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BILL GRUNDY
I can't remember which character it was in The Importance of being Earnest who said, 'This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last'. It sounds like Algernon but, who- ever it was, I fear he is doomed to disap- pointment. Suspense doesn't last. It can't, or stops being suspense and becomes normal.
The TV coverage of the moon-trip demon- strated that to perfection. To a large num- ber of people, it has already become a bore. I realise this says more about the people who are bored than it does about the moon-shot. But while it is unfortunate that people do get bored, it is true. As the Daily Mail said on Saturday: 'Nothing, however extraordinary, seems that way for long.
The plain fact about the second moon- trip is that it differed in no way, visually, from the first one, except for the extra distance the men walked and the descent into the crater they were required to make. Everything else we had seen before, and the new ingredients we were destined not to see anyway.
Ought, therefore, the coverage to have been a lot less extensive? I know if you have such knowledgeable chaps as A. Burnet Esq, Paul Haney, and Peter Fairley in your studio, there's a strong temptation to get as much mileage out of them as possible. The same applies if you have the hypnotic Patrick Moore and the admirable James Burke.
But, speaking as a viewer, I could have done with less of them. Great efforts may have gone into making the presentation dif- ferent this time, but the effect produced was much the same as before. And this is a pity, for it leaves an impression that the achievement of these latest moonmen is in some way less than that of Armstrong, Ald- rin, and Cooper, which of course it isn't.
For me the papers covered the moonshot better than Tv. This could have something to do with the failure of the TV colour camera on the moon, of course, but I don't think it has much. For I think the papers covered it better by covering it less. They were able to look at the story, decide that nothing much is happening at the moment, and push it down page, or even inside. If you're doing a live TV broadcast, you just keep talking; and that can be very irritating. There can be few of us who haven't shouted 'Oh shut up' at a TV set when some poor fellow is merely doing what he's told and 'keeping things going'. The trouble is that it's usually the wrong thing he's keeping going.
Two incidents make the point. When the moon camera failed, what should have been done? In retrospect: go to black, put up an information caption with some typical background music (or why not some decent music? What's wrong with a bit of Beet- hoven while we're waiting for normal ser- mal service to be resumed?), and have the boys in the studio come back less than frequently to let us know what they've learnt about the state of play.
If they'd done that, they'd have saved a lot of sound and a lot of fury. The fury was demonstrated by Mr John Gordon in the Sunday Express: 'There were moments of most tense drama, but for most of the time nothing happened or could happen. Especially when the vital pictures were lost. Yet the commentators gabbled on until one felt like throwing a brick at them. Wouldn't it have been more enthralling if they con- fined themselves to the dramatic moments and then shut up?'
Which brings us to the second incident, the most dramatic of all—the re-docking of Intrepid with Yankee Clipper. Everyone I've spoken to has raved about it. Some, however, made a very relevant point, relev- ant to what Mr Gordon is saying. Here was something happening before our very eyes, something never seen before, some- thing that spoke for itself. Here was some- thing that required no commentary at all, and yet was the most exciting moment of the lot. The tensest moments in a film are always when nobody is speaking but when you can see for yourself the situation Toy- ing towards its climax. A man called Hitch- cock cottoned on to this some years ago. Maybe it's time our current affairs and out- side broadcast producers tried it to see if it would work for them, too?
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