Fallen Idol- The Yuri Gagarin Conspiracy

Global Science Productions

R1 DVD

Indican Productions

Reviewed: Bob Estreich

Yuri Gagarin was, according to the standard histories, the first man into space. At the time it was a major coup for Russian science. Gagarin became a national hero and spent much of his following life touring the world as an example of what Communism could do. After a while it all started to go subtly wrong as the fame went to his head and he degenerated into alcoholism. Finally he was killed in a plane crash after being allowed to return to duty as a fighter pilot. This film purports to document his history and reveal a huge conspiracy to alter the truth. The film is presented and narrated by a very earnest-looking Elliott Gould, an actor whose claim to fame relevant to this film is that he played an investigative journalist in the 1978 film Capricorn One. This film presented the Apollo moon landings as an elaborate PR hoax by NASA. It gave rise to a huge amount of conspiracy theory that the landing was in fact faked. I have looked at a lot of the “evidence”, and frankly I just don’t see what the conspiracy theorists claim is there. Thus I was slightly skeptical when I watched this film.

It falls into three main areas.

The first segment deals with the Russian paranoia for secrecy, and with only publishing news which was favorable to Communism. It proposes that a test pilot, Vladimir Ilyushin, actually made the first flight. The capsule crashed on landing due to defects in its construction and Ilyushin was badly injured. Because he was unable to stand up in front of the cameras and receive the accolades for his success, it was decided that the flight should be wiped from the histories. The PR machine went into action and a number of conflicting stories were published, many of which lacked credibility. Ilyushin was variously reported as OK, crashed in a test flight, in China receiving acupuncture following a car crash, etc. This is the stuff of conspiracy theories, but little supporting evidence is produced. That which is shown in the film supports the complete mess that the Russians made of the news of Ilyushin’s injuries, but does little to support the assertion that he was first into space. The only one who could shed more light on this is Ilyushin, who is shown briefly in the film walking around a display of an old MIG jet, but he did not comment for the film. According to the producers, they arranged to meet and interview him but he was pressured into saying nothing useful.

This section contains much early historical footage, including some quite spectacular shots as the launchers exploded. The Cold War paranoia is well documented and explained, as is the development of powerful people and families in the post-WW2 U.S.S.R.

The second segment deals with Gagarin. A young barely-trained fighter pilot, he was a trainee in the Cosmonaut program and was selected for the second mission. Considering the rather rough and ready nature of the technology of the time, the mission went off fairly well and Gagarin became a hero. Although the mission was kept quiet until after Gagarin’s landing, there is sufficient independent evidence to verify this flight. The telemetry signals from the capsule, including Gagarin’s heartbeat, were tracked by, among others, Britain’s Jodrell Bank. Gagarin became a hero, a friend of Premier Nikita Khruschev, and was sent off around the world in a blaze of publicity. Gradually he lost touch wife his wife and family, began to drink heavily and womanize, and was finally pushed into the background when Khruschev was replaced by Premier Leonid Brezhnev. The politics in Russia at this period are interesting, and well explained in the film.

Brezhnev needed some political success to make his reputation, and he badly wanted to return Russia to the forefront of space achievements. It was two years since a manned flight had been made and the Americans were catching up. Unfortunately the new Soyuz launch vehicle had a bad habit of blowing up at launch. Four test flights so far had ended in explosions. The fifth flight was scheduled to carry a Cosmonaut, Komorov, who was a friend of Gagarins. Gagarin and Komorov raised the defects of the launch vehicle and the capsule to their superiors, but the mission went ahead anyway under political pressure. The capsule was under ground control, but the controls failed and Komorov had to take manual control. He successfully managed the re-entry but the parachutes failed to deploy and the capsule crashed. Komorov was killed. The official story was that he was killed in a bus crash on his way to Moscow for the celebrations.

Gagarin fell apart mentally after this and became something of an embarrassment to the Communist Party powers. The film suggests that the death of his friend and his knowledge that he was not really the first man in space but was a fraud got to him and unbalanced him. The Party did not want a loose cannon around who knew the details of the space program’s failures. The film postulates that Gagarin was returned to active fighter service in spite of his increasing age, poor health and lack of recent training. The KGB staged a plane crash that killed both him and his copilot. Gagarin’s body apparently was never found. The investigation that followed was brief and, according to the film, a coverup. “No independent investigation was ever carried out” – why would it be? The investigators were from the Air Force, the manufacturer, and a test pilot – a competent investigation team. The fragments of the crashed plane are still apparently kept in sealed drums in a locked room of a warehouse. Why is not explained.

The third part of the film deals with the U.S. involvement in the Ilyushin and Gagarin missions. The U.S., quite naturally, would have been interested in the Russian progress and tracked the progress of each launch and mission. The film mentions a tracking station at remote Tern Island in the Pacific Ocean that recorded the signals from Ilyushin’s capsule. Gould quotes assertions from an unnamed engineer at the base that the telemetry indicated the cosmonaut was alive and under great stress. This engineer was allegedly leaned on by U.S. authorities and threatened with imprisonment if he talked to the producers. Why is not explained. A mysterious warehouse full of space-technology parts is shown, and it is suggested that some of the consoles are from the Tern Island establishment. So what? The warehouse also contains something which Gould introduces as a genuine console from a Russian Soyuz capsule. Very careless of the Russians to lose this, and a strange place to store it. If the U.S. got a console, wouldn’t their engineers have torn it apart to examine it? If this warehouse is so important and secret, why were they allowed to film reenactments in it? This is unexplained. Much of this section seems irrelevant to the film except to try to suggest U.S. Government involvement in the cover-up. Why? The U.S. would have more to gain by exposing it. The tapes and transcripts of the received telemetry are, in best conspiracy theory tradition, blocked from release under the Freedom of Information Act on the basis of “national security”.

Overall I found the evidence for the conspiracy theory largely unsupported and unconvincing. There are a lot of inferences drawn from limited information and conflicting propaganda, little corroboration, and a somewhat weak attempt to suggest that the U.S. somehow participated in the coverup. I had a look at Global Science Productions and found that they seem to be deeply involved in producing space conspiracy theory documentaries. “Apollo 13: The Untold Story”, “Apollo 12: Uncensored”, and “Behind The Race To The Moon” are examples. Dr Haimoff seems to have something of a fetish for government conspiracies.

On the other hand, the film gives a human touch to the protagonists. The state of politics and space technology in Russia during the Cold War is well explained, and the reasoning for some of the film’s allegations is at least more plausible as a result. There is a massive collection of historical footage that fills in the life, fall from grace and death of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

The film is in1080i High-def. Since most of the footage is old documentary and newsreel film, largely in original unenhanced condition, don’t expect too much quality.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.2 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

If you came to this page directly (and missed our menu), click here to go to the Synergy Magazine front page. (http://www.synergy-magazine.com)