Project U.F.O.

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Project U.F.O.
Title screenshot
Also known as	Project Blue Book (in some countries)
Genre	Science fiction Mystery
Created by	Jack Webb Harold Jack Bloom
Directed by	Donald L. Gold Robert Blees
Starring	William Jordan Caskey Swaim Edward Winter
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	26 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Gene Levitt Jack Webb
Producer(s)	Robert Blees William Coleman
Editor(s)	Chuck McClelland
Running time	60 minutes
Production company(s)	Mark VII Limited Worldvision Enterprises
Distributor	CBS Television Distribution
Broadcast
Original channel	NBC
Original run	February 19, 1978 – July 19, 1979

Project U.F.O. is a NBC television series which lasted two seasons, from 1978 to 1979. Based loosely on the real-life Project Blue Book, the show was created by Dragnet veteran Jack Webb, who pored through Air Force files looking for episode ideas. This was the final show produced by Webb's Mark VII Limited, but in the case of this show it was produced in association with Worldvision Enterprises (now CBS Television Distribution); this was the only Mark VII production not produced with the two other studios closely associated with Mark VII -- Warner Bros. or MCA TV / Universal Television.

Synopsis

The show features two U.S. Air Force investigators with the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson AFB, charged with investigating UFO sightings. The first season starred William Jordan (as "Maj. Jake Gatlin") and Caskey Swaim (as "Staff Sgt. Harry Fitz"). Jordan was a rather nondescript leading man, while Swaim (who had never had any significant acting experience before landing the role) added diversity as a Southerner with a pronounced accent. In season two, Jordan was replaced by Edward Winter (as "Capt. Ben Ryan"). Aldine King ("Libby") was another regular. Dr. Joyce Brothers appeared in two episodes.

In the pilot episode, Gatlin informed the newly assigned Fitz that, since it is impossible to prove a negative, their job was to prove that each UFO sighting was real, by researching and disproving possible alternate explanations. Gatlin also told Fitz that he himself had once seen "something I can't explain" while flying as an Air Force pilot, which led to his interest in Blue Book.

In retrospect, Project U.F.O. anticipated many of the themes of the X-Files (which aired 14 years later), though of course without that show's romantic subtext or anti-government (or for that matter, anti-alien) paranoia. As with Blue Book, many of the UFO sightings on Project UFO turned out to have conventional explanations. Some, however, were left unexplained, and suggestive of alien contact. By the second season, the investigators had themselves experienced a UFO sighting.

In an odd reversal of the Scooby-Doo dynamic, the series eventually settled into a pattern in which the investigators would spend most of the hour uncovering some conventional explanation for a UFO sighting, only for the last five minutes to reveal that UFOs (or some similarly unexplained phenomena) were involved after all.

Opening credits

The opening montage showed flying saucer diagrams and schematics, while a minor-key version of "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel" played. A voice-over (narrated by Webb) then spoke:

"Ezekiel saw the wheel. This [UFO diagrams] is the wheel he said he saw. These are Unidentified Flying Objects that people say they are seeing now. Are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations from other stars? Or just what are they? The United States Air Force began an investigation of this high strangeness in a search for the truth. What you are about to see is part of that 20-year search."

Notable was the extensive use of miniatures for the UFOs by Brick Price Movie Miniatures (now Wonderworks), usually cobbled together from off-the-shelf model kits.

In some countries, to avoid confusion over a similarly titled show UFO, the show was known as Project Blue Book and had a different title sequence, one much more similar to The X-Files TV show that it inspired.^{[citation needed]}

Episodes

Main article: List of Project U.F.O. episodes

Rights issues

Except for runs on the United Kingdom's Sci-Fi channel and the Australian cable network TV1 in the early 1990s and TVLand in the U.S. (which ran 1 episode as part of its Ultimate TV Fan hour), this series has not been aired since its original network run. Mark VII had creative control over the series and originally held the copyright, but the rights to this series are currently uncertain.^{[citation needed]} In Italy, the first season of the series was shown on syndication in different Italian districts (for example Video Firenze for Tuscany), with Tony Fusaro as the dubbing voice of the narrator in the opening credits. This series was also shown on Indian state run television network Doordarshan (DD) around 1985.

Reference list

External links

v t e Jack Webb/Mark VII Limited

Television series	Dragnet Noah's Ark Pete Kelly's Blues GE True 77 Sunset Strip Adam-12 The D.A. O'Hara, U.S. Treasury Emergency! Hec Ramsey Escape Chase Sierra Mobile One Project U.F.O. Sam

Radio series	Dragnet Pete Kelly's Blues

Films	Dragnet Pete Kelly's Blues Red Nightmare The D.I. -30- The Last Time I Saw Archie What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Dragnet (1987 film)

People	Jack Webb Ben Alexander Dan Aykroyd Art Balinger Jill Banner Harry Bartell Harold Jack Bloom Richard Boone William Boyett Richard Breen Paul Burke Stephen J. Cannell Robert A. Cinader Robert Conrad Jackie Cooper Gary Crosby Howard Culver Tim Donnelly George Fenneman Robert Fuller Art Gilmore Virginia Gregg Tom Hanks Mark Harmon Stacy Harris David Janssen Julie London Marco Lopez Tom Mankiewicz Randolph Mantooth Wayne Maunder Kent McCord Martin Milner Harry Morgan Burt Mustin Ed O'Neill Peter Parros Barney Phillips William Reynolds Mitchell Ryan Walter Schumann Olan Soule John Stephenson Ernest Thompson Kevin Tighe Bobby Troup Ethan Wayne Dick Wolf Barton Yarborough

Miscellaneous	Mark VII Limited Dragnet (theme music) List of Emergency! characters Joe Friday St. George and the Dragonet San Franciscan Nights

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