A collection of short documentaries and featurettes to introduce the behind the scenes aspects of FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON.
Episode 1. Behind The Scenes: Making of From the Earth to the Moon
1998-04-03 · 30 min
Details the making of "The Earth To The Moon". Interviews with cast and crew including producer Tom Hanks.
Episode 2. Special Effects Featurette
1998-04-07 · 4 min
Covers the special effects used to produce the series. Interviews with the model makers, special effects artists are included.
Season 1
12 episodes · 1998
Episode 1. Can We Do This?
1998-04-05 · 60 min
NASA responds to John F. Kennedy's challenge of landing a man on the moon with a group of new astronauts for the Gemini Program, who work toward the eventual lunar voyage with a series of risky and groundbreaking earth-orbit missions.
Episode 2. Apollo 1
1998-04-05 · 61 min
The tragic death of Apollo's first three astronauts during a pre-launch test haunts the spacecraft's designers, as they struggle to come to terms with what happened, and find a way to save the moon program.
Episode 3. We Have Cleared the Tower
1998-04-12 · 60 min
A documentary film crew follows the final preparations for the first manned Apollo launch. Now behind schedule due to the Apollo 1 fire, astronauts and launch pad personnel bet their lives--and America's space future--on its success.
Episode 4. 1968
1998-04-12 · 55 min
NASA takes its boldest and most controversial step—an attempt to fly men around the moon and back for the first time in history—at the end of one of the most cataclysmic years of the century.
Episode 5. Spider
1998-04-19 · 57 min
Engineers at Grumman Aviation work with NASA and the Apollo 9 astronauts to design, build, and finally test-fly the world's first true spaceship—a “lunar module” which will hopefully land the first humans on the moon.
Episode 6. Mare Tranquilitatis
1998-04-19 · 57 min
The glare of the public eye, conflicts among the crew, disastrous simulations, and a series of harrowing last-minute crises threaten the Apollo 11 astronauts' success at pulling off NASA's crowning achievement—the first lunar landing.
Episode 7. That's All There Is
1998-04-26 · 50 min
From the perspective of Astronaut Alan Bean, see how he made an unexpected journey to the moon and his friendship with his Apollo 12 crew mates.
Episode 8. We Interrupt This Program
1998-04-26 · 49 min
As the life-threatening consequences of the Apollo 13 accident escalate in real time, so do the tensions among the NASA press corps covering it. Among them, a respected, old-school TV journalist questions the confrontational methods of a…
Episode 9. For Miles and Miles
1998-05-03 · 50 min
America's first man in space, Alan Shepard, is grounded with an inner ear disorder. A thankless new desk job starts to look permanent, until fate—and surgery—bring him a chance to rescue the space program.
Episode 10. Galileo Was Right
1998-05-03 · 56 min
Geology guru Lee Silver helps Dave Scott and his Apollo 15 crew unravel the moon's mysterious origins by teaching them to become his lunar surrogates, and thus the first fully-trained “field observers” on another world.
Episode 11. The Original Wives' Club
1998-05-10 · 58 min
A group of young military wives struggle with their new “jobs” handling both the national spotlight and a demanding home front. Meanwhile, their astronaut husbands lose themselves in the pursuit of a national goal alternately competitive,…
Episode 12. Le Voyage dans la Lune
1998-05-10 · 60 min
The bittersweet end of the Apollo program—and the final manned journey to another planet—is juxtaposed with a light-hearted recreation of the first cinematic imagining of such an endeavor, the 1902 French silent classic “Voyage to the…
In 1970, the crew of Apollo 13 was struck with a endless succession of devastating bad luck, worthy of the number 13. Twenty-five years later Ron Howard brought the exciting story to the big screen. Almost as amazing as the story itself was the fact that, a mere 25 years later, so few people remembered, or even knew of the disaster. And even fewer knew of the hundreds of other story highs and lows that tracked our journey from the Earth to the Moon.
Tom Hanks recognized the importance and served as Executive Producer in bringing as much of this ignored history to televisions with excellent results. Based on the epic story, chronicled in Andrew Chaikin's book, "From the Earth to the Moon", the story was broken into 12 hour long episodes. Hanks was very present, writing and directing episodes, acting as a French cameraman, even serving as a host to introduce each episode.
One of the things that makes this experiment so grand, is that they recognized each story on its own merits. Individual episodes may be handled as drama, or comedy, documentary or behind the scenes. With different directors handling the specific contributions, we see stories focusing on our space travelling voyagers, about their wives, or about the countless technician's who gave of their lives to make this dream come true. One episode even focuses on a geologist who has a great influence on the astronauts.
One of the most interesting episodes returns us again to Apollo 13, so brilliantly explored in the big screen 3 years earlier. That film turned a regular space launch into a claustrophobic nightmare where the astronauts are cut off from the earth and those they love. To tell that story again, they flipped it. This time we focused on those back on firm ground wondering if we will even see them again with no video from the capsule during the entire episode.
The actors on screen are some of the best at the time and joined by excellent directors and musical composers. this series is a great document of the Apollo program. It even stands up well when combined with THE RIGHT STUFF and APOLLO 13 for a binge of the journey from the earth to the moon.
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