OFFICIAL DENIAL | Syfy's First Original Film

Official Denial was the Sci-Fi Channel’s first original film, written by Bryce Zabel and released in 1993. Parker Stevenson stars as Paul Corliss, a man who claims to have been abducted by aliens — only to be abducted again, this time by a covert government group called Majestic, which wants him to communicate with the lone surviving being from a UFO shot down by the Air Force. What begins as a story about alien abduction, secrecy and crash retrieval becomes something stranger and more provocative: the “aliens” may not be from another planet at all, but from our own future. [NOTE: This video is presented as an archival film with historical and educational value, particularly as to how it relates to the presentation of the UFO/UAP mystery in the media and the fact that it was released three years before the alleged approach of Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman by the Office of Naval Intelligence.] Seen today, the film plays almost like a time capsule of ideas that have never really gone away. Crash retrievals, Majestic-style secrecy, government “official denial,” contact with Grays, abductees as unwilling witnesses, the possibility of non-human intelligence, and the argument over Disclosure are all as active in the culture now as they were when the script was written. In fact, many of the subjects that were still largely fringe in 1993 have since moved into Congressional hearings, Pentagon reports, NASA studies, whistleblower claims, podcasts, documentaries and mainstream journalism. The production was made with limited funds, and some of the visual effects and creature work show the strain of trying to do a big UFO mythology on a modest television-movie budget. But that limitation is also part of why Official Denial remains important: it was ambitious, early, and unusually direct about subjects that Hollywood would keep returning to for decades. Before Dark Skies, before the modern UAP era, and long before “Disclosure” became a mainstream word, Official Denial was already asking whether the truth was being hidden — and whether the visitors might, in the end, be us. *** Three decades ago, "Official Denial" first aired on Syfy (back then, Sci-Fi Channel) and it was their first original film on the topic of alien abductions. I wrote this script on spec in 1988 as "Progenitor" and eventually sold it to Syfy who developed it further, then shot it in Australia. It's one of my favorite scripts to this day, although the production is hampered badly in the realism department by its extremely low budget. Still, I love it in so many ways, not the least of which was that lead actor Parker Stevenson was willing to shave his head for the part. Then there was the brave 12-year-old ballerina who wore the plastic alien suit. I learned a lot of lessons and, because of that, my next UFO/abduction piece, NBC's "Dark Skies," is so much better. But this was first, and that counts for something. Also, the ending when you realize, well, that would be a spoiler, but to the best of my knowledge, I'm the first to float this idea in a film. And there are those who say it influenced the British Bentwaters testimony from one of the participants who began embracing this theory just months after the film aired. *** I became compelled by a “what if.” What if, my imagination asked, the government knew that Strieber was telling the truth? And what if they wired up his house so the next time these Visitors came for him, it would set off electronic trip-wires, and the military could target either the craft or the Mothership and shoot it down? In this scenario, Majestic-12 knew UFOs were real and that abductions were happening, but was willing to let the U.S. government officially deny their reality at the same time. So the main character, Paul Corliss, was being manipulated to feel as if he was losing his mind, jeopardizing his marriage and his happiness. When an alien Mothership is brought down through the use of Reagan’s “Star Wars” Space Defense Initiative, there is a single surviving alien creature. It refuses to communicate with the military types that are holding it hostage and its health is failing. Majestic-12 brings in Corliss to see if he can get it to talk, given that there was obviously a connection between the two that had led to his abductions. Corliss bonds with the alien who he names “Dos,” based on the computer operating system of the moment. He ends up breaking Dos out of Majestic’s secret headquarters, and they go on the run together. The shock ending was the aliens weren’t from another place but another time. They were us, from a troubled future, looking for a way to set things right again. One of the last lines in the film is Corliss telling the head of Majestic, “It’s not where they’re from, it’s when!” Boom!