User reviews

This series was based on Project Blue Book, and one of the former officers assigned to Blue Book was actually a technical adviser to the show.

The problem, of course, is that today, we know that Blue Book was an attempt at Public Relations by the USAF to show that they had a handle on this UFO thing when they really didn't, and that they frequently used the most ludicrous explanations for sightings they could think of. Usually, an officer who was assigned to Blue Book was someone who was at a career dead end, and the Air Force was happy to get out of the whole thing in 1969.

The problem with Jack Webb's concept is that he tried to treat it like one of his cop shows, but still create a little action. So you'd have this elaborate special effects sequence setting up the story, followed by some "prosaic explanation" (as famous UFO Debunker Phil Klass used to say) as to what they actually saw. OH, that was swamp gas? Really?

To be absolutely fair, they were right. 95% of UFO sightings can be explained as something that was misidentified by people. Still, that didn't make for very good drama. The Air Force even cooperated in this series, hoping it would be good PR, but it was anything but.

As one of the other reviewers brought up, I do remember this series by a different title. I hadn't thought at all about this until I saw the promos for the new series by the title "Project Blue Book". It triggered my memory, went to Google and now here I am. I was a kid when the original (show/series? ) was on but I always really liked shows like this and In Search Of, Night Gallery, One Step Beyond and etc.

Initially called 'Project Blue Book' - Was a good tv show on the UFO subject in the late 70's. I believe it was produced by Jack Webb of Dragnet fame. As I recall it was well done visually for the time and stories were decent enough. Not sure why it's been renamed 'Project UFO'.

Project UFO was another fine Jack Webb production, but where did it go? Once aired, it never reappeared again. Everything from I Love Lucy, to Green Acres, at least ran on local UHF stations as reruns, but not Project UFO. If this series was struck on 16mm film to the TV stations, not one reel of it fell into collector's hands. The nation's biggest collectors claim to have never owned even one episode. Not available for sale on any format. Some Universal Studios personnel claim this series never existed. I remember seeing these films when they originally aired and believe they were very well done. Might they have been a little too well done? I would love to see them again.

I religiously watched this show every week, as I was fascinated with UFOs after Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released. This program was aired on NBC as Project Blue Book...

All I remember was trying to get home in time to see this series on network TV. It showed in the early evening during one season only here in Iowa and in the time before VCR's! I have never seen this series in reruns or syndication like all the other science shows on at the time (1978)! Jack Webb's production must have been too good for those censors we had back then!

As I remember the series it was called Project Blue Book. Not as good as the History Channel series of the same name and subject matter but decent for a late 1970's network show.

As I was reading the book of Ezekiel recently I thought of the opening of this show. But kept finding references to a new show not the old one I remember. Finally found this. As someone else asked, I remember the series being called Project Bluebook.

I remember watching this show in the 70's with my husband and one of the things that I remembered was that one of the investigators kept referring to his home of "Six Mile, SC". We are residents of upstate SC and that is the name of a real town and this is one of the reasons why we started watching. He was always being kidded about being from Six Mile and I know that the actor probably was not, but we very much enjoyed the reference.

I remember this show, particularly one episode which ended with the two agents at the top of some observation tower with a large white UFO floating away from them. As I recall the FX were actually OK, and the whole thing had quite a cool Close Encounters-type feel to it. Certainly a predecessor to the X-Files, Sci-Fi channel or somebody could re-run this and cash in.

I started searching for this when I started watching the 2019 PBB. I definitely do not remember it as Project UFO. I liked it a lot and, as I recall, this was the first time I ever remember hearing of "The Men in Black". I'm assuming this is the group you see watching the Dr. in the 2019 version.

When I was a kid watching this show. I always remembered it titled as "Project Blue Book" NOT "Project U.F.O." Is it just me or am I going completely mad? Maybe since they used the word "Project Blue Book" in the series so much that I just remember the show being called that. Any thoughts from anyone on this?

I so much wanted to enjoy this series again, having not seen it since its original UK transmission in the late 1970s. Sad to report, then, that it proved hugely disappointing...

An odd choice of premise given that the real-life Project Blue Book had been closed ten years previously and, if not officially discredited, had certainly faced serious challenges over its motivations and probity. In partial fairness, though, some episodes in the series depict the public accusing the team of a cover-up.

In general the stories are played out terribly slowly - often padded out with ponderous, purposeless shots of characters walking or driving past the camera or exterior shots of a helicopter. In the second season these were supplemented by "banter" scenes between our heroes which lacked any humour and did nothing to further the plot. In each episode scenes of the UFO's arrival are repeated a number of times in order to hit the standard 48-minute runtime. Cut out all the "waffle" and you'd probably trim ten minutes from each episode without losing any of the plot.

