Can you recommend documentaries about space?

October 4, 2020 12:15 PM

My tween kids and I just watched "The Farthest: Voyager in Space" and absolutely loved it -in part because of its disciplined use of original/raw imagery over artistic re-creations. What are some other documentaries which don't put lipstick on science?

We're all kind of hopped up on the Voyager missions right now and want space! space! moar space! But really, I'd love recommendations for all kinds of sciency documentaries, please, and if they're pitched well-above the usual 101-level pop science TV show, so much the better.

(We did not like NdGT's Cosmos very much - but we do plan to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos soon.)

posted by MiraK to Media & Arts (16 answers total)

Response by poster: (Just a note that we have a filled up watchlist already for the animal sciences section: all of the Attenborough-narrated documentaries like The Life of Birds, Blue Planet, etc; and we're also watching Gorillas In The Mist a soon. That area's well covered! Would love to get recs that focus on chemistry and physics.)
posted by MiraK at 12:31 PM on October 4, 2020

"Cosmos" ..the original, the recent update, and the books accompanying both.
posted by elgee at 12:44 PM on October 4, 2020

Best answer: For All Mankind (1989)

Apollo 11 (2019) -- FanFare thread

Both of these documentaries are about space travel and going to the Moon. Neither one is a traditional doc with narration. They are simply footage and audio recordings from the various missions and sometimes astronauts just offering their thoughts over something like driving around the Moon, etc.
posted by Fukiyama at 12:54 PM on October 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Since someone beat me to Apollo 11, I'll offer up The Last Steps, a 20 minute documentary short about the Apollo 17 and the last steps taken on the moon, which more or less got director Todd Douglas Miller the job of directing Apollo 11. Full movie at that link.
posted by Sunburnt at 1:11 PM on October 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

Best answer: If you're in the US, you should be able to get stream some episodes from "NOVA" through your local PBS app. You'll get more access to episodes if you're a "member", but even without being one, a very cursory look shows that the "Planets" series (S46, Eps 12-16) are still available on-demand for anyone, at least via my local station.
posted by Ufez Jones at 1:13 PM on October 4, 2020 [3 favorites]

The recent "Apollo 11" documentary is all original footage.
posted by nickggully at 1:17 PM on October 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

The only thing about Apollo 11 is that some of the footage is from later missions that had better camera placement. But it doesn't really matter, it's fine.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:23 PM on October 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Oh, other space/science things... HOW ROCKETS ARE MADE (Rocket Factory Tour - United Launch Alliance) - Smarter Every Day 231. Back stage tour of a facility that builds the giant rockets that launch all of that stuff. Dude's like a (ex)?NASA engineer type and many of his videos are space/astronaut related. His latest involved talking with the handful of Navy Seals in the astronaut/NASA realm and was pretty cool: Navy SEAL Astronauts - Smarter Every Day 243. Like dude's interviewing astronaut about upcoming mission and ending with Q&A on the ISS and a spacewalk.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:34 PM on October 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

"For All Mankind" (the documentary, not the Apple TV+ series) is mainly about the visuals rather than the story. It includes commentary from astronauts, but I don't think any was recorded specifically for the film. There are a couple odd moments where background sounds and dialog is added to footage that originally had no sound (like a dubbed-in woman saying "take care, y'all" to the astronauts as they head out of the NASA building to get on the bus to take them to the launchpad), but it's a really lovely assemblage of footage. It also has a great Brian Eno/Daniel Lanois score that really accentuates the visuals.

And the previously mentioned "Apollo 11" documentary is fantastic. The footage is all high quality wide format stuff, most of which had been locked away for decades. It also has a great soundtrack.
posted by jonathanhughes at 1:44 PM on October 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

This falls outside of the documentary category but if you have Amazon Prime, “Troop Zero” is a cute film that has a really neat tie-in to the Voyager missions.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:57 PM on October 4, 2020

This may be a bit too adult-boring for your kids but I found The Last Man on the Moon, a movie about Gene Cernan's life, to be pretty great.

Also along the SCIENCE! lines, if you can find a copy of The Creeping Garden (about slime molds!) it's pretty great.
posted by jessamyn at 2:18 PM on October 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Powers of Ten (1977) is amazing!
posted by gregr at 3:36 PM on October 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: It's a bit 101 but the recent BBC series The Planets is very good and I learned quite a bit from it (my knowledge of the solar system was basically stuck sometime in the 80s!)
posted by crocomancer at 12:42 AM on October 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Cosmodrome was a pretty interesting look at Soviet rocket technology development during the cold war. (A LinkedIn article w/ more info)
posted by Bron at 3:54 PM on October 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Not documentary, but... Previously on MetaFilter Skywalker Sound, also filled with Previously are videos from the solid rocket boosters of the now retired space shuttle. Really the Space-X videos of launch, land, deploy are still awesome to watch. You can also find (sometimes) live feeds from the ISS on the NASA site/app which are actual real people in space right now flying high above you that are also pretty cool.

Real live space footage is pretty limited from the past. There are pictures and stuff from Mars and other planetary missions, video (well film) from Apollo and other launches way back when. Most cameras out there aren't picture cameras as a human would expect but more like tune-able narrow band EM sensors that get pseudo-colorized for us to look at. It's only recently that we have like a GoPro strapped to a rocket for clicks.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:55 PM on October 5, 2020

Best answer: I loved Particle Fever (2013), about the launching of the LHC and the search for the Higgs boson. Lots of physics and engineering!
posted by notethisbean at 7:18 AM on October 6, 2020 [1 favorite]