Only just now have I found this nerdy offering via iTunes (Summer doldrums) Scientific Fiction instead of Sci-Fi because this is a Trip to Mars as if scripted by NOVA instead of Hollywood. The focus of this movie is plausible scenarios faced by a ship to and from Mars. The design of the ship, the setup inside it, the cast of characters are all very staid and measured. But then-- we really aren't going to fill a REAL Manned Mars flight with people like "The Sulky Nerd", "The Arrogant Engineer", "The Repressed Doctor", and "The Lesbian Biologist" -- the ship would arrive at Mars with a dead crew.Instead I just took in the sensibly crafted "How would we do it" style of this movie and absorbed the details that are normally glossed over with hand-wavium explanations or failing that close-ups of the "Lesbian Biologist" derrière.Best of all was the condition of the ship on the return leg-- the presence of Mold and it's deadly effect on the ship's environment-- and the possibility of infection by an alien organism or virus.On the fun side-- I was amused by how many times the movie did not deliver the Usual Hollywood plot twists-- and how much I was expecting to see a Martian Alien Plaster its icky face to the porthole and send the mission doctor screaming for help. No alien starships. No ancient dead cities. No guns. No explosions. No incredibly sadistic and improbably lethally armed robots controlled by an insane computer.Think of this as a muted, sedate 21st century "Conquest of Space".If you like HARD Science Fiction, this will fill a few weeknights worth of viewing and it won't feel like a waste of time either if it lends you to a little thought about the possibility.I wasn't overwhelmed. . .but I liked it.

All the negative things that people said about Brian de Palma's Mission to Mars can be said about this dud of a mini-series. The acting is lazy, the story is dull, the special effects are terrible. Race to Mars starts off okay, but it falls apart badly.It is a two episode mini-series. Judging the episodes individually, the first one is not too bad, but it is the second that really ruins Race to Mars in its entirety. As it progresses, the programme gets increasingly less involving, or convincing. It needs to generate more suspense rather than provide, badly scripted dialogue.The only good thing about Race to Mars is that it gets you thinking about the future. this could very well be the first century where man sets foot on another planet. I've read some articles, and saw a couple of documentaries (more informative than this). Concpts of how to get a ship out a hundred million miles, are floating around NASA as we speak, we have yet to find out if it will be put to action.Anyway that's a slightly different matter. I strongly suggest you avoid Race to Mars even if it sounds interesting. It is cheap, superficial and all that really gets sold is an idea, not a programme worthy of your time investment.

Race to Mars was promoted well enough if you watch "Discovery", but I'm sure most people missed this one. It was presented as two 2-hr segments. The story will be for most one of "how to get to the planet, and actually return". I saw a story with a lot vision of what would be necessary to accomplish this mission, with good blend of what kinds of things can go wrong -- and how well prepared is the crew able to maneuver through all the struggles that they encounter.We enjoy Science Fiction of all kinds -- reality is tough enough, and most people's idea of reality (if I may say) is just plain stupid. We like being entertained. I have no idea of how exact the science is here, and I since I enjoy sci-fi movies from the 50's, I can't get real hung up on whether the special effects and animations are the most excellent -- so I'll just have to recommend that sci-fi fans will have to checkout "Race to Mars" the next time the mini-series comes into orbit.

It's not that these actors can't act; I've seen several of them do great work in other roles. But here, they just seem to plod through most of their scenes, having to chew their way through dialogue that veers from corny to painfully expository. The writers and the director have to share about equal parts blame for this one.Crises emerge that ought to be engaging and suspenseful, but they're so badly structured and dramatized that every moment just falls flat. Which brings me to the look of this production: The computer-generated backgrounds are just mediocre, hardly better than NASA-sponsored animations they commissioned to illustrate their missions almost five years ago. The spaceship interior sets are reasonably convincing, but the backgrounds for the transmissions from mission control look really cheesy.There were also a couple of factual peculiarities: I'm not sure if I missed something, but five days into the mission, a relative complains about the inconvenience of having to send video e-mails, as opposed to being able to have a two-way conversation. Five days? They wouldn't be that far from Earth in five days. I can't imagine more than an eight- or 10-second delay in transmissions after five days--especially at the speed these guys are travelling. Every scenario for a manned Mars mission that I've read talks about a 6-month flight to Mars. These guys take almost a year, for some reason (a year in which, by the way, no one looks one iota different than when he or she started out). The music sounds as if it was done by a guy with a synthesizer in his basement.What a disappointment.