The acting from the two leads starts out as rather "stiff" and characterless but they improve slightly over the course of the the first season. Aldine King, as Gatlin's secretary, is awfully underused but much more interesting to watch!

William Jordan (as Gatlin) disappeared after the first season - presumably abducted by aliens. He was replaced by Edward Winter (as Capt Ben Ryan), leading to a more of a "spark" between the two lead characters. The second year saw production improvements such as more modern-sounding incidental music and sound effects and more "dynamic" camerawork.

The visual special effects are quite well realised in some episodes, taking into account the era the show was produced. That said, some camera focusing was poorly directed as it presents no impression of depth-of-field, rendering the use of small models rather obvious. And presumably the FX sucked up most of the budget as many of the visitors' ships in the first season emitted sounds that had been taken straight from 'Star Trek', produced a decade before.

It's difficult to recommend any particular episodes as they are all fairly consistent in plot.

The show is very rarely seen these days (in the UK I gather it was last broadcast by The SciFi Channel in the mid-1990s). But this isn't surprising and it's certainly no "lost classic". Overall this pedestrian work has little more than curiosity value - and did well to last its 26 episodes.

Author kjq45 from United States, a fan of Jack Webb's "Project UFO", writes that "Some Universal Studios personnel claim this series never existed." I was a guest star on "Project UFO" under what was then my stage name, Christie Wagner, and I can assure that it definitely existed.

I wonder if the Air Force behind the scenes contributed to taking the show off the air? After all, on the 50th anniversary of Roswell, New Mexico's alleged extraterrestrial craft and personnel sighting and interaction, the Air Force issued a long disclaimer in the media that it was only a "weather balloon" which crashed with "dummies" inside it.

If the space alien phenomenon really didn't happen then it's a non-issue so why issue a disclaimer half a century later? That disclaimer alone, some would believe, confirms that it really did happen.

Christie Wagner

It was as stiff as 1Adam12, but checked out ufo reports. I was like 8 watching this and was entertained by the notion of investigating ufo reports. Looking back now, it had some pretty weak effects, stiff acting, flimsy scripts, and an even flimsier budget. 343 more characters to go to fill this review, I can't. Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalallalalallalalalalalalalalallalalalalalalallalalalalallalalalalalalalalalallalalalalalalalalallalalalallalalalalalalalalalalalalallalalalalallalalalalallallalallallalalalallalalallallallalallalalallalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala.

Jack Webb's DRAGNET, ADAM 12 and EMERGENCY were such big hits that his Mark VII productions always had a few other series on the networks (mostly NBC) with various success. Project UFO was definately Jack Webb's baby and he was the one who did the talk show circuit to promote it. Besides his narration, the show followed Webb's trademark of stiff, unemotional acting that gave all his shows a semi-documentary look. His earlier shows introduced the day-to-day realities of police work, paramedics and emergency rooms long before Hill Street Blues and E.R. and without the soap opera scripts. Project U.F.O. was Webb's attempt to bring the then current hit film CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND to television via a straight forward telling of the real people who investigated UFO sightings (known as Project Bluebook, that title was eventually changed to PROJECT UFO because it sounded more interesting). A typical episode would open with a discovery of a burnt out portion of field where a UFO appeared to have landed and took off and the two investigators gathering evidence to support or dispute the premise that a UFO had actually landed. Sometimes the evidence pointed to fraud and sometimes there were no answers and sometimes it was left to the audience to come to their own conclusions. Since there wasn't an attempt to conclude that there actually were aliens the series was a bit dull, there was never any big payoffs. Think of M. Night Shyamalan's SIGNS if it had ended a half hour sooner and that would pretty much sum up Project UFO. Perhaps M. Night Shyamalan was a fan of the series and wanted to do a better version and that's where SIGNS came from.

Does no one else remember this show? I used to watch it when I was in 2nd grade. It lasted for one season and was about these two Air Force guys assigned to investigate UFO sightings. Sometimes they would prove it a hoax and other times it would turn out to be real. From what I can remember (and it has been awhile - I have NEVER seen this show in reruns) the acting and the scripts were not too good. And unlike the X Files, the U.S. governement in this show was truthful and honest.

The creator of X-Files credits Kolcheck: The Night Stalker for inspiration but I am wondering if he saw a few episodes of this somewhere along the way and just forgot it like the rest of the world.

