MARS ATTRACTS: As a prelude to a 6-part documentary on the challenges facing any future manned mission to Mars, the Discovery Channel began airing a 4-part, Canadian-made dramatic miniseries last night imagining how this future adventure might transpire. A cast of locals play a team of astronauts from five different countries, and features among them actors with long TV resumes such as Michael Riley and Kevan Ohtsji and festival circuit veterans Lothaire Bluteau and Pascale Bussieres.
The good part is that Race To Mars has nothing to be ashamed about, especially if you are, like me, part of that generation who flinches unconsciously when the words Canadian and sci-fi are put together, as a vivid and mortifying slideshow starts playing in our head composed of brief scenes from The Starlost and Lexx. Digital effects have made polished the visual veneer of even low-budget shows, though it helps that, apart from a few glimpses of mission control and families at home, we only ever see the six astronauts, who spend most of their time locked away in a series of small, cramped spacecraft sets.
After a brief prologue showing the failure of an unmanned Mars landing craft – all too plausible considering recent NASA disasters – we’re in orbit around the earth as the crew of the mission to Mars prepares to head off on their nearly 2 year odyssey to the red planet. Underway for barely a few hours, they experience the first of a series of technical failures that quickly makes their high-tech vehicle seem like a nuclear-powered secondhand Chevy Cavalier.
The culprit is finally discovered – a series of circuit boards made by a supplier who bypassed quality control in the rush to meet the project deadline, which was pushed ahead in a failed attempt to beat the Chinese to the planet’s surface. The whole mission turns into an exercise in Murphy’s Law, and the first human casualty is the crew member most openly and purely enthusiastic about the mission. With the sort of pluck required of such stories – and necessary to make sure it doesn’t run for half its length – the crew persevere onward, and land on the planet’s surface in defiance of mission control and their PR handlers, who take exception to their We Are The World exit from the landing module.
The last two parts of Race To Mars air next Sunday, while Discovery’s documentary series begins a week after that. It’s a nice example of how cable channels, even so-called “educational” ones such as Discovery, have stepped up their game to make some impact in the hurly-burly of the new TV season’s debut weeks.
On the way to Mars, we see the crew watching Rocketship X-M, a 1950 feature starring Lloyd Bridges as the captain of an accidental Mars mission. They’re appropriately dismissive of the movie’s kitsch storyline and dubious science, but I’m sure the filmmakers behind Race To Mars are perfectly aware how laughable their own show might look in three decades time, when the optimists behind the Mars mission and Discovery’s own Mars Rising imagine we might finally put moonboots on Mars.
