Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Perfect cast and a good story

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

After reading many of the other reviews here I felt that I should add my views on this wonderful simulation of a voyage to the planets.This is a 2 hour film set as an accurate as possible documentary on a Voyage to the Planets. The plot lines to add the humanity into this were well though out and covered most aspects of human frailty (considering that the astronauts had worked together for many years and were all professionals in their own right) People will get sick, people when trying to discover new things will push their own limits - these are the two aspect that I felt were realistic. Not the fake bravado of an action movie but viewing a dedicated professional who has trained for years for a task and then trying to achieve it.Mentioned in other posts is the time lag of conversations over an extended distance. It was mentioned very early in the movie that these were expected and had been EDITED out for the audiences benefit.Technology was likewise well though out. A trip to Venus has a suit that had been tested in a blast furnace and has a time limit on use on the planets surface.. plus additional example of how hostile the environment was.A visit to IO likewise had a suit that used a magnetic field to protect the wearer for a set duration.All in all the anticipated problems had been well though out and a solution provided - as if it was a real trip we were watching. And yes - even professionals have spats during stress as shown in Apollo 13 and the over monitoring of the astronaut's physical condition.all in all this is a program that I have watched many times, and will watch again - feeling a welling of hope and pride in my heart that maybe - with work - humanity could undertake this trip and really see the wonders of the solar system. Until then excellent programs like this can give us a realistic glimpse of the "What If's"

My main criticism is quite simply that it isn't long enough or detailed enough. I would have loved to see more of everything: the building of the vessel, the engineering, the training, the first lift to orbit, preparations for departure, Venus Orbital Injection, everything. I would have liked to see more of the first leg, Venus to Earth, instead of zipping there like a n°10 corporation bus. In fact, I would have liked to see a series on the scale of Earth Story made of this, with a full hour dedicated to every planet and maybe another to the loop around the Sun. As it was, I was left hungry. On the other hand, I do understand budgets and viewers' attention-spans.Re the science: Let's be fair about the speed-of-light time-lag: they did mention at the beginning that there was a lag in conversations, but they let this evaporate once they reached the outer planets. Some kind of conversation had to be presented to the viewers, and we have to assume that the lag was edited out for the sake of palatability; so no complaints there. But zero for noisy spaceships. The only film in which spaceships make no noise was Kubrick's 2001, and even then he copped out by using the noise of the crew breathing in their helmets - which *was* pretty effective. I wish the makers of Space Odyssey had realized just how eerie the sight of vast rocket-motors blasting in absolute silence might be but alas, Pegasus lets out much the same roar as every other cardboard spaceship in every other cardboard SciFi film.But the rest of the science was excellent. No complaints there, in fact praise for bringing out the radiation problems as well as they did. I just hope that having done this film won't discourage the BBC from making a really detailed version, but I suppose that's not for next week or next year either...

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.

An excellent series, part drama, part documentary. Just a point of information about the communication lag mentioned by a previous poster. They did refer to a communication delay, but of course they edited things out to make the story flow faster. At one point on Mars, mission control detect a huge dust storm the landing crew can't detect yet and warn them with a message "dust storm on its way 6 minutes behind this message" which illustrates the time lag and just to clear up another point made, the lander on the comet isn't automatically controlled from Earth, but by the crew on the Pegasus. As for the Pegasus, it surely must be one of the best spaceships ever designed for a sci-fi show. A cross between the Discovery and the Leonov from the 2001/2010 saga.