After braving Game of Thrones‘ fantastical world full of dragons, undead armies, and some of the most unhinged political operatives ever assembled, Aidan Gillen is about to embark on a journey into something even weirder: the United States Air Force’s systematic studies into thousands of unexplained unidentified object (UFO) sightings.Dubbed “Project Blue Book,” this very real piece of American history, which is serving as the inspiration for History’s new series of the same name, began in the 1950s following World War II and continued until 1970. By the time it concluded, Project Blue Book investigated more than 12,000 UFO reports, much of which was made public by the Freedom of Information Act. Now for the first time ever, its story will be brought to life on the small screen.[brightcove video_id=”5987305515001″ brightcove_account_id=”3653334524001″ brightcove_player_id=“rJs2ZD8xâ€]”The idea was to allay public fears, so they wanted the results of the inquiries into the UFO phenomenon made public as much as they wanted them to be made public,” Gillen told Nerdist. “So Project Blue Book, our TV show, is basically a ten-part series based around the emergence of what became known as the ‘UFO phenomenon’ and the hysteria–not just the hysteria, but the wonder that it created among the public, and the US government’s reaction to that.”Gillen portrays Professor J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who was recruited by the Air Force in order to serve as a scientific advisor to the project. Following his work on Project Blue Book, Hynek published a number of books about the field of ufology and investigations into these alleged UFO sightings. In his first book, The UFO Experience, he developed something known as the “Close Encounter” scale which was meant to grade and categorize UFO sighting reports. The book attracted the attention of Steven Spielberg, who employed Hynek as a technical advisor when he made the 1977 sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”I hadn’t realized that I was familiar with this person already,” Gillen said. “It will sound like I’m doing promo for Close Encounters of the Third Kind as opposed to Project Blue Book. But look, they’re connected because Spielberg was inspired to make Close Encounters of the Third Kind from reading the books of Hynek. I think maybe they were even going to call it Project Blue Book at one point or Watch the Skies. I don’t remember. Hynek was on board Close Encounters as technical advisor and he appears in it.”
Images: History