Moonshot

“Of course, this is what it’s going to be all about from now on, isn’t it?” Buzz Aldrin (James Marsters) sighs. ” It’s not enough to go to the moon. You gotta do it on television.” It’s a reimagined Christmas 1968 when he poses this question to his friend and colleague Neil Armstrong (Daniel Lapaine). Looking up into the night sky, they ponder the dilemma stretching before them. No longer concerned about having the “right stuff,” as the Mercury astronauts might have been, the Apollo crewmembers know that they are expected to sell the program, to solicit public support and perform their adventure for cameras.

It’s a poignant and vaguely astute moment in Moonshot, a British production premiering tonight on The History Channel. Even as the movie commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moonwalk — the courage of the astronauts and extraordinary ambition of the effort — it also underscores the essential mediation of that moment, the way it shaped and was shaped by TV.

At this point in the film, Neil, already assigned to command Apollo 11, is still wondering whether to include Aldrin on the team. He’s “not the easiest person to get along with,” Deke Slayton (Nigel Whitney) has warned. Still, he’s gutsy and smart and seasoned and Neil respects his willingness to express his frustrations with their roles as pitchmen. It’s a complaint Neil understands, even if he wouldn’t say it himself (“Neil’s what it says on the label,” observes one NASA officer, while with Buzz, ‘You never know what you’re gonna get one day to the next”). Neil is finally sold on Buzz as his moonwalking partner — according to this film’s romantic version of events — when Buzz describes his own “feelings,” beyond the reach of TV reports: “I’m always trying to remind myself what it’s like up there, but it’s impossible, isn’t it? You can only really feel it when you’re there.” The movie’s camera shows Neil looking convinced, as Buzz gazes skyward.

The movie sets this sense of camaraderie against the annoying reporters’ questions and intrusive cameras. Still, the distrust evinced by the characters complicates the film’s own use of media sound and imagery from the time. Introduced as “the story of what was seen and what was said and what might have happened,” the movie tends to hang its “factual” accounting of the Apollo program — leading up to and including 11 — on reporters’ narration and NASA and TV footage. (The emphasis on CBS tape, featuring Walter Cronkite, might even be called ironic or fortuitous, given the past weekend’s media attention to the “most trusted man in America.”) On the flipside, the movie dramatizes private moments — between Armstrong, Aldrin, and to a lesser extent, Mike Collins (Andrew Lincoln), or between the men and their wives — in order to convey made-up truths, for instance, the tensions or concerns left undocumented in 1969.

Such moments may be imagined or reconstructed, and tend to focus on competition between Aldrin and Armstrong — over who gets to step on the surface first, that is, who gets to step and speak first for NASA’s camera (the film doesn’t note that NASA lost its own original video.) Their conflict is mostly resolved when they realize that NASA officials are less prepared than they seem, that they lack contingency plans and so, the guys are, in the end, “alone out there.”

This allegiance sets up for an imagined scene based on decades of conspiracy theorizing after Apollo 11, namely, the astronauts’ alleged sighting of blinking lights en route to the moon that may or may not be an unidentified flying object. As the film has it, they agree not to report the incident, in order not to alarm the control room team back in Houston: “Why make them aware of it if there’s nothing they can do?” reasons Armstrong. “If that’s what you say it is, commander,” sighs Aldrin, his face gazing out the ship’s window in close-up wistfulness. (Recently, Aldrin has been describing the “L-shaped something” they saw, but noting it was not, in his mind, an alien spacecraft.)

Aldrin and Armstrong’s newfound accord is reinforced after their jaunt on the surface (this includes pretty reenactments, narrated by NASA play-by-play, TV reportage, and an awkward insertion of Armstrong’s own audio for the “giant step” pronouncement). When they get back to the module, they discover more drama: a lever that’s supposed to initiate their departure from the surface is broken. Before you can say, “Houston, we have a problem,” they come up with a plan to jerry-rig a replacement lever.

This mini-drama — in which the men appear less anxious than heroic — reminds you there was good reason for the letter prepared by NASA in the event of their non-return. The revelation of this letter, just days before the launch, gives Neil’s wife Jan (Anna Maxwell-Martin, who gives the film’s most consistently convincing performance) her own moment of resistance, and Moonshot a brief respite from its focus on the manly men. She’s admirably cool about it, reading the letter out loud at the dinner table: “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.” It’s an alarming thought, of course, made somehow worse in this format, a sort of contingency script. It’s not until Neil informs Jan that she’ll be informed of disaster by a phone call from the man who will read that script — Nixon — that she blanches: “I hope he doesn’t,” she says. In that instant, resisting her role, Jan embodies a refreshing bit of truth.