[X] My Assistant

[ilbasso]

Just finished watching episodes 1 and 2 of the new Discovery Channel series, "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions."

WOW!!

Wonderful footage, beautifully restored, and it looks great in HDTV. These first two episodes covered Mercury and Gemini. Subsequent episodes will cover Apollo, Shuttle, and ISS.

Due to time limitations, they didn't cover every mission (Sigma 7, and Geminis V, X, and XI were not mentioned at all). But the missions they did cover included some footage that I have never seen before, and I have been watching these missions on TV since Shepard's flight. Seeing film of Ed White's spacewalk again brought back the sense of wonder and disorientation that I felt the first time I saw it in 1965. I don't believe I ever knew that Gemini VII had been tasked with observing a Polaris missle launch - and they had film of the launch taken from orbit. They also showed film of Gemini VI's approach and rendezvous - I had previously only seen stills from the actual station-keeping with Gemini VII. And I don't recall ever before seeing a movie of Gene Cernan's spacewalk on Gemini IX.

The film clips and narration are supplemented by commentary from many of the astronauts, most surprisingly being Neil Armstrong. He almost NEVER takes part in these kinds of documentaries, so his participation certainly added to the feeling that this was a special show. John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Jim McDivitt, Jim Lovell, Frank Borman, Buzz Aldrin, and Gene Cernan also provided commentary, as did Chris Kraft and Gene Krantz.

If you get Discovery Channel, I strongly suggest you watch this! It's also coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray, with an additional 4 hours of footage.

[dvandorn]

Well... I'd judge the first two installments as better than average.

There wasn't really much of anything on the show that I've never seen before, but there were a lot of things I haven't seen in an awfully long time. And some things were sort of "created" a bit -- a few shots of generic Gemini spacewalkers shown during the description of Cernan's EVA troubles (of which there is almost no movie film), for example. (The one actual shot of Cernan is taken from inside the cabin by Stafford, and is a short clip of film of Cernan sort of wheeling across the field of view. That and some partial-body shots as he struggled with his umbilical are really the only shots of Cernan's GT-IX EVA in existence.)

They also trimmed the story a little *too* much, in places, I thought. For example, after the discussion of Gemini IV and White's EVA, they state "The next thing for Gemini to prove was rendezvous, and they turned to Frank Borman and Jim Lovell to help do it." No discussion of the real purpose behind Borman's GT-VII (long duration flight), no discussion of GT-VI's original mission plan and the loss of its Agena... like I say, nothing inaccurate or criminal, just a touch incomplete.

But all in all, one of the better efforts. In fact, I was not only impressed that they got Armstrong out to comment on his flights, I was even more impressed that they got John Young out to do some, as well. Young is always tongue-tied in front of a microphone and has refused many prior requests for this kind of thing. I'm pleased to see he's finally getting over his shyness and is willing to add to the historical commentary.

-the other Doug