Alternative 3

Did You Know?

• The programme was originally meant to be aired on 1 April, April Fools' Day, 1977, but its broadcast was delayed to 20 June.
• Music was supplied by Brian Eno, a portion of his score being released on his album Music for Films (1978).
• The film was released on DVD in October 2007, together with a 30-minute featurette with presenter Tim Brinton and writers David Ambrose and Christopher Miles.

Plot

The hoax documentary opens with an investigation into a "brain drain" of physicists, engineers, and astronomers who had vanished or died under suspicious circumstances. One such case involves a Professor Ballantine from Jodrell Bank, who gave a videotape to a journalist friend before his death; the tape shows only static when played. It emerges that these missing scientists were part of a covert joint American-Soviet project. Space travel had been secretly achieved much earlier than the public knew. A fictional Apollo astronaut named Bob Grodin claims he discovered an unknown base on the Moon during his moonwalk. The story then reveals that in the 1950s, scientists had privately concluded that pollution would trigger catastrophic climate change, making Earth uninhabitable. In 1957, physicist Dr. Carl Gerstein put forward three options. The first was a massive reduction of the human population. The second was building huge underground shelters for officials and a representative group of people until the climate recovered, similar to the plan in Dr. Strangelove. The third option, called Alternative 3, was secretly put into action: colonizing Mars using a staging base on the Moon. The program concludes with the reporters following Grodin's clues. They discover that Ballantine's tape needs a special decoder. Once they find it, the decoded video shows a joint American-Soviet unmanned probe landing on Mars in 1962. After touchdown, the camera captures an unknown organism moving beneath the Martian soil. A mission controller announces, "22nd May, 1962, we're on the planet Mars and we have life!"

Related texts

A book marketed as nonfiction, titled Alternative 3, was published in 1978 by Sphere Books Ltd in London. It was written by Leslie Watkins with David Ambrose and Christopher Miles. An American edition, also sold as nonfiction and styled Alternative 003, came from Avon Books. This novelization expanded on the claims from the 1977 television broadcast, making several alterations. Instead of using fictional astronauts like Bob Grodin, it inserted fabricated quotes from real figures such as Buzz Aldrin and Edgar Mitchell. The astronauts in the book do not find primitive life on Mars; instead, they discover a breathable atmosphere there. The text also asserts that the conspirators have been transporting staff to a secret Martian base, kidnapping potential workers to use as slaves. Jim Keith’s Casebook on Alternative 3: UFOs, Secret Societies and World Control contends that certain elements of the original broadcast were actually true. Ken Mitchell wrote a techno-thriller novel also titled Alternative 3, which uses the scenario as its backdrop. On June 20, 2010, an unofficial eBook version of Watkins’ book appeared online, described as “unexpurgated,” “edited by Anonymous,” and published by “Archimedes Press.” It included a new foreword and additional material.

Possible influences on the mockumentary

The radio anthology Dimension X aired an episode titled "The Man in the Moon" on July 14, 1950. In it, a worker at the fictional United States Bureau of Missing Persons picks up a radio broadcast from a man claiming to be imprisoned on the Moon. His investigation reveals that many people, including scientists and engineers, have been kidnapped. These captives are forced to labor on the Moon under German supervisors, who secretly colonized the Moon in the late 1930s and are now planning an invasion of Earth.

References in popular culture

Canadian musician Ian Thomas has said that his 1979 song "Pilot" got its lyrics after he watched Alternative 3. The 1997 video game Fallout features a track called "Vats of Goo" on its soundtrack, which is a cover of the Alternative 3 theme. British doom metal band Anathema named their 1998 album Alternative 4 after the program. Monster Magnet, a rock band, included a song about the conspiracy called "Third Alternative" on their album Dopes to Infinity. The Canadian punk rock band The Broomhandles have a track titled "Alternative Three" on their album Karma Had It Coming that draws from the program. In 2001, Lo Recordings put out an alternative soundtrack for the film created by members of Add N to (X), Stereolab, and Hairy Butter. Costa Botes mentioned Alternative 3 as one of the things that inspired him to make the New Zealand mockumentary Forgotten Silver alongside Peter Jackson. In Richard Linklater's 1991 movie Slacker, a character played by Jerry Delony insists that Alternative 3 is "absolutely true" and that humans have been living on Mars since 1962. UK punk band UFX released a video for the title track of their 2013 album Reverse Engineering that uses supposedly hoax footage from Alternative 3, the Roswell alien autopsy, and Nazi flying saucer clips.