jdjordan-35731 Review of Close Encounters

Close Encounters (2014– )

Factual inaccuracies for dramatic effect ruin believability

[2/10 · 26 August 2017]

Now, this series IS entertaining- I enjoy a lot of UFO stuff; maybe it's the slight frisson of fear I get from people's reports of strange experiences. However, the producers / scriptwriters (and 'expert' commentators) frequently exaggerate the original accounts and include frankly untrue material for dramatic effect. This makes the series utterly useless if you want to be informed about UFO phenomena. For example, the show about the Rendlesham Forest / RAF Woodbridge and Bentwaters incidents of 1980: We are told that a USAF sergeant is the security commander of an airbase with nuclear weapons in a foreign country- rather above his pay grade! The narrator tells us that, because it's during the Cold War, when the USAF men realise that the lights they see are not due to a crashed aircraft, their mission changes from "search and rescue to shoot on sight"- and the dramatization shows us men prowling the woods with M16s. But this just isn't true. ALL the various original (USAF) witnesses state they left their weapons at the East gate before leaving their airbase, just as well as they would have no jurisdiction whatsoever off-base. The idea of USAF men on a shoot-to-kill mission of their own devising on Christmas night in the English countryside is daft- and was never claimed by the USAF witnesses. By 'embellishing' the facts (i.e. lying) for dramatic effect, Close Encounter's producers undermine ALL the remarkable claims made in the series (there are factual inaccuracies and anachronisms in other episodes). This doesn't help us understand the original sightings any better, so the show is for entertainment only.