Another Disney Plus update pushes this National Geographic documentary onto my radar, as it's now quite high alphabetically. Despite being happy to use the more outlandish theories about Area 51 for the advertising, the documentary is strictly linked to facts and declassified truths about what has occurred at the secretive location.

Located in the Nevada Desert, protected by both remoteness and surrounding mountain ranges, Area 51 is a CIA and later Air Force base that has acquired a reputation for the secrecy of the work that has gone on there. Through interviews with former workers, and by looking at declassified CIA material, this documentary sticks to the facts about the site's involvement in the scientific development of high-altitude spy planes, as a training site for pilots and then in the creation of RADAR invisible spy planes.

I had a cursory knowledge about spy planes before this documentary, but I didn't know that so much of the development on them had taken place at Area 51. Despite wasting a bit of time in the pre-amble by flying towards the site and getting warned to turn away by the control tower, mostly the show is either CGI work, showing the developments at the site, historical footage or testimony from people who used to work there. There are interesting titbits, such as the CIA setting up dummy companies to export enough Titanium out of Russia in order to build planes to spy on them. There's also a bit of tragic stuff, with an interview with a former security guard who is dying of cancer that he believes was caused by the burning off of toxic material at the site but is unable to sue due to a Presidential decree.

It's not the most interesting documentary I've ever seen, but it was enough to keep me engaged for 50 minutes or so and I was glad that it stuck to the facts and not the more fanciful stuff.