"From the Earth to the Moon" (1998)--3/5

The Tom Hanks-produced HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon” is a mixed-bag effort to be more than just a twelve-hour riff on “Apollo 13.”

“The Original Wives Club” follows the dull and repetitive lives of some of the astronauts’ wives. Imagine the most obvious scenes from “Apollo 13”—e.g. Marilyn Lovell portentously losing her wedding ring in the shower, people on Earth staring fearfully at a TV. Now imagine those scenes expanded to an hour without the tonic of anything whatsoever involving tension or dynamism.

“Spider” follows the step-by-step design and construction of the Lunar Module, or LEM. Everything about this episode is novel. It makes hard science suspenseful while easily explaining the processes involved. Also, it’s a spot-on period piece of a milieu rarely seen in film—a 60’s engineering firm staffed by devoted, overworked geeks. By the end of the process, the LEM is just as much a character as any human. It’s the offspring of thousands of hours of manpower.

“That’s All There Is” depicts the camaraderie of the crew of Apollo 12. “Kids in The Hall” member Dave Foley gives a winning performance as Alan Bean, the accident-prone Lunar Module Pilot. This hysterical episode shows, with a dash of “The Three Stooges” style, that the Apollo missions weren’t always deadly serious—although they were when it counted. It starts with Bean getting briefly knocked out during atmospheric re-entry by an improperly stowed camera. The rest of the episode moves backwards and forwards through time to show the closeness of the crew on land and in space.

“From the Earth to the Moon” is sporadically brilliant. Just don’t expect anything as consistent as that other Tom Hanks series, “Band of Brothers.”