Date of airing: April 12, 1998 (HBO)
This episode gave you the shortest of short cliff notes about how much of a messed-up year 1968 was for Americans and how excellent of a contrast it makes when you put it in the same line with the very successful Apollo 8 mission. All the mess this episode glazed over in its first ten or twenty minutes, and all the beauty it depicted during the remainder of the episode in which Apollo 8 happened to be one of the most enjoyable rides of the Apollo program and manned spaceflight, generally makes for an interesting episode of television. It almost makes me nostalgic about watching more stuff from 1968, including documentaries about the tumultuous times, but also stories about the best parts of the year, which may or may not be hiding in-between the nightmarish images. It’s a sign that beauty can still happen in the face of darkness, and I think the example of how 1968 ended in American history is one of the best to use in the argument. You can go through war and death and assassination attempts and think it’s the worst year on record. But you can also witness one of the greatest achievements in human history, and suddenly the year does not seem so bleak after all. Although no argument can be made that has 1968 not be a bleak year in American history, kind of like how 2020 has become one of the bleakest years in American history.
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| Earth life during one of the darkest years in America is in black and white. |
In hindsight, this episode didn’t have much to deliver. The Apollo 8 mission wasn’t dramatic, since everything happened and went along with perfection, and the only moment you could have brought some suspense in was the launch scene, during the moment the vessel enters the lunar orbit, as well as when it exited the lunar orbit, which was essentially the real scary moment Susan Borman was anticipating and hoping her fears wouldn’t come true. But other than that, a scripted episode about 1968 and the Apollo 8 mission is hard to execute – are you going to focus on the bad things of the year, to put it in contrast with the successful mission, or do you focus on one of the two things, with the other only being a minor backstory?
This episode looks like the writers couldn’t make their minds up, as the first 21 minutes were a quickly read-through history book of the worst moments of 1968 (including the violent international demonstrations, as it became a montage of the dark and bloody side of the year). When you use almost half of the episode by flashing you images of 1968, before you get to the actual premise of the episode, then one might wonder whether the writers didn’t have enough material to work with or if the Apollo 8 mission was not of worth to be turned into a script of an hour-long television show. The writers could have made it better by focusing on the characters of the missions. Thanks to APOLLO 13, I already know who Jim Lovell is, but a few more words about Bill Anders and Frank Borman would have been nice. I kind of know more about Susan Borman after this episode than the commander of the Apollo 8 flight.
At least Borman’s family was the center of attention in this episode, and it was quite lovely to see Rita Wilson in the role of the worried and panicked wife, which she excelled at. There might have been barely anything to get out of the actual Apollo 8 mission because of no tension plot-wise, but there is a lot in a family member’s fear of something going horribly wrong (by remembering how unexpected science and technology can be and how easy it could be to remain stuck in lunar orbit), or the tension of looking at the television screen and watching your husband get shot into space, and when something goes wrong, you can’t do anything about it. That fear in Rita Wilson’s face brought a little tear to my eyes, as it brought tension into the episode when there couldn’t have been one. This also means if the writers had cared a bit more about the characters of the show, maybe FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON would have been a better show in general. Tracing historical and scientific achievements and events is one thing, but it’s also a thing to get the audience to know the persons who were involved in those events, and this miniseries doesn’t excel in that regard.
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| And on the eighth day, man circled around the Moon. |
Meanwhile, you could smell how important it was for the writers and producers to get to the two most important moments of the Apollo 8 mission: the creation of Earthrise, as well as the reading of the first chapters of Genesis during the Christmas Eve television transmission. As if these two things are the only moments the Apollo 8 mission is known for – although Earthrise is a stunning photograph and the television transmission from lunar orbit is generally a cool thing. Holy crap, how will things look like when we get to see the first “live” pictures from Mars? Will I still be alive when that happens? Will the planet still be alive when we get the shot to land a human on Mars?
