8 Days: To the Moon and Back

It's well done, but not entirely a documentary in my view. The addition of the three actors portraying the astronauts during the presentation is, well, not what I was expecting. They did a very good job of synching voices, which is far better than adding the director's own "concept" of what was said during the event. In other words, what we are hearing during the program is actual voice footage in spite of what we are seeing is not necessarily what it actually looked like in the cockpit of the command module and other devices.

What was interesting of note was the switch between 4:3 aspect ration and today's more common 16:9, with this being used anytime we were watching the astronauts in the capsule or various actions taken with said devices. Maybe this was done so the viewer can better note the real from the fake?

Anyway, this event was an important step in the US space race, and something those of us born and bred in the United States should be proud of and hopefully never forget.

Almost a docudrama.

I've watched all the recent space documentaries and film celebrating the 50 anniversary of landing on the moon. I'm just old enough to remember it. Of all the programs this is the best and I include Apollo 11 that I watched at the cinema. By re-recording the mission conversations it comes over a lot clearer.

Despite knowing the ending it is really tense.

When you've seen as many space docs as I have, you wonder what can I possibly learn that's new. This doc answers that: voice audio between crew members that not even Mission Control heard during their mission. One thing I learned: Armstrong had the least amount of space travel time among the three. So at one point, Buzz refers to Armstrong as "rookie" and the actor portraying Armstrong didn't like hearing that. Now, was that Armstrong's actual response? Hard to tell, except Armstrong said nothing in reply, which you can interpret as speaking volumes. Finally, you get a view of what it must have looked like for Eagle as it landed on the moon. A terrific doc and a must see.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. 8 Days: To the Moon and Back recreated the events with the audio tapes, some lookalike actors in a recreation of the capsule which was mixed with historical footage.

The documentary had no narration. You relied on captions which gives some factual information as well as footage of the television coverage fronted by Walter Cronkite. The US network's coverage was sponsored by Kellogs on the day of the launch.

In the build up to the launch, the three astronauts had been constantly paraded on tv and the press. They must have been the most interviewed people in America, giving the same bland answers to the same questions. No wonder Armstrong eventually withdrew from the limelight.

Neil Armstrong was the most inexperienced of the three astronauts in terms of actual time spent in space. It showed when he mentioned his excitement of the prospect of seeing the sunrise from space. Buzz Aldrin was expecting to be the first man to walk on the surface of the moon but NASA had other ideas.

What came out of this documentary was just how much seat of the pants the mission was when it reached its critical stages as the lunar module approached its moon's orbit. The module overshot its planned landing site. A warning light came on and nobody knew what it meant. When a switch broke during take off from the moon, Aldrin improvised by using a pen while NASA boffins searched for an answer.

The three astronauts had a sense of calm and practicality throughout the mission.

After 50 years you would have thought there was little new to say about the first moon landing. This documentary proved me wrong as it provided new insights.

This unusual documentary essentially recreates visuals to match actual audio recordings of the astronauts on their moon excursion. It's an engrossing story and it's fun to see how it played out from beginning to end (fun enough that's it's worth watching both this and Apollo 11, which covers the same territory).

The only thing I didn't care for was the gimmicky transitions. Sometimes when flicking through scenes one hears the sound of a TV getting staticky, other times film footage will run out to the marked-up end. I don't see the point in any of that; it just annoyed me. But that's a small thing.