The Worst Thing About From The Earth to the Moon (1998)

They knew they couldn't compete with Apollo 13.

I don't mind Emmett.

This was my favorite HBO mini until Band of Brothers came out.

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But a 100 percent fictional character just ruins the crisp verisimilitude of the series.

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There were lots of composite characters and creations in the making of this wonderful series.

1. Cronkite was, effectively, the face of the media coverage of the space program, particularly Apollo, and they used extensive archival footage of Cronkite, so they couldn't recast him.

2. Lane Smith (Seaborn) was one of the best casting decisions they made. He was, effectively the lead, opposite Jay Mohr, in episode 8, and did so, brilliantly.

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The Apollo 13 episode is the most egregious episodes and the most useless one. When I re-watch the series, I always substitute the Ron Howard movie for that episode.

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You're aware that the production team from Apollo 13 is, essentially, the same for From the Earth to the Moon, right? They leveraged all that knowledge, research, set building, etc., into a project for HBO - the exact same model and
(many, many of) the same people that would do the same thing with Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers.

They made a conscious effort to not go over old ground, at least not feature film stuff. That is why they were very perfunctory in coverage of Mercury (The Right Stuff) or Apollo 13.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.



On a side note - Tim Daly said the sets were so meticulously complete that he picked up one of the many binders lying around and discovered it was not for show - it was the actual manual, per the cover.