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"MARS" will boldly go where no television show has gone before.
No, the six-part, six-hour National Geographic series is not the first show about the first manned mission to the planet Mars. That's been done repeatedly for more than a century — starting with the 1902 silent film "La Voyage dans la Lune" ("A Trip to the Moon").
But this latest "MARS" journey, beginning Monday, is an amalgam for which there is no easy description. It's part drama — the story of a team of astronauts in the year 2033 who travel to the Red Planet.
And it's part documentary — the drama is broken up by segments that feature experts talking about what that trip will be like and segments showing present-day scientists hard at work so that the trip will one day be possible.
"We don't actually refer to it as science fiction," said executive producer Justin Wilkes. "It's actually science fact. Everything that you're seeing is real. It's going to be what that mission will actually entail."
Or, at least, it's what the present-day experts believe the mission will entail. And the list of experts includes a slew of highly placed NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory staffers, astronauts, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, authors like Stephen Petranek ("How We'll Live on Mars") and Andy Weir ("The Martian") and Neil deGrasse Tyson — just to name a few.
"This team, I can tell you, was very careful about getting it accurate," said Weir — from the color of the sky to the way sound travels on Mars; from the difference in the atmosphere to the difference in the gravity.
Former NASA chief technologist Robert Braun praised the writers and producers for working so hard and "getting it right."
"It was much more than [just] I was the science guy off in the corner," he said. "It was very interactive. And that helped a lot, I think, to make it real."
It's not just talking heads, either. There is, for example, an extended look at attempts by SpaceX to build a rocket that can land upright and be reused — which is essential for the plan to send humans to Mars. And "MARS" cameras were there when the SpaceX team accomplished that for the first time.
The flashbacks to the present are interspersed in the story of the international crew of the Daedalus, on a 2033 mission undertaken by a conglomerate of space agencies — public and private — from around the world. Directed by Everardo Gout ("Days of Grace") and shot in about 40 days of production spread over three months in Budapest and Morocco, the fictional mission does not go smoothly.
"You have that level of truthfulness on the documentary side, but you also have the equal amount of beauty and truthfulness in other scenes on the scripted side," Gout said. "It's very emotional. It's a very visceral experience."
The actors prepared by spending five days in "space boot camp," said Clementine Poidatz, who stars as Amelie Durand, the mission physician and biochemist. The actors trained with people like former astronaut Mae Jemison.
"Basically, we had to go to class, like, every day," said Sammi Rotibi (Robert Foucault, mechanical engineer and roboticist). "And I was, like, 'Whoa, I'm an actor. Just give me the lines and I'll say it.'
"But, actually, she schooled us on what it was like to be an astronaut. And then we had to take a test at the end of the week," Rotibi said. "And I tell you, that was no joke."
"No joke," agreed Poidatz.
Despite all the science and technology, Gout insisted "MARS" is "all about the humans. It's a series that takes you through the incredible, emotional journey of these six brave pioneers who are going to go to Mars, representing us from all over the world.
"So it's very exciting, and you want to know how did they get there, and that's what's happening right now. It's pretty cool."
Twitter: @ScottDPierce —
On TV
Beginning Monday, Nov. 14, the six episodes of "Mars" premiere on successive Mondays at 7 and 10 p.m. on the National Geographic Channel.