Zero Hour: 1 x 03 "Pendulum"

What's our cheesy intro going to be now?

"Two is the number of love, lives ever lost in breath. Sometimes its life(?) pursuit leads not to life, but death."

Spoilers lie beyond!

Ancient Aliens: Underground Things!

So, the producers are endlessly creative about finding themes of. What they're not endlessly creative about finding, though, is content. Because currently they're showing pretty much the only four rock drawings that they ever show, including the "TARDIS rock art"

So there's an underground city in Turkey, that people carved out of soft volcanic rock. After a gratuitous image of a pyramid, we get to see inside this city. Apparently, although things that are obscured from space by trees are always in unbelievably straight lines that are perfectly lined up with constellations, aliens couldn't care less about things that are underground.

Then, they first of all suggest that this has to do with a Zoroastrian myth telling of a culture hiding underground to escape a global winter, and abruptly change tack to suggest that the people were actually hiding from a giant space battle that included at least one faction dedicated to wiping out humans. We're treated to an cheesy CGI sequence of spaceships firing on each other.

Now, we're in the American Southwest, discussing how a lot of the various tribes that live there have similar creation myths. They talk about some Hopi legends that indicate that people went underground for protection from "storms of fire and ice," and "cataclysms," and then go into a complete non sequitur about developing large eyes from living underground and cave paintings with large eyes, and then something about legends involving some kind of "lizard people" and "ant people", as the narrators described them. Then, they ask "If so, could some of them still be living beneath the surface of the Southwestern desert?" The next shot we have involves a van driving through the desert, implying that these people are actually going out alien-hunting in the desert. This is gonna be good! although alien hunting in the desert sounds like it might be fun if you do it with the right people


They're out at the Jicarilla reservation, home to an Apache tribe. They talk briefly with a Native person about the legend, and about stories relating to the nearby Archuleta mesa. Then, it gets better: They show a still photo of the mesa, complete with photoshopped moving sparkly rays!

Now, because it's the US Southwest and aliens alone aren't enough for a good conspiracy in that area, they talk about eyewitness accounts that "are not only true but evidence of a secret collaboration between underground aliens and the US military." Wait, what? The whole "The government experimented on aliens in secret laboratories in the Southwest" thing is a classic conspiracy theory, but "The government and aliens experimented on humans in secret laboratories in the Southwest,"  is a whole new twist on it!

Incidentally, the first commercial in the break is for a show called "The Vikings." From the commercial, I can't tell whether or not this is supposed to be a part of Ancient Aliens until the title screen and the "On the History Channel" bit comes up.

Now, we're in the Andes, discussing an indigenous tribe that lived there, and an Italian Catholic missionary who was given gifts that were "elaborately carved" and contained symbols that he didn't recognize. Apparently, the evidence that aliens were around hinges around the idea that in the 16th or 17th centuries, the Incas were still stuck in the very early part of the Stone Age or something. So, in the 1970's, there's a video of him... wait a second, there were Catholic priests going out to convert indigenous peoples in South America in the 20th century? And this hinges around the idea that, by the 20th century, it's unlikely that the Native tribes could've either made or found intricately carved things?

So, then, someone who's fascinated with these things decided to find out more. There was a guy who had claimed to have been in the cave in '46, and seen lots of things like metal books with strange writing, and things that looked - to him, at least - like some kind of mathematical formula. Someone else went searching for this cave in the 70's, dragged along Neil Armstrong, used an entrance found by the Ecuadorian army, and it appeared that large areas had been excavated. The biggest thing that they seemed to find in the cave was a stone ring. Hasn't anyone here read enough Tolkien to know of the dangers of finding rings in caves?

As of recently, though, they think they got the wrong cave, because they didn't find what they expected. They're very frustrated that they can't find the cave that has what they expect in it, because the local indigenous tribes are keeping all their caves' locations a secret.

Then, the Yucatan peninsula is next up. After following records from 17th century priests, they found a cave with entrances submerged underwater. Once inside, they found an underground temple, complete with a pyramid and bones. They point out that it's consistent with Mayan legends of the entrance to the underworld, with things involving bats, jaguar bones, and other things that could represent various pieces of the myth. But, here's where the circular reasoning comes in: Some archaeologists suggest that this place was intentionally modeled after their legends about the entrance to the underworld. But, our narrator suggests that the Mayan holy book was actually written about this cave! Because, of course, the Mayan underworld deities were aliens, come down from the sky, and were bloodthirsty.

Now, we're at the North Pole, which contains no indigenous human inhabitants, and probably not any caves, either. So the narrators tell us what, "according to mainstream geology," the earth is like! Aside from the fact that someone said "mainstream geology" completely deadpan, it gives an accurate and brief overview of the crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core, and mentions that scientists figured this out by measuring gravity, magnetism, and seismic waves.

