Hypersonic air travel, alien sightings, soldiers with super-human strength — Warren native Eric Murphy spent much of 2019 immersed in the government’s “Black Files.”

Murphy is a supervising producer and writer on “Black Files Declassified,” a documentary series that premiered April 2 on the Science Channel and airs at 10 p.m. Thursdays. Host Mike Baker, a former CIA operative, explores some of the secrets in these once-classified documents.

“With any of these investigative-type shows, and certainly with ‘Black Files Declassified,’ we’re not exposing any government secrets,” Murphy said. “They could shut us down like that if we were.”

The six episodes were shot over the first five months of 2019, picking the best possibilities from a list of about 20 story ideas.

“We went through everything — what are the most interesting, the most visually compelling stories that haven’t been told before or have been told in this fashion before? We wanted to pick stories our host, a former CIA counterterrorism operative, could sink his teeth into because he was the one who was going to be driving everything.”

Each episode is crafted like an investigation, so Murphy and the other supervising producer had to find the sources who could provide the information to lead to the next step. It’s different from similar shows in the genre, in which the host may be involved only in the opening and closing segments.

“With this the host is in each scene, going to meet the experts in a particular field and getting the information that compels him to go to the next person,” Murphy said. “We spent a lot of time in preproduction, shaping the show and pre-writing, doing pre-interviews with subjects and incorporating the notes into a prewritten script. This person will say X, Y and Z, and Z will compel us into the next scene.”

Murphy, a 1994 John F. Kennedy High School graduate, has worked on several television documentary series since graduating from film school at Loyola Marymount University, including “Ancient Aliens,” “Gangsters: America’s Most Evil” and “America’s Book of Secrets.” He also is the director of the documentary feature “Traficant: The Congressman of Crimetown.”

Because “Black Files Declassified” was being produced for The Science Channel, the network wanted a greater emphasis on science.

“In most of these shows, in an hour you’re doing one real demonstration or field piece,” Murphy said. “In ‘Black Files,’ we’re doing some kind of science demonstration three or four times in each hour.”

Some of Murphy’s favorite experiences on the show including talking with pilots who flew the SR-71, a hypersonic aircraft that could travel from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., in an hour.

“It was the pre-eminent spy plane of the Cold War,” he said.

They also did a segment on Night Stalkers, an elite helicopter unit connected with the U.S. Army. Baker participated in a simulation of how to survive a helicopter crash into water.

“We had about 10 cameras for that, GoPros (a small handheld camera) everywhere,” Murphy said. “That was a really thrilling experience.”