Project Blue Book recap: Were the Lubbock lights alien or avian?

Rynek and Quinn are tasked with investigating the mysterious Lubbock lights sighted in Texas skies causing mass power outages and Rynek comes dangerously close to the truth.

The anomaly of the Lubbock lights plagued a late Texas summer in 1951. They appeared as a series of fast moving bluish-green orbs assembled in a V-like formation. In the television series, the Lubbock Lights are spotted by an air traffic controller named Tommy, who, after witnessing them, falls into a strange coma-like state. When Alan Hynek investigates, he comes into skin-to-skin contact with Tommy and receives a massive jolt of electricity.

In real life, no such physical ailments were reported. The lights were initially spotted by three professors from a suburban backyard rather than from a tower. In both accounts, a popular explanation theorized the “lights” were actually birds known as plovers, their glossy white bellies could refract a beam of light shining up form beneath their flight path and create the strange illusion against the backdrop of night.

No conclusive explanation has ever been given for the mysterious Lubbock lights. In Project Blue Book, they are explained as a classified aircraft test by the government.

The nuclear hysteria

Nuclear hysteria and extraterrestrial paranoia run parallel to each other. Discord is sewn through small communities united by the fear of an outside force destroying everything because it is easier to unite against a common enemy than to inspect homegrown chaos and disruption. Humans almost need to cling to the idea of imminent destruction coming from something outside of their control. Fear against the outside is a uniting.

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In Project Blue Book, given the time period, people are afraid of war, of the Russians, of aliens, Mimi being amongst them. She buys her own bomb shelter for her family and then invites a Russian spy (Susie) into her home to assist in its assemblage. Instead of worrying about the fox already in her hen house she is safeguarding against the hypothetical.

Like the mob who almost burned Sarah at the stake in “The Flatwoods Monster”, Hynek and Quinn yet again run into angry suburbanites, frightened by the unknown men in hats trying to make sense of the Lubbock lights. They assume Hynek is a communist, “He looks like a commie!” One particularly oafish man exclaims.

Perhaps it is a social commentary about the legislature of the time period, General Harding and Valentine are immensely concerned about citizens becoming hysterical over perceived alien threats but can’t be bothered to quell the frenzy surrounding underground bunkers and backyard bomb shelters.

You’re gonna write the stories we want you to write

Donald Keyhoe is a renowned author and prolific UFO researcher. In real life he was regarded as the leader of the field. On Project Blue Book, he fills a similar role but his snooping and investigations land him in the crosshairs of twitchy government leaders who would rather their interplanetary discoveries remain under lock and key.

Keyhoe is an example of what could happen to Rynek should he continue his prying questions to an increasingly agitated General Harding who has grown wary of the doctor’s inquisitive nature. (Though I’m not sure what he was expecting when he enlisted an academic to investigate events clearly originating from a realm beyond our own atmosphere.) But his final words are an ominous threat about Rynek’s future.

Odds & Ends

• Why didn’t Mimi ask Susie why she was attempting to pick the lock to her house in the middle of the night? As soon as she saw it was her she just opened the door to let her in and never thought to question her tactics, it was odd.
• If I was the guy that watched Quinn break my baseball bat in half over his knee without even blinking I would have been running back into my house with my tail tucked and head bowed.
• Quinn’s wistful desire to re-live the days he’s lost from his youth and court the young woman on the college campus speaks to his loneliness.

A new episode of Project Blue Book titled “Operation Paperclip” airs January 29th on the History channel.