Apollo 11

Apollo 11's flight is broadcast on television. (TV: Day of the Moon)

Apollo missions

Apollo 11 was an American Earth spacecraft which landed on the Moon on 20 July 1969. Humans regarded this as the first Moon landing.

The spacecraft was manned by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. (PROSE: The Time Traveller's Almanac)

Overview

History

Motivations for the landing

Around 1959, an alien species had landed on the Moon and sent a transmission to Earth. They requested a meeting with humans so as to share technology. The American government intercepted the transmission and started NASA's moon project to meet them. (PROSE: Blue Moon) The Silents, who had controlled humanity up to that point, were also interested in the Moon landing in order for the human race to produce the astronaut suit. (TV: Day of the Moon) In popular culture, the Moon landing had much to do with the Americans' rivalry with the Soviet Union and was known as the "Space Race". (PROSE: Blue Moon)

The mission

An astronaut salutes the American flag during the mission. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters ^[+]Loading...["The Secret Lives of Monsters (short story)"])

While Apollo 11's Saturn V rocket was on the pad, prior its 16 July 1969 launch, the Eleventh Doctor entered the command module, Columbia, and installed a radio relay. (TV: Day of the Moon)

Coordinated by Mission Control at the Kennedy Space Center, the Apollo 11, powered by a Saturn V rocket, lifted off on 16 July. En route to the Moon, the crew encountered an alien species. Mission Control, as well as Torchwood, knew of this, but not the public. After getting caught by an overzealous secret services officer, Spencer, the Tenth Doctor ended up locked in the Center, though gained release in enough time to greet the aliens due to land on the Moon in a flying saucer prior to the Apollo. The Doctor convinced the aliens that humanity needed to develop on their own. The Doctor then witnessed the landing. (PROSE: Blue Moon)

Martha Jones also personally witnessed the Moon landing four times with the Tenth Doctor, as opposed to watching it on television. (TV: Blink)

The Eleventh Doctor interfered with the transmission of the landing, with the help of Canton Everett Delaware III and the relay that he had installed aboard Columbia. At the crucial moment that Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, they inserted footage of a Silent, ordering for its kind to be killed on sight. (TV: Day of the Moon)

At some point before his seventh incarnation, the Doctor acquired bits of the Apollo moon landers, and kept them in his TARDIS. (PROSE: Echo)

It was not generally known that dozens of people had set foot on the Moon prior to Armstrong as the United States government had built a moonbase on the far side of the Moon in the 1960s using alien technology. It was destroyed by the Sixth Doctor on 23 November 1963. (AUDIO: 1963: The Space Race) Furthermore, the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown visited Mare Nectaris on the Moon in 1872. (AUDIO: The First Sontarans) Iris Wildthyme also claimed to have visited the Moon before, and that she gave Neil and Buzz a fright when she drove up out of a crater flashing her TARDIS' headlights. (PROSE: Minions of the Moon)

Public reaction

A crowd gathered to watch the takeoff from the ground. (PROSE: Blue Moon) With interest in the landing so intