The Challenger Documentary on Netflix is a Fine Example of the Genre
Challenger: The Final Flight. Image courtesy of Netflix.
Netflix has lately been carving out a name for itself in the world of documentary filmmaking. It has an apparently unbreakable addiction to true crime. But it has also been branching out into social issue and historical documentaries, inking a big deal with the Obamas to do more of that kind of stuff. I have quite strong opinions on documentary film as a genre - what sorts of stories it serves best, how it should be presented, and so on. And the recent Netflix documentary on the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, Challenger: The Final Flight, it really a fine example of the genre.
First, the content is appropriate for the medium. It is telling the story of an important historical event; it is not trying to do too much, nor push any particular political or ideological agenda. What it sets out to do is compact and achievable: lay out the facts in an easily digestible format, using archival footage of interviews with actual participants to recreate the context and the timeline and underline the importance of the story it is telling. In my opinion, it is the ideal way of fitting the documentary form with its most effective function. You can read everything there is no know about Challenger, but there is no substitute for hearing people recount their lived experience of it.
Unlike the Night Stalker documentary on Netflix, which feels like the story isn’t interesting enough so it fills the screen at every second with unnecessary flourishes and musical cues and images and edits, Challenger: The Final Flight just lays out the facts, letting the images speak for themselves. And letting the people involved also speak for themselves. That is the most powerful thing about documentaries. They let participants in major historical events get their thoughts, impressions and feelings down on film. These old NASA administrators, themselves at the very end of their lives, staring into the camera and saying they still feel they made the right decision given the information they had at the time is a powerful thing and it needs no adulterants.
Equally powerful are the wives and families of the Challenger crew looking into the camera and saying their piece. Michael Smith’s wife, Jane, doesn’t have much screen time but she recounts the moments immediately following the crash, when a NASA doctor asked her if she needed something for her nerves. “I am not nervous,” she says. “But if you have something for heartbreak...” Absolute gut punch.
As a documentary this film serves its purpose, laying out the events of the disaster with a pretty good balance between conveying details of what actually happened, letting us get to know the people involved in this tragedy as well as the larger geopolitical, social and economic context in which these events were playing out and why they were so important. The series works great as an informative piece of documentary filmmaking, but it also allows the human beings involved in these momentous events to shine through.
Toward the end of the documentary, it kind of pushes the idea that NASA committed manslaughter or negligent homicide. I thought it got a little bit unbalanced at that point. In retrospect it is clear NASA should have scrubbed the flight that morning because it was too cold, but I think it’s very easy to look back with the certainty of hindsight and not really understand the magnitude of the uncertainty they were dealing with, as well as the risk threshold that is necessarily involved in a complex, dangerous and uncertain endeavor like space flight. They did not know for sure that the solid rocket booster would explode. To suggest otherwise, and that NASA sent the crew off knowingly to their deaths is simply wrong.
But, all in all, the show is balanced, informative, moving, and uncomplicated. It lets the people and the images tell the story. And in a well-made documentary about an important historical event, all the filmmakers need to do is bring those elements together and get out of the way.
