they're not actors (that much is clear).

Len appears – his set now back to black, and his photographic panels now in full colour! Len himself wears a dark jacket, light grey turtleneck and dark grey slacks, as he strides purposefully through his photographic set. The photos are of ancient monuments like a South American pyramid and some kind of Middle-Eastern statue.

Len tells us that some experts have dismissed the Bermuda Triangle as not being a mystery. Len begs to differ, of course, and he tells us that science “cannot discount the personal stories” of unusual goings-on out there. Len is sceptical of the sceptics, and we trust his word implicitly. Len then introduces Lt. Cmdr. Frank Flynne (who looks disconcertingly like Jim Nabors) and Frank begins to relate his own story while standing on a boat which is in a dock in Florida.

Cut to the re-enactment! A young man (clearly Frank in his younger days) re-enacts being witness to a “solid green line” on the radar scope. So far, so good.

It looked like they were detecting land according to he and his re-enactment colleague – but they were 165 miles off shore. Interesting.

Then they saw a “grey wall” in front of them. There was a “grey mass just sitting there”, and conditions were calm. The wall seemed to continue for a long way. They shone lights on it, hooted their horn at it, but could only see a “dull glow” at the top of the wall. They suddenly noticed some “throat irritation and difficulty in breathing”. The ship’s engine starts having trouble. The Captain orders them to leave the area. They’re not sure what they saw, and no one can explain it.

Now Bob Spielman, a pilot, tells his story. He’s flown “extensively” in the Bermuda Triangle, and a plane he owned (but wasn’t piloting) was involved in a strange incident. There was no issue with the weather, visibility was excellent, etc. He does note that the area is known for interruptions to communications for no explicable reason. This is what happens, and the plane goes missing and never arrives at its intended destination. It cannot be contacted. His plane simply vanishes, despite being piloted by an experienced person, and when the wreckage is recovered the next day it’s found that the aircraft is intact except for one wing having been torn off by an unknown but powerful force. The five people aboard are dead (we don’t hear the details). Again, there’s no explanation for this.

Enter Ray Smithers. Ray’s an “amateur researcher” who’s seeking answers to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. He dresses like an Elvis Impersonator. Not a very good one, though.

He’s a professional radio broadcaster, and he presents a program discussing the Bermuda Triangle. Suddenly, 45 minutes into the broadcast, his fellow radio guy answers what he thinks is a phone call, but all the phone lines he answers are dead until he gets to the sixth and final one…and there’s a recording of the call.

It’s VERY creepy, and the guy on the phone says something about auras, and some sort of “millient” council, and “the timeless void” of the Bermuda Triangle where everyone who’d vanished is “alive and well”. He mentions people in the council being in contact “with this planet”. It’s creepy as hell. I’m not going to write it all down but if it’s a prank it’s a really good one. It’s certainly weird.

Ray’s audience have a huge reaction and the call is a topic of discussion for some time. Ray concludes that “something strange is happening” (Ray’s only an amateur investigator so I’m cutting him some slack). The phone call is weird and apparently couldn’t be “verified”.

We then hear Len discuss the history of the Bermuda Triangle while various “ye olde” illustrations of ships are shown– English vessels in the 18th Century go missing there, etc.

Ships such as The Marine Sulphur Queen (early 20th Century) and Proteus (1941), as well as the Navy sub Scorpion (1968), go missing without a trace. We also hear about a C1-19 plane that goes missing in 1965.

Then, of course, we get to Flight 19. This is the most widely documented Bermuda Triangle story I know of. In December 1945 some Navy planes go missing. I won’t repeat it all because it’s easily researched. We do hear from Carlton Hamilton who’s an aviator familiar with the area, and an air-traffic controller. He was the air traffic controller when Flight 19 went missing; he lost contact with them while they were at 4000 feet and they were scheduled to climb to 6000 feet. He mentions that once the planes lost contact with the control tower they sent out search aircraft. One of these search aircraft lost its ability to communicate with the tower while out searching, without explanation ( a ‘PBY’ aircraft, apparently). It also went missing. 250 planes and seagoing vessels were out searching for Flight 19 the next day. No wreckage was ever found of those five planes or the missing 'PBY' search aircraft. Hamilton was the last person to speak to any of them.

