NASA’s Greatest Missions commemorates NASA’s fiftieth anniversary and presents potted highlights of the organisation’s finest hours.  The series of six programmes broadcast on Discovery and Discovery HD in the UK from 28th September onwards, charts the progress of early American space exploration from the Mercury program and X-Planes of the 1950’s, through to the first moon landings in the 1960’s, complete with re-mastered archive footage and interviews with the likes of John Glenn, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.  The later episodes will focus on the Space Shuttle, first flown by John Young, NASA’s missions to Mars and scientific tools such as the Hubble Space Telescope. The series was shown as When we Left Earth: The NASA Missions in the US and that’s also the packaged DVD/Blu-Ray title.

The series provides an excellent – if somewhat hurried – insight into NASA’s achievements, but benefits greatly from the use of restored archive footage, a lot of which presented here in high definition for the first time.  Apart from the occasional pristine clip of President Kennedy, earlier programmes aren’t particularly exciting from a visual standpoint given the age of the source material, but as the series progresses, some of the footage is quite jaw-dropping and could certainly qualify as demonstration material.

Unfortunately, like a bad smell you just can’t escape from, each episode is blighted by some of the most intrusive and overbearing music you’re ever likely to hear.  Composed by Richard Blair-Oliphant and presented far louder in the mix than it should be, it gives the whole programme a “hurry up, get on with it, we’re all about to die” atmosphere that’s both distracting and downright annoying.  The unrelenting breakneck soundtrack that in some instances hasn’t even been edited to match the video, is completely out of place.  This isn’t a forty-minute trailer for a Vin Diesel movie but a considered appreciation of the beauty of space and of man’s ingenuity and bravery, something Oliphant appears to be hell-bent on trampling all over.

However, we have come up with a partial cure for viewers of Discovery HD, and that is to engage the 5.1 Dolby Digital mix and turn down, turn off or unplug your front left and right loudspeakers.  Doing so creates an anti-Oliphant mix that eliminates most of the music while retaining the dialogue and effects.

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Don’t let Richard Blair-Oliphant’s dreadful score distract you from the glorious imagery on show in NASA’s Greatest Missions, currently airing on Discovery and Discovery HD.