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From the Earth to the Moon
[2005] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Starring: Mason Adams, Jo Anderson, David Andrews, Ronny Cox, Bryan Cranston
Format: AC-3 Box set Collector's Edition Dolby Dubbed DVD-Video Subtitled Widescreen NTSC
Released: 20 Sep 2005
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Flawed Brilliance..... - By: , 30 Jan 2006
Tom Hanks & the Apollo13 production team have re-united only three years after the the film was released to give us yet another insight into the workings of NASA & it's glorious days from the Mercury, Gemini & Apollo missions. If I was to give anybody one piece of advice on how to view this, then treat each episode individuallly rather than the series in it's entirity.

I loved how the producers had considered the many people whom made the missions take off from the ground in the first place & the importance of the work that they carried out, my favourite episode had to be 'Spider'- this was based on the design & build of the LEM, or Lunar Module by the company Grunmann & it's project overseer Tom Kelly. The work & result of it was very well documented.

The only downside was that I felt the Russian Space programme could have been featured a lot more than it did, & it leads me to think that the series glorifies NASA a little too much (albeit unintentionallly).

Putting that aside, I feel that this is a must for anyone who has an interest in the space programmes, it is very enlightning & educational as you get to feel what went on behind the scenes & get to share the agony & estacies of the failures & successes that made the technological progresses advance so greatly within a relatively short space of time.

Flawed but wonderful - By: J. Myers, 06 Nov 2005
‘From the Earth to the Moon’ is an excellent recreation of America’s space programme from incidents occurring during the earliest test flights to the final Apollo mission in 1967. The series sets out in a stylish, upbeat fashion from which it rarely breaks – presenting a largely uplifting, optimistic review of events. Eleven of the twelve episodes are headed by a title sequence, an introduction by Tom Hanks & a second, lengthy credit list. For my tastes, this format slightly deadens the impact of the material – & adds to its loose, fragmentary style. (Part 4, in particular, suffers badly.) But once past these titles, the drama of each individual story takes over – & the magic begins. Each of the twelve episodes documents individual struggle & brilliant, collective team-work as the most ingenious minds of their times pair with the most heroic. The whole series is fascinating - whether it’s dealing with the design disputes of a single piece of technology, the crazed bonhomie of the crews or the aftermath of the complete endeavour on the astronaut’s marriages – the entire human story is here.

Negatives? The format of the TV programme isn’t strong enough to deal with the complex political issues occurring within NASA’s environs. In particular, it’s hard to imagine an intelligent retrospective of these events without mention of Wernher Von Braun, yet – barring one cursory reference – that’s what happens. ‘From the Earth to the Moon’, has as good as airbrushed its founding rocket genius; Braun, out of the picture. Much as the Russians did – in real life - with their mentor, Sergei Korolev, within his own life time. Part 4, titled ‘1968’, makes an effort to capture broader events – the social protests of the civil rights movement, Vietnam, the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers & Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. But only in a fleeting, snap-shot fashion. Even that is enough to complicate the dramatic flow of the episode.

I also found the final instalment, referencing George Méliès, 1902 silent film: Le Voyage Dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), an artistic leap too far. Tom Hanks foregoes his normal introduction to act out the part of one of Méliès assistants – & begins to diverge from the material in an indulgent, unjustifiable way that confuses & weakens the preceding dramatic realism. These gripes aside, it’s impossible to watch this series without getting caught up in the excitement of the times & the nail-biting tension created by many of the missions. If you were alive in the 60’s – or remotely curious about ‘mankinds boldest adventure’ – you must watch this series.

From earth to the moon - By: Mr. A. Ishaq, 06 Mar 2005
This mini series is one of the best made in the last ten years charting the space race with the key members of both the astronauhts & science team that put man on the moon. Each episode has it's own identity that brings to life that period of history with Tom Hank's as executive producer & Ron Howard who both bought us Appolo 13 this stands as a great companion peaice & for yonger members a historical doucument they can view & get a taste of our most recent history.
Almost as exciting as what we lived through way back when - By: Lawrance M. Bernabo, 06 Jul 2004
When I was in the first grade in Orlando, Florida our class would go outside to watch the Mercury flights take off from Cape Canaveral, so the American space program made a big impression on me as a child. Of course, now I have a daughter who is surprised to learn that human beings have walked on the moon while I remember "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." being interrupted by a news bulletin about the fatal fire that killed the crew of Apollo 1. My father was stationed in Japan for most of the Apollo flights, so except for Apollo 11 we did not get to see a lot of what everybody saw back home. Consequently, for me "From the Earth to the Moon" is a combination of vague memories & new information.

