When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions Blu-ray Movie Review

A Blu-ray documentary series that truly soars...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown February 17, 2010

When I was a child, I was in complete and utter awe of NASA. There was a sense of mystery and wonder that could make buying a tiny, diecast space shuttle at Toys R' Us just as exciting as finding a new Star Wars vehicle on a nearby shelf. I'm not sure when actual space travel stopped capturing the imagination of kids around the world, but I suspect it began to die off when modern CG gave filmmakers the ability to project any conceivable technology they wanted onto the big screen. Real ships suddenly seemed archaic, astronauts were no longer regarded as the star-faring heroes they once were, and NASA became little more than a glorified museum of fossils and relics.

I suppose that's why a documentary series like When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions struck such a chord with me. Just seeing footage of the things previous generations accomplished, the obstacles the nations of our planet overcame, and the challenges mankind faced to reach the heavens is a humbling reminder of a remarkable and inspirational period in human history.

The thing that makes the Discovery Channel's six-episode overview of NASA's successes and failures so compelling is that it never focuses on the technological advancements, engineering miracles, or scientific discoveries that transformed the organization into such an important American mainstay. Granted, it briefly touches on each of these areas, but the series primarily trains its sights squarely on the men and women who made it all possible, documenting their struggles, perseverance, and sacrifice over the course of five decades of space exploration. Packed with interviews and a mind-boggling amount of revealing archive footage, it leaves very few stories untold, masterfully immersing its audience into each emotional milestone. You'll experience the tension filling the control rooms, the joy flooding the cockpits, and the horror overwhelming the astronauts amidst NASA's most terrifying ordeals (i.e. the Challenger explosion and the Columbia re-entry). Even when the series dug into events and missions I initially knew virtually nothing about, I was left feeling as if I had been there to witness each one first hand.

I'm sure the fact that my childhood was spent staring at the stars made it much easier to sink into When We Left Earth (as well as retain my enthusiasm through more than eight hours of feature and supplemental content), but I can't imagine anyone, even the most casual dreamer or student of history, will find themselves shrugging their shoulders or growing bored with the series. It not only captures the pride, joy, and heartache that littered man’s journey into space, it provides a thorough glimpse into our nation’s past and introduces dozens of people who drastically changed the course of our modern world.

The following episodes are spread across three BD-25s in this 4-disc Blu-ray set:

• Ordinary Supermen: NASA selects seven men to become the first astronauts. They're all test pilots, prepared to risk their lives. No one has ever survived a vertical launch on top of a rocket, but it's the only way they know to put an astronaut into earth orbit. America's first astronauts, the Mercury Seven, are on a journey into the unknown. Six of the men ride into space, each launch taking NASA further forward in their quest to conquer space.
• Friends and Rivals: Nine new astronauts arrive at NASA; their mission, to test all the procedures required to land men on the moon and bring them safely back to earth. Each Gemini mission launches two men into space, leading to some of NASA's greatest moments -- Ed White's spacewalk, the first orbital rendezvous of Gemini 6 and 7, and Neil Armstrong's first space docking.
• Landing the Eagle: The Apollo program is set to achieve the ultimate prize of the Space Race, landing men on the moon. But a fire breaks out in the pressurized capsule of Apollo 1, resulting in the deaths of three beloved astronauts. However, NASA rebounds, launching men into deep space and landing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.
• The Explorers: Apollo 13 puts the astronauts to the ultimate test, returning a damaged spacecraft back safely to earth. Apollo 17 sends man for the longest mission yet to the surface of the moon, but it's the last lunar mission for generations. Now, it's time for a new phase in the program. Converting an unused Saturn V rocket, NASA launches Skylab, America's first space-station.
• The Shuttle: For its first 20 years, NASA launches capsules carrying a maximum of three people. However, new requirements for a bigger cargo bay prompt a breakthrough in spacecraft design. The development of the re-usable shuttle leads to a revolutionary approach to space travel. Meanwhile, the pioneers of NASA's manned programs are leading the way into the modern era of the space-age.
• A Home In Space: One of the most complex instruments ever built, the Hubble Space Telescope is expected to transform mankind's understanding of the Universe. But once it's in orbit, NASA discovers a serious problem -- a defective main mirror. NASA sends a team of astronauts to fix the problem in its greatest and highest profile mission since the Apollo era. It gives NASA the confidence to begin construction on the International Space Station.

This set also includes a fourth disc dedicated to a variety of special features (detailed at length in the Supplements section of this review).

