Anyone see the promos for this series on Science channel? It's odd, but when the promo ran, with the scenes from the moon program and the '60s music, it felt like that moment in Oz when the world went from black and white to color. All the memories of the time when we worked towards "results" instead of "process" came flooding back. But, for a space program series, you'd think that, instead of "Gimmie Shelter", they might have used "Stairway to Heaven".
Here's a link to the official site -- along with some neat simulations, vids, pics, and games: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/nasa/mission-control/mission-control.html
Maybe they should have had the guys that did the promo do the program. Just a bland skimming of some of the surface facts, with a typical Disco Channel half baked attempt to make "suspense" out of known results. (If the rocket blew up, he could have been killed.) Yawn. No attempt whatsoever to give any kind of feel for the attitudes, the expectations, the hopes that went into the program. No message whatever about the challenge, the audacity of challenging an environment only known from science fiction; no portrayal of the power of the machines, the subsonic rumbles that shook the tv cameras and all the observers. No hint of the anticipation as half the planet watched, -- the will of billions of humans, with the mantra of "Go!", defying gravity to lift tons of hardware and hurl it into the sky. Just a distilled partial recap of some of the "what", with no attempt at the "why" or "how". Not even any of the social changes taking place outside mission control. Nada. Zip. Zilch. The kind of dry, bland presentation of history that makes school kids hate history. Disappointing.
VERY well stated. I watched the first 1.5 hours. They had a frickin timer on Discovery Channel for hours beforehand and I was disappointed. It promised to be a new look at the space program. It was pieced together footage and very underwhelming. A big disappointment.
Of course it was pieced together footage, what else could a documentary use? I wasn't thrilled with the shows but not as disappointed as some of you guys.
