ALTERNATIVE THREE

How many have heard of Alternative Three in the present day?  When it happened it was a huge mystery - and still is. I am going to bring you up to date by this article written by Bill Nelson.
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Prior to 1979 and the airing of the original Alternative Three documentary by Spectra Television, I had already gathered much of the material in this book and knew that there was more going on in space than the public was being told.

The hour-long TV show, devised by David Ambrose and Christopher Miles; written by Ambrose and produced by Miles was a shocker because it maintained that the US and Russia, presumably England as well, had been working together in space for many years before the historic Apollo shots to the moon

I first viewed the film as rebroadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation several months after the original showing via BBC in Great Britain.  It was at this point that I realized that I was not alone in my belief that a gigantic conspiracy among the nations of this planet existed and that a determined attempt to save some portion of Homo Sapiens from extinction actually was in progress.

Had the program been just another speculative science-fiction effort I would have been pleased that other writers had enough perception and imagination to come up with a plausible hypothesis based on facts that for the most part are common knowledge.

Instead, I was dumbfounded, because the hour-long vehicle for Alternative Three was not science-fiction theater, but Science Report, a 60-minute documentary aired frequently dealing only with orthodox scientific subjects.  Even to think of the producers of Science Report coming on with a science-fiction or Orson Welles Mars-scare-type-of presentation was as ridiculous as Walter Cronkite narrating J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” as historic fact.

Alternative Three was presented as a straight-forward documentary that I believed then to be factual and know now to be revelation of only part of the truth as known to the producers at Anglia Television.


For those of you who did not see the show a brief rundown on what it portrayed is necessary.

It began with the narrator, a familiar figure to watchers of Science Report, saying that as originally conceived the program was to examine the causes behind Great Britian’s “Brain Drain,” the exodus of many scientifically trained persons to other parts of the world.

He stated that the original purpose was defeated because of the “difficulty of obtaining information” of the scientists who had gone elsewhere.  He cited as an example one Dr. Ann Clark, a scientist who had been interviewed shortly before her departure for the then planned “Brain Drain” documentary.  In the interview, Dr. Clark was reticent to talk and said little other than that she had decided to leave England for another position.

Some weeks later, her expensive rented car was found parked at Heathrow Airport, where presumably Dr. Clark left it to take a plane to another country, but all efforts to find out which plane and to where, failed.

The disappearances of two other scientists, Robert Patterson and Brien Pendlebury were also described.  In the case of Pendlebury, he supposedly had gone to Australia to work and his parents had received letters and photographs from him.  However, when a former school chum, vacationing in Australia, attempted to locate him at the address he had been using no one there had ever heard of him.

In all, Anglia Television researchers discovered that at least 5 top scientists apparently disappeared without a trace.  Between 1963 and 1975, the year hat Dr. Clark vanished, more than four million persons had left Great Britain, about one-third of them from the professional and managerial levels of British Society. (Editor’s Note:  In the last years over 85 scientists have come up missing in addition to the 25 missing in GB. Purple Urial)

Something sinister was going on and the producers were certain that the vanishing scientists were not reappearing behind the Iron Curtain.  Where were they going?  With little material to go on, the “Brain Drain” was shelved.

Meanwhile, a separate drama was unfolding.  Dr. William Valentine, a noted British scientist returned to England from the United States where he had been working with NASA.  With him he brought a computer tape that was to play a prominent part in the Alternative Three program which was later to be produced.

Dr. Valentine died in a car crash while motoring from his home to London.  His death was written off by the press as an accident, although there was some question at the time as to why the press photographers were only allowed to take one photograph, at a distance, of the wrecked vehicle.

As reconstructed later from interviews with a newspaper editor and Dr. Valentine’s widow, his death became highly suspicious.

It was learned that on the day of his death he had received a call from an American associate in the US that agitated him considerably.  From his home he called the newspaper editor and

told him that he was coming to London that night with very important information and had to see him as quickly as he could get to London.

Dr. Valentine then gave his wife a parcel, addressed to the same individual that he had called, and convinced her that it had to be mailed that day; a request with which she complied.

Dr. Valentine died before he could keep his rendezvous.  The editor received what turned out to be a computer tape. When put on a computer, however, it was a meaningless garble of sound and image.

Some time later, the TV studio received a call from an individual who identified himself as an American just arrived in England.  He told the producers that he knew why Valentine had been killed and said that he would meet with the them and tell them why.

The meeting of a reporter and the American “agent” was captured on TV tape and the brief conversation recorded by hidden microphone.  The agent said that it was too dangerous to talk in public and that the reporter and his cameraman were to come to a certain address in London the following morning, then he ran off, seemingly in a panic.

On the following morning the camera man and reporter arrived at the house as instructed and knocked on the door. The door was opened by a young woman who at first refused to let them in.  But British reporters are not too easily dissuaded and despite protests they got in, with a camera recording all of this.

At the head of the stairs, the crew went into what appeared to be a bedroom where in the camera lights, a much bedraggled and almost incoherent ‘agent” was lying on a bed.  As they came into the room, he started swearing at them, shouting at them to get the “hell out of here and leave me alone.”  He struck the camera man and the crew retreated.  The man seemed to have been drugged and severely beaten.

When the crew returned the next day, they found the house deserted without a clue as to where the couple had gone.

