This movie is an attempt to give a realistic portrayal of an extravagant space voyage. Instead of the usual small shuttle, we have a very large station.It may have been a good idea. But no one will ever know, unless it gets another edit. This is because the production value is probably the worst ever.I'm reminded of my days in a studio for free public access, and speaking with the technicians there. The common joke was "sound people don't know what the Hell they're doing." And here is a prime example.The director painstakingly tries for realism, and he gives a realistic look, but the cost is too great. You can't understand a word that is spoken in this poor sound environment. True, that's how NASA sounds on the TV set, but that's why few people bother to watch real live NASA space coverage, because it is impossible to know what people are saying.And anyone who avers that he or she does understand the dialog is a liar. Fact.I watched the show, but still have no idea what was ever going on. None of the actors could enunciate, and that is suspicious. Either they were poorly selected, or the sound crew was the worst ever. Since none of the actors were intelligible, that makes the sound crew look almost certainly to be the guilty party.The attempt for realism gave it an atmosphere of reality. This is what the director obviously intended, and the director was successful.Too bad you need a scorecard to follow along with what is happening. It is a poorly produced movie.

When I first requested this DVD from my public library I thought it was going to be a legitimate documentary. Having been a space fan since the Sputnik went up when I was a young boy, I've never lost my interest. And, living near Space Center USA doesn't hurt.However, this is a BBC production, a fictional story with a British cast, mostly veterans of various TV shows. Some of them are faking American or Russian or French accents and do so credibly much of the time. They take time to make it realistic as they can, but still many of the laws of Physics and the fundamentals of deep space travel are violated, but not so badly as to make it distracting.The story is set some time in the near future when a team of space travelers leave Earth to explore the solar system. The first destination is a landing on Venus, but only a very short one because of the heat and the suit's limited ability to protect. Then off to Mars, Jupiter via a pass through the Sun's outer atmosphere, Saturn, Pluto, and finally back to Earth. With large tanks of Hydrogen fuel pre-placed along the route so they could refuel. A total trip of 6 years and 50 days. That was the plan, anyway.The film is done as a documentary, as if a camera crew were following the real explorers (impossible) and present at mission control. When a crisis arises, we see Mission Control staff telling the "documantary" cameraman to get out of the way. All in all an entertaining 2 hours, for anyone who enjoys space travel adventures done in a realistic style. A few times I even was able to put aside that it was all fiction.SPOILERS. Radiation near the sun causes one traveler to become very sick. He holds out until Saturn, and he is "buried" wrapped in foil and cast out to drift among the rocks of the ring for eternity. They have a close near miss several times, at least once on each planet or moon, as unexpected events arise. The last stop was an asteroid which begins to throw out boulders as they are exploring it, doing some damage to the spacecrafts, but they survive to return to Earth.

Jeez, It's been nearly 40 years since we landed on the moon, even so, the people who made this "documentary" still managed to forget that other planets are a *long* way off--so long that light takes time to travel between here and there. It takes light (and radio communications) 1.5 seconds just to get from the Moon to the Earth, 2 minutes from Venus, 4 minutes from Mars, 36 from Jupiter, and a whopping 72 minutes from Saturn. Yet Mission Control was watching and managing everything in real-time. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The whole premise for this flick was flawed, didn't anyone take physics in high school? How could the science advisor's have made such a huge mistake??!!! Waste of good special effects budget. Better luck next time, BBC.

Despite missing the first episode and having to frantically find out when the repeat was on, I was not disappointed having to wait a little longer to see this mini-series on viable space exploration today or in the near future.As with the BBC's other "Walking With...", "Seven Wonders Of The Industrial World" series and Space ("Hyperspace" to US viewers), this is a well scripted, CGI and fact filled venture played out to the tune of a fictional mission to visit the major planets of our solar system: Sol.From visiting Mars to a slingshot manoeuvre around the Sun and a tricky landing on a passing comet, this highlights what information we could well be finding if an international effort to make such a mission comes about.I hope this comes out on DVD (and not limited to, say, Australian DVD as with the equally amazing "Seven Wonders Of The Industrial World") as the accompanying book cannot do full justice to what a great insight this two-parter is to our corner of the universe. I'm certain beginners in astronomy and experts in the field will find this an enjoyable feature. The music by Don Davis (as with the previous mentioned series) is ideally epic and moving and the screenplay by Joe Ahearne makes the characters believable and adds suspense. This is far from a simple lesson on the planets you'd get at school.