When George Knapp, aka the UFO reporter, interviewed John Lear for a TV show, he was sceptical about the claims the maker of Lear jets made on air about the US government's cover up of five alien bodies cryogenically preserved and the flying saucers in its possession. However, after the show, the phones at the TV station rang off their hooks; viewers of the show called in to share their personal experiences of UFO sightings and strange encounters of the third kind.

Thirty years ago, the Las Vegas-based journalist Knapp broke the news about Area 51 in Nevada. Last year, he was among the audience of the US congressional hearing about reporting unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) as a face that stood out for many in the media as well as the ufologist community. On the occasion, three military veterans testified and shared their experiences regarding UAPs. The Pentagon released a trove of classified information about UAPs as the number of reported sightings rose sharply.

Investigation Alien follows the dogged Knapp as he tries to blow the cover off of the US government's persistent refutation of alien encounters. As far back as 1947 in Roswell a UFO was reported by the US military itself but it retracted the claim within 24 hours under the pretext of a weather balloon.

The Netflix docuseries encapsulates Knapp's work as a UFO journalist as he traces the trail of various UFO sightings and unexplainable phenomena across America.

Knapp presents himself as any other investigative journalist, chasing a story like a scent hound, aiming to throw open an undisclosed reality to the public. His methodology appears credible and he ropes in a couple of other people to carry out interviews as well.

Knapp gets a former CIA case officer Douglas Laux to work on this documentary with him, as a pair of fresh eyes. Laux claims he doesn't have preconceived notions about non-human intelligence but that he will gauge everyone's stories with an open and unbiased mind. The ex-spy, who knows Pashto and Dari, speaks in a measured tone and doesn't express himself in words that would make him appear a UFO enthusiast. That's the groundwork laid for creating a voice that viewers will more likely believe. Except if you're a true sceptic. Just because an ex-military man is enunciating clearly that he is holding a piece of unbreakable UFO debris from 50 years ago, does not mean that sceptics will believe him more.

The first mystery they explore is of cattle mutilation. They talk to ranchers who have had their animals mutilated in an inexplicable way as if they were cut by a laser. The catch is there is no blood. One rancher says 20 or so mutilations have occurred over the last four years.

They also see a few crop circles although they are not elaborately patterned but just flattened grass. Knapp wonders why these mysteries are not investigated by the government? Is it dismissal or simply awareness that keeps the authorities from investigating these weird anomalies. Laux revisits a scene of cattle mutilation that still has bones scattered around. “You can't explain it a lot so you don't talk about it,” says a rancher.

With Vee Armour, the first Black female military pilot, Knapp investigates an incident from the late 1970s in Colares, Brazil where hundreds of people were burned by laser. Vee meets a couple of women who narrate their experience of seeing a beam of light from the sky and being burned in the chest by it. The scars are still very lightly visible. In fact, Colares turns out to be a territory where alien phenomena are witnessed somewhat frequently. Knapp even meets a local who says he saw a fireball in the sky just weeks ago and shows him videos and photos of it.

Everyone knows

In Tampico, Mexico, Laux and Knapp investigate the possibility of submerged UAPs with the help of a magnometer. An unusual magnetic reading sparks questions about what could be the cause. The duo asks a geologist at a military institute who is just as puzzled. It could be a cylindrical object at rest or maybe just dips in the seabed. There is no conclusive answer for the reading.

While working for Knapp, an underwater archeologist and his friend witness a light in the sky – on film. It's not a crazy moment but almost mundane. The archaeologist later recounts to Knapp that the light in the sky travelled something like 200 miles in five seconds. The night holds even more surprises. When everyone on the boat is asleep other than the explorers’ night watchman, a light is seen on the horizon which descends into the water. What are the odds of alien ships appearing on the evening a Netflix documentary is being filmed for evidence of UAPs? Very likely, in this spot.

Although combat pilot Vee offers a possible explanation from a military perspective of a recon exercise, the documentary doesn't dwell too much on the sighting caught on film. Viewers are left to decide whether the documentary itself is presenting truth or hoax.

Similarly when Knapp is trying to corroborate another UAP sighting, the experiment they undertake to prove its legitimacy is sadly lame. A man claimed that the plume from a thermite explosion he and his friends ignited looked like a spaceship and caused people to think it was a UFO crash with residual debris. By this time in the docuseries, Knapp's methodology of cross-checking has become counterintuitive.

The filmmakers have relied on mostly ex marines for collecting information, or PhD holders. The selection of interview subjects should lend authority to the debate; on the other hand, it may also come across as contrived and forced.

Whereas this is an enjoyable enough watch, the documentary is neither here nor there. Believers might think it presents convincing enough proof of ET life but not nailed down as it should be, whereas sceptics will pick many loopholes in the presentation of evidence and corroborative interviews that try so hard to appear factual.

As an American production, the investigation focuses only on North and South America. Casting a vaster net to explore sightings across the world in person would make for a hugely more compelling documentary. The series briefly mentions landmark mass sightings in Italy and Belgium. However the biggest was in Phoenix, Arizona so it explored the 1997 incident (which actors Kurt Russell also witnessed from a plane) in more detail.

Pilots around the world are probably a segment to contact for documenting unidentified phenomena in the skies. In Investigation Alien, two Commercial pilots show videos they filmed while flying over the Pacific of lights in the sky. The air control tower revealed the lights had been orbiting for two successive nights. The pilots interviewed say one out of three times, they see something unexplainable in the skies and reiterate such events are witnessed worldwide, not just in the US.

A Pakistani pilot indeed reported a UAP near Rahim Yar Khan in 2021 during a Karachi to Lahore flight. He described seeing a very shiny object despite the sunlight, and locals down below saw it too. In 2022, a man captured a 12 minute long footage of a “bulging triangle UFO” flying over Islamabad.

Instead of the ghost hunter shows on local TV channels, some channels can boldly investigate such sightings of alien life instead, if it doesn't hurt the religious sentiments of our population.

Message of peace

The docuseries ends with a quick look at the reason behind alien contact. Those who witnessed the Phoenix lights overall felt a sense of calm and felt blessed to have witnessed the phenomenon. To them the lights from another world were gentle, not menacing and brought a message of peace. Many who have experienced UAP sightings get emotional and feel they have been conveyed by aliens to look after Planet Earth. Some feel the message is to stop messing with nuclear weapons. Some are comforted by the thought that we are not alone.

It probably is not a source of comfort for the women who got burned in Colares by rays of light from the sky. Or for that matter ranchers who wake up and see their cows and bulls eerily killed and drained of blood.

An anthropologist interviewed in the Netflix docuseries posits that the form of being we call alien in our collective imagination might just be a part of our family tree. He has extrapolated the evolution of the shape of the human skull through time.

As our heads have grown bigger in the evolutionary process, they will grow bigger still, he says, and eventually, our faces will become smaller as the eyes wrap around the side of the head. That paints a resemblance of what is known as the grey alien in sci-fi lore.

Yes, I think this will hurt not just religious sentiments but redefine our sense of vanity, and that would be more of a test.