I always kind of felt sorry for Jack Webb, he created a cultural icon like Dragnet, first as a sensational radio series and then in two long running tv shows. How could he possibly top that? He spent the rest of his life trying to top Dragnet and couldn't do it. Project UFO was his last series before his death in 1982. Webb brought the same approach to this show that he used with Dragnet. He believed that viewers wanted realism and "just the facts". He used actual material from the files of "Project Blue Book". This was the study the United States Air Force did about unidentified flying objects and the reports of people who claimed they saw one. The study revealed that most of these reports were people being mistaken about what they saw or hoaxes. BUT there were about 10% of the case that COULD NOT be explained. These were the cases that interested Mister Webb and he brought them to life in this fascinating series that was cancelled far too soon. The two actors who were the investigating Air Force Officers were like Friday and Gannon in Dragnet, only they were investigating an "out of this world" mystery. The one I remember most was a young actor named Caskey Swaim. He had never really acted before and landed a starring role in this show. He did an amazing job as did Edward Winter. Do you believe in UFO's or life on other planets? If you did or not, this series was really interesting and entertaining. I wish they would put it back in syndication. One case I wish that they would have profiled was a case in Austrailia in 1978, interestingly this case happened when this series was on the air. It involved a young pilot named Frederick Vallentich who was flying a private plane over Bass Strait. He disappeared without a trace and no trace of him or his aircraft was ever found. Shortly before, he had radioed that he was being followed by a UFO and then he said that it was right on top of him! The ground controllers heard a strange metallic grinding sound and then silence! Vallentich's father said that he believed that his son had been abducted by aliens from another planet.

This series was called Project Bluebook when it aired back in the late 70's.

UFO investigations by the US military.

I remember watching this in my 70s youth and I found it reasonably entertaining. However, I think I was a bit turned off by the formal nature of the two leads. Not saying their acting was unrealistic or anything like that but in this period there was another investigation-into-the-weird series going on - Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) - and when I was a kid I warmed to that more light hearted approach to lead characters.

I always liked the footage of the actual UFO encounters. When watching today I think I heard a sound effect from Star Trek Original Series (1966) and at one point I almost thought I was looking at stock footage from This Island Earth (1955) - today it looks very retro!

Not sure if I would ever bother getting this show on DVD (if it is available?) but I would suggest a few screenings on Youtube if you have time to kill.

This has always been one of my favorite shows; and I loved the Jack Webb "just the facts" style. I remember sitting at home, watching this with my father, although I'm not sure why, as he didn't believe in UFO's or aliens. For several years I've searched for DVD's, or even VHS tapes of the episodes but to no avail. Not too long ago, I found this website, and lo and behold, here they were; all the episodes, in order. Enjoy them! (http://www.veoh.com/TV/collection/project-ufo)

After reading the comments on the IMBb site related to the 70's tv series 'Project UFO', I'd wonder if they saw the same show. The Project UFO characters were US Air Force officers investigating UFO sightings. Much like a Project Blue Book tv series(they just didn't want to use the name). X-Files is something completly different, it's a show about two FBI agents that investigate real wierd cases, and once in a while you'll see a captured UFO/alien or a UFO/alien related plot. But nothing right to the point about UFO sightings like 'Project UFO'. A typical X-File episode is about a strange monster/person living in the ducts of a building with slime and newpapers all around him -- sewer monsters -- bad government medical experiments -- strange government experiments that look like their aliens but turn out to be mutations or something of that nature. Mulder is a huge UFO fan and believer but X-Files is a modern Kolchak:The Night Stalker. I'm not putting down religion, but the entertaining Project UFO is a Harve Bennett Project Blue Book tv series and has nothing (other than a Nun sighting episode) to do with religion or UFO cults. It has to do with the US Air Force investigating UFO sightings -- It was just aired 11/01 on the TV Land Network (USA), it was a great episode called 'Sighting 4011:The Doll House Incident'. It starred David Hedison (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), Marta Kristen (Lost in Space) and had an excellent plot with a full scale UFO! It (Project UFO) was no 'flag waving' government sponsered show;some cases were classified 'unexplained', not all explained hoaxes, it was a try at making money by Harve Bennett the king of 70's schlock tv. I guess TV1 in Australia has been airing the series and people sell VHS tapes of it on e-bay.

Project U.F.O., which was about Project Blue Book, is an early version of The X-Files. Unfortunately, this show, like Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and Battlestar Galactica, only lasted one season.

Too bad, it was really ahead of its time. I loved it when I was in high school.