The Infinite Monkey Cage - Hollywood in Space

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

Brian Cox and Robin Ince put Hollywood under the microscope to unpick the science fact v science fiction of some of the biggest movies set in space. They are joined by a truly out of this world panel of space experts including astronauts Tim Peake, Nicole Stott and Susan Kilrain alongside Oscar-winning Special FX director Paul Franklin, whose movies include Interstellar and First Man. Tim, Nicole and Susan fact check how space travel and astronauts are portrayed in movies such as Gravity and The Martian, whilst Brian and Robin argue about Robin's lack of enthusiasm for Star Wars. They look back at some of the greatest space movies including Alien and 2001 A Space Odyssey, and ask whether some fictional aspects of these blockbusters may not be so far from our future reality.Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

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Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince and this is the Infinite Monkey Cage. Now today we're going to peer review Hollywood as we ask, is space really like it is in the movies? And so we're going to deal with some of the most important movies that are about space and space exploration and we're going to ask questions such as, is it really possible for Santa Claus to conquer the Martians? Has anyone actually seen Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? Yes.

It's as good as it sounds, isn't it? I think is the best way of describing it. If you're about six years old it is, yeah. Which is when I saw it. Has it got anything to do... Well, no, it's exactly what it deals with. This is why it's a big question. If we're talking about...

We've got three astronauts on the panel. There's people we're about to find out. And, you know, I want to know from them, for their own experience, you know, do they believe it would be possible for Santa Claus, scientifically, to conquer the Martians? Look, we're all adults in here, aren't we?

Primarily. And mainly adults listening. So I think I can say, I think I'm allowed to do it without shattering anyone's dreams and illusions. It's okay. I'm a scientist. I can say it.

There's very little evidence for the existence of Martians. Science fiction used to play fast and loose with the laws of physics, but recently there has been an increasing trend towards scientific accuracy. Noble laureate Kip Thorne helped out and indeed write Interstellar. Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll advised on the appearance of wormholes in the Marvel franchise of the Thor films.

And TV chef Brian Cox was an advisor on Danny Boer's Sunshine. But we're not going to talk about that this time, are we? Because you made a bit of a pig's ear of that, didn't you? I was given a tremendous challenge. Our son is dying now. We are going to go and fix it. Discuss. It was like, well, this is bollocks at every level.

But Danny Boyle wouldn't. Anyway. Now, in a break with current political and intellectual fashion, we're going to explore the representation of space in films with four people who actually know what they're talking about. One has two Oscars for the representation of space in films, and the other three people have flown in space. And they are. Hello, I'm British astronaut Tim Peake. I flew to the International Space Station in 2015.

I've just finished a new book called Space, The Human Story. And the best thing I learnt from Hollywood movies was to stay out of the cornfields. Because whenever you see a cornfield in a Hollywood movie, something terrible is about to happen. I'm Paul Franklin. I'm a filmmaker and visual effects designer. I've worked on films including Inception

and Interstellar and the Dark Knight franchise. And I'd say the best thing I have learned from working on Hollywood science fiction films is though nobody can hear you scream in space, you can always hear the score. And I'm Nicole Stott. I'm a NASA astronaut and artist who got to paint with watercolors in space and now am part of a foundation called the Space for Art Foundation, bringing space and art together.

I got to spend two missions on the International Space Station and the space shuttle. And the best thing I ever learned from a Hollywood film is I think how much I must not have learned in science class. Hi, I'm Susan Kilrain, Navy test pilot, space shuttle pilot times two. I'm recently an author of a newly released children's book called An Unlikely Astronaut. And what did I learn from Hollywood movies?

I learned that the Earth is round. We did go to the moon and Mars and black holes and other planets. And that nothing is definitely real when you're looking at a Hollywood movie and this is our panel we're going to start off with you Paul because I think this is probably most threatening for you because I would imagine more often than not when there's three astronauts near you just go oh no who's going to come up first and go can I just say I watched that film you made, and to be quite honest, that was terribly inaccurate,

what you did when we were in space. So what are the things that you are most used to? You know, you've had a long career making a lot of science fiction movies. A lot of people remember you most fondly for, obviously, The Naughty Professor 2, The Clumps. Yeah. But got that in early. I do apologise.

