TELEVISION
• and the moon
GEORGE SCOTT
Television, the medium which enables all of us to become privileged spectators of historic occasions, also diminishes them. Television domesticates, it engenders cosi- ness, it scales down events to sitting-room size.
So it was in the early hours of Monday morning. Initial wonder at the shadowy pictures of man setting his first foot on the moon was hard to sustain. Partly it was the lack of context. The £200,000 camera, static on its tripod, could not explore the environ- ment. Its area of vision was confined to the immediate vicinity of the lunar module. Even the panoramic views by Armstrong were little better, mainly because of the nearness of the horizon. The other factor contributing to a drooping of excitement was the quality of the pictures. As we were told, they were composed of only one-third of the lines which make up a 'normal com- mercial' television picture. Paradoxically, it was the very success of the operation which permitted disappointment. To sec as much as we did of those loping, see-through, spectral figures was to wish for more. Had we been restricted to those first few shots of Armstrong coming backwards down the ladder, it would have been easier to react to the astonishing fact that whatever we were seeing, however dim and vague, was coming across 240.000 miles.
Our imaginations would have been forced to work harder. That is how it was with the actual landing. After all the build-up, all the elaborate simulations, we were left with the voices of N atiA control and the astronauts. The succinct captions (on ITV). and the re- volving counter clocking away the time, contributed to the tension, but such pictures as we saw, either the darkened control room, the Apollo 10 film of the moon's surface, or stills of the module. were almost irrelevant. The imagination created its own pictures to complement the story being told by the voices and the time when we could see nothing was the most dramatic of the whole night.
I nearly wrote 'of the whole show', for one could be excused for thinking that the whole lunar landing mission had been laid on as part of an extra-special, staggeringly extravagant, never-to-be-forgotten David Frost Show. The i-ry coverage went on con- tinuously for more than twelve hours to the time of Armstrong and Aldrin re-embark- ing in Eagle, and then it offered re-runs for people who were just getting up.
It was a mixture of 'chat, 'show biz. hard news commentary, and more chat. And more chat. Never were so many pundits assembled in one place on one evening to field the balls thrown to them by Frost. There were regular injections of _viewers' phone calls feeding questions to the experts through David Frost. Frost narrowing his eyes, Frost smirking, Frost taking the mild mickey, Frost flirting, Frost modestly acknowledging his own celebrity and com- petence. 'Nice to see you back, David.' 'Congratulations, David.' Good to talk to you, David.' And between times, David Frost introducing the likes of Cilia Black, Engelbert Humperdinck, Ken Dodd, with stupefying hyperboles which made one won- der what adjectives he would find to match the achievements of the astronauts.
Yet, for all that it sank to the depths of banality and vulgarity, ITV, in throwing away all the usual Sunday night schedules, showed a better sense of what the occasion demanded. And, in a horrible way, it was more attuned to the public mood as exem- plified by the exhibitionists in Trafalgar Square, the gay party crowd, the man who had won a £10,000 bet on the moon land- ing. The landing was the star point of the night, the excuse for whooping it up.
Some of the talk was good talk. Frost himself had to be admired for his pro- fessional agility and resource. The mistake was to have invited Cliff Richard and Peter Cook into the same studio as the genuine pundits. At least, I did not hear Richard say much. Cook, on the other hand, before the end of the night, was no longer acting the part of the biggest bore in the world.
It was curious to find the sac, which is prodigal with experts and oas for such lesser events as the Budget, should have been content to treat the moon landing with an economy (in terms of time at least) bordering on the mean. Its mood was much more to my taste, its commentators never less than adequate and their background ex- position enormously helpful. But to switch over from Frost to find Dr Finlay or the Black and White Minstrels was unsatisfac- tory. Further, when it came to the really big moments, the ITN team, and particularly the former NASA man, Paul Haney, had the edge in authority and restraint. The BBC was inferior again on Monday night during the blast-off from the moon and the dock- ing manoeuvre. The Panorama discussion was of the highest quality but twenty-four hours late.
One disturbing thought lingers. Will we take it for granted next time that there is television coverage of man at work on the moon's surface? And will we expect a more convenient and more disciplined timetable?
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