There was so much wrong with the Ancient Aliens episode that I could spend all week trying to counteract every incorrect assertion. What results is a slimy and incomprehensible mixture of idle speculation and outright fabrications which pit the enthusiastic “ancient alien theorists,” as the narrator generously calls them, against “mainstream science.” I would say “You can’t make this stuff up,” but I have a feeling that that is exactly what most of the show’s personalities were doing. The episode is what you would get if you dropped some creationist propaganda, Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods and stock footage from Jurassic Fight Club into a blender. Given my restrictions, I have little choice but to try to encapsulate the shiny, documentary-format rubbish in a more coherent and reader-sensitive way.

If they did, my entire review would be little more than a string of expletives. I’m actually glad that my editors don’t allow me to cuss a blue streak on this blog. I steeled myself for the pain and watched the mind-melting madness unfold. But then I heard the History Channel’s slurry of pseudoscience had taken on dinosaurs. Or, at the very least, watching the show would kill about as many brain cells as a weekend bender in Las Vegas. I had a feeling that if I watched the show-which popularizes far-fetched, evidence-free idiocy about how human history has been molded by extra-terrestrial visitors-my brain would jostle its way out of my skull and stalk the earth in search of a kinder host.

Until now, I have assiduously avoided Ancient Aliens.

Erich von däniken books in order