Could have been Blade Runner 2049, but I feel for a lot of people it is The Nutty Professor. What are the things that you just think, oh, man, I wish I'd known that before we did that effect? Well, I mean, generally, you worry about what's in the story, mostly, and the things you're actually most concerned about is, am I achieving what the director wants for the film,

for the vision of the film? And not so much about you know being super accurate at that point then later on you see something you think oh well that was a load of old nonsense wasn't it and I think Nutty Professor 2 probably falls into that category but then it wasn't really intended to do uh be a lecturer in science was it so that was Susan when um because I you know physics everybody always says to me how can you watch science fiction film does it annoy you when you're watching a film and this happens and that happens so the same question to you really do you take some of the films seriously

and say well that's just absolute nonsense I'm offended by that representation of space flight oh there's some of the best movies are completely wrong and I love them. I mean, look at Top Gun and Top Gun Maverick and Gravity. Those movies are amazing. None of it's real, but I love it. Because you flew the F-14. I flew the F-14 and yeah, you know, you can't do what they did. So can you do that? Well, no, you can definitely, yes. The fly-in was real in Top Gun. Top Gun Maverick, not so much. What is the bit in Top Gun Maverick where you went, whoa, that really is pushing it too much?

Wow, a lot of it was pushing it too much. The answer is the entire thing. The fact that Tom Cruise was still allowed to fly was probably the biggest wow that would never happen in the entire film. Well, one, the fact that Tom Cruise was still allowed to fly was probably the biggest, wow, that would never happen in the real Navy. And the fact that all his ex-girlfriends, who were actually the same age as him in 1985, were no longer in existence for some reason.

No, they were no longer there. Some alien had snatched them all up. But I was happy that they brought Iceman back and let him be part of the movie. And, you know, it was a great film. You have to go to a movie with your popcorn and your soda and get into it, I think, and not pick it apart scientifically. Well, that's ruined this show.

Thank you. Hey, you last. Notwithstanding Susan's comments, Nicole, the same question to you. Hey, you last. Notwithstanding Susan's comments, Nicole, the same question to you. I don't think you can help but watch a film, you know, for whatever industry you're in and just, you know, pick it apart a little bit or at least be bothered by some of it.

I think you mentioned gravity. Some of the most amazing visual effects, I remember looking at that and thinking, oh my gosh, the way they got the light like off of the space station, you know, and the way they got the light off of the space station. And the way all of that looked was so beautifully done. And yet, it made me almost, my stomach was just churning with every spacewalk scene that was going on. And how just almost disrespectful of that whole task that it was.

Kind of the playing around and all of that really upset me. But what I try to look at, I think it's the same kind of thing you're talking about, Susan, is I love the idea of how sci-fi has had so much influence on sci-fact over the years. How things that seemed like just part of our imagination at some point

have become reality along the way. And that's why I'm hopeful in a lot of these movies that I see, that, man, that cool stuff, that we're not doing that, but maybe it could happen sometime. I remember one of the things that a lot of astronauts picked up on gravity before they even got to everything else in space was, just so you know, that's not the underwear we wear. That's really, whatever Sandra Bullock's got on,

is not pragmatic for the ISS. No, it's a nappy and a suit with cold water flowing through it. Not quite as glamorous as the hot pants that Sandra Bullock was wearing. But no, for me, I'm really with Nicole and Susan there in terms of I love being entertained. I go to a movie to just watch it, sit there with a Coke and popcorn and have fun. So from that point of view, I don't really mind the inaccuracies. And Gravity, yeah, the cinematography, actually, they did get it so right.

If anybody wants to know what Earth looks like from space, watch Gravity. But one thing that does knock me a little bit from a test pilot background is how spacecraft always fly in space. You know, they always, whether it's Star Wars X-Wings or whether it's, you know, coming from all these different movies, like, no, no, no, there is no air in space. Spacecraft do not need to fly like aircraft here on Earth, but you always see that.

Or in straight lines. Yeah. But what are you criticising in gravity? Are you saying the space shuttle shouldn't have had wings? Because I think... It was mainly... But it needed them, didn't it? Most of it was OK.

