Apollo 11: The Untold Story (2006) (TV)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Tom Whitter

Writer:

Tom Whitter (writer)

Release Date:

24 July 2006 (UK)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

APOLLO 11: THE UNTOLD STORY aka FIRST ON THE MOON: THE UNTOLD STORY One-Hour Special for Discovery Science...

Cast

Buzz Aldrin	...	Himself - Apollo 11 astronaut
Gene Kranz	...	Himself - Apollo 11 flight director
George E. Mueller	...	Himself - Deputy associate administrator of manned space flight (as George Mueller)
David Baker	...	Himself - Senior Apollo 11 scientist
John R. Garman	...	Himself - Apollo 11 computer engineer (as Jack Garman)
Harold Loden	...	Himself - Apollo 11 mission controller
Andrew Chaikin	...	Himself - science journalist

Runtime:

Finland:53 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Atlantic Productions

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Trip to the Planetarium (2008)

Wildly exaggerated quasi-documentary

You'd think the first landing on the Moon would be dramatic enough without needing to make up stuff about it. However, this documentary seems to need to cast everything in the scariest possible light. It talks about the risks associated with the lunar module and mentions Armstrong's nearly fatal accident with the training vehicle, as if the trainer and the spacecraft had anything to do with each other. It makes the computer overload problem (the 1202 and 1201 alarms) encountered during the final landing sequence sound like a near-catastrophe when it was just an annoyance and not a risk to the crew at all. And it takes the "thirty seconds" call to mean thirty seconds of fuel left before running out, when it's actually thirty seconds before an abort is mandatory.

If you want to see a documentary or dramatization of Apollo 11, go for "From the Earth to the Moon" or one of the PBS documentaries, but skip this one.