Date of airing: April 5, 1998 (HBO)
Nielsen ratings information: 6.55 million viewers
And the HBO miniseries already became political in its second episode, which is understandable, considering the political ramifications of the Apollo 1 disaster that I would have loved to follow in real-time, now that I’m interested in American politics, thanks to the crazy run of the 2016 US presidential election cycle. I’m glad that some of the Senate hearing was part of this episode, even if Frank Borman happened to deliver the most patriotic and pro-spaceflight speech anyone could have ever dreamt of, but the Washington, D.C.-set fallout of the Apollo 1 fire was definitely intriguing for me, as I came to learn about what happened during the fire in the command module, and maybe even got a theory of why it happened (no accident is ever just an accident, there is always a backstory). The argument in Washington D.C. over what happened was new to me, and while I don’t know what was historically accurate and what was not, it was still a fun watch, as the witnesses were trying their best to get out of the disaster unscathed, and the “prosecutors” tried their best to save some money for the taxpayers and stop the madness that is the space race. But questions need to be answered about what was classified and what was declassified before the shooting of this miniseries, but I assume everything involving NASA was never really classified to begin with, except maybe for the internal report that Walter Mondale mentioned and pressured the NASA suits with.
Let’s just think about that for a second: Some Senators were ready to pull the plug on NASA, knowing that it would lead to the Russians winning the Moon. Considering the Cold War that was already running incredibly hot at certain times, would it have been considered unpatriotic for the Senators to try and take funding away for part of a very specific war against the communists? Trying to save money and make the constituents happy is one thing, but actively trying to push your country away from a war (whether it’s a cold or a bloody one) they were supposed to win? I think that’s an angle to the story that hasn’t been told yet, and that this episode failed to deliver. It may have been close to making an argument about it, but I will assume that the running time of the miniseries, with each episode going less than an hour, didn’t have time to get even more political and depict how NASA was essentially in the middle of the Cold War between two nuclear nations.
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| When the mission to land on the Moon became political. |
While I was happy to see the political fallout of the Apollo 1 fire, I was disappointed to see that the episode right away started with the fire, instead of giving Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee a moment to be characters in this fictional retelling of their lives. Borman had the opportunity to tell you things about the three perished astronauts, but for the sake of the narrative, it would not have been such a bad idea to have them shine as characters in a scripted program first, especially since they didn’t get much screentime in the previous episode.
Then again, what would have been taken out of the story to be replaced by more character work? The issue between NASA and the company they hired, North American, seemed proper enough, because it was part of the story like Halliburton was part of Aaron Sorkin’s Deepwater Horizon story in his pilot episode for HBO’s THE NEWSROOM. Maybe Deke Slayton deserved a little bit of less screentime, although I have no idea what his connection to the story was in real life, and if he was rattled by the emotional fallout of seeing three of his astronauts die. Maybe Joe Shea’s little side plot of moving to D.C. and becoming part of the presidential administration could have been cut, as I felt that it was kind of out of place here, or a whole different story entirely. But then again, he and Harrison Storms were pretty much part of the team, so of course, the episode had to focus on them as well, and not just because the narrative needed a few people in the story who had to pay for the fire and the loss of the three astronauts’ lives. You can’t just be somewhat responsible for three deaths and not think that you will be punished.
I would have also appreciated some “alone time” with the wives of the dead astronauts. They were given short segments during the beginning and then at the end when they gave Deke the astronaut pin, but the story was just too heavy to not also focus on the wives who just lost their husbands. NASA was about to crash and burn metaphorically, because the fire could have led to a shutdown of the entire spaceflight program, but the lives of the wives were also altered that day, and yet no focus was given to them in this hour. It makes me think that FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON isn’t particularly character-driven at all and just wanted to rattle down historic facts and events of the space race, including the smallest detail of removing a tiny wrench in the command module, which was something I wasn’t interested in either, despite the obvious ridiculousness of the caution the engineers proceeded with. I know it was necessary, and without it, they probably wouldn’t have found the socket, let alone the reason for the fire in the first place, but damn, was that one heavy bureaucratic scene.
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| The widows of the Apollo 1 astronauts have a present for Deke. |
It was also a lesson for engineers about how machines and vehicles are handled when being part of an accident. I’m pretty sure the same will happen when a plane crash is being investigated: removing one screw after the next and just don’t make a single mistake while doing so. It’s probably interesting stuff for investigators and nerds who love everything about planes, but within a scripted narrative, it was a bit of a weird scene.
