Friday, January 4, 2013

Dark Skies

Back in 1996-1997, I remember seeing the sci-fi UFO conspiracy television series Dark Skies on the TV schedule, but never got around to watching it. Before I had a chance, NBC cancelled it before the first season ended, after 18 episodes.

So it was with some delight that I saw the series on DVD recently. That gave me a chance to watch the series in its entirety. I immediately wondered why it took so long to come out, and learned that the reason was because of the background music … it was basically pop music of the ‘60s and the producers had a difficult time getting all the permissions and releases.
They finally found a DVD releasing company (Shout) to handle all of that.
Dark Skies is pretty intriguing. What if all that we knew in our nation’s history from the 1950s and onward was really a lie? What if significant events and personalities were actually manipulated by aliens who visited us from out there? For example, what if the Vietnam War was actually the result of Russians accidently downing a UFO? What if JFK was killed because alien-infected humans didn’t want him revealing the truth? What if … what if … what if?
The story centers around two people just out of college – John Loengard (Eric Close) and Kimberly Sayers (Megan Ward) – and the chief conspirator, Navy Capt. Frank Bach (J.T. Walsh). Capt. Bach knows all about what really happened at Roswell, when a UFO landed and then was shot down when Pres. Harry Truman ordered it.
Throughout the episodes, famous political and historical figures pop up – Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Jack Ruby, Nelson Rockefeller, Carl Sagan, Dr. Timothy Leary, Capt. Norman Schwarzkopf, Dorothy Kilgallen, J. Edgar Hoover, Marilyn Monroe, Ed Sullivan, the Beatles, Jim Morrison, Henry Kissinger, and on and on and on.
Of particular interest was my discovery that Megan Ward, one of the principal characters, is a 1987 (I think) graduate of Kaiser High School in Honolulu, Hawaii.
She also appeared as Kate Howard in the daytime drama (soap opera), General Hospital in 2007-2010.
How ‘bout that, huh? She joins Bette Midler, Yvonne Elliman, and Kelly Preston as notable women actors/performers who went to high school and grew up in Hawaii.

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