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

When I first cracked open When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions and slid its first disc into my Blu-ray player, I wasn't expecting to be impressed with the series' 1080i/AVC-encoded video transfer. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the episodes looked significantly better than many television documentaries available in high definition, especially considering the amount of decades-old footage and newsreel bits the Discovery Channel scraped together to tell NASA's story. It helps that the modern-day interviews populating each episode feature lifelike colors and skintones, crisp textures, sharp edges, and deep shadows. While the remastered archive footage can't possibly compete with the series' most recent material, it still looks great in its own right. Sure, print damage, foreground softness, and contrast wavering continually assault the classic clips, but the Discovery Channel clearly went to a tremendous amount of trouble to restore and rejuvenate the tattered prints.

As far as the proficiency of its transfer is concerned, I did notice some artifacting, digital noise, edge enhancement, and a bit of minor black crush here and there (particularly when it came to shots of space). However, even when several issues simultaneously appeared on the screen, they were never glaring enough to yank me out of the experience. Ultimately, When We Left Earth's transfer isn't as eye-gougingly gorgeous or technically consistent as other notable documentary series like Planet Earth, but it's nevertheless a relatively strong release that easily trounces its standard DVD counterpart.

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I was also pleased with the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track featured on the Blu-ray edition of When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions -- in fact, it's a more competent and rousing mix than I initially thought I'd be reviewing. Interviews sound clean and well balanced, recent launch footage injects some welcome LFE heft into the audio presentation, and Gary Sinise's smooth narration is crystal clear and nicely prioritized (even when the series' abruptly hops from one historical era to the next). More importantly, the archive footage audio has been meticulously restored. Quality still varies wildly from shot to shot depending on the age and condition of the source materials -- warbled speech, intrusive hissing, and audible popping are frequent issues -- but documentary junkies will quickly ignore such common and inevitable flaws. Likewise, rear speaker support is often non-existent, but audiophiles should attribute any soundfield inadequacies to the nature of the episodes rather than the design of the track.

My only lingering gripe is that the Discovery Channel should have upgraded the sonic prowess of the presentation with TrueHD or DTS HD Master Audio. I can't be sure a lossless track would have delivered any perceptible differences, but I suspect the series' dynamics would have been more resonant and the fidelity of the archive footage more precise. In the end, When We Left Earth isn't going to wake the neighbors or send you searching for the latest and greatest home audio equipment, but it does manage to hold its own against other television series and feature documentaries.

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Loaded with more than four hours of additional mission clips, archive films, NASA highlights, and interviews (all of which have been ported directly from the standard definition DVD), When We Left Earth is an extensive 4-disc release to say the least. The bulk of the special features are relegated to a fourth disc, but you'll also find several features on the first three discs as well.

• Original Films (172 minutes): This collection of archive films are a veritable treasure trove of information on various NASA missions, astronauts, and milestones. Freedom 7 offers a 29-minute look at the 1961 Mercury Redstone 3 mission and the first American in space, Alan Shepard; Friendship 7 is a 58-minute monster that looks at the Mercury Atlas 6 mission in which John Glenn became the first American to orbit the planet; Proud Conquest takes 29 minutes to dig into the Gemini VI and VII space flights; Apollo 8 is a 27-minute film that documents the historic Apollo 8 mission and the subsequent debriefing of its three man crew; and The Flight of Apollo 11 is a 29-minute overview of the first manned moon landing.
• Mission Clips (29 minutes): Seventeen all-too-short mission clips are spread across the first three discs and include patchy footage of Mercury mission training, Gemini VI and VII, Ed White's EVA, Gemini VIII docking with a Lockheed Agena, a docking attempt by Gemini IX, Apollo 8's launch and eventual orbit, Apollo 9's orbit, the return of Apollo 11's crew, a Rover test drive, an Apollo 17 night launch, the Skylab, Shuttle STS-1's launch and landing, the Hubble Telescope deployment, and the STS-61 Hubble repair. Each one is over before you know it, but I thought they were all fascinating to watch.
• Film Highlights (23 minutes): The discs also include additional clips that document everything from the Gemini IV space flight to the first forty days the Skylab space station became operational. The highlight reels aren't nearly as thorough as the larger archive films on the fourth disc, but they do cover a few missions you won't see elsewhere in the supplemental package.
• Archive Interviews (18 minutes): Rounding out the set are additional interviews with astronaut Michael Collins, NASA flight director Gene Kranz, suit designer Joe Kosmo, engineer James Croker, moon walker Al Bean, and astronaut Shannon Lucid. While they're not as interesting as the interviews featured in the series itself, they're still worth watching.

I'll admit it can be a monotonous experience if you try to plow through all of it in one sitting, but NASA purists will find plenty of things they've never seen before. All in all, it's a generous collection of supplements that really add to the value of the release.

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions is a stirring documentary series that will capture your imagination, bring you to the edge of your seat, and leave you in a state of childlike wonder. Not only is the series itself loaded with meticulously remastered archive footage, the Blu-ray edition looks and sounds far better than I expected. Add to that more than four hours of bonus films, clips, highlights, and interviews and you have a 4-disc release that's well worth the cost of admission. I simply can't recommend this one enough.