Review of 'Project Blue Book' 1.3

I'm continuing to enjoy Project Blue Book — a science fiction story based on some actual events. Along those lines, it would be a great twist if Hynek himself was an extraterrestrial, wouldn't it. Such a move would have about the same relationship to reality as most of the other high points in this series.

Take our government organizing a massive coverup, and urging Hynek and Quinn to help them sell this to the public. The truth is that our government was engaged in all kinds of coverups in the Red-scare 50s. The government is no doubt involved in all kinds of coverups today. But that's still a long ways off from a coverup specifically being about sundry alien sightings.

Episode 1.3 takes us to Lubbock, Texas in 1951, where strange lights were seen for many nights in the sky, and, according to some reports, a guy's truck was demolished but he escaped physically unscathed. Hynek and Quinn investigate and encounter a professor who concluded the lights were made by a formation of plovers — flying terrestrial birds, not extra-terrestrial spaceships (in reality, Hynek actually learned this from the professor years later, in 1959, but ok). Unsurprisingly, Hynek and Quinn don't put much credence in the professor's assessment, though Quinn is always happy to acquiesce to his superiors' commands. (I predict, though, that as this series progresses, he'll come to reject them.)

So Lubbock goes down as a major example of another government-suppressed incident of visitation from outer space. One facet not explored in this episode is the connection of all of this to Buddy Holly, Lubbock's best-known citizen. He appeared on television for the first time in 1952, just a year after the Lights. He had a fabulous, original voice, and wrote irresistibly catchy songs, loved by the Beatles and everyone else. Could Buddy have been influenced by those lights in the sky, inspired by them to change the world with his music?

Now that would be a story.