Season 1 • Episode 4
LatestRace To The Moon, spans 1964-1969. Both sides now plan to put a man on the Moon - while the Soviets struggle, the Americans pull ahead in the space race with Project Gemini, but then suffer a disaster with the Apollo 1 fire. The Soviet space programme suffers its own blows: Sergei Korolev dies when his heart fails during an operation, Soyuz 1 crashes and kills cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, and their planned moon rocket, the N-1 rocket, fails to successfully launch. In America, von Braun has difficulties with the Saturn V, but they are overcome, and the rocket successfully launches the first manned lunar mission, Apollo 8, and the first manned lunar landing, Apollo 11.
Acting
Dillane's von Braun: charming war criminal or visionary? You decide.
Production
BBC budget squeezes epic history into cramped corridors and archive footage.
Writing
Script treats both sides with uncomfortable moral equivalence.
Creators
Christopher Spencer, Mark Everest
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Korolyov actor couldn't legally know his character's real appearance — Soviet secrecy was so tight that Korolyov's face was classified until after his death.
This 2005 series aired before 'The Right Stuff' and 'For All Mankind' made space history trendy again — it's basically the forgotten grandfather of prestige space content.
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