It was flying through space on a fire extinguisher was the point I really kind of thought, right. But it's interesting what you said about there's no... Because there is a lot of fun in the spacewalk. They're playing around. So is there really genuinely no room for fun on the spacewalk did you did you have any moments when you were on a spacewalk where you could just take it in and we we got 10 minutes to just hang out because we were specifically repairing a solar panel and the sun was still up

so and it was the kind of the circuit breaker that had broken so a risk of electric shock so yeah we did have 10 minutes just to take selfies and hang out which is amazing yeah and i think every i mean every part of space flight i think you're you want to enjoy it too right um my problem with like the spacewalk and stuff that they showed was just okay we're just gonna tool around and like we've never met each other before and we're gonna bounce off the station on our tethers and things that you would never cross your mind out on a spacewalk but taking in the view of earth well one of my friends Christina likes to remind me of riding on did you get to ride on the end of the robotic arm at all I didn't oh my gosh

no has anybody got and they showed they had that in gravity too, right? Not in a very nice way, the way she got to get flung around on the thing, but it was so peaceful. And just to watch the scene of Earth like rising up around you and the shuttle popping into your view and just appreciating that awe and wonder. I mean, that's a really like human fun thing to do.

And then almost falling asleep because it was so comfortable. How is that first moment in space, Susan? Because I suppose however much you train for it, you can't train for that view and that sensation. Yes, the first wow moment really is once the engine's cut off and you're now kind of floating in your straps, your seatbelt that's all still on, and you just gaze at Earth.

It's, you know, you've seen it a thousand times in movies or from pictures that other astronauts have shown you, but it just doesn't do it justice. It's really seeing it firsthand that just stops you in your tracks and you gaze at it, and then you get to work because you have a lot to do well let's go to a more uh i suspect a more accurate film which you worked on for his first man so that that's the the whole reason for that film is is accuracy by a pick of neil armstrong ryan guzzling playing neil armstrong so um what what what was the

process you went through? It's interesting, I suppose, when you're first approached, and it's got to be absolutely realistic. It is the story of Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11. What do you ask to do and how do you approach it? Well, I mean, accuracy was super important. And Damien Chazelle, who directed it, who made La La Land just before that,

he became a real aficionado of everything that happened on the Apollo missions and I'm a bit of a space nerd and grew up like you during the Apollo era watching it on TV as a kid and and so I've always been very interested in it so he would just pump me for information about the missions and one day I got this email from the visual effects producer saying Damien wants to know if michael collins had his gloves on whilst he was docking the command module with the lunar module and i was thinking oh i don't know and i start looking for information on it and everything and then i thought wait a second you've actually got michael collins email address so perhaps best to ask him rather who actually did this and went to the moon rather than the guy who was three years old at the time and has a degree in sculpture.

But I think they found out in the end. I'm not quite sure what the actual result there was. But yeah, the accuracy, and Damien would try and catch me out. He started referring to the way that the astronauts would sleep inside the command module on the way to the moon. And I didn't know about how they folded out the seats and the hammocks and all this sort of thing, so he kind of caught me out there.

Isn't there also a problem, which is sometimes, when you're making a movie, audience expectations of how things will happen? Absolutely. That you actually have to go, do you know what? We can't be as scientifically accurate, because actually it will make the audience detached. I think things like walking on the moon and well with in the case of first man we want they wanted to make it as accurate as possible the depiction of the moonwalk

and so that was all filmed in a quarry outside of atlanta in georgia where they actually has gray sand and the art department dressed about a couple of acres of it to look like the sea of tranquility and we had a full-size lunar module mock- acres of it to look like the sea of tranquility and we had a full-size lunar module mock-up and it was lit by the most powerful lamp they could find a 200 000 watt bulb lit it to simulate the look of the sunlight and i went out onto the onto the set and i just thought holy heck i'm standing on the moon it's uh it was quite extraordinary because if you've looked at all the Apollo surface photography, it was a pretty spot on match. Though it then began to snow and run

around the effect. So they had to wait a couple of days until it all melted and they could, so it was a rather damp sea of tranquility. But mostly, we don't really know, well most of us, what it looks like on the surface of the moon. And most people haven't bothered to look at the photography. So they're always expecting to see things like a bit of mist in the air to make things feel a little bit further away you know they don't get that depth perspective in space one of the things we had on interstellar was that the thrusters of the spacecraft the jets just fly out in you know perfect cones and it looks really strange if you've seen uh this footage they did it very well in gravity actually whereas um we actually just use little puffs of nitrogen gas which form

little clouds which you don't get in space but it looks real because we filmed a real thing and so people kind of believe it more and that's because of this business of audience expectation and it's uh it's something you know when the films become more and more fantastical when they're more fantasy based they they tend to shift more and more into things like stuff that you'd experience on the earth was there anything tim when you first went into space that you'd your expectations turned out to be wrong because you'd grown up seeing space films and things was it something that surprised you you thought that shouldn't look like that yeah i think it was just this stark contrast of of just how black space is in the daytime it's a it's a black that we just never see here on earth there's no color that