With Dr. Valentine now in the mystery, the producers followed the leads so far uncovered and interviewed Mrs. Valentine (Lady Valentine) and through her they located the newspaper editor and the mysterious tape.  They had no better results with the tape.  It had been what seemed to be “space garbage.”

The leads petered out, then later they were contacted by the woman who had opened the door for the camera crew.  She told them that “Harry” had given her something that would unlock the key to the Valentine tape.  They met with her and obtained a printed circuit board and the instructions, relayed through her, ‘that this thing’ would fit in a specific type of computer.  Research revealed that this was the type of computer used at NASA.  Further research revealed that there was in England a similar computer and the studio obtained permission to use it.

As recorded in the documentary, the tape turned out to be a recording of TV camera coverage from an unmanned space probe sent to Mars.

For about 10 minutes, documentary viewers saw the landscape of Mars reeling by beneath the probe, red rolling hills, with some greenery and moon-like craters.  In the background, as recorded on this NASA tape are the voices of scientists commenting on what they were seeing as the probe visual was being recorded.

At the end of the probe tape, the vehicle settled to the surface of Mars, one of its tripod legs showing in the foreground.  As the probe settles to earth and the leg digs into the soil, something big, like a six-foot-long earthworm, wiggles away from the contact, pushing up the earth for its passage.

And in the background one of the original viewers is heard to comment, “My God, this is the biggest thing since the coming of Christ, there’s life on Mars.”

The producers including this tape is their reawakened documentary are faced with a dilemma.  How can this be Mars, when the tape showed no craters and all of the pictures released previously by NASA showed hundreds of craters very similar to those found on the moon.  Their conclusion was that instead of releasing the real pictures of Mars, NASA had released previously unreleased photos taken from the Apollo missions.

This possibility is given some credence by an American manufacturer of space hardware who adds the comment that when he saw the purported “Mars photos” the first time, he wondered why they had been shot with a narrow angle lens rather than with the wide angle lens usually associated with the Ranger missions.

(And the reader at this point is thinking to himself, “hmmm, this chapter is pretty nebulous, why doesn’t he use names, full names?”)

It’s a good question and I’ll take this opportunity to answer it.  Bear in mind that I saw this documentary some time ago and CBC, which makes recordings of everything it airs, somehow didn’t tape this particular documentary.

I taped it on an ordinary tape recorder and jealously guarded the tape because I wanted the information ti contained for this book, which I was then in the process of writing.

At the time, I was living with my father, now deceased, in an apartment in Niagara Falls.  We had in the neighborhood, apparently, a burglar with a weird taste in loot.  He made several raids on my apartment and one in my car.  Let me tell you what he took.

First of all, he took my Adamski and Frank Edwards book,three different copies of “Alternative Three (oh, yes, it was made into a book which cannot be purchased in the good old USA, although it is possible to find one in Canada.)  And he took my tape of Alternative Three.  He left the tape recorder.

He later stole my briefcase from my car with a flock of UFO pictures and notes in it and ignored an expensive flashlight on the seat beside it and two cans of Quaker State motor oil.

Believe, if you like, that I’m an absent-minded writer who somehow managed to misplace all this stuff if it makes you feel better, but in any event, at this point I am going entirely on memory, okay

Where were we, ah yes, the moon.

The moon, as you probably know, is marked off in longitude and latitude as is the earth, although with one side facing us all the time we only see about one-fourth of the total surface.

Anyway, the producers, using a photo of the near side, scattered flags all over it to designate points at which manned and unmanned craft had landed.  Then flipping the moon over to a photo taken of the backside of the moon they showed where eight vehicles had landed behind the moon.  And there, was a tiny cluster of flags in one spot the size of a dime.  Interesting, no?

What is this documentary telling us? It’s stating the major powers, or perhaps we should call it the “Tri-Lateral Commission,” had been placing men and materials on the moon for lo these many years -- a base camp from which to supply those who have gone to the red planet.

With this premise in mind, the producers track down Dr. Karl Gerstein, a renowned scientist and one who attended a 1968 conclave of scientists in the US called to discuss the question “where do we go when the surface of this planet becomes too hostile to support life as we know it, mainly because of gases building up in the ionosphere to produce a dangerous “greenhouse affect?”

After several attempts, the reporters badger him into telling what transpired at this hush-hush meeting.

He tells them that the scientists had discussed three possibilities, going underground, building domed cities or blowing holes in the gaseous buildup to allow the planet to radiate off excessive heat. But the first two are really one and the same, so another contact is made with Gerstein  to learn what the third alternative to survival was and at last, visibly agitated, he tells them, “Alternative Three is to leave the planet.”

The showing of this documentary brought instant noise form Parliament and under pressure, the Anglia Television released a statement saying that “Alternative Three” was a gag, another Orson Welles special.

But as we shall see,this annoyed the creators of the documentary no end, so they turned out a book by the same title, containing much more information, adding at the end that they were going to label the book “speculative” rather than “news” because of pressure to do so from members of Parliament.

An American astronaut, now deceased, interviewed for the documentary stated at one point, “What are you doing to me?  Do you want to get me killed like Valentine?”  In another part, he states, “Hell, the Apollo shots were window dressing.  They don’t need a Saturn rocket to put a man and a bicycle on the moon.”

And I know they don’t.
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If you can find this book buy it, it is much more informative than this short article.  I once did a long report on it with names, professions and dates of disappearance.  I gave it to a friend and I don’t know what he did with it. - P. Urial