TELEVISION

FT’s very own couch potato, STU NEVILLE, casts an eye over the small screen’s current fortean offerings

In Search Of...

History Channel

Long regarded as the daddy of all fortean series, the original In Search Of... ran for five years and covered most of the greats – UFOs, Nessie, New Hampshire discovered by the Welsh – and was hosted by Star Trek favourite, Leonard Nimoy. Given the recent resurgence in interest, a rebooted In Search Of... was perhaps inevitable: with the original Spock sadly gone (and William Shatner’s phenomenal talents being employed elsewhere; see FT408:67) there was only one candidate to host: the rebooted Spock, Zachary Quinto.

The original series was cut to the pattern of documentaries of the time, with Nimoy appearing at the top and tail of each episode and narrating, the rest of the footage consisting of testimony and re-enactments. The reboot is somewhat more immersive, with Quinto, who like Nimoy before him somehow manages to look even more like Spock when not in costume, actually rolling his sleeves up and hefting a shovel, nodding thoughtfully when listening to an ever

He teaches Quinto how to break a wooden staff over his own head

so slightly crazed witness and manfully resisting the temptation to declare it “illogical, Captain”. In episode two of the first series, “Superhumans”, he meets the usual suspects: a man impervious to pain, people who have found sudden immense strength in crises and a Shaolin monk who can unflinchingly accept kicks to the groin, bend steel bars with his nostrils, etc, who in turn teaches Quinto how to break a wooden staff over his own head without staggering about afterwards clutching his bonce and swearing.

In episode five, “Time Travel”, we visit Geneva for CERN, Washington State, Liverpool, and in Seattle we meet Andrew Basiago, founder of Project Pegasus, who claims to have teleported to Mars, where he met Barack Obama. To Quinto’s credit, he once again conducts the interview without clutching his head or swearing, although he does express a degree of disbelief regarding Basiago’s claims. He’s less dismissive when visiting Liverpool’s Bold Street, which has triggered many reports of timeslips. The fact that multiple witnesses claim to have experienced a similar effect over a significant period of time is fully acknowledged, with a good deal of thought put into potential explanations: the theories du jour are electromagnetic waves and/ or infrasound combined with the environmental properties of the street affecting the brain in a certain way. The claims are not dismissed out of hand merely because they sound fantastic. This approach – balanced, respectful and entertaining – works well, with Quinto providing a strong but unobtrusive focus and old favourites and new cases appealing to veteran forteans and newbies alike. You even stop thinking about Spock after a while. More, please.