Hamilton says that he and a friend were once flying – just off the shore of Miami beach – and they lost “all lights and all navigation”. They had to perform an emergency landing on the shore, and all the lights and communications returned just as they were landing. There was, according to Carlton Hamilton, no explanation for any of this. Hamilton calls it the ‘Devil’s Triangle’ and says that there’s something that occurs “above eight to ten thousand feet” in the area that cannot be explained. He also states his “theory” that it’s some kind of environmental effect or hazard that originates “at the floor of the ocean”. He doesn’t explain why, but that’s what he reckons.

Len then concludes – from his amazing set – that “It seems far fetched to presume that the Bermuda Triangle mystery has been solved. To say, in essence, that science need not investigate is to destroy the rationale for any scientific quest” (he really was Spock!). He tells us that there’s an “Unknown force…there in the Bermuda Triangle, begging for investigation”.

Well…the re-enactments are pretty short and unadventurous in these early episodes but I know they get more elaborate as time goes on. They’re still finding their feet at this stage.

Len’s really fired up when he narrates this one and he amply demonstrates why he’s the heart and soul of this show in this episode. He’s not mincing words, he’s straight up challenging science to investigate…whatever this is. It’s invigorating. Probably insane, but invigorating nonetheless.

The Bermuda Triangle is one of the things I loved most as a kid. There are too many odd stories about that area spread over too lengthy a span of time to ignore. The ocean’s a treacherous place and ships and aircraft can just disappear anywhere at all. Even so, it seems statistically unlikely that this one area is so renowned for it. I can’t help but engage in my own conjecture and agree with Ray Smithers (the bad Elvis impersonator). He’s right to say something strange is happening. I don’t know about the weird phone call – because it all sounds very hoaxish to me even if it is creepy – but I agree with his ‘conclusion’. As for Carlton Hamilton’s idea; while I agree that it’s something environmental I’m not sure why he thinks it originates in the ocean. I don’t know what he’s basing that on.

Basically, I think Len’s right about science needing to do more than dismiss this concept. It seems as if something weird is going on but I don’t buy the idea that it’s anything other than some kind of magnetic or atmospheric phenomena unique to the area. Something unexplained is happening but it’s got nothing to do with the weird phone call or aliens in my opinion.

I used to picture the Bermuda Triangle as a real triangle, like a Nexus of All Realities where ships and planes just disappeared.

In reality it was just a large general area where it seemed like more things happened (statistically) than in other sectors of comparative size.

I had a similar view of it - that stuff just vanished into thin air after entering a mysterious fog or something. It's still weird that it's got this history going back hundreds of years. It's not a recent observation by people or a modern-day urban myth. It's been going on, to an unusual degree, since before the invention of aircraft.

They don't go into it all here but I know there are more episodes to come that discuss the Bermuda Triangle - there's a third season episode called 'Bermuda Triangle Pirates' which I'll get to in time.

My next review will be the very first ISO investigation into Bigfoot. I'll get to that at some point in the next day or so. The one after that? Killer Bees. It's going to be fun to write about this stuff. I've found that writing about it makes me focus my thinking on the topic at hand. This is part nostalgia and partly a rediscovery of my genuine interest in unexplained weirdness, which is an aspect of me this TV show directly fostered during my childhood. So it's not just nostalgia but a sort of self-rediscovery that motivated me to start this thread.

How soon until the Big Foot and the Loch Ness episodes? I remember those as being pretty good.
And I later visited Urquhart Castle myself in 1987, so it would be nice to see their footage of the place.

Bigfoot's next (later tonight, my time), and Loch Ness is episode 20.

There are specific Sasquatch/Yeti/Apeman episodes in seasons one, three, four, and six. I could've sworn there were more but I'd have been wrong. There were also things from the 70's like The Mysterious Monsters (1975), hosted by Peter Graves and various other Bigfoot related "investigations" that featured re-enactments and so on. I do recall the ISO stuff as being several notches above most in terms of the quality of the stuff they presented and the range of experts they interviewed who made the whole idea seem completely reasonable. I was convinced (and remain so to this day) that we simply don't know everything there is to know about the wilderness and what lives out there.

If, in the case of something like the Sasquatch/Yeren/Yeti/Yowie, we're dealing with a creature that has human-style intelligence (if not quite human level intelligence) then its ability to avoid us becomes less of a shock and more of a reason not to go camping in remote areas.