can really truly represent the blackness of space and for me that was quite quite a shock it's uh really absorbing it feels like you're kind of falling into this soul-sucking blackness um and then the in contrast then when you look at parts of the spacecraft and certainly outside the space station where you can see down the whole structure you're struck just by the colors because you have got this pure white uh fusion reaction and it's the whitest light that you'll ever get. So from a sort of filmmaker studio perspective, it is just like the perfect studio. And of course, that perfect white is giving you perfect colors

and perfectly crisp shadows with no obscuration from the atmosphere. So you'd see the shadows falling on the space station. They're just razor sharp. And so these kinds of things that you know that it's going to be like that, but you can't really visualize it until you get there yes it doesn't it almost doesn't look real yeah it's just the most like crisp crystal clear glowing like vivid color that you'd ever see

one of the other things did you guys think this too like everything's not in slow motion that was the thing i was really like do we move in slow motion but you don't so did ryan gosling did because you'd move at the normal yeah speed but of course that looks silly on the moon in some sense i mean for first man i think we shot it um the camera is running at the normal speed so it wasn't slow motion but it's very much a convention if you go back to science fiction films from the 60s and early 70s you slow motion all the time to make it look like you're in zero gravity or if they didn't have a high speed camera and if you watch space 1999 you'll see the actors pretending to move in slow motion.

It's when they have a fight, isn't it? Space 1999, very, very slow. None of them doing actions on a radio program. Slow motion photography is very expensive. Certainly was back then. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke.

Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcast. So, Cesar, when we talk about accuracy, I suppose one of the important things,

going back to when you were saying, well, when you go to the cinema, you know, you sit there with your popcorn and it's just all fun. I suppose one of the dangers is that sometimes we do, you know, whatever Hollywood creates, sometimes people then believe that is the reality. You know, we see that in war movies. We see that in so many different things.

People go, well, this is... So I suppose that that's part of that would you say that's part of the battle of going but this doesn't matter because this bit's fun but this idea might matter because this might be now believed as being a true part of the experience of going to space of the challenges of going into space well i thought it was kind of nice that my kids knew I flew F-14s, and then they thought I flew just like Tom Cruise did. I got some real street cred that day. But you do have to. I mean, watching a movie like The Martian, amazing movie. And you could come away from that thinking all of that science was exact. But it's not yet. And maybe someday most of it will get there, but some of it was never going to get there. And so the movie was so good and so believable

that people think that the science is real. Isn't that the story? I think you told me, Brian, that Andy Weir, who wrote it, that he wanted it to be as accurate as possible, but the only bit that's totally inaccurate is why he gets stranded on Mars, the actual storm that occurs. So that's quite an interesting thing to actually start.

Right, I'm going to get all the scientific inaccuracy over to begin with, but my potato growing will be as specific as it can be. But I think one of the things that was interesting about that film, because I really liked it too, was that where there were those inaccuracies or where there was dramatic license taken that kind of veered from the book as well they didn't hide it like when when the film came out and when people were talking about it they

just said that they just said hey this is not the way it would be on mars you're not going to get blown over by something but um but it made the movie i don't it made the story of the film too so yeah i kind of like that that transparency and it's all it's also an exploration of the psychology of astronauts as was first man to a large extent and i wondered um how in your experience the so the selection of astronauts has changed i suppose over the years hasn't it because you know mercury and apollo it is all i know you're well actually two of your test pilots it kind of ruins my question somewhat but it was all it was all test pilots yeah i know you're an engineer right but then but it has moved hasn't it away from that idea that you have to be you know the chuck yeager the right stuff that kind of thing so could you

talk a bit about how the selection process has changed over the years well in the beginning we didn't know much about space or if about space or how safe it was going to be or how reliable. And so test pilots were the best pick back in the day. And then when we flew the space shuttle, you needed a couple of test pilots up front because every time you flew, it was basically a test flight. But they had also already gotten away from that when they started getting geologists because they were going to the moon to pick up rocks and then engineers and and then doctors. Let's let's do some medicine in space. Let's do some science in space. And scientists came along. And so it's really opened up. And now you're hearing more about art in space.

