It’s just another episode of Anglia TV’s Science Report series, albeit one in which a trail of disappearances of bright, healthy young scientists, engineers, and other thinkers, and a series of unexplained mysteries about the American space program going dormant following the seemingly promising start of the international Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975, and a videotape handed over to a member of the press for safe keeping by a radio astronomer who died in a mysterious car crash shortly afterward, and troubling reports of climate change lead to an astonishing conclusion: Earth is doomed, and the human race is secretly sending its best and brightest to a colony on Mars to preserve itself.
written by David Ambrose
directed by Christopher Miles
music by Brian EnoCast: Tim Brinton (himself), Gregory Munroe (Colin Benson), Carol Hazell (Katherine White), Shane Rimmer (Bob Grodin), Richard Marner (Dr. Carl Gerstein), David Baxt (Harry), Alec Linstead (Professor Broadbent), Norman Chancer (Charles Welbourne), Anthony Roye (Robert Hendry), Patsy Trench (Dr. Ann Clarke), Phoebe Nicholls (Harry’s Girlfriend), Ivor Roberts (George Pendlebury), Linda Cunnungham (Annie), Nancy Adams (Doreen Patterson), Jonathan Hieatt-Smith (Young man in laboratory), Alice Wade (Mrs. Pendlebury)
Notes: Originally intended to air on April Fools’ Day (hence the date given at the beginning of the show’s end credits) but delayed by broadcast industry strikes in 1977, Science Report: Alternative 3 was a hoax from beginning to end, devised jointly by its writer (David Ambrose, with credits aplenty on previous Anglia TV series such as Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries) and its director. It’s another entry in that rareified category of “faux newscast” dramas that includes such greats as Special Bulletin, Countdown To Looking Glass, Without Warning, and, of course, Orson Welles’ greatest broadcast hoodwink of them all, the 1938 War Of The Worlds radio broadcast. Still, despite literally everyone aside from veteran TV news anchor Tim Brinton being portrayed by actors (whose names then clearly appear in the show’s end credits), Anglia TV was flooded with phone calls demanding more information for days afterward. Adding to the confusion was a Sphere Books paperback adaptation published in 1978, written by Leslie Watkins (but also crediting Ambrose on the cover), which took the liberty of replacing fictitious “Apollo astronaut Bob Grodin” from the TV script with Buzz Aldrin, which remained in print on and off for 20 years.
LogBook entry by Earl Green