1977 Mars Colony Mockumentary Spurs Trump Scientists Probe
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- Alternative 3 aired on Anglia Television on 20 June 1977 as a mockumentary written by David Ambrose, claiming the US and Soviet governments were secretly building a Mars colony to escape climate change, with missing British scientists recruited to help
- Anglia Television founding executive director Sir John Woolf overruled colleagues' fears and greenlit the production, with ex-ITV newscaster Tim Brinton playing the anchor straight — and then winning a Conservative MP seat regardless
- The show triggered a flood of calls to ITV from concerned viewers despite end credits labelling it fiction; the Scottish Daily Record headlined the row "TV TERROR!" and a Jehovah's Witness confronted the production designer at home
- Milton William Cooper included Alternative 3 in his 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse, which went on to influence Alex Jones, The X-Files, and hip-hop artists including Nas, who name-checked Cooper on his 2008 track Testify
- Debunker Mick West noted that the US "top secret-cleared aerospace and nuclear workforce" numbers around 700,000, meaning roughly 4,000 deaths would be statistically expected over the 22 months the "missing scientists" claims cover
- The Trump administration has launched an investigation into the "missing scientists" phenomenon, which traces its conceptual DNA back to Ambrose's 1977 fiction, per the article's argument
- David Ambrose, who wrote the original script at age 28, says he "never, ever thought of it as a hoax" and recalls a man travelling from California to hear from the "horse's mouth" that the story was invented
Why it matters: The Trump administration is devoting investigative resources to a conspiracy framework whose core claim — elite scientists vanishing to a secret colony — was invented as fiction by a British screenwriter in 1977. When a sitting government pursues a hoax's premise as a national security matter, the line between satire and state action collapses: a £500 mockumentary has arguably shaped federal policy 49 years later.