Different people are doing performing their art or doing art in space. And NASA and other folks that fly to space are realizing the importance of all of it. Eventually, all of it will have a place in space. You know, when you say that you always needed test pilots up front in the shuttle, so what skill set is it that's required? I mean, obviously, being good at flying an aircraft but what you know psychologically and what kind of skills do you need to be able to fly an experimental aircraft like that and the psychology of it is you've had a lot of practice in flying a lot of different aircraft that have had a lot of different failures and you know and

so you know how to handle the situation and you've been tested to have a level head while you're handling the situation. I don't know if you've heard, like, airline pilots sometimes, like, have an engine that's missing and took a bird strike or whatever, and they're having to do an emergency landing, yet they're talking on the radio, ground or, you know, tower, we're coming in,

we have an emergency and it's like nothing's going wrong because they've just learned how to handle the emergency. Yeah, I remember once, Tim, I had the great honour of interviewing Jim Lovell and he said to me that the skill of being a test pilot is to make a list of the things that are going to kill you and if you get the order right, then you might survive but you have to get the order right yeah yeah yeah it helps get the order right

definitely what's the one right at the bottom then what's the least likely but possible that's when you jump out um but that doesn't help you in space um but no as susan said it's it's a case of um having that skill set i think to to be calm under pressure and to work through that checklist that you would have drilled into you during training and analyse all the options. I think it's a case of having options. That's what gives you the ability to do that. It's when you start running out of options, that's when the heart rate starts going up and the panic can set in if you're not really prepared for it. But to go back to that kind of crew selection, it's really interesting because it is much more diverse today, and we're going to need that because you still will need test pilots.

As we go to Artemis, we're landing on the moon again. We're back to rendezvous and docking and lunar orbital mechanics and landing systems. But then you're going to need to set up a microgravity or a laboratory on the surface, microgravity laboratory in lunar orbit. You're going to need to have people who can have all sorts of skills to run that team. So when we're looking at our selection processes now, that's a huge part of it. And the psychological effect as well as longer duration missions away from Earth.

I think the real step change comes not so much with the artemis moon missions it's mars going on a three-year mission to mars and watching earth disappear until it's just a speck of light in the sky that's going to take a certainly a different mentality than we've considered up until now and and the blend in in the crew as you said maybe um nicole so you have engineers, which is your background, but also, you mentioned, Susan, artists and people who will know how to respond to space and transmit that. Yeah, I think it's going to become even more and more important,

and not just as we're starting to include someone who is an artist on a crew in particular. We're like, that's their thing. But I think we need to acknowledge more and more thoughtfully as we go into flights that are going to be three years where Earth doesn't look like Earth out the window very quickly. And you're in not the Hollywood spaceship, by the way, either. You know, you're in a relatively confined space where I think now with Artemis, even they had to put the toilet in the bulkhead to find space for it is that these things like art and music and kind of the psychological stuff that just

keeps us happy and healthy, you know, right here on earth, whether you're an astronaut or not needs to be built into the missions as well. Acknowledged as part of something that's going to need to happen. Cause one of the things I was thinking, Paul, and I know you've watched a lot of movies, one of the biggest dangers, it seems to me, of long space missions is that more often than not, one of the astronauts is evil. And yes, do you think, you know, how can we weed out to make sure

that someone who didn't appear to be evil but the moment they're in space they're evil aren't they yeah it's true all the all the computer is evil it's one or the other well actually tim you wouldn't be allowed to go tim because you're english and as we know anyone in a hollywood movie is english he's probably going to be evil on that mission aren't they yes yeah definitely i'm looking forward to that one paul i wanted to ask you just about because the holodeck was mentioned, and of all the people on this panel, you, I think, are the one who'd most likely be able to create a holodeck. So that idea, I suppose we could think, for instance, of VR.

Would that be something? Because what I was wondering is, every now and again, you've worked so intensely on so many different ideas of space exploration, and sometimes it is inventing that which does not exist. But I wondered about that point where sometimes you might be creating something think do you know what this is an idea that is a good idea for for instance thinking if you are gonna you know have people uh going to mars or indeed you know some of the ingenuity required for the fictional world that might then have some use in reality well i mean i think science fiction films have a you know there's a great history of predicting things which then either get adopted i mean i think science fiction films have a you know there's a great history of

predicting things which then either get adopted i mean there's a very early science fiction film called frau in mont woman in the moon by uh fritz lang which uh i believe is the first time the concept of the countdown appears in the film in a or in any film it's made in about 1920 it's a silent film the actual countdown to to blast off i think uh starts with that film that's where the original idea came from apparently that's that is yeah and you think about star trek and the little flip top communicators you know anticipate cell phones and things like that as a fan of science fiction movies you know now when you are working on ones that are dealing with creating a reality do you sometimes think

oh my goodness that's so weird. I look back now to, you know, might be watching 2001 or Alien or whatever it might be and going, that actually was prescient. Well, there's a cracking little clip from one of the old Skylab missions in which Skylab was this very early NASA space station. It had a large space inside it because it was made out of an old Saturn V rocket. And they had equipment lockers all around the inside.

