Of course I'd heard of it and I think they even play clips from it at the KSC Visitor Center so I've likely seen parts there, and I definitely recognized a scene or two, but I guess I forgot to hunt this whole series down to binge it in its entirety until now.
And what a time to do so. Although the mission has been delayed for something like three or four times now in the past couple months, NASA is still planning to send the first manned space flight to the moon with Artemis II, hopefully, now in April.
As for this show, it was part documentary and part recreational drama. It's really well done and has a cast of a thousand faces you've seen a thousand times before it seems, especially those actors from the late nighties, of course. Unfortunately, it is a show very much of its era and it feels it. Especially the score. It's designed as background music but it's so bombastic and melodramatic, a signature of the '90s I'm afraid, that it's a bit off-putting.
It's the perfect warm up to the real life event about to unfold soon -- mankind's return to the moon. You know, I say it with such gravitas and I half expect that cascading, '90s score to bellow over Tom Hanks' doing a voice over of that hugely significant statement:
Mankind's Return to the Moon.
And so it should be. But even though, as I titled this post, I say there's "hype" about it, I have to look at the news feed that makes its way to my bleary eyes and I think... is there? Is there hype?
I mean, we're so close to putting four people back in orbit around the moon, and where's the big news stories? Yes, I know, they won't be landing yet. That mission won't be until next year at the earliest, but this is still big ass news in my book!
Instead we're concerned over a flailing economy, big government program budget cuts, international terrorism, overseas wars, corporate and government corruption, racial and gender prejudice and a tone-deaf, right-wing, fascist-esque president cementing his legacy as one of the worst leaders in America's history.
Oh, did you think I was talking about this as if this was all new? Nope. The entire above statement was the exact same thing that plagued the Apollo program in the 1970s.
Just goes to show, some things never change. I'm sure Tom Hanks would agree.