"De la Terre à la Lune" Spider (TV Episode 1998)

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Tom Hanks

Self - Host

Remi Aubuchon

Engineer Bob

Reed Birney

John Houbolt

David Brisbin

Allyn B. Hazard

Max M. Brown

Glennan
(as Max Brown)

Matt Craven

Tom Kelly

Brett Cullen

Dave Scott

Keith Dorman

Kelly's Assistant

John Drew

Mylar Engineer

Dann Florek

Robert Seamans

Randell Haynes

Houbolt's Critic #1

Steve Hofvendahl

Tom Stafford

Clint Howard

Paul Lucas

Daniel Hugh Kelly

Gene Cernan

Paul Kiernan

Glennan's Assistant

Brian Lafontaine

Young Engineer

Mark Lainer

Doubting Engineer

Matthew Lussier

Arnold Whitaker

Director
- Graham Yost
Writers
- Andrew Chaikin
- Andy Wolk
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

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Trivia
A recurring musical element is the theme song to the film La grande évasion (1963). This is appropriate, as the story is about a group of desperate men trying to achieve something extremely difficult and risky but hugely rewarding. In the film years of repeated failures and refinements are followed by great success. Another aspect is in regard to the "cooler King" prisoner of war character played by Steve McQueen, who, between escape attempts, spends extended periods of time in the cooler (solitary confinement) during which he spends his time tossing a baseball against the wall of his cell and catching it. This is what Grumman exec Tom Kelly ( Matt Craven )does.

Goofs
At approximately 27 minutes into the episode, as the astronauts arrive for the testing of the LEM, the onscreen graphic misspells "Grumman" as "Grummen".

Quotes
Bob Carbee: [the Grumman engineering team is waiting to see if they've been awarded the contract to produce the Lunar Module] Whoever is tapping the pencil, if you value your life, please stop.

Alternate versions
Warner Brothers remastered the entire miniseries for re-release in time for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It was enhanced to improve picture and sound quality, more saturated, and completely true widescreen. This new version was released both in Blu-Ray format and for streaming services.

Connections
References La grande évasion (1963)

Soundtracks
Theme to 'The Great Escape'
Written by Elmer Bernstein
Used by permission of EMI Catalog

An episode without a real conclusion

Everyone says this is the best episode of this series but I'd rate it about 5/10.

This is another episode of this show without a true conclusion. Basically we have a problem statement, bunch of meetings between engineers and scientists to offer possible solution ideas, none of the original ideas seem to work so they realize that they will have to think outside of the box to fix this problem.

The issue is WE NEVER SEE THE SOLUTION. We just see a montage clip of engineers and scientists work hard at fixing the issue with dramatic music in the background and their celebrations at the end. We have as much idea about how the issue was solved at the end of the episode as we did in the beginning of the episode, so what was even the point of this episode other than having dramatic effect?

This is the biggest problem with this show actually, not just this episode. They spent 12-hours going through motions, showing engineers and scientists "solving" problems to make moon journey a reality without actually explaining any of the solutions. At the end of the day, 99.999% of viewers will have ZERO clue how those issues were solved other than being shown montage clips in each episode with dramatic music and just have faith that things got somehow solved since our scientists are celebrating in the background.

How did they solve these problems you ask? Well you'll have to watch an actual documentary or read a book for that instead of wasting your time with this poorly made soap opera that pretends to be docu-series.