Out-of-this-world mix of fact and fiction
SEASON 2 of this documentary/ science-fiction series arrives in a few weeks, so it’s a good time to catch-up with the first series, which was a delicate blend of dramatic fiction drama and space fact.
Inspired by the book How We’ll Live On Mars by Stephen Petranek, with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer as executive producers, the series follows six astronauts who blast off for Mars in the year 2033.
Unsurprisingly, things don’t go exactly to plan. The spacecraft develops a fault and they land 75km away from their intended target.
As you’d expect from a production for the National Geographic channel, there is a factual spine to the drama: interviews with SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk; author of The Martian Andy Weir; commander of Apollo 13 James Lovell; aerospace engineer (and advocate of Mars missions) Robert Zubrin; and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
It’s an unusual format, but is sure to prompt a sense of wonder among young viewers.
As director Everardo Gout noted: “I try to look every day to the sky.”