MARS - Season 1 (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Creators: André Bormanis, Mickey Fisher, Karen Janszen
	Actors: Jihae, Alberto Ammann, Clémentine Poidatz
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 24.06.2017, in-flight entertainment system 10" screen.
Synopsis: 2016: Several clues hint that the world could be ready to conquer our solar system starting with Mars. 2033: the first mission arriving there has to face many challenges to just survive.
Review: There seems to be nowadays a boom of movies and TV-shows depicting realistically humanity's conquest of our solar system: Europa Report, Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian, Ascension, the Expanse. This sub-genre has never been very popular since it was born I think with 2001, a Space Odyssey. The first Star Trek movie gave me a similar feeling, and we remember better the simultaneous three movies on the conquest of Mars in the early 2000's: Red Planet, Mission to Mars and John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars. In fact it seems that the genre has never been as popular as today! Is it a sign that we are ready to go back to space exploration, nearly 50 years after our first step on the moon? Barack Obama's motivated speech during the state of the Union in 2015 (visible here on Youtube and also shown on MARS) certainly hinted that way, and I recently saw a Documentary about the Google Moon Shot Prize (another documentary produced by J.J. Abrams is freely available here). The first episode Novo Mundo alternates between a documentary with interviews and research shot in 2016, and the fictional story of the first crew landing on Mars in 2033, depicted realistically based on what we learn from the 2016 status of technology, funding model, motivation and politics. I liked this approach from the start and thought the following episodes would stay with the 2033 events while in fact the parallel goes on, in each episode focusing on one of the challenges to be faced by the mission of going to Mars to stay, not just to explore and come back. MARS was produced by National Geographic, the documentary parts revolve a lot around the SpaceX company and his CEO Elon Musk but also other facts around the current space programs, and the fiction part looks good probably thanks to scientific advisors, although it seems to have been written by people who watch too many movies: the reaction of professional astronauts to difficulty is often exaggerated and feels wrong, which would be OK in a fully fictional movie or TV-series but here offers too much contrast with the visible wish to be realistic. In any case, the choice of putting in parallel Documentary and Fiction is excellent and has probably incensed more people to watch it than if it were a straight-forward Documentary.
Rating: 7 /10