ALTERNATIVE APRIL FOOL

With Woodsy doing a couple of April Fools gags this morning, I was reminded of the spoof documentary, Alternative 3 which was intended for broadcast on April 1^st, 1977, but was actually delayed until June 20^th.  

For those who don’t remember it, it was produced by Anglia Television as an edition of ‘Science Report’, and presented by Tim Brinton, a broadcaster and former Conservative party politician who added credibility to the programme. 

The report started with an investigation into the so-called ‘Brain Drain’ of British scientists leaving the country and vanishing, and over the course of the programme it was speculated that they had become involved in a joint Russian and America project to advance the space race well beyond what the rest of the world had been told. 

A former American astronaut, Bob Grodin had seen something strange during an Apollo landing which indicated that ‘they weren’t the first’.

It is later revealed that there had been American and Russian Moon landings on the Dark Side several years before the televised Apollo Missions.

An interview with a Doctor Carl Gerstein, a lecturer in Applied Physics reveals that Alternative 3 is a plan to populate Mars, using the Moon as a launch site. 

The Report ends with a recovered video tape of an unmanned landing on Mars in 1962, which indicates that there is alien life under the surface.

I loved is at the time, and would have been totally fooled if not for the voice of astronaut Bob Grodin which I instantly recognised.