Having also watched "Band of Brothers," the other HBO documentary in which Tom Hanks had a significant hand, I am struck by how these two mini-series have essentiallly redefined the term more towards its original meaning. Unlike landmark mini-series such as "Shogun" & "Winds of War," where each episode picks up the main characters pretty much where they were left at the end of the previous episode, "From the Earth to the Moon" & "Band of Brothers" clearly offer up distinct episodes in telling the story of the Apollo space program. The only constant characters are reallly Eugene Cernan (Daniel Hugh Kelly), the one Mercury astronauts who never got to fly & ended up heading the program, & the fictional television anchorman Emmett Seaborn (Lane Smith), who represents an amalgam of alll the newscasters who were big boosters of the space program.

Most of the episodes focus on a specific Apollo flight, but there are also episodes on different topics, like the development of the lunar module. There are episodes that of surprising comedy, such as when the crazy Pete Conrad (Paul McCrane) takes Al Bean (Dave Foley) & Apollo 12 to the moon, & one devoted to the pathos of the shattered lives of the wives of the third group of Astronauts. The episode on Apollo 13 is interesting in how it effectively avoids covering the same ground as the movie. We never see the astronauts, we only hear their voices, & since we alll "know" the story now the focus of the episode is to show how the space program was confronted with the "new" brand of journalism that was not going to be spoon fed information & heroes by NASA. However, my favorite was the episode in which Lee Silver (David Clennon), a professor of geology, teaches the astronauts how to read the story of rocks as the test pilots being sent to the moon learn to be "scientists." There are lots of familiar faces in these episodes (the proverbial too many to name), but for those who remember the indelible bad boy characters created by McCrane & Clennon on "E.R." & "thirtysomething," there is a special joy in which them play good guys.

"From the Earth to the Moon" is not as informative as a documentary, but it certainly focus on the actual nuts & bolts of sending men to the moon. Actuallly it does this in a rather engaging manner, & the way in which it combines NASA technology with human drama is one of the strengths of the mini-series. Almost alll of the astronauts come out of the series with their images as heroes intact (providing you do not ask their ex-wives), the exceptions being Buzz Aldrin (Bryan Cranston), who reallly wanted to get out on the moon before Neil Armstrong (Tony Goldwyn), & Alan Shepard (Ted Levine), who we always knew was the grand old S.O.B. of the space program. But even so both men merely come across as being decidedly human. Whether you actuallly were around at the time to go outside & look up at the moon knowing there were a couple of Americans walking around hitting a golf balll, picking up rocks, & dropping a hammer & a feather at the same time, or this is alll just history come alive, you should find this an excellent series of adventures in & about outer space.

Remembering History - By: oberon41@aol.com, 15 Mar 2001
Having been a teenager during the 'Apollo years'and having also been an avid follower of the missions (a friend & I told the English class at our school that 13 could use their LM engine to return to Earth before it was announced), it was with nostalgic awe & excitement that I sat down to watch this historicallly accurate portrayal of the Apollo program. Hanks did a wonderful job as Exec. Producer, spurred on by his obvious love & interest for the subject & the series captured a lot of the atmosphere of the time. It took us behind the missions, to show us the stories that most people did not hear about, while also not ignoring the negative things that were going on, Vietnam, Kennedy's assasination etc. (contrary to the reviews given on a certain BBC arts review programme, which I for one have not watched since). The special effects were excellent, enabling us to see things that before we could only imagine (or re-enact with models). The films also served to show our children things that happened before some of them were born, it is strange, as someone who grew up seeing the dream of walking on the moon become a reality, to know people now, who grew up with it as a historical fact. My children were amazed as they watched this wonderful dramatic recreation of history & I was nostalgicallly content to see homage paid so effectively.