Review | 'India’s Space Odyssey' reminds me of Films Division newsreels of yore

Hoisting of Vikram Lander during the Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft integration at the launch centre. (Image: Isro via Wikimedia Commons)

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is the only government agency in India that’s made a profit of Rs 5,600 crore from 2016 to 2018.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Vikram Sarabhai and Homi Bhabha created Isro under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in 1962. Until 1969, the agency was called INCOSPAR: Indian National Committee for Space Research and it split). Ever since its formal inception in 1969, Isro has launched 100 spacecraft missions, 70 launch missions, nine student satellites, two re-entry missions, and 269 foreign satellites of 32 countries.

These are impressive numbers. Yet the Discovery+ documentary on Isro does not have such awesomeness. Instead, it follows an interview format with G. Madhavan Nair, former head of Isro; Anuradha T.K., the celebrated head of missions, a space historian; and journalists with footage and animation of rockets and satellites. It’s got fabulous information, no doubt, but this is 2021! Why do we get the feeling that school kids will troop into the auditorium and be forced to watch it.

It gets me asking, ‘Why are lessons for the UPSC exams about Isro on YouTube sharper and smarter than this documentary?’

It’s like Discovery+ was sitting on a goldmine, and then decided to just concentrate on the local tea shop outside the mine instead. Come to think of it, even the tea shop scene in Kala Patthar (a movie that is set in a coal mine) is more memorable and better written.

If you are a space nerd, you probably love the animation of satellites unfurling their solar panels like wings. Movies with astronauts repairing a stuck arm leave you stunned, no matter how many times you watch the scenes. Chandrayaan 1 also had nail biting sessions of a unmanned mission that settled into orbit rather than directly landing in the trajectory. The documentary does not show us the nail-biting moments, but tells us about them, with rows of scientists in the mission control room either raising their fists in the air out of joy, or looking down morosely. I want to say to the makers, take your time, your audience is hooked by the very name!

The show is named Indian Space Odyssey, and we space nerds hope that it will tell us all about Isro like Homer told us about Odysseus’ journey across the oceans. How could they forget that we grew up on the never-ending Sunday Morning Star Trek shows about the voyages of the Spaceship Enterprise, boldly going where no man (now they say ‘no one’) has gone before… And today’s generation has watched and discussed movies like Interstellar and Jodie Foster’s Contact for years. Give us more details, I say, give us more!

And Isro has had amazing successes. We have loved the stories and the books about scientists riding bicycles with the payload, and rockets being transported in bullock carts. This documentary just touches on this awesomeness for a throwaway fact. Perhaps someone decided that too much has been written about it, and it doesn’t deserve more than a passing mention.

But it was superb to learn about Thumbi, and how the priest asked the faithful if they’d let the scientists assemble a rocket in the church. How cool is that! The documentary says that Thumbi is the best place to study cosmic phenomena, but what are we doing there today? I am convinced that there are many tales like the church which we haven’t heard which could have been included! More research needed, I say!

Isro has so many female scientists that there were not one but two movies made on them. Surely the documentary that celebrates 60 years of Isro could have used the fact with pride?

Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma who made everyone’s hearts swell with pride and gave us goosebumps (we were wide-eyed kids) when he replied, ‘Saare jahan se accha!’ to the then Prime Minister’s question, ‘What does India look like from space?’ He just shows up as his older version talking about that historic flight without any fanfare. Most of us wanted to be like him when we were kids, and I did not even recognise the man!

If we’re talking rocket science, then shouldn’t there be talk of spies? Isro scientist S. Nambi Narayanan and his deputy, plus the Indian representative of Soviet company Glavkosmos were arrested because a Maldivian woman (Rasheeda) and her companion told the cops that these scientists had sold ‘super secret’ cryogenic technology to Pakistan. The event changed the way we deal with technology and how the world looks at India. Missile technology is now under the defence department, and as the space historian Siddique explains in the film, the deal with the Soviets had fallen through and Nambi Narayanan was brought in to develop this technology indigenously. So there were no secrets to sell, nor could this cumbersome cryogenic technology launch military grade missiles.

This huge story is told so badly that I’m grateful that R. Madhavan (who narrates the documentary in Hindi) is making a movie on Nambi Narayanan called Rocketry: The Nambi Effect (slated for release in April 2022).

We see more footage of politicians in this film than the men and women who make Isro such an amazing organisation. And not a word about what a momentous journey of 60 years this has been. I am sure the filmmakers have more historic footage than they have used. It should have been a celebration of an agency that has put India on the world map dominated by the US, Russia, China, Japan and the EU, but the documentary looks like a last-minute anniversary present.