These older NOVA documentaries are fun. They focus on science and history. Anything before 2015 is not super political or morally preachy overall which is nice. But they still use a bit too creative tools to tell a story.
This focuses on photos and drawings explaining what Dumont did and how everything looked like. The people talking about him do exaggerate while talking about his achievements. He was the most famous person of his time? Seems like a grand statement about a guy who is largely forgotten outside Brazil today. He invented the airplane? Again, quite a silly statement. Santos-Dumont did a lot in his life and was a big name so no need overplay your hand in the documentary. While maybe Brazilians will nod in agreement with such points anyone outside Brazil will feel it's just unfactual weird statements.
The documentary also claims he was interested in men. It's a rumor created about most big historical names. Of course there is zero evidence of this while there is plenty of evidence that he was very interested in women. But since he never married such rumors are created to expand on the storytelling. Again, bad history. The Wright brothers similarly were unmarried so I assume NOVA could create rumors about them too to create more storylines? Completely pointless and ahistorical.
The acted out scenes are actually quite good focusing on the technology showing engines and Santos-Dumont working on technology. The pace is very good as we switch between the narrator, pundits, photos, and acted out scenes. But later it ads on modern scenes with for example a young woman flying the Santos-Dumont 14-bis. And they make her out to be some sort of heroic trailblazer. It feels like more overblown stuff. Then of course when she fails, as she is seemingly clueless about this and just there because the camera is there, a guy takes over and actually does fly the plane because he knows what he is doing.
I don't feel like it's a great documentary. But on the other hand it does contain actual history you can learn from.