I'll mention this guy's work -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Paulides

Also, it's easy to find Peter Graves' Mysterious Monsters documentary on the YooToobs. It's worth a look as it's essentially what I think the producers of ISO were inspired by. It's really the template for this type of "unknown mystery" genre, even more so than the Erich von Däniken stuff was. ISO lifted the format from The Mysterious Monsters but Graves never projects the enthusiasm for the subject matter that Nimoy manages to convey. Whether it was real enthusiasm or just good acting I really don't know...but I tend to think it was because Nimoy was simply a better actor than Graves was.

Series 1, Ep. 5: "Bigfoot"

Wow…we begin with a re-enactment from Bigfoot’s point of view. Interesting. Miners in Ape Canyon are shooting at some Bigfoot(s) through the walls of their log cabin in 1924, in Washington. Len tells us that Bigfoot encounters are not always peaceful. Things look pretty hairy (sorry) for the miners, but then we’re told there were no injuries.

“Indian lore” has a long history of Bigfoot/Sasquatch. Bigfoot has a “mystic significance”. Okay.

Suddenly...

Len’s outside! In a city! Atop a building! He’s talking about our modern world of “concrete and steel” where we are “…far removed from the Indian lore of Bigfoot”. There’s no arguing with the facts, is there?

Len’s rocking the grey slacks, the turtleneck and what looks like a Gabardine jacket. This is his first talk to the camera outside his studio set with the giant photographs. It’s working for me. We’re told that Bigfoot has evolved “parallel” to ourselves, and then it’s right into the meat-and-potatoes of the episode.

Grover Krantz is the first cab off the rank. He has a cast of a jawbone he says is from a Gigantopithecus and he’s not afraid to use it.

We hear Krantz’s opinion of the infamous Patterson footage. He’s persuasive and urbane and extremely convincing (for now). He also makes the point that Patterson wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer (he met Patterson) and it was unlikely he could’ve faked such a thing as the famous footage. Annoyingly we see only stills from the footage not the actual thing. So here are two stabilised versions of it -





We hear Len tell us, as we see footage of a forest shot from a helicopter, that Bigfoot’s range is thought to be from Northern California to British Columbia. I have no idea about how far that is but it sounds like a long way.

Lewis Allway and his daughter Cindy had been to their “folkses” (Lewis’ parents) when, at 10:30pm, he drives past a Sasquatch. We’re in real re-enactment territory now, with in-car footage and the whole shebang. He and his child see the Sasquatch walk across the road. It’s all very exciting, although I was distracted by the fact that I loved Lewis’ car and wished there were still cars like that on the roads of the world. Anyway, the re-enactment is still from Bigfoot’s perspective and there’s a lot of grunting. We see Lewis in his car pointing to 'Sasquatch' and then we see Lewis' (excellent) car as it whooshes past the Sasquatch.

Sherriff William Clausner (of Skamania, Washington) is seen next, discussing having seen tracks and having taken many reports of Bigfoot over the years. He looks very official and lends some kind of credibility to the whole affair.

James Strayhan and Harold Tesky are next. In Colton, Oregon they saw “something by the roadside”. The guy speaking is a real character, and I like him. He also has an incredible car. The creature is four feet wide and seven feet tall and it stank to high heaven. The smell stayed in his car until the next day.

Now we see Peter Byrne and his BFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) team, walking up a mountain with some camera equipment. He’s very British and very crisp in his manner. He’s a reformed big game hunter and appears to have more money than sense. He’s been to Nepal. He presents like a Monty Python caricature come to life. He’s sort of dressed like a stereotypical big game hunter and has the air of some kind of fictional character. He’s likeable but odd. Larger than life.

Now we're in Mount Hood, Oregon. 1974. Jack Cochrane and Ferman Osborn are loggers. These guys are interesting. They see a ‘creature’ covered in hair that moves with a ‘glide’ while it walks away from them as they're seeking shade in the woods. The re-enactment "from the Sasquatch's point of view" is used to good effect here. The older guy (Osborne) chases the thing. Cochrane draws what they saw.



Byrne now makes a cast of a Bigfoot print, explaining what he’s doing as he goes about it. He speaks about the unique musculature of the tracks.

