From the Earth to the Moon (1999, VHS)

Space had become somewhat passe'. Then Ron Howard made Apollo 13, Tom Hanks won an Oscar playing the mission's commander Jim Lovell, the movie was a critical and box office success, and a wave of nostalgia made space hot again. His own interest piqued and the iron piping hot, Hanks pitched HBO an idea for a mini-series: a retrospective telling the story of the Apollo missions in a docudrama style, similar to the movie. The idea eventually became the 12-part series, From the Earth to the Moon, based in part on the book, A Man on the Moon.

First off, this is a fabulous series. The 12 original parts, each roughly an hour long (about 55 minutes in the original HBO version), star a variety of well-known and recognizable actors, and were filmed by a talented group of directors and technicians, with Hanks as Executive Producer. The production values are fabulous, on a par with feature films. The effects are as breathtaking as in the Apollo 13 movie. The acting is uniformly top-notch.

"Can We Do This?", the first segment, gives the lead-up to the Apollo program, in short segment form. The Mercury and Gemini flights are highlighted, as well as President Kennedy's promise "To put a man on the moon and bring him home safely in this decade." Kennedy's promise fuels the first half of the series, as it did NASA. That deadline and the public support generated made the very expensive program possible. The title refers to the discussion within NASA itself, as they discuss the engineering feats necessary to reach the moon. Building new technologies not yet in existence, in the space of a few years. The answer to the question; "Yes, yes, absolutely."

With the excitement and anticipation building, "Apollo 1" hits a big roadblock. In a test on the launchpad, three astronauts were killed in a fire days before the scheduled launch. The show begins with the fateful incident, focuses on the investigation that followed, and memorializes the three men, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Rusty Schwiekert. It is a touching and wonderful episode, showing the dangers of space exploration, and making a villain of Walter Mondale, a young Senator at the time and opponent of the space program.

Mark Harmon stars as Wally Schirra, the commander of Apollo 7, in Part III, "We Have Cleared the Tower," the story of the first manned Apollo mission to reach space. After some unmanned tests, NASA was ready to return to space. The episode focuses on Harmon as Schirra, a no-nonsense astronaut determined to succeed in the mission and make the moon landing possible, and do it safely.

"1968" is an account of that turbulent year in American and world history, possibly partly redeemed by the Christmastime orbit of the moon by Apollo 8, the first manned lunar orbit. "Spider" is an account of the building of the lunar module and the company that built it, and the flight of Apollo 9 in earth orbit that tested it.

Part 6 is "Mare Tranquilitatis," the sight of the first lunar landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 mission. The tremendous media and historic pressure the crew members faced is shown. Truly this was an event in exploration to rank with Columbus. The episode is heavy with the import of history.

To break up the mood, "That's All There Is" details the story of Apollo 12 and its fun-loving commander, Pete Conrad, played by Paul McCrane, now on "ER." The episode is narrated by Dave Foley of "Newsradio" in the part of Alan Bean, perhaps the most unlikely of the men to land on the moon. The episode is light and tone and terribly funny at times. This is also where a great deal of "objectionable" language shows up, because Conrad's speech patterns are, shall we say, "earthy." As an HBO show, four-letter words are allowed, and a number of them are used in this episode. Not for the small children.

"We Interrupt This Program" is the story of Apollo 13 from the earth-bound perspective of the media. Since the movie had recently been released, Hanks apparently wanted to find another angle on the story, and the episode focuses on the fictional/composite science rerporter, Emmett Seaborn of "NTC," played by veteran actor Lane Smith (Perry White from The Adventures of Lois and Clark). This, the 8th episode, is the first one that really falls flat, because it is not so much a focus on Apollo as a statement about the media. It focuses on the rivalry between Seaborn, wanting to report the "hard news," and a young reporter out for the "human story," trying to catch family members crying on camera and other tabloid TV staples. It is not so much about space as an indictment of the media.

"For Miles and Miles" focuses on Alan Shepard. Shepard was the first American in space (for 15 minutes) but before he could fly a Gemini mission, was grounded with an inner ear problem. After a few years of frustration, a new surgical procedure corrected the problem and Shepard reached the moon on Apollo 14. Part 9 stands as a tribute to him.

"Galileo Was Right" looks at some of the science around the moon, as the moon missions got a bit longer and the astronauts got to spend more time on the lunar surface. With the ranching out, and the use of the lunar rover, the astronauts were able to cover more area and do more exploring.

The penultimate episode, "The Original Wives' Club," looks at the effect of the Apollo program on the astronaut's spouses. Certainly this was a hazardous job, and a very public existence, and the pressure on the wives was enormous. Many marriages ended in divorce. This episode doesn't work as well for me, but it takes a human-interest look at the "home fires" of the flyboys.

The ending episode, "Le Voyage Dans La Lune," refers to a movie by a Frenchman from the early 20th century, the first to depict a lunar voyage. It is also the only appearence as an actor by Hanks in the series, as the director's assistant. The episode flashes back and forth from the French filmmaker to the last Apollo mission, which also featured the first (and so far only) pure scientist to visit the moon, geologist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt. This is a bittersweet ending, showing the difficulties of the filmmaker and the pathos of the last moon landing.

We have just barely been in space since Apollo. The Skylab mission, and the low-Earth orbit of the space shuttles have kept us in space, barely, but I wish we were planning a manned mission to Mars, not just robotic flights. If you watch these fabulous and fascinating videos, you may agree with me. The challenge and adventure of space is a fascinating thing, and I believe the world could use some of that challenge and adventure right now. Let us think forward and look up again!