But, this is not a show to let any mainstream science get in their way, because they say "But no one has ever seen these areas."

"Could the frozen surface of the pole be hiding a gateway to a world within our surface world?" They ask, and promptly answer themselves by saying, "There are those who believe that the answer is yes, and what they believe is known as the 'Hollow Earth Theory.'"

Yes, they're actually supporting the Hollow Earth Theory on this show. It's almost unbelievable, except for the fact that I've already seen some similarly preposterous things on this show, like that time that they suggested that destructive hurricanes happened because people had stopped worshiping Poseidon, or something like that.

Anyways, they try to give this theory credence by citing that Edmund Halley proposed this theory in 1691. I'd like to point out that, whatever else Halley may have figured out about astronomy, the time that he proposed that the earth consists of a matroishka-like series of spheres around an "inner sun", it was a mere sixty years after the Inquisition accused Galileo of heresy for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun, not vice versa.

Moving on, the show says that someone proposed that there were "massive openings at each pole", and reference the Jules Verne novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, and suggest that the interior might contain extinct creatures, or advanced civilizations. Further things they mention are "ray guns," "special weapons," and "flying saucers." This all seems quite implausible, so they ask, "Is there any evidence that such fantastic theories might actually be true, and has anyone actually be inside our earth?"

Of course, since this is Ancient Aliens, the answer is always "Yes, of course!" Aside from anything you might be wondering about Brendan Fraser, the person that they claim has been inside the earth is the explorer Richard Byrd. They claim that "Hollow earth theorists" - my next favorite phrase after "ancient alien theorists" - believe that on February 19th, 1947, Byrd flew inside the earth where the inhabitants used a tractor beam to land his plane, and then told him that they disapproved of humanity's use of nuclear weapons! Of course, since there's no evidence of this, the narrators' rational explanation is that the government covered it up, yet at the same time "staged" a naval operation supposedly involving him near the South Pole so he could "slip away to the other end of the planet, unnoticed by the media."

So, the episode ends with a bad pun, saying "Perhaps we've only just scratched the surface of our planet's underground mysteries."

Zero hour: 1 x 02 "Face"

"One is the number of man. One is the number of you. But sometimes one is not one. Sometimes one is two."

Well, I'm glad to see that the principles of basic mathematics are out the window in this show. That's probably going to explain a lot.

[consider this your warning about spoilers, except that it's hard to call them 'spoilers' when the show's plot progresses in exactly the most convenient and predictable way possible, however illogical that may be]

So, then the FBI Agent and Our Hero are in the sub with Vincent, having found a Nazi that looks just like Our Hero, a fob watch, and a cryptic journal. The FBI Agent points out that it's best to kill Vincent now before he can wreak more chaos. Our Hero points out that if he's killed, he won't be able to say where Leila (Our Hero's wife/motivation) is, and Vincent understandably sides with him, so they convince the agent to back down. Then, Our Hero starts pestering Vincent about what the frozen bodies in the sub are, and why this random pocket watch is important, and what he knows, and he takes cell phone photos of the pocket watch, and in the process Vincent makes himself the most relatable character in all of this show by being annoyed at him.

Then, Vincent somehow blows up his SUV, hijacks the FBI's seaplane, and sinks the Nazi sub all at once. But, the FBI Agent and Our Hero somehow manage to get back to NY, where they start bickering again and Our Hero insists that his wife is still alive because he believes it.

The assistant is wondering why he can call the local police, the FBI, and INTERPOL, and they'll still tell them that they haven't made any progress in the case and they don't have any new information. I, personally, am wondering why he can just call up the FBI and INTERPOL and expect to get any information about one of their cases in the first place.

Now, we're back with Vincent, and he threatens to kill Leila and dissolve her body in lye. Which will totally work, because people do it on crime shows, right? Anyways, he then asks her to prove why she's valuable to him in order to save her life. She says she can't, presumably dooming her.

Back at the magazine offices, the priest walks in, and everyone starts talking about how people always think that it's the End Times. Then, the priest goes on about how, in Revelation 16, the first angel pours out his "bowl", and "painful sores" break out on people. He explains that some people, although not him, believe that it refers to AIDS. Then, he says, "Next angel comes, pours out his bowl on the rivers, they became as blood."

Hang on, let's look at that: Revelation 16 is where angels pour out bowls on things, so that's one point for the writers. But...

• The first bowl is "...ugly, festering sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshiped its image." So if you consider that the show seems to be referring to this as HIV/AIDS, that creates some major unfortunate implications.  
• The second bowl is the seas becoming like blood, whereas the rivers being like blood is the third bowl, so they got those mixed up. It may seem like a minor mistake, and maybe could even be easily retconned, if it wasn't for the fact that a priest said it.

