What a waste of my time!!!

Best movie of this year hands down!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Great documentary, the best i have ever seen about us space exploration and space exploration in general. The pictures it shows are amazing and it is in high definition too. Also i really disagree with the previous review stating that this was only American journey. In the documentary it was clearly stated that without competition between Russia and America no one would have gone to space yet alone the moon so early. The astronauts in the documentary tried to send a message that the world is small, interconnected and that really the humans are one family. It is sad this message didn't reach the person who wrote that review. Anyway great documentary about great people.

This is one of a several "what we did then" historical retrospectives of the NASA human space flight program. In its favor, it includes interviews with Neil Armstrong himself, who was famously averse to such things, and even James McDivitt and Frank Borman, who are rarely seen. There is interesting footage of geology training and so on that will appeal to space buffs.However, the editing is done in the choppy and affected style of a rock music video, which quickly becomes extremely tiresome. The music is beyond awful, a mishmash of orchestral fake-dramatic boilerplate episodes, something like the trashy background sound of a video game. The narration is done in an irritatingly over-serious manner. Combined with the bad music, it is nearly impossible to get through this series without turning the volume off and just enjoying the views. Unfortunately, the best part of the series is hearing the astronauts in their own words, and you can't do that without slurping down the treacly music and Commander McBragg narration as well. Ultimately, this sinks the series, which is a shame.Some day, this material should be re-edited without much music, because none is needed, or at least, it should be kept to a bare and spare minimum. One wonders where they find the composers of this trash and how they manage to get themselves paid.Gary Sinese unfortunately also lacks the vocal authority for documentary narration. But that is a minor quibble.-drl

Overall, I thought "When We Left Earth" was a fantastic, excellent and amazing mini-series that I would be delighted to own on Blu-Ray DVD, if it weren't for those Swedish buccaneers. Nevertheless, the inclusion of so much color-footage shot by the astronauts themselves was clever and made for breathtaking viewing, and that's the selling point that will probably get me to fork out for the gen. discs. It wasn't all peaches- and-cream, however, and I was genuinely disappointed with the cursory treatment given to Apollo 1, which only received approximately four minutes of very bland, formulaic coverage. There was no imagery from any of the three Apollo 1 crew-members' funerals or memorials or anything heroic, and I believe the producers dropped the ball and missed the chance to jerk a bit of genuine contrived emotion out of us. Their decision not to was difficult to accept and is the only sore point for me in an otherwise-excellent miniseries.If it was the case that there simply was no video footage available from the funeral and interment of Gus Grissom, for example, my apologies. But if ever there was an appropriate forum in which to display such coverage/footage, it would've been here.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this series. Unlike many shows on space exploration in which the focus is on space itself, this series was presented with an emphasis on the people who were involved to make it happen. Viewers are treated to personal behind-the-scenes trials and tribulations of space program from the perspective of the people who were there. Personal anecdotes and experiences are interspersed throughout the series. I often found myself saying, "Oh, I didn't know that." For example, describing what Allen Shepperd said to Mission Control before his first take-off was amusing.This is an American show produced from the American perspective. Sorry to break it to some people but contrary to worldwide belief, America is NOT the world's country. When America says "We" it doesn't mean Russia, Canada, Europe, China, and Japan too. America is entitled to tell its own history without having to include everyone else's too. Russia is welcome to produce its own space program documentary. And when they do, I don't expect it to include shots of Cape Canaveral or soundbites from John Glenn.