Movies - Alternative 3

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Alternative 3 is an infamous television programme, broadcast in the UK in 1977. Purporting to be an investigation into Britain's contemporary 'brain drain', it uncovered a plan to make the moon and Mars habitable in the event of a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth. Two earlier "alternatives" (Alternative 1 and 2) were reportedly scrapped as impractical, and only certain "elite" persons were to be relocated to the Moon or Mars.

Alternative 3 began as a fictional hoax, an heir to Orson Welles' radio production of The War of the Worlds. The original programme was supposed to be broadcast on April Fools Day, 1977, but was delayed to June by industrial action (notably, the credits explicitly copyright the film on April 1st). Alternative 3 provided credits for the actors and interviewed a non-existent astronaut. However, some conspiracy theory supporters have argued Alternative 3 is at least partly true.

Overview

In the late 1970s the UK's Anglia Television ran a weekly science series, Science Report. The final episode, Alternative 3, retained the series' format and presenter, and was written by Chris Miles and David Ambrose. Music was by Brian Eno, a portion of his score being released on the 1978 album Music for Films.

The episode began by detailing the so-called "brain drain": a number of supposedly mysterious disappearances and deaths of physicists, engineers, astronomers and others in related fields. Among the strange deaths reported was that of one "Professor Ballantine" of Jodrell Bank. Before his death, Ballantine delivers a videotape to an academic friend, but when viewed on an ordinary videotape machine the only result is radio static.

According to the research presented in the episode, it was hypothesized that the missing scientists were involved in a secret American/Soviet plan in outer space, and further suggested that space travel had been possible for much longer than was commonly accepted. The episode featured an Apollo astronaut - the fictional "Bob Grodin" - who claims to have stumbled on a mysterious lunar base during his moonwalk.

It was claimed that scientists had determined that the Earth's surface would be unable to support life for much longer, due to pollution leading to catastrophic climatic change. It was proposed that there were three alternatives to this problem: the first involved the detonation of nuclear bombs in the stratosphere in order to allow the pollution to escape. The second alternative was the construction of an elaborate underground city, a solution reminiscent of the finale of Dr Strangelove. The third alternative, the so-called "Alternative 3", was to populate Mars via a waystation on the Moon.

The programme ends with some detective work; acting on information from Grodin, the reporters determine that Ballantine's videotape requires a special decoding device. After locating such a device, the resulting video turns out to depict a landing on the Martian surface - in 1962! As Russian and American voices excitedly celebrate their achievement, something stirs beneath the Martian soil...

(Some expanded accounts, including William Milton Cooper's are similar to fanon, and state that one of the rejected alternatives was the "elimination" of vast segments of the populace, presumably by some form of biowarfare - in the minds of some conspiracists, this equates to AIDS or some other unknown plague.)

It was further claimed that Mars had abundant water "locked up in its soil" and that this water could be utilized. Critics of Alternative 3's actuality note that Mars' atmospheric pressure is so low that liquid water at Mars' surface would boil away within minutes. Supporters argue that the water being "locked up in the soil" might protect deposited water from such effects.

Response

As with Welles' earlier radio production, and the subsequent BBC drama Ghostwatch
, Alternative 3 provoked controversy, with many viewers unprepared for its convincing presentation and deadpan tone.

The programme's environmental catastrophism comprised a mixture of global warming and then-popular warnings of an impending ice age, both of which were high in the public consciousness at the time. The dark conspiracy theory appealed to an increasingly sceptical generation which was starting to take the Apollo moon landing hoax accusations more seriously.

Shortly after Alternative 3 was broadcast, Anglia Television issued a statement that the Alternative 3 episode was a hoax. Conspiracy theorists suggested that the British government forced Anglia Television to issue this statement.

Books

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