So then they open up this other pocket watch, and observe that the gears are soldered together. "This clock was never meant to work!" they say. "Who makes a clock that's not supposed to tell time?" Well, aside from the Doctor and the Master and a bunch of other Time Lords, I'd put shadowy secret organizations that a fake CIA division is involved with pretty high on the list.

At least not all of the clocks will have hidden diamond treasure maps in them. But, they have a brilliant idea: Maybe it's a celestial map! Of course it's a celestial map, because the characters' massive leaps to conclusions are always correct if they're necessary to keep the plot moving. So then they look at the time and date that the watch is stopped at, and pull out some kind of book, and somehow manage to figure out that the constellation needs to be viewed in Chennai, India.

Our Hero decides that more clues to this might be in the cryptic journal, but refuses to try to chase down the journal because the FBI Agent has it. The girl assistant agrees to, tracks down the FBI agent, they chat, and the FBI agent hands over the journal saying it's not of any value to the FBI so our protagonists can have it. The guy assistant sends a previously unseen flunky to go online and research plagues and AIDS and rivers of blood, and them him and the girl translate the journal from German.

Anyways, the assistants translate the journal, discover that some guy named Corben or something was a Nazi doing field research on this "Zero Hour" thing (isn't it so convenient how everyone used the same code name for it?) and that a private collector had more information. They track down the collector, and he's conveniently a fan of the magazine, so he's happy to help them out. Super uncomfortably, he's got an entire room decked out in a ton of Nazi paraphenalia, where he shows them a filmstrip kind of thing from the Nazis. It's about their expedition to India to talk to a girl who could reportedly talk to the dead, and this Corben guy looks suspiciously like Our Hero, which manages to make things even more uncomfortable.

Somewhere in here, we're shown a shot of a bathtub with a lot of empty jugs of lye. We can't see the interior of the tub so it's unclear whether this is meant to be a red herring in the classic vein of "No body, no proof," or whether the producers have simply decided that showing the body would be too much for an otherwise very PG-rated show, or perhaps if the producers simply could not be bothered to figure out what it would actually look like (much less have the effects department try to recreate it) if someone decided to attempt to dissolve a body in lye. 

In the meantime, Our Hero and the FBI Agent have made their way to Chennai. They sort of make peace and agree not to kill Vincent when they find him. Just as they're about to have nothing to talk about, Our Hero gets a call from the assistants informing them of everything they've figured out. So they go to find this woman, and the FBI agent mentions that the ideal of a Hindu woman being an apostle might be offensive enough for people to kill over it.

Back at the office, the assistants find a letter in a secret pocket in the journal. It's a letter from Corben to his wife, and it's going on and on like some kind of inanely mushy love letter. I think this guy is supposed to be the Rosicrucian/Nazi double agent? During this voiceover, we have a bizarre scene of the Nazi who looks like Our Hero giving a young Hindu girl something, and his Rosicrucian cross, and she puts a Bindi on his forehead. And I suppose it supposed to promote happiness and harmony and "we're all humans inside" but it just comes off as weird and extremely uncomfortable, although I'm not educated enough on Hinduism to know if that scene is flat-out wrong or just unlikely.

So Our Hero and the FBI Agent find this "Hindu holy woman," as they describe her, and bring her an "offering" of something. She tells them that Our Hero had told her to destroy the clock if she ever saw his face. Our Hero goes off on the but-I-KNOW-my-wife-is-alive tangent and so it's very important that she tell him her secrets anyways. She refuses, saying that his return would prophesy "the coming of the angel of death." I'm trying to decide whether this would be more entertaining with Terry Pratchett's version of Death or the Supernatural version.

As our protagonists leave, someone starts shooting up the area, and unsurprisingly, Vincent shows up. The holy woman willingly moves away from where she's standing, and Vincent steals the clock, then shoots her. So he's attacked on Catholic priest, killed another just a moment ago, and now has shot a Hindu holy woman. Not only is he on his way to becoming a serial killer (or perhaps a spree killer?), but a good DA could have a field day with hate crimes legislation after the next few victims. Anyways, as Vincent drives off, we're treated to a frankly hilarious scene of Our Hero reaching his hand through the fence towards the car and yelling "Leila! I'll find you!" as if he believes that Vincent is toting her around in the trunk of his car or something.

Then, Our Hero returns to where the Hindu holy woman is, and she's dying. Because this episode hasn't had enough awkward moments yet, the woman says with her last breath that she was wrong, and something about the darkness of the coming apocalypse, and that Our Hero alone holds the key to something (despite the fact that Vincent always seems to be one step ahead?) and if he continues chasing Vincent across the planet, he'll bring about the end of the world.

So, I'm not sure what I just watched. Lots of plot threads have been left dangling, and now I'm curious to see if this is a revelation-style apocalypse, and even more curious to see what the writers have decided that the secret that triggers it would be.