Krantz then makes some good points about how hard it is to fake footprints. He mentions that if someone wanted to create a convincing cast, such as the one he’s holding, it would have to be done by –

“…a human anatomist who was a real genius…(who) had to have laid out thousands of these fakes all over the place and that just simply becomes impossible”.

Byrne then mentions that while there are many fakes, they’re easy to spot because they’re done by people looking for a quick buck whose efforts are usually transparently ridiculous to the trained observer.

Then we get to the guys I call the three amigos – Don Peterson, Jack Sullivan and James Hewskin are three self-styled Bigfoot Hunters. They believe they need to shoot a Bigfoot in order to prove they exist. All of them look like folk singers, with the guy on the far right looking almost like John Denver’s brother. Looking at them, I believe they’d all happily shoot at a Bigfoot. I’m not sure they’d actually hit it if they did shoot at it but I have no doubt they’d have it in them to shoot at one. They want to shoot one because “Pictures ain’t gonna be enough”. Maybe that could be the title of their first single? "If everyone had a guitar instead of a gun...", etc.

More POV re-enactments with lots of weird grunting and then Len asks the serious question –

“Does it have to be killed to prove it exists?”.

It’s a very Spock-like moment and thanks to his former role Nimoy is an old hand at posing unanswerable rhetorical questions (I imagined him saying “Captain” at the end of that particular line…but I digress).

Stevenson, Washington have put in place a ten thousand dollar fine (or five years in prison) for killing a Bigfoot. So hopefully the three amigos don’t do their Bigfoot killin’ in that particular neck of the woods.

Stevenson’s District Attorney Robert Leak tells us –

“We didn’t feel that if there was such an animal that the animal had ever harmed anybody or that it had done anything to deserve to be shot or captured”

Then Krantz says – ominously – “We need a piece of the body. Nothing else will be accepted”.

Previously the voice of reason, Krantz now sounds creepy, and a bit mad-sciency. I think it’s the hairstyle. Or maybe it’s his sudden manic intensity when he says the words “piece of the body” as he looks into the camera.

Then there’s a sound-bite war between Krantz and Leak which is kind of dramatic. I enjoyed the editing here. Leak says he doesn’t think a dead one is needed to prove there are living ones. Then Krantz ramps up the mad-science even more and says…

“My preference would be to locate a hunter who has shot and killed one and, perhaps because he thought he killed a valuable animal or a peculiar human, he might not have said anything about it. But if he would come forward perhaps we could examine the place where he killed it and we might find a few bones and then the whole thing is settled right there. If we don’t find such an old kill then the only alternative remaining is to kill one now”.

That’s Krantz’s nice-guy cred blown out of the water (for me, anyway). He gets full marks for coming across like the creepy mad scientist who causes mayhem in a B-Grade science fiction movie of the 1950’s, though. He goes from being the voice of reason to the voice of…well, incitement to kill…very quickly.

D.A. Leak warns Dr. Krantz (via the power of film editing) not to kill a Bigfoot in his County or the ordnance will be enforced. He looks like he means business, too.

All of our previous experts then get to chime in on the matter, with the three amigos being very much for killing a Bigfoot (‘natch) and the very British Byrne saying it would be "morally wrong to do so", etc. It’s all very interesting and constitutes the first time there’s any real conflict in an episode of ISO. It’s science versus morality and it’s interesting to see how this was put together. They’re almost making it seem as if a Bigfoot kill is imminent, that this is a burning question that must be answered, and the producers, writers and editors of this show are clearly masters of presenting argument upon counter-argument while avoiding any actual solid facts. They get even better at it as time passes, but this is the earliest example of them flexing their ‘theory and conjecture’ muscles to do more than present ideas and eyewitness accounts and have Len ask rhetorical questions. They use the people who have some skin in the game to present an actual debate and it won’t be the last time they employ this technique.

Byrne eventually says something like “What if the one we kill is the last one?”

Krantz’s reply? Classic. He says –

“My answer to that is if they become extinct, so what? If they’re not proven it doesn’t make any difference. We have a lot of animals that became extinct in the past and there’s nothing we can do about it and if this animal remains unaccepted who cares if it becomes extinct?”

Yeah. Dunno. He sounds SUPER creepy at this point.

