ALTERNATIVE 3

Some of you might recall that back in the mid 1970s, a film called Alternative 3 came out through the underground. It was produced (in Great Britain) to appear as a real documentary, but was obviously a hoax.

A review of the story is presented here by Michael P. Elsey:

*******************

The documentary program is called Science Report, and it was produced in England in 1977. Science Report is investigating missing people, and in their investigation they uncover a strange story they call Carl Gerstein's Alternative 3.

It starts with the investigation of a solo car crash that kills distinguished radioastronomer and science chief Sir William Ballentine. Ballentine had recently picked up signals from outer space with his radiotelescope, and he showed up at NASA with the recording. A young NASA engineer helps Ballentine decode the recording which up to this point had been random cacophony similar to thousands of space recordings in the archives of radioastronomers. NASA puts the recording through what is called a "Juke Box", which is the decoder, and the decoded signal turns out to be a video broadcast from what appears to be a remotely controlled craft hovering over the surface of Mars on May 22, 1962. Basically, it's a massive but covert operation in space between the governments of the United States and The Soviet Union, working together to explore the surface of Mars.

The story continues with Ballentine giving the recording to a friend of his, then Ballentine mysteriously dies in the solo car crash. The NASA engineer who helped Ballentine gets in touch with Science Report to do an interview, but when they show up to do the interview, the NASA guy appears to have been drugged, and he ends up missing the next day — but not before giving the "Juke Box" decoder's printed circuit board to his girlfriend, who in turn gives the circuit board to Science Report. They put the circuit board into a computer, and they play the tape Sir William Ballentine recorded, and they get the decoded video of the exploration of Mars, which appears at the end of this video.This video also includes what is claimed to be an 8mm home movie of Astronaut Bob Grodin who is interviewed about what he saw on the Moon, and he says "we weren't the first," and, "the place was crawling! Do you think NASA needs all that crap to get two guys up to the Moon on a bicycle? The reason they do it is to keep you bums ( the media ) happy." End of hoax.

***************

Complete with interviews, name dropping, on location filming, and anonymous reporting. Brian Eno even did the soundtrack according to the credits. It wasn't a very good hoax, but many actually believed it.

MT