And there's a clip of the astronauts running around it. And it's basically the scene of him running around the centrifuge in 2001, you know, where he's exercising. And I think they were deliberately recreating that moment from 2001. Apparently, Arthur C. Clarke saw that and then sent it on a film reel to Stanley Kubrick

to say, look, we got there first. Do you prefer... Talking about 2001, we've been to step out again and it gets more futuristic and we get these bigger spacecraft further into the future. Do you find it easier or more liberating, I suppose, to be able to work on something

that's not a biopic, not anchored in reality, or even gravity, something I suppose, creative, to be able to work on something that's not a biopic, not anchored in reality, or even gravity, something that's set today, to be able to go out and really build those remarkable spacecraft. Interstellar would be another example. Yeah, Interstellar is a good example. Interstellar, we grounded it in the look and feel of 1960s, 70s space exploration.

So even though it's set in our future, it's supposed to be set like 80 years from now or so, the spacecraft were very much inspired by the look of the space shuttle, Skylab, Apollo. And the sets were all built out of bits of old aircraft. We got them from the aircraft graveyard. So most of the floor panels inside the big spaceship are made out of those hostess trolleys.

And I love bits of the set. We had one part of the set, we had a lot of old galleys taken out of airliners. So you'd have these things, a coffee machine, and it would say, make coffee. And then next to it was some system taken from a military jet and it would say, fire missiles. Don't get confused.

You were talking about the Hollywood spaceships often tend to be much bigger than the reality of spaceships, and that's mostly because we have to fit the cameras and the rest of the crew in. It really is a consideration. See, I wondered if we need to... Because one of the things I find interesting is we mentioned 2001, and 2001 shows as a kind of a real moment of all human evolution.

We're all getting... And everything, just in terms of the world that we have, is everything's clean lines. And then you get a movie like alien which says do you know what we're going to get to the point where we'll have incredible access to new technology and there'll still be people doing really rubbish jobs getting treated really it's like that that element i suppose that we don't often see of the apollo missions which are things like you know frank boorman on apollo 8 I think in the first day, getting a terrible attack of diarrhea, and the other two astronauts having to float around

and pick up, you know, which is just not... And if that is made in 3D, you know, that's kind of like so... Which I imagine, is that a tricky one to do? I'll tell you what, I'm going to write straight to Disney if they want that idea for the ride, definitely. Never been asked to do that. Well, I've got a screenplay that I'm working on at the moment

and I'll get you straight in. But, you know, that bit, I suppose, which is interesting, there was a point where so many images of space exploration were that everything was going to be, you had the space 1999 suits, everyone was going to be fashionable, everything was clean. And then we get to the bit going, do you know know what it might be grubby and dirty and actually the distances will change but life itself won't well that's what i love about films when when i think

about my favorite space films which really aren't about the science at all it's like galaxy quest and rocket man not the elton john movie but the the, I think it was 1997, I looked it up, where it becomes more about kind of the human in the human space flight, you know, the relationships, the, you know, well, how many flights did you fly, you know, and somebody thinks it's four, but it's really five, well, who's counting, apparently you are my friend, those kinds of things, like about the ego and the relationships and stuff, and the fact that we're humans that have to do human things like go to the bathroom in space that people really want to know about too which is closer to me because that future the the alien future i i love alien i i loved i always

loved it from when i watched it bizarrely that my school showed it when I was 11. In those days. You'd all been very bad, hadn't you, as punishment. The 70s in Manchester, it's like, watch that. Which is closer, because we have these two extremes, don't we? As you said, Nicole, the Star Trek, which is just shiny future, and then you have Alien, which is basically truck drivers, essentially, that's what they are. So which is the reality, which is basically truck drivers. Essentially, that's what they are. So which is the reality?

