Space Crawl

So so predictably, the BBC 2 Space Race docu-drama (like all such things) was a load of ol' tripe. Last night's first of 4 episodes padded 10 minutes of story out to the full hour. Germany is falling, the Russians and the Americans race to capture von Braun, and the Americans win. But the Russians have an ace up their sleeve in the form of a rocket scientist who'd been stuck in a gulag after one of Stalin's purges.

The Russian side was an interesting human story, the tale of scientists denouncing each other to save their skins, and working, literally, under the gun. But then so were the Germans.

That the Russians got the first satellite and man into space (not yet covered in the slow crawl of Space Race) is probably a back-handed compliment to the United States, who weren't quite as ruthless and threatening, perhaps, to their captured Germans.

Anyway, I'd rather have watched lots of old footage of German/Russian/American rocket experiments than some ac-tors putting on silly accents. Those shots of rockets taking off and then going sideways are always entertaining. And don't patronise us: give us some technical details; tell us about the actual scientific and technological breakthroughs. Typical dialogue:

"Hmm. If we made it lighterski and more powerfulski, do you think it might go furtherski?"
"Yes, but Sergei the Builderski, can we fix it?"
"Yes we can! Er, ski."

Then again, maybe I didn't think much of Space Race because there was a trailer for Martin Scorsese's forthcoming Bobumentary No Direction Home, which I'm afraid is going to form something of an obsession on this blog for a couple of weeks.

I was totally buzzed after watching the trailer. It was like drinking 3 cups of espresso in a row. Not so much by the old footage, which I've seen bits and pieces of before ("Here's a song, it used to go like that, now it goes like this..."), but by brief snippets of Dylan speaking. Not cracking jokes in 1965 press conferences, but being a bona fide documentary Talking Head: Bob Dylan, aged 60-somethng, being interviewed by Martin Scorsese. That, and the old footage gets you me jumping around on the couch with excitement.

Note to 14-year-old TV producers: docu-dramas are docu-dumbed-down docu-crap. Martin Scorsese has sensibly chosen to make a traditional documentary with old footage and talking heads. Why? Because the subject of the documentary is interesting in and of itself, without requiring ac-tors and costumes to "entertain" the mythical 3-second attention span public.

You must have scratched your head, looking into the whole "Space" thing, wondering, "What can we do to make this interesting?" Well, gosh, I don't know. What about getting one of the CBeebies presenters to narrate it? No? How about an ac-tor, then? Robert Lindsay? He's always available isn't he?