National Geographic TV Series 'Mars' Is A Scripted Science Fiction Yet Seems Real?

The new National Geographic TV series Mars features the challenging and risky journey of humans to the Red Planet. It had its first episode on Nov. 14, 2016, which focused in the sending of humans to Mars in 2033.

It was a scripted science fiction drama that involves fictional crew, spaceships and Martian habitats. In the episode, the viewers could see spaceflight milestones. These include the Apollo astronauts walking down the gantry to the spacecraft. Another scene showed President Barack Obama discussing the setting up off-Earth settlements and SpaceX employees during a rocket launch, according to Space.

The show is dramatic and adventurous showing the dreams of humans in settling on the planet Mars in the future. It suggests how humans could land and settle on the Red Planet. These involve the Martian scenery, functional spacesuits, spacecraft, high-tech ships and a lot more.

Stephen Petranek, the author of the book How We'll Live on Mars, describes the show as surprisingly and almost shockingly, in a way, as accurate as it could possibly be. He further said that the idea was to make this as entertaining as possible so it would get a large audience. On the other hand, people would learn something while watching it.

Petranek added that it is not a fictional part. He explained that it is an accurate imagination of what is very, very likely to happen and much sooner than people expect.

The show was produced by Ron Howard, Michael Rosenberg and Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment. It was directed by Mexican filmmaker Everardo Gout, as noted by Space.

Howard explained that any story about a true-life adventure is a story of courage and heroism and Mars is as well. He further explained that it is not just getting there, it is building the base, it's colonizing it, it's surviving. "We are dramatizing what we think the experience might be like but it's not fiction, it's very much based on research."