Making Prime Work Part III

NOTE: This is the start of a very intermittent series on this blog, wherein I review anything I may have watched, read, or otherwise gained from our Amazon Prime membership. This is partly to continue justifying the cost of Amazon Prime as it takes yet another leap, and to remind me what a wonderful cornucopia of media there is out there that I have yet to witness, or re-witness as the case may be.

Part One: Mixing Fact With Fiction Diminishes the Fact

As a space exploration junkie who, for a time, had Apollo 13 on a near-endless loop at our house, I was thrilled to see 2017’s Russian film Salyut 7 available on Amazon Prime. I’d been familiar with the impressive and successful rescue of the Russian space station by two cosmonauts and thought watching an Apollo 13-like dramatization of the mission would be a lot of fun.

Fun it is.

And yet.

The fire on board, caused by a short-circuit when a random drop of water seeps into some electrical component. I can’t find any evidence that it happened.

And clearly, watching that sequence as cosmonaut/engineer Viktor Savinykh works with a fire extinguisher to put the fire out, dressed only in his blue uniform, to suddenly seeing him spewed out of the station in a fireball, clad completely in his EVA suit, I have to surmise: The fire did not happen. It was included in the film for dramatic effect.

Which is a shame, as the fictional event draws away from the fact of this technically significant rescue in space.

Do I have any evidence the fire did not occur?

Officially, I suppose, I do not.

But while the Internet is aglow with discussion of the Salyut 7 angels – unexplained light phenomenon that cosmonauts saw on more than one missing – I can’t find a thing about a fire during the repair/rescue mission.

So I have to assume the fire story is false.

UPDATE: Spent some time off and on over the last 24 hours searching for any fire connected with Salyut 7 or Soyuz 13, the craft sent to rescue the space station. Or any fire in space involving any Soyuz craft. Can’t find any evidence online, which leads me to surmise not only did the fire not happen during the rescue, it never happened during any Russian space flight. So again I ask, why include it in a “true” telling of the already significant rescue of the space station, other than for tawdry dramatic effect?

Additionally, there’s this bit of Russian paranoia about a Space Shuttle Challenger mission going up shortly after Russian mission control lost contact with the space station and the sinister suggestion that Challenger was going up with an empty cargo hold with the exact capacity needed to bring Salyut 7 to the United States.

Facts are there were nine shuttle missions in 1985, three within the Paranoia Window when Salyut 7 was out of contact.

Shuttle Discovery went up  in June, carrying three communications satellites. A Strategic Defense Initiative [cue sinister music] experiment went up as well.

Shuttle Challenger (the one specifically mentioned in the movie) went up in July, with experiments related to life sciences, plasma physics, astronomy, high-energy astrophysics, and other sciences went up. Not with an empty cargo area.

Discovery went up again in August, with another trio of communications satellites.

Not saying, of course, that there weren’t General Turgidsons probably thinking a shuttle mission could go up, snag Salyut 7, and bring it back home, but you have to wonder why a shuttle – prime examples of 1970s and 1980s space technology, would want to snag a foreign space station, with very likely similar technological achievement levels. It would be like me driving a Uhaul into the heart of Los Angeles and using it to swipe a 1985 Toyota Corolla. A fine piece of machinery no doubt, but nothing that couldn’t be more easily replicated by using parts I’ve probably already got lying around at home. And there’d be no international incident to have to explain away.

The paranoia runs deep, and apparently sank into this film.

Part Two: Idaho the ZZZZZZ

Now, I’m a native Idahoan. So when I saw Tim Woodward’s “Idaho, the Movie” available via Prime, I thought, let’s give it a shot.

Snoresville.

Lotsa glory shots. Other writers and artists offering scenic blather.

Now Idaho is a nice place to live. Many beautiful places to see. But this film was a sleeper. You get the perspective that Idaho, like The Good Life, shows a place filled with lovable, middle-aged eccentrics.



And absolutely no cities.

Which is fine, since any film focusing on the state’s cities would probably spend far too much time in Boise. Ick.