"The Right Stuff" (TV Series)

[Blackstar]

On the fence about trying this show.  I'm always looking for things to recreate the magic of the Wolfe book and the movie, and also HBO's "From The Earth to the Moon," but early reports (also in this thread) are not encouraging for The Right Stuff series. 

The trailer is very broad and cliche.  They make it look like cookie-cutter fictional characters rather than actual history. 

I would love to hear if anyone has had good experiences of this show though.

CollectSpace.com has had a number of episode recaps. You could go read those if you are interested. My article will appear in The Space Review in a few hours. I did not give it a thumbs up.

It is not about the training, or the piloting or the preparations for flight. It plays up the interpersonal fights among the astronauts and invents some rivalries. It focuses very heavily on Shepard and Glenn, and a little bit on Cooper. Most of the other astronauts are ignored almost entirely. This creates some weird situations. For instance, when the astronauts rank their peers, the ranking is Shepard, Grissom, and then Glenn. But because you see so little of Grissom, it makes little sense that he's so high. He doesn't do anything that shows him to be a particularly good astronaut. In fact, none of them do, leaving the viewer wondering why they were selected for the Mercury program at all.

If you're looking for something that praises them as heroes, or shows them doing heroic things, or even depicts them as extremely good at their jobs and highly effective pilots, this show does not do that.

[Blackstar]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4076/1

We were heroes once: National Geographic’s “The Right Stuff” and the deflation of the astronaut
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, November 23, 2020

Several years ago, National Geographic ventured out beyond documentaries to start producing scripted dramas. So far none of them have hit a high mark—nothing on the order of “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” “Fargo,” or other prestige television. Most recently they produced “The Right Stuff,” based on Tom Wolfe’s famous book and currently streaming on Disney+. But whereas Wolfe’s book was an exploration of the qualities required of men in a new and highly dangerous job, exploring space, the series is focused on depicting the Mercury astronauts as a bunch of back-biting, egotistical, insecure, argumentative jerks. The differences may be explained by the needs of a multi-episode series, and our changing cultural views of heroism, but the result is unfortunately mediocre.

The eight-episode series spends little time on showing the astronauts training for space, flying their airplanes, or demonstrating the skills that led to their selection for the Mercury program in the first place. Instead, the focus is on rivalries between the astronauts, particularly Alan Shepard and John Glenn, many of them invented. Shepard is portrayed as cold, self-centered, and frequently nasty. Glenn is a boy scout, a square, a Christian, and a good Marine who believes that Shepard’s flaws jeopardize the program. Each is unlikeable in his own way. After Glenn helps cover up one of Shepard’s indiscretions, Shepard quickly—and mistakenly—suspects that Glenn used it to his advantage and turns on him. Glenn then seeks to get Shepard removed from the program. Instead of training hard to be the best, they’re fighting with each other. It is unclear why either man was considered worthy of being in the astronaut program, let alone one of the top candidates for the first Mercury flight.

[MATTBLAK]

I consider the series to be a disappointment. Even 'The Astronauts Wives Club' was better than this.

[woods170]

If you're looking for something that praises them as heroes, or shows them doing heroic things, or even depicts them as extremely good at their jobs and highly effective pilots, this show does not do that.

I could not agree more.

In fact, the show does such a poor job in telling a story that I consider the hours spent watching the episodes as a complete waste of time.

[Skylon]

If you're looking for something that praises them as heroes, or shows them doing heroic things, or even depicts them as extremely good at their jobs and highly effective pilots, this show does not do that.

I could not agree more.

In fact, the show does such a poor job in telling a story that I consider the hours spent watching the episodes as a complete waste of time.

Agreed. The few beats I liked were not worth it. For example, I think some of the actors fit into their roles extremely well - such as the actors for Chris Kraft and Deke Slayton. And I appreciated the concept of setting up a bond (even if fictionalized) of the two early on since they would be required to carry the show thru to the Moon landing - if that is the series' intent. I actually think they found a good actor for John Glenn. And once the series got to an actual flight (Freedom 7), I liked the portrayal of the mission - but there was no reason to take all season to get there.

But the deviations from history are meaningless. Some of the Astronauts are just bland cardboard cut-outs of how they are viewed by history. Wally Schirra just tells jokes, Scott Carpenter is set up as the "washout" and Gus Grissom is there - and gruff. Others-  I don't know what they did to Gordo Cooper because nothing suggests he is the "stick and rudder" pilot he was by most accounts.

Then Alan Shepard - I recognize the complexity of historical figures, and but Tom Wolfe paints pictures of all the Mercury 7 that are three-dimensional. Dee O'Hara evokes Wolfe briefly in the series commenting on Shepard's duality saying something to the affect of "one minute you are smilin' Al - and the next" and I thought "no, he hasn't been that at alll." The big grin of "Smilin' Al of the Cape" that you see in pictures has been absent - and replaced by a cocky sex-maniac. And the other side? The "Icy Commander" that it left un-said. He has been the whiney, paranoid jerk. Nothing about his portrayal suggests he was a natural leader whose comments could be searing.

If it takes all next season to get to MA-6 then this show can be written off as a waste of time. If they try to focus on the rest of the actual Mercury flights then they may have a shot at salvaging this (although they missed the boat with the MA-7 crew swap by needlessly moving Deke's grounding up historically).  But as it stands, I really don't know what they were thinking for the pitch beyond "Mad Men with Pilots."

