Fallen Idol: The Yuri Gagarin Conspiracy [Import]

FALLEN IDOL is well done, fun to look at for its many vintage film clips and enlivened by Elliott Gould's interested narration, but in the end this is a total work of fiction. (Gould was chosen for this program because in 1979 he played a character in CAPRICORN ONE who proved that an historic NASA flight was faked.)

Claims that test pilot Vladimir Ilyushin and not Yuri Garagin was the first man in space, that he went up five days before Gagarin or less than a month before are proven untrue by NORAD tracking system records which show no launches from the USSR before Garagrin's historic 4/12/61 flight. For those who remember the Mercury program in its infant first year, do you think a second mission could've been readied in 5 days or even 3 weeks?

As their proof, presenters of this 90 minute "exposé" offer tidbits like: the zealously guarded Soviet files documenting Ilyushin's flight were examined by us but making photocopies of them wasn't permitted. HOW convenient. Also, the Tern Island "smoking gun" tracking segment is equally amusing. Paraphrase of Gould: "I have in my hand the testimony of an anonymous engineer, who in April '61..." blah-blah-blah. And just like in a hackneyed conspiracy movie, the NSA refused to release Tern Island transcripts or tapes and supposedly threatened this nameless engineer with years of prison if he went on the record. Oh yah.

I've enjoyed watching FALLEN IDOL but have done so knowing its main premise has not a scintilla of hard evidence to back it up. Assertions that the American government and NORAD are in on some sort of cover-up are laughable-- what do they have to gain by not discrediting Gagarin, and why does it matter at all WHICH Russian beat America into space? That one did so in early 1961 remains a fact of history.

The premise is that due to certain inconsistencies in the surviving records, the producers, spoken for by Elliot Gould, accuse the Soviet Union of fraud in their Vostok program of putting a man in space, and they seriously question whether Yuri Gagarin ever went into orbital flight.

They argue strongly, and bring various "witnesses" to support their version of events, but I feel they have not done a sufficiently convincing job to upset the official account, nor to dethrone Gagarin from being the USSR's biggest hero of their entire history. However, the movie is crammed full of really cool historical trivia, and many images pulled from Gagarin's 7 years of glory prior to his tragic death in the test-flight crash of a Mig-15 in 1968.

This is a very educational, and engaging look at the Russian side of the Space Race of the 1960's, and I've already watched it 3 times, and expect to watch it several more times as my time permits.

There are many footage from the 60s that were nice to look at. Some I had never seem before and that was interesting but the whole conspiracy thing is crap. No interviews done with the people who were there and are still alive, no Soviet/Russian documents were shown, no hard evidence at all, Just pure crap made up and backed by foreign reporters. Since when do reporters report the truth? Some of the claims are even laughable like the report from one of the operators who tracked a manned space flight days before Gagarin's flight. The report wasn't shown, it was read and the operator's name wasn't revealed because he was threatened with jail if he showed his face on this documentary. The Soviet Union/Russia was and still is to an extent a very secretive nation but the truth would've been out already had somebody else been the first in space. A much more entertaining option is The Red Stuff dvd, which contains interviews with those that are still alive and were there.