We get even more POV re-enactments now, with Bigfoot grunting as he watches a helicopter fly above him (no doubt the same one that’s taken all of the aerial shots of forests in this episode) and Len speaks to us of man’s technology, of the inevitability of our finding Sasquatch some day and so on. I don’t know how they created the Bigfoot noises but they sound pretty weird. I’m imagining a Foley Artist grunting whilst in character, method acting his way into the mind of Sasquatch. "What's my motivation?" he might have asked the director "Grunt or you don't get paid" might have been his answer. He certainly earned his money.

Then we get an “Indian” perspective. Mrs. Joe Washington says that it’s not worth trying to ‘prove’ they exist because they can never be ‘civilized’. She describes Bigfoot as a type of ‘man’ who is “…gentle and goes about his own way”. She's saying there's no need to prove they exist, just let them be. She sounds more reasonable than most of them, in my opinion.

Byrne then says –

“The Gorilla is mentioned in Greek mythology, going back hundreds and hundreds of years and yet it was not discovered until the late 18th Century”.

Byrne also mentions the Mountain Gorilla not being identified until 1900. He mentions the Coelacanth as well. He’s using one of my favourite arguments here – we can’t ignore anecdotal evidence out of hand.

Back to Len for his final rejoinder on the subject. There he is, atop his skyscraper, in his Gaberdine jacket, speaking of how we must prepare for this first meeting between ourselves and Bigfoot.

“If we assume that Bigfoot is real and that men are closing in on this seemingly gentle monster then we must prepare for that first meeting. To have eluded us for so long Bigfoot must understand men very well. The burden will be on us to understand him. Bigfoot may well be waiting for some sign that we’re ready”.

I love this episode so much.

We cannot accept every story as fact – most ‘Yowie’ stuff I see is an obvious hoax. In fact I’ve never seen a single image or video that couldn’t have been faked. There’s something to be said, though, for the sheer weight of evidence, the number of reports by people from so many walks of life over such a lengthy span of time. How do indigenous people in places like North America and Australia have stories about apes when – according to conventional thinking – they’d never seen or heard of them? Why have tourists seen them? Colonial settlers? Politicians? Police? How can anyone see them if they don’t exist? If everyone who sees one is somehow having the same hallucination, or making the exact same mistake and misidentifying a bear, isn’t that just as unlikely as the presence of an unidentified animal?

Even if they’re all seeing a bear in America, how does that explain the Yowie, and its clear similarity to the Bigfoot? Why would people a hemisphere away be seeing and describing the same thing down to the smallest details? There are no bears* to misidentify in Australia. Why are people in China and Russia still seeing them? In fact, many places where there are large forested areas seem to have reported sightings of these things going back into antiquity. Usually these places are a long, long way from human habitation and in inhospitable areas featuring densely forested mountain ranges. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

Heart on my sleeve, I think it’s possible. I don’t think UFO’s are alien spacecraft (I suspect military activity where prototype aircraft and weapons are being tested). I don’t think ghosts are the spirits of the dead. I doubt 99% of everything I read and see and I always have. I’m sure plants aren’t psychic. I do think the Bermuda Triangle has some kind of freakish electromagnetic thing going on that messes with technology. But Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle are about the only things I can’t dismiss out of hand. Loch Ness is a tourist attraction, nothing more in my view.

Somehow, though, Sasquatch (and the Bermuda Triangle) strikes me as being potentially true simply because it’s a matter of us assuming we know everything. We just don’t. We dismiss it because it “couldn’t” be true. We’re kidding ourselves to think we know all there is to know. I think we mostly deny it because it makes us uncomfortable to think it could be true. We laugh because the idea makes us uneasy. My final remarks aren’t as great as Leonard Nimoy’s but that may be because I’m not wearing Gaberdine.

Anyway, I'm enjoying watching these and writing about them.

*Koalas are marsupials not bears and Drop Bears do not exist but you didn't hear that from me.

Just for fun here are the opening and closing credits from In Search Of!

Steve Austin solved the mystery of Bigfoot.

Steve Austin himself remains an enigma.

When I was young and impressionable I was fascinated by Barry Fell's theories about legions of ancient cultures visiting the Americas and leaving vague traces here and there. I even recall doing a report on it in school.

I owe him and the Bermuda Triangle people a sort of debt. Learning more about those two subjects ultimately taught me a lot about critical thinking and the importance of doing genuine in-depth investigation.