The vibrant and musical living documentary, “We Chose to Go to the Moon,” aired on PBS on Nov. 10, 2026. It was “unlike any telling about mankind’s journey to the Moon,” as described by Ron Howard, the director of the critically acclaimed film “Apollo 13.”
On Dec. 7, 1972, NASA launched the Apollo 17 mission and a Saturn V rocket towards the moon. This documentary centers around that very mission. John Monsky, a historian and lecturer, narrated much of the performance, which was recorded live at Carnegie Hall in New York City. He described his personal experience of watching the victorious flames of the rocket launch as a child, a day many viewers of the show remember.
The production’s backdrop displayed clips of former President John F. Kennedy delivering a speech in 1962, where he promised America would win the Space Race and land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Deliberately contrasting simpler objectives, Kennedy declared “We choose to go to the moon!” The live audience in Carnegie Hall bustled with excitement at the sound of this confident assertion, even replayed 64 years later.
We, as Americans, still ogle the remarkable labor that led to Neil Armstrong’s footstep and what it meant for national pride. Online magazine The Space Review refers to the show as an “immersive theatrical experience,” explaining that although it’s difficult after so many years to find new headlines for such a spectacular event, PBS’s live recording uses unseen approaches to storytelling that make the program worth watching.
Katherine Johnson, an African American mathematician, received horrifyingly inadequate credit during the 1960s and ‘70s for her work at NASA. She was a human “computer” who worked on the crucial calculations of the spacecraft’s trajectory that would bring the astronauts home safely after the completed moon mission. “We Chose to Go to the Moon” illuminates Johnson’s efforts as a Black woman who faced deep systemic discrimination in her workplace. She designed the path of orbital flight the rocketship would take in order to land safely in the Pacific Ocean. Even as the most qualified mind for her position, Johnson represents countless women and people of color silenced by bigotry in NASA as a systematically racist and patriarchal operation at the time. Her name was the first of any woman’s signature on her work, making history as the first female co-author of a NASA research report in 1960. Although her name was erased — if ever written at all — from public recognition at the time, we are able to celebrate her now thanks to this show.
The entire performance was brought to life with songs of the era sung in real time. “Fly me to the moon,” originally by Kaye Ballard, and “Space Oddity” by David Bowie are just a couple of hard-hitting favorites intentionally incorporated to commemorate an exhilarating time unlike any other. The trajectory of NASA’s accomplishments, and all who made them possible, are highlighted in the spectacle “We Chose to Go to the Moon.”
Rating: 4.5/5