Television Reviews : Channel 28’s ‘Saucers’ Finds a Funny Subculture

When Carl Jung said that “California is classic saucer country,” he wasn’t talking about dinnerware.

The great psychoanalyst was talking about flying saucers, which are the subject of tonight’s entertaining installment of “California Stories,” KCET’s locally produced weekly series (Channel 28 at 7:30 p.m.).

“Saucers” isn’t much interested in anything serious, such as proving or disproving the existence of UFOs, choosing instead to explore L.A.’s strange UFO subculture.

Scarier than any brush with beings from other planets are some of the human life forms already inhabiting Los Angeles.

Gabriel Green, president of the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America, tells of his early 1950s desert encounter with benevolent aliens.

A more sinister tale is told by a Sunland woman who said she recently encountered “intergalactic vivisectionists” who performed some kind of a brain operation on her.

The program also visits a service conducted by the droning and chanting humans who belong to the Aetherius Society. The Hollywood-headquartered group believes, among other things, that a huge satellite hovering above Earth radiates energy to earthlings who are doing good works.

“Saucers,” written and produced with wit by Nicholas Clapp, is a mix of good TV journalism and Monty Pythonesque deadpan. It wasn’t meant to have any redeeming social value, just some fun.