SERIES PREMIERE: Even though this is a new production from the History channel, don’t mistake it for unadulterated history. This is a 10-part series, designed as a sort of flying saucer-centric The X-Files, in which Aiden Gillen stars as Dr. J. Allen Hynek, one of the men in charge of the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book. That was the code name for the government’s investigation into unidentified flying objects, or what it termed UFOs. (Hynek was responsible for, among other things, coining the terms and values of Close Encounters, of the First, Second, and Third Kinds.) Project Blue Book existed from 1962-69 – and near the end of its existence, I applied for, and received, official acknowledgment from Project Blue Book for the formation of my own (one-man) organization as a Florida-based, teenage investigating group interested in flying saucers. They welcomed the help, but I was in it mainly for the acronym. My Project Blue Book-recognized group was called the Youth Investigations Committee on Unidentified Flying Objects – and if you said the acronym aloud, it explained why I called it that: Y.I.C.U.F.O. For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.

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