Pyramids, Obelisks, and Orbs
PROJECT BLUE BOOK – Season 1 Episode 10 – SPOILERS ⁓
Susie and Mimi
Mimi (Laura Mennell) gets a phone call from her husband but the connection is bad and they can’t hear each other. Static on the line makes her suspicious and she finds the bug Susie (Ksenia Solo) planted. Mimi suspects the US government of tapping her phone. She tells Susie her suspicions, and asks to stay with her because she feels unsafe at home. Aware of the developing relationship between herself and Susie, Mimi makes a point of ending any possibility of romantic involvement.
Mimi and Susie watch “The Freezer” (episode 1.29 of I LOVE LUCY) which first aired 28 April 1952. The painting behind them looks very much like the artwork for the 2012 album “Voices From the Lake“
The two remain friends, and the following day they see activity at Donna Smith’s house. Mimi is unaware that Donna was killed by Cal who was in turned killed by Susie. FBI Agents are in the process of arresting Donna’s husband Jack (Kurt Evans) as a possible Communist sympathizer because he had surveillance equipment in his basement. Susie must have had time to plant the equipment in Jack’s basement and tip the Bureau about it anonymously As Jack is being led away, he pleads with Mimi to tell them it isn’t so. Mimi walks away, muttering: “Something isn’t right.”
Mr. Hynek Goes To Washington
On instructions from The Fixer (Ian Tracey), Professor Hynek (Aidan Gillen) meets Captain Quinn (Michael Malarkey) in D.C. and the two of them go to the Washington Monument where, slightly later than the the time specified by The Fixer, a squadron of flying orbs made their presence known. How the Men in Black know when the UFOs will appear is left unexplained. Later, the they provide Hynek and Quinn with film footage proving that a UFO was responsible for the failure of an American missile test in the Pacific.
Donna’s husband Jack being led away by FBI agents.
After viewing the film, The (fictional) Secretary of Defense William Fairchild (played by Robert John Burke) tells Hynek: “Ivy is the code name for a top secret thermonuclear weapons test in the South Pacific. We had two successes and one failure. Now we know why.” Fairchild plans to show the film to President Truman, but the Defense Secretary dies when his car explodes at a White Rose gas station. But before his death, Fairchild alerted the President to Hynek’s work. Truman meets with Hynek and (it is implied) tells him to pretend to be a non-believer, and asks to be kept up-to-date (privately) on the Professor’s findings.
Project Ivy involved the first tests of the Hydrogen Bomb. Historical accounts mention two successful tests. The first was on 1 November 1952 and the second fifteen days later. No failed tests are mentioned.
The White Rose gas station, just before the explosion.
The only cabinet member to die while Truman was in office was Labor Secretary Lewis Schwellenbach, who died in hospital of unspecified causes in 1948 after a long illness.
When the orbs return to D.C for a second time, Quinn arranges to be one of the F-94 fighter pilots sent to pursue. What he encounters persuades him that the UFOs are not natural phenomena, but at a subsequent Congressional hearing Hynek supports the temperature inversion theory, contradicting Quinn. After the hearing, Quinn is angry.
QUINN: “After all we’ve seen, you sold me out.”
HYNEK: “No. In fact, I did the opposite. What I did was to set us free. What I’ve come to realize is that the only way to really get to the truth is to convince them that we don’t believe, because if we don’t believe, we’re not a threat, and if we’re not a threat, then…”
QUINN: “We keep our jobs. Jobs that give us access to more cases, more information.”
HYNEK: “Jobs that will allow us to continue our search for the truth.”
QUINN: “Got to say, Professor, you are one tricky son of a bitch.”
Quinn and Hynek
Epilogue
The Fixer hikes across a frozen wasteland to an obelisk-like artifact, likely at the co-ordinates 83° 37′ 20″ South and 102° 53′ 41″ West on the Ross Ice Shelf that Hynek deduced in “The Flatwoods Monster“, and uses the alien artifact that he had Hynek steal in “The Green Fireballs” (and that he subsequently recovered after the events of “War Games“) as a remote control to activate the artifact. As the structure lights up, we hear a disembodied voice slowly recite the numbers 3154565359.
It is not mentioned in the episode, but a pyramid-like structure which may or may not have developed as a result of freeze-thaw erosion is located nearby at 79°58’38″S and 81°57’41″W.
The Fixer at the obelisk
Hynek receives an anonymous typed message: “The escalation of events in D.C. this weekend were further proof that we are not alone. But as you saw with Secretary Fairchild’s death, there are those who will stop at nothing to keep the truth hidden. What comes next is far too dangerous to have you stay involved. So I will insist you return to your old life now, Doctor. I will no longer be able to protect you.”
Frustrated in her attempts at a relationship with Mimi, Susie arranges to run into Quinn in a pub and comes on to him. The true motivation for her activities will be made clearer in “Hopkinsville” (episode 2.4).
Miscellaneous Info
On the Ross Ice Shelf, The Fixer activates the Antarctic Obelisk.
Showrunner Sean Jablonski told Entertainment Weekly: “…the Antarctic holds a lot of secrets and ties back to Operation Highjump, which happened in the early ’40s following World War II when our government [and] military felt that the Nazis had discovered alien technology and bases in the Antarctic. There’s a lot of sort of energy around it now — by that I mean, a lot of curiosity about what’s going on in the Antarctic right now where you can see pyramids on Google Earth…when you see the object glow and the obelisk glow, we are not setting a stage for, ‘Okay, we just turned on a large antenna and have called the aliens to come down.’”
According to David Roos of History.com, Nobody bothered to tell Captain Edward J Ruppelt, the lead Project Blue Book investigator, about the sightings. He “found out a few days later when he flew into Washington, D.C. and read news reports. Ruppelt tried to get out to National and Andrews to interview radar operators and air-traffic controllers, but was denied a government-issued car or even cab fare. Frustrated, he flew back to Ohio with nothing.”
For those interested in such things, Mimi’s radio is an Olympic Model 550 AM-only radio.
More details were provided by Peter Carlson in The Seattle Times on the 50th anniversary of the D.C. sightings. “…a few days before the first sightings at National Airport, Ruppelt interviewed a government scientist who made a startling prediction that Ruppelt recorded in his 1956 memoir, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. ‘Within the next few days,’ the unidentified scientist said, ‘you’re going to have the granddaddy of all UFO sightings. The sighting will occur in Washington or New York — probably Washington.’ The blips first appeared on radar at National at 11:40 that Saturday night: seven unidentified targets about 15 miles southeast of the city.”
** — Revised. Originally posted on 25 March 2019