Space Race (TV series)

• 1. The Romanian Filming Location

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  BBC filmed Space Race in and around the town of Sibiu, Transylvania in Romania. Romania has signed the EU co-production treaty which allows for EU co-productions. The BBC chose this location because it offered unspoiled natural locations and experienced crews at moderately priced production facilities compared to other options. They used a Panasonic SDX 900 DVCPro50 professional camcorder for filming. This camera choice allowed them to keep to a speedy shooting schedule while providing a gritty look appropriate to the time period. The series was shot in widescreen 25fps progressive mode to deliver a rich filmic feel.

• 2. Four Episodes Of Competition

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  Episode one covers the years from 1944 to 1949 showing Wernher von Braun's work on the V-2 rocket for the Nazis. It depicts his final activities within Germany during the last years of the Second World War as American and Soviet forces race to capture German rocket technology. Episode two spans 1953 to 1958 where Sergei Korolev designs the R-7 Semyorka first ICBM. He later uses it to launch Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 while von Braun struggles to persuade the US government to allow him to launch his own satellite. Episode three runs from 1959 to 1961 covering crewed space flights with the Vostok programme and Project Mercury. Yuri Gagarin goes into space first followed shortly by Alan Shepard after difficulties and failures on both sides. Episode four takes place between 1964 and 1969 when both countries plan to put a man on the Moon. The Americans pull ahead with Project Gemini but suffer a disaster with the Apollo 1 fire before successfully launching Apollo 11.

• 3. Actors Playing Historical Figures

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  Richard Dillane portrays Wernher von Braun in the series. Steve Nicolson plays Sergei Korolev who is described as the Soviet chief rocket designer. John Warnaby appears as Vasily Mishin while Ravil Isyanov plays Valentin Glushko. Rupert Wickham takes the role of Kurt H. Debus and Tim Woodward plays Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin. Vitalie Ursu acts as Yuri Gagarin and Oleg Stefan plays Alexei Leonov. Todd Boyce portrays Alan Shepard and Anthony Edridge plays Chris Kraft. Robert Lindsay serves as the narrator for the entire production. Constantine Gregory appears as Nikita Khrushchev and Stephen Greif plays Colonel Holger Toftoy.

• 4. Awards And Critical Recognition

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  The Royal Television Society nominated Space Race for an RTS Television Award for Best Production Design in 2006. Alan Spalding received this nomination for his work on the series. The Sir Arthur Clarke Award committee selected Space Race to win the Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Best Presentation in TV and Radio during 2006. This recognition came after the series first aired between the 14th of September and the 5th of October 2005 on BBC2. The National Geographic Channel later broadcast the series as a two-part mini-series in 2006.

• 5. Documented Factual Errors

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  An early scene shows Serov executing Polish resistance fighters who discovered a V-2 but this event did not happen. A team of British and Polish soldiers formed a mission to retrieve a fallen V-2 near the Blizna V-2 missile launch site in Poland instead. Footage showing early rocket club activity actually displays Reinhold Tiling's rockets rather than von Braun's VfR club rockets. The narrator states twice that the Mercury-Redstone could put an astronaut into orbit when it only achieved suborbital flight. Gagarin flies over a sleeping America even though Vostok's flightpath did not take the craft anywhere near North America except the Aleutian Islands. Episode one features a map with wrongly indicated countries where Switzerland is labeled Austria and Austria is labelled Yugoslavia.