大象传媒

8 Days: To the Moon and Back, catapults viewers right to the heart of the Apollo 11 mission, using previously classified sound recordings from inside the cockpit. Intimate audio exists for much of Neil Armstrong, Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and Michael Collins’ 8 Day, 3 hour, 18 minute and 35 second journey. Screenwriter Philip Ralph got to trawl the transcripts to create the drama. He reveals his top discoveries and the insights they give into the mission, and the men, who went to the moon and back.

Credit: NASA

I was born in the middle of the Apollo moon landings and immediately fell in love with the adventure, the wonder, the magic of their exploits. Like many awe-struck little boys, I wanted to be them when I grew up (before I decided that actually I wanted to be Han Solo – and my life went in a different direction…) Now, years later, here I was with privileged access to the audio recordings from inside the capsule for the entire 8 days of the Apollo 11 mission.

I knew that there would be masses of technical jargon, but would there be anything else? Would there be arguments? Jokes? Would they express fears, doubts? History tells us that (spoilers!) the astronauts made it but, at the time, there was every likelihood that they were embarking on a one-way, suicide mission. How did it feel to know they may not be coming back?

As I worked my way through the recordings, my admiration and wonder at what they achieved grew beyond all measure. Here were Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins in all their humanity – funny, bored, irritated, uncomfortable, afraid, awestruck… This was no foregone conclusion of success. This was an edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting odyssey of incredible bravery and profound humanity…

Audiences will – I hope – experience the same thrill that I did when I listened to the tapes, as in 8 Days the actors lip-sync to the original recordings. All the words spoken by the astronauts in the film are the real voices of the men on that incredible mission; while our three brilliant actors, working alongside cutting edge digital technology, convey every moment of emotion, humour and fear…

It all combines to make 8 Days: To the Moon and Back the story of Apollo 11 as no-one – apart from the astronauts themselves – has ever seen it before…

To whet your appetite, here – in mission order – are a few of my favourite Apollo 11 moments:

Yeah, they finally gave me a window to look out.

Collins

1) Armstrong: Tower’s gone.

Capcom (Capsule Communicator): Roger, tower.

Armstrong: Houston, be advised the visual is go today.

Collins: Yeah, they finally gave me a window to look out.

The astronauts have just blasted off, sitting atop a rocket that contains enough propellant to blow them to kingdom come if anything goes wrong – and there is every chance it will… They are 36 miles above the Earth as the escape tower jettisons, their last chance to abort the mission before entering Earth’s orbit. And yet here they are, joking about being able to see out of the windows for the first time. These are some very cool customers indeed…

2) Capcom: … an Irishman, John Coyle has won the world's porridge eating championship by consuming 23 bowls of instant oatmeal in a 10-minute time limit from a field of 35 other competitors. Over.

Collins: I'd like to enter Aldrin in the oatmeal eating contest next time.

Capcom: Is he pretty good at that?

Collins: He's doing his share up here.

Aldrin: I'm still eating.

Collins: He's on his 19th bowl.

The astronauts received a daily news briefing of increasingly bizarre goings-on back on Earth from the spacecraft communicator (Capcom) at the Mission Control Centre. Collins, the Command Module Pilot, was known to have a great sense of humour but ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, the Lunar Module Pilot, was a deeply serious man, known by the other astronauts as “Doctor Rendezvous” due to his ability to bore them rigid at drinks parties. But this was the ultimate trip, the three men sharing a space the size of a family car for eight days, eating, sleeping, going to the loo, and as the days of the mission passed even Aldrin mellowed…

3) Armstrong: Look back there behind us, sure looks like a gigantic crater. Look at the mountains going around it. My gosh, they're monsters.

Aldrin: Yes, there's a big mother over here, too.

Collins: Come on now, Buzz, don't refer to them as big mothers. Give them some scientific name.

Aldrin: It sure looks like a lot of them have slumped down.

Collins: A slumping big mother. Well, you see those every once in a while.

Aldrin: Most of them are slumping. The bigger they are, the more they slump - that's a truism, isn't it?

The astronauts are getting their first up-close look ‘behind’ the Moon, out of radio contact with the Earth, hence their discussion is perhaps a mite more ‘relaxed’ than it might otherwise have been… I like to imagine Armstrong rolling his eyes at his crewmates’ banter…

4) Aldrin: That’s the last meal we eat before descent, huh?

Collins: Amazing how quickly you adapt. Why, it doesn't seem weird at all to me to look out there and see the Moon going by, you know?

Aldrin: Oh, that is weird - big crazy Moon out there again, huh? Funny-looking thing...

Collins: Well, I thought today went pretty well. If tomorrow and the next day are like today, we'll be safe...

The night before the crew separate – Armstrong and Aldrin to descend to the lunar surface, Collins to circle the Moon awaiting their return. If anything goes wrong then Collins has absolutely no way of rescuing them – and they have no way of rescuing themselves... Collins later admitted that he spent the entirety of the mission in a state of intense panic that he would be forced to return to Earth alone, a marked man for life…

5) Armstrong: Program Alarm. It’s a 1202. Give us a reading on the 1202 program alarm…

This is the most stressed we ever hear Neil Armstrong. Mid final descent to the Moon’s surface and everything is going wrong. Flying too fast, overshooting their planned landing site, barely managing to maintain communication with the Earth, and now alarms they never experienced in simulations are blaring, one after the other. The onboard computer (with less memory and processing power than a smartphone…) is on the verge of crashing… and so are they… Moments later, Armstrong will take manual control, desperately searching for a safe landing site before they run out of fuel…

6) Aldrin: This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.

While Armstrong was to be the first man to set foot on the Moon, Aldrin was able to claim his own significant ‘firsts’. With this rather solemn communication, he marks the moment of the first communion on the Moon. A few hours later, he notched up a second ‘first’, pausing on the ladder descending to the lunar surface to empty his bladder, becoming the first human to go to the loo on the Moon...

7) Armstrong: That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind…

Perhaps the most famous words ever uttered by a human being, astonishingly Armstrong’s first words on the Moon were unknown to anyone but him up until the moment he said them. Despite being asked what he would say innumerable times in the run up to the mission, Armstrong always insisted that he had no idea what he would say and that something would come to him at the moment of his first step. Something did…

So, yeah – spoilers! – they made it to the Moon. But then they still had to get home and there were many things that could – and did – go wrong before they were safe back on Earth… You’ll have to watch to find out how they did it…

Working on this project has fulfilled my childhood ambition. I genuinely feel like I’ve been to the Moon and back. When you watch the film, I’m confident that you will too…

Written by Philip Ralph

8 Days: To the Moon and Back airs on Wednesday 10 July on 大象传媒 Two at 9pm. Visit the programme page here to view more clips from the film.