Space Odyssey
Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets last night. It is a fictionalâthough factually-basedâaccount of a six-year manned mission to all the planets in our Solar System. I thought that the combination of fact and drama might be really cheesy, but it was pretty well done. The facts were somewhat simplified for a popular audience, but it wasn’t dumbed down too much. The combination of ‘interviews’ with the scientists and astronauts involved, and the information on the voice-over worked quite well. The simulations of the landings on the planets, and also the scenes on Pegasus were beautifully done, and did bring the facts about the planets to life. There’s a good reason that the cameras mounted on the Viking Mars landers were at human eye height: we find it difficult to understand things unless we see them from our own familiar viewpoint. That’s why it’s so powerful to see human figures wandering around on a simulated Mars and Venusâit gives you a much better impression of scale. Even the dramatic bits weren’t gratuitous because space missions are really dangerous.
I got the impression that some of the quirky details might have come directly from stories told by people involved with space missions. There was one bit where one of the astronauts was talking about a bet they had during G-force training on who would withstand the highest G before fainting. The Russian won, but none of them could understand how he could survive 15 G until they found out he could faint with his eyes open. That had a ring of truth about it.
Of course, it may be that I didn’t pick up any of the egregious errors, physical impossibilities or huge generalisations because I’m not a planetary scientist, astronomer or astrophysicist. I tend to be much more critical of documentaries about biology or natural history. Anyway, it was fun and I’m looking forward to the second part next week.
1
I must say that I enjoyed it too, the near miss by the asteroid was particularly good, I liked the way the asteroid got very close very fast, showing that these things are moving at significant relative velocities. The tornado on mars was intersting too, particularly the bit where they said that although it looked dangerous because the atmosphere is so thin it was the equivalent of a light breeze. On the downside they seem to have completely ignored the time lag of signals between earth and the spaceship due to distance. The astronauts, and earth seem to converse over some StarTrek like subspace frequency which is not limited by the speed of light.----- Darn it. I missed this.. wonder if I can grab it from somewhere... hmmmm
by Gordon @ 11/11/2004 11:11 am • Permalink •
2
The BBC seems to have done quite a lot of the "factual drama" type things of late - and they're normally pretty good. I didn't see this one (small problem of a knackered TV) but I'm sure it'll be repeated.
As for signal lag, if memory serves it'd be something like half an hour between messages if the lag were included in the documentary - I think we can write that one off to "practicality"...
by Lyle @ 11/11/2004 11:12 am • Permalink •
3
I enjoyed the program itself, and then "facts behind the drama" programme on BBC4. I thought there were plenty of mentions of the time lags, though, especially in the asteroid encounter bit where I think someone mentioned that there'd be an encounter x minutes after this message.
No, wait, it was the solar flare warning while they were on Mars.
BTW Part 1's repeated on the 14th at 3.15pm BBC Two (except in Scotland) according to the BBC site.
by Em² @ 11/11/2004 11:11 pm • Permalink •
4
Keith: I liked the 'close encounter' too. And I thought it was interesting how they explored the psychological issues involved with being miles from home and having to trust your life to people a safe on earth.
Gordon: See #4. It looks like it's repeated.
Lyle: If memory serves, they did actually flag up the signal lag for each stage of the journey, along with other stats about the planets they were visiting, but as you say, depicting that lag would make for a very boring programme.
Em2: Yes, I meant to mention the 'making of' programme, which I also watched.
by bsag @ 12/11/2004 6:11 pm • Permalink •
5
Thank you for all your comments about Space Odyssey. They are nice to read. I spent two years making this series and it's nice to know the time was well spent!
I think you understood the thing about the communications delay from what I read. You are all correct it doesn't make very good TV so we edited around it by sometimes repeating lines of comm back on Earth or on Pegasus, and refering to it in the documentary commentary and the astons that appear with each planetary encounter.
Thanks for watching.
Chris
Dr Chris Riley, Producer, Space Odyssey
by Chris Riley @ 18/11/2004 6:11 pm • Permalink •
6
Chris Riley: Congratulationsâit was informative, entertaining and rather moving when the astronauts body was interred in Saturn's rings. That's a difficult mixture to pull off. I also like the bit where the mock-journalist was interviewing one of the Mission Control scientists about landing on the comet, and asked whether it would explode. The scientist looked at him wearily and said, "Oh, really, do we have to be so dramatic" or something like that. That struck me as probably being an actual quote.
We scientists hate it when journalists over-dramatise.
by bsag @ 20/11/2004 5:12 pm • Permalink •
Page 1 of 1 pages