Re: From The Earth To The Moon

From: Pat Flannery (flanner_at_daktel.com)
Date: 12/23/04 

Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 23:21:04 -0600

Terrell Miller wrote:

>Then we get to "We have cleared the tower", the episode about A7. Title says
>it all. The entire story arc of this episode is getting back up in space and
>getting over all the bad residue of the fire. None of the A7 astros ever
>flew in space again, so the director/producer didn't have to spend a lot of
>time developing their characters and setting them up for a later landing
>episode.
>

The show all this building tension between Wally and NASA as they get
ready for the flight, and then it just ends. Anybody who didn't know
what happened on that flight would be left wondering "what the hell was
the point of all that?" after watching it.

> They already knew that the A10/A16 missions would only be
>background for the story of the wives (probably to avoid the political hot
>potato of getting full NASA cooperation while simultaneously featuring John
>Young in something other than a "loyal sidekick" role), so they gave Young
>some screen time here and used him as a summation of lots of
>behind-the-scenes NASA types. And then had the wives bitch about how he
>dumped his first wife for a golddigger. Selah.
>
>That's a hell of a lot to cram into one episode, so anything other than a
>very clear "how do we get back in space after the fire?" storyline would
>have served no dramatic purpose and had to go. The tension we saw in
>Schirra's bickering with the suits all had to happen *before* launch, just a
>symbol of the drive to get it right this time. After that it had to be "Go
>Fever" so the producers could show the Apollo program galloping along
>purposely towards the moon again. They knew that they were gonna waste
>virtually an entire episode with all the counterculture protest crap
>("1968"), so there's your bickering quotient. And then show Apollo 8 as the
>single redeeming moment of that year, dissing stuff like a pretty nice
>little World Series, etc.
>

 As a piece of pro-NASA propaganda, the thing is great. NASA is always
right, and if it does make mistakes they weren't due to any fundamental
problems at NASA, no siree! It was those stinking reporters, and
meddling Congressmen that are to blame... Tom Hanks' movies tend to
resemble Frank Kapra's - nice, and sweet, and wholesome, and more than a
bit simplistic and saccharine, and sappy.

>
>So yes, they ignored the inflight shenanigans on Apollo 7, but not for any
>kind of whitewashing. It was just a subplot that did nothing to advance the
>overall storyline and would have been confusing for the average viewer (what
>does it mean that they're yelling at Mission Control, and what does that
>have to do with the moon shot?).
>

It would have been fascinating to see how they would have portrayed that
incident...given the tone of the rest of the miniseries, I'll bet Wally
would be portrayed as a world-class *** who should be on his knees
for the mere privilege of being allowed to touch Apollo 7- much less fly
in it.

>
>Again, remember that even in a 12-part miniseries they have to condense
>thousands of man-years of activity into less than an hour of footage, so
>they have to trim ruthlessly and stick to the main storyline. Wally's little
>rebellion had virtually no impact on the Big Picture, so it's one of the
>things that had to be chopped from FTETTM.
>

But since you are going to devote an episode to the flight of Apollo
7...then you might as well show what happened on the Apollo 7 flight.
It's a great story, and I think the only people who wouldn't have
enjoyed seeing it are the guys from the NASA PAO. The Apollo 12 episode
was great, and about the only really exciting thing that happened on
that flight was burning out the TV camera.
I have a strong suspicion that what the Apollo 7 episode started out as
a very different sort of beast indeed than what finally appeared on-screen.

Pat

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