4/10
Great material, bad editing, terrible music
1 September 2012
Warning: Spoilers
This is one of a several "what we did then" historical retrospectives of the NASA human space flight program. In its favor, it includes interviews with Neil Armstrong himself, who was famously averse to such things, and even James McDivitt and Frank Borman, who are rarely seen. There is interesting footage of geology training and so on that will appeal to space buffs.

However, the editing is done in the choppy and affected style of a rock music video, which quickly becomes extremely tiresome. The music is beyond awful, a mishmash of orchestral fake-dramatic boilerplate episodes, something like the trashy background sound of a video game. The narration is done in an irritatingly over-serious manner. Combined with the bad music, it is nearly impossible to get through this series without turning the volume off and just enjoying the views. Unfortunately, the best part of the series is hearing the astronauts in their own words, and you can't do that without slurping down the treacly music and Commander McBragg narration as well. Ultimately, this sinks the series, which is a shame.

Some day, this material should be re-edited without much music, because none is needed, or at least, it should be kept to a bare and spare minimum. One wonders where they find the composers of this trash and how they manage to get themselves paid.

Gary Sinese unfortunately also lacks the vocal authority for documentary narration. But that is a minor quibble.

-drl
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