Somewhere There’s Music…
PROJECT BLUE BOOK – Season 1 Episode 1 – SPOILERS ⁓
After an American fighter pilot engages a UFO over Fargo, North Dakota, the U.S. Air Force hires J. Allen Hynek (Aidan Gillen), a professor of astrophysics at Ohio State University, to investigate UFOs. They tell him he is supposed to find out the truth, but it is soon made clear that his job is to discredit the reports, no matter the evidence. It also becomes clear that there are other players involved. Someone attempts to force him off the road as he is driving home from his first UFO investigation, and the culprit flees into an abandoned amusement park. Hynek follows the unknown man inside (which seems a dangerous thing for a university professor to do) and discovers a room used for either interrogation, indoctrination, or both. He does not tell Captain Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey), the Air Force guy who recruited him for Blue Book, about the incident.
The actual UFO encounter over Fargo was reported by North Dakota Air National Guard Second Lieutenant George F Gorman on October 1st, 1948. In the fictionalized version, Gorman’s name is changed to Henry Fuller (played by Matt O’Leary).
After being buzzed by the UFO, Fuller radios the tower. “Controller, this is flight niner-one-five. Is there any other aircraft in the vicinity?” The tower reports: “Negative, Coop. Nothing but open sky between you and Bismarck.” In the actual incident, Gorman could clearly see a private plane (a Piper Cub) flying five hundred feet below him. The pilot of that craft also saw the UFO, as did at least two people on the ground.
In the fictional version, Fuller sees the Piper Cub before sighting the UFO, and during his close encounter he picks up a radio station from his home town of San Diego. The song the station is playing is “How High The Moon”. This radio broadcast is not mentioned in any accounts of the Gorman dogfight, so it may be entirely fictional.
In Washington, D.C., the (fictional) U.S. Secretary of Defense William Fairchild (Robert John Burke) has this exchange with Air Force General James Harding (Neal McDonough) after viewing part of Robert Wise’s film THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL which was released on 20 September 1951:
FAIRCHILD: “The point is, Truman assembled this group to control the narrative on this issue, not Hollywood, and we are losing that war.”
HARDING: “Well, maybe stop admitting defeat all the time and you won’t feel that way, Mr. Secretary.”
FAIRCHILD: “The public knows there’s something going on now. The deeper we try and bury it…”
HARDING: “The safer we’ll be. Need I remind you, we don’t even know what the hell we’re dealing with here. Let Hollywood be the distraction. It’s the situation in Fargo we need to be worried about now.”
Hynek and his family are under surveillance from the moment he takes the job. We see a dark sedan tailing him as he is driven to the airport, and it might be (one is not quite certain) the same car that lures him into the abandoned amusement park. His wife Mimi (Laura Mennell) goes shopping and meets Susie Miller (Ksenia Solo), who seems friendly and offers fashion advice. Later we see Susie parked across the street from the Hyneks’ home, covertly taking pictures.
At the end of the episode, General Valentine (Michael Harney) and General Harding wonder what to do about Fuller:
VALENTINE: “This encounter goes deeper than we think.”
HARDING: “At Least we may have another candidate on our hands”
VALENTINE: “You went up there. You saw Fuller. What’s your gut?”
HARDING: “Initiate him into the program.”
VALENTINE: “Okay. You make the call.”
Hynek checks with the San Diego radio station and finds out they were playing the song Fuller heard at the time of the incident. He calls Quinn and tells him that, but keeps everything else he has discovered to himself.
Fuller is injected with something and taken from the hospital against his will. He is assured by his kidnappers that he “won’t remember a thing when it’s all over”. When they come for him, Fuller is listening to a recording of “How High the Moon“, which is the song he said he heard during the UFO encounter. Ella Fitzgerald released a version of that song in 1948, but what Fuller hears was released by Les Paul and Mary Ford in 1951.
Miscellaneous Info
Dr. Hynek actually began advising the U.S. Air Force on UFOs after it created Project Sign for that purpose in 1947. Project Blue Book was not created until March, 1952.
Aidan Gillen (J Allen Hynek) is Freddy Darby, London’s biggest crime boss, in LONDON CALLING, Allan Unger’s comedy about a mediocre hitman (Josh Duhamel) who accidentally kills a relative of Darby, forcing him to flee the UK for Los Angeles. Tommy makes a deal with his new employer (Rick Hoffman) in exchange for safe passage home. LONDON CALLING will be part of the “Industry Selects” program at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
The show’s first episode grossed 3.1 million total viewers over its two telecasts on 8 January 2019. It was the top scripted series on cable of the 2018-19 TV season across all key demos and total viewers.
** — Revised. Originally posted on 13 January 2019