From the Earth to the Moon (TV series)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

From the Earth to the Moon was a twelve part HBO miniseries documenting the Apollo program, in the 1960s.

  • Part 1: Can We Do This? documents the original inception of the Apollo project, and the early Mercury and Gemini flights.
  • Part 2: Apollo 1 documents the tragic Apollo 1 fire, and the investigation that followed it.
  • Part 3: We Have Cleared the Tower documents the flight of the first manned Apollo flight, from the point of view of a documentary film crew making a movie about it.
  • Part 4: 1968. The flight of Apollo 8, the first to leave Earth orbit, and to circle the moon, set against the backdrop of civil unrest in the US, and the world.
  • Part 5: Spider documents the development of the Lunar Module, and its test flights with Apollo 9 and 10.
  • Part 6: Mare Tranquilitatis. The flight of Apollo 11, and man's first steps on the moon.
  • Part 7: That's All There Is. The flight of Apollo 12.
  • Part 8: We Interrupt This Program. Apollo 13. Since Tom Hanks had already done the astronaut's and ground crew side of this story, this episode concentrated on the news media coverage of the flight.
  • Part 9: For Miles and Miles. Follows Alan Shepard, grounded after his first 15 minute Mercury flight because of an inner ear problem that gave him vertigo, to his return to flight status and the flight of Apollo 14.
  • Part 10: Galileo Was Right. The training of the astronauts to work as geologists, and the flight of Apollo 15.
  • Part 11: The Original Wives Club follows the lives of some of the astronaut's wives, and the troubles they have. Apollo 16
  • Part 12: Le Voyage Dans La Lune Tom Hanks stars as the assistant to film maker Georges Méliès, as he makes his revolutionary 1902 film, set against the flight of Apollo 17. Some of the actors also portray their characters, 30 years after the Apollo flights, reflecting back on the program and what it accomplished.
Tropes used in From the Earth to the Moon (TV series) include:


  • Documentary Episode: "We Have Cleared the Tower" follows a film crew making a documentary about the Apollo 7 mission.
  • Fashion Show: "The Original Wives Club" introduces the Apollo astronauts' wives by having them participating in a charity fashion show.
  • Kicked Upstairs: "Apollo 1" has Joe Shea, director of the Apollo Space Program, being "promoted" to Washington to assist in making policy in the wake of the Apollo 1 fire, but it's really a move to keep him out of the way of the congressional investigation into the accident. Once he's in his new job he realizes he has no responsibilities there, and eventually moves on to the private sector.
  • Mundane Object Amazement: In "Galileo Was Right", there is an epic scene (with upswelling music and lots of drama and a sense of utter and complete triumph) about the astronauts finding a rock. The rock they found might have been a piece of the original surface of the moon, over four billion years old, and finding something like that was one of the prime mission goals.
  • Percussive Maintenance: In "For Miles and Miles," during the pre-landing check of the Lunar Module, Alan Shepard finds that the "Landing Abort" circuit has been activated, without the button being pressed. Tapping on the console by the button deactivates it again. They did not think that this fixed the problem, and put off the landing until they found a real fix for the problem.
  • Space Is Noisy: Every external shot of a spacecraft is accompanied by a wind noise.
  • Stop Trick: In "Le Voyage Dans La Lune," George Méliès is shown using this trick in his 1902 film.
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