Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified

I was excited to see two upcoming UFO documentaries arriving in August 2021, one on Showtime notably produced by J. J. Abrams and then "Top Secret UFO Projects..." on Netflix. With all the recent revelations on the topic of UFOs I felt a fresh new Netflix documentary would delve into the latest evidence and offer some new insight as well as a better production value than the options that are mostly available these days. Well I desperately sat through all 6 episodes of this once anticipated show filled with utter disappointment and at times astonishment. While the show features some credible talking heads on the subject like Nick Pope, George Knapp and Richard Dolan they interlace their brief statements with crude CGI re-enactments straight out of an early 90s after hours sci-fi show along with vague conjecture from more relatively unknown talking heads and then occasionally throw in totally unbelievable stories told by utter charlatans like Emery Smith that basically discredit anything of substance already covered. The topics are all over the place and are either a rehashing of the recent pentagon leaks, are old stories heard many times over or follow completely insane fantasy stories by proven conmen. By the last episode I concluded this documentary show to be a total waste of time. Sadly being desperate for anything new on the subject I watched the entire thing. I found it funny they frequently showed clips of an interview with Jeremy Corbell but dedicated nearly an entire episode to Emery Smith, whom Corbell said in a 2018 tweet to be a total fraud. And he is, his stories are so outlandish it's astonishing any production would give him the time of day. Not sure what went wrong here, or who raided the mushroom stash but I will be holding out for the Showtime series backed by J. J. Abrams.

I was hoping for this to be as captivating as Unacknowledged or the Phenomenon. It wasn't. The stories were highly unbelievable nor critically examined. I mean seriously? An UFO with a call sign consisting of an Arabic numerals and Latin alphabaticals. Give me a break.

The interviews with distracting scenes. It could be more interesting if they didn't touch the interviews and I would rate it higher for sure. Interviews were interesting.

CGI that replaces every interview is distracting and it devalues it. The last story seems fake by the way. Emiry Smith is also not credible guy. Some stories are inspired by the true events (two ladies hit by radioactivity on the road). Viewer needs to make his own conclusion.

Overall I had fun streaming it. One needs to access this as fun show not as a document.

I'm familiar with the details of many of these cases and the designers and CGI artists have pretty much ignored witness descriptions of craft and their actions and taken too much artistic license. They've done a Star Wars job on the look of everything, and added in alien closeups when most of the time the witnesses didn't see what they looked like.

The Reverend Gill section for example. The Reverend and co saw 'figures' from a distance, not cloaked blond Caucasian dudes like it the so-called reenactment. Disappointing, especially when they had the money to get things right.

Always interesting documentaries about UFOs. But this product, in my opinion, has been "loaded" with too much unnecessary, misleading, and patently mystifying CGI. At least insert notes of "reconstructed images". I still have to finish all the episodes, almost all the "news" have more or less already been documented in many other documentaries, and better, and at the dawn of 2021 it could certainly have been better edited. Repertoire images, repertory documents, could honestly be better described and introduced. Documentaries on UFOs have always been very complex to shoot, edit and propose to the public, because, in addition to the tons of "opposition" they encounter, they have to sort out the many mythomaniacs, without trying at all costs to sell them as "real witnesses". In short, enough, for now, but nothing exceptional.