[hektor]

On a side note I found the 90 min companion documentary very good. No talking heads, which is a good point,  and extracts from the book read by Dennis Quaid.

[spacenut]

The TV series does go deeper into the men and their wives.  It is kind of like the early Americans like Washington and Jefferson.  They both had slaves, but knew that eventually slavery would have to be done away with and wrestled with this.  They did want what was best for America. 

The astronauts were driven men.  You can call them dare devils or whatever, but they wanted more.  They pushed themselves hard.  Physically and mentally.  They also had strong desires, which lead them astray sometimes.  America at that time wanted the ideal Americans, Ideal families, strong faith and so forth.  John Glenn was probably the only one who fit the "Ideal", but he too had his problems. 

I think overall the series is good.  Worth watching. 

[Skylon]

The astronauts were driven men.  You can call them dare devils or whatever, but they wanted more.  They pushed themselves hard.  Physically and mentally.  They also had strong desires, which lead them astray sometimes.  America at that time wanted the ideal Americans, Ideal families, strong faith and so forth.  John Glenn was probably the only one who fit the "Ideal", but he too had his problems.   

The problem isn't how driven the Astronauts were, nor their vices. The problem is that there is no sense given of their abilities as pilots, engineers and overall ability to work as a team. I think the Shepard-Glenn rivalry was a good angle to explore - but to focus the whole season on it? It feels like a squandered opportunity.

[Blackstar]

The problem is that there is no sense given of their abilities as pilots, engineers and overall ability to work as a team.

I think that this was a missed opportunity. Maybe it was different with the Mercury astronauts, but something that was true of test pilots, and of astronauts in later programs, is that they worked closely with the engineers designing the spacecraft. That kind of story would have been a new one to tell--showing these guys sitting down with the wiring diagrams and the blueprints and talking about the different systems would show that the astronaut doesn't just train to fly the machine, but figures out how to understand the machine, and to get the most performance out of it. The shorthand version of that in the movie was them demanding that they have a window in the spacecraft, but I'm sure they had more interactions with the designers than that.

[Skylon]

The shorthand version of that in the movie was them demanding that they have a window in the spacecraft, but I'm sure they had more interactions with the designers than that.

Even the book managed to touch on this, discussing how the Mercury Astronauts "altered" the experiment of the program by demanding greater control of the spacecraft. Now, you could argue that the requirements of landing on the Moon, or the "pilot mentality" dictated that change - but the Astronauts advocating for greater control of their spacecraft - and proving that idea as justified - from Gordo Cooper's manual re-entry on Faith 7, to the Gemini 7 and 6 space rendezvous, all culminating in Neil Armstrong taking manual control of the first lunar landing - is a pretty good thread that can run through the entire series.

[Blackstar]

Even the book managed to touch on this, discussing how the Mercury Astronauts "altered" the experiment of the program by demanding greater control of the spacecraft. Now, you could argue that the requirements of landing on the Moon, or the "pilot mentality" dictated that change - but the Astronauts advocating for greater control of their spacecraft - and proving that idea as justified - from Gordo Cooper's manual re-entry on Faith 7, to the Gemini 7 and 6 space rendezvous, all culminating in Neil Armstrong taking manual control of the first lunar landing - is a pretty good thread that can run through the entire series.

Yeah, see, that would be new, and it would give the show a more positive message--they're working to succeed, not undermining each other. Maybe there's not enough to sustain that for multiple episodes, but they could have introduced that throughout the series.

[Oersted]

Present-day scriptwriters are very removed from old-fashioned concepts such as "patriotism" and are incapable of understanding that some men used to put their lives on the line to fight for their country. You can't get anywhere near an understanding of the Mercure 7 without understanding their deeply-held beliefs.

They saw themselves as front-line fighters in a new and dangerous battlefield, space, and were ready to assume the huge risks to their lives: witness Grissom's gruesome death. All of the US saw them as modern-day knights in shining armour, fighting for the Free World against despotism, as evidenced by the (borderline hysterical) adulation they received.

This was how the astronauts wrere seen and this was also what they actually were.

These aspects are evidently wholly incomprehensible to the script-writers of this series, just as they were to the script-writer of the "First Man" movie.

[hektor]

 “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://deadline.com/2021/04/the-right-stuff-canceled-disney-plus-shopped-warner-bros-tv-1234726920/

The Right Stuff’ Canceled By Disney+ After One Season, Shopped By Warner Bros. TV

By Nellie Andreeva
April 2, 2021 5:22pm

EXCLUSIVE: Disney+ has opted not to order a second season of space race series The Right Stuff. The Mercury 7 period drama, starring Patrick J. Adams and Jake McDorman, originated at National Geographic before launching as a Disney+ original last October. It is Disney+’s first scripted series cancellation.

Warner Bros. Television, the studio behind The Right Stuff, is shopping it to other outlets, with WarnerMedia siblings TNT and HBO Max considered logical potential targets. I hear the options on the cast expire tomorrow, and WBTV has asked for a two-week extension while the efforts to find a new home continue.

[libra]

(sorry, couldn't resist !)

[Andy_Small]

such a disappointment of a show.  not a bad thing it's not coming back

[HVM]

Did you know that Mercury capsule's Hand Controller look lot like a Saitek Cyborg 3D joystick?

(Lazy props dudes and dudettes...)