Which is close to the reality of being an astronaut? I think it's truck drivers. But, I mean, it is about normal people, essentially. That's where we're going to. You can see that in terms of in the early days, as Susan was saying, it was all, you know, this test pilot environment, a lot of caution about who was being selected. And now really we've got a number of different jobs if you think about what you do on board the International Space Station today you do everything in terms of what

the Apollo crews were doing being ready for that kind of test flight but you're operating equipment you're doing the spacewalks you're doing medical training dental training scientific payloads when we go to the moon it's going to be all that plus some you're going to be builders you know build your habitation modules doing surveys geological work so we can't keep heaping the skill set on top of astronauts and so i think it will end up being more the kind of portrayal of this mixed crew that we see in films like alien yeah paul the you talked about Interstellar. I suppose it's a special case in a way, isn't it? Because Chris Nolan famously doesn't like special effects

if he can help it. So you built this set, which I love the idea. I remember once I did a thing years ago with Matt Smith in the TARDIS. And that was the same. The TARDIS is built out of old bits of aircraft. But he was so excited. The first thing he said to me was,

look at this, if I click this switch, the light comes on. And that's what he was into. It actually worked, writing this thing. So I wondered, you know, of the films you worked on, I suppose there's two extremes, isn't there? There's building a set out of old bits of aircraft, which sounds wonderful. But there's also creating them in computer graphics.

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously now with modern digital visual effects, with computer graphics in particular, you can... If you look at a film like Gravity, the interior of the ISS in Gravity is completely created in computer graphics. In fact, almost everything in that film is computer graphics, with the exception of the actors' faces. And when we were working on Interstellar,

Anne Hathaway was telling me about what a challenge it was wearing the spacesuits which had been fabricated for them to wear, because they had cooling systems inside them, but they'd get very claustrophobic, and sometimes it didn't work, and either they got too hot or too cold and everything. And Gravity had just come out. I said, oh, well, you know uh have you been to see this yet and she said no i haven't seen it but i guess sandra must have gone through the same things and i said well no she's just wearing motion capture pajamas it's all

cg and she's sort of looking at me amazed and so why on earth am i wearing all this and then chris walks past chris nolan walks past on the set and they say, ask him. Because Chris always wants to do it for real. I'm just shocked by that because I'd not known this, that Christopher Nolan doesn't like films

with loads of special effects. He's really not got a good choice of screenplays then, has he? Because, I mean, Ken Loach, he makes films

without special effects, you know? Food banks, setting old pubs, that kind of thing. I don't want to do too many special effects, but I just want maybe kind of traveling near a black hole having a fight on mars stuff like that more accurately say chris wants to use the visual effects special effects

to do the things you can't otherwise film that so for instance an interstellar the black hole you know we couldn't well you can actually take pictures of black holes now but at the time you couldn't but we still grounded it in as much physics and as much science as we actually could you know we did a proper simulation of the way that the light is warped by the gravity of the black hole rather than just drawing a pretty picture and making it up but um the he's always keen to put reality in front of the camera where at all possible so yeah famously we didn't use any green screens on interstellar which actually made my life extremely difficult but i just want to say we've run out of time but i want to ask you just the last question So, yeah, famously, we didn't use any green screens on Interstellar, which actually made my life extremely difficult.

I just want to say, we've run out of time, but I wanted to ask you just the last question, really. We were talking about science fiction. To me, science fiction films, they're about these quests, aren't they? They're romantic things. They're about the human quest to go further, understand our place in the universe. So, as such, what is your favorite science fiction film and uh does being a real astronaut map onto that those romantic ideas of exploration well my favorite science fiction movie is the

martian so i don't think there was a lot of romantic anything going on in that movie but i do think the two go hand in hand. I mean, we're people. And people are going to go to space. And people are going to go, hopefully, someday to other planets. And we're still going to be people. The moment you said there was nothing romantic in The Martian, I just had an image of him getting so lonely that he gets the potato out. He starts drawing a little face on it. I love you, potato.

Tim, what about you? Not the Potato question, the film question. I had too many to choose from, but one of my favourite science fiction movies is The Abyss. And I guess this is looking at going down instead of going up. But in some respects, I think it has so many similarities to a space exploration mission in terms of that isolation, that confinement, going into the depths of the unknown. And then when they meet this strange intelligence down there as well, I just think, you know, you never quite know.

Was this something that evolved in the oceans of Earth or was this something that has arrived on Earth from another planet? And I kind of like that mystery of the abyss as well or was this something that has arrived on Earth from another planet? And I kind of like that mystery of the abyss as well. I think it's a fantastic movie. I think for me, and it's not because of who we have present on the stage tonight, but I really think Interstellar is my favorite. And it's reminiscent of sci-fi before it too, right? You know, you think of 2001.

My husband would argue it's kind of a-fi before it too, right? You know, you think of 2001. My husband would argue it's kind of a remake in some way of 2001, which I think is really the more I look at it, I'm not quite as brainy as he is. But it's nice to look at things that way and kind of reflect on other movies that really were, you know, impactful in some way on you, and the way you thought about sci-fi, and the imagination of the future. And that, to me, is what it really ends up being all about,

is this imagination of something that may not exist yet, but how that could positively influence what we have to look forward to. Well, that brings us to the end of the panel. And if anyone would like to write in with their guess of which one of our panel was actually evil we'll reveal that in the next series. Brian we asked the audience a question didn't we and it was which science fiction movie would you most like to live in? What have you got Brian? Batman so I can have Robin in brackets Ince as my boy wonder. That's from Vivian, and her phone number is on the back.

Lego Batman, so I can build Brian as my boy wonder. 12 infinite monkeys, because number one, I like monkeys, and number two, you can't ever have enough monkeys. Star Wars on Tatooine.

Is it Tatooine or Tatween or Tatween? Tatween. Tatween. Tatooine. Tatooine. Because we've been on the radio for Tatooine. You've ruined your geek status now. Oh, no, no, I'm not a big fan of Star Wars. Tatooine.

There we go. I've revealed it to you. I'm not a big fan of Star Wars. I've got other things to do. There's Darth Vader. Darth Vader. I'm really happy. It's meant to be like, oh, I can't believe that you're not into Star Wars. I've got other things to do. There's Darth Vader. Darth Vader. I'm really happy. It's meant to be like,

oh, I can't believe that you're not into Star Wars. And I go, well, which Ingmar Bergman's your favourite? And they've not even watched Wild Strawberries. To hell with them.

I should be on Radio 3 with these tastes. You can like both. You can like both. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can like both. But what I mean is, you know,

I don't mind that people haven't seen those things, but it's just like, I like Empire Strikes Back. You haven't seen Star Wars? No, I've seen all of them. Have you seen it? Yeah, yeah.

I'm not saying I'm against them. I'm just saying that I don't have a tattoo of Chewbacca down my spine. I also don't spend my life going, well, I'm a huge fan of Star Wars, but I haven't liked the last nine. Which a lot of people seem to do, don't they? Star Wars on Ratatatween. At least it will be dry. There we are. Graham's, Graham's,

this is seeing the silver lining to every cloud. It says alien because it would be a great way to get rid of my indigestion. Right, anyway, so well done everyone. And it's nice to spend a lot of time in a room with astronauts. Well done, everyone. No, well done, everyone.

They've been here so long, and it really is. Only one person pretended they needed to go to the loo. And thank you very much to our wonderful guests, Tim Peake, Susan Kilrain, Nicole Stott and Paul Franklin. Now, next week, usually we spend a lot of time, we kind of sit down trying to work out what we're going to talk about on Munkage. We sit around a table, and more often than not,

it roughly goes like this. I'll say something like, why don't we do the minds of octopuses? And Brian goes, no, physics. And then I'll go, why don't we do kind of fungal communication in woodland? No, physics. Why don't we do spider sex?

No, physics, but maybe a little bit of spider sex. And then fortunately, next week, we've actually asked one of our most popular guests, someone who's an absolute joy. We've had her on so regularly. She's one of our funniest guests. We asked Jo Brand what would she actually like to discuss on a show, and she said, what is quantum mechanics really about?

Physics. You've got everything you dreamt of. Lucky, really. Thank you very much for listening. Bye-bye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Turned out nice again.

Hi Greg, I'm a long time listener to the show and I'm not lying when I say it has changed my life. I'm Greg Foot and my podcast, Sliced Bread, from BBC Radio 4 is back to separate more science fact from marketing fiction. For me, they're the best things in sliced bread and science fact from marketing fiction. For me they're the best things in sliced bread and they're not marketing BS. Each week I investigate a new wonder product promising you the world. At this time of year my husband and I suffer from hay fever. What I would like you to look into though are the tablets. This series a whole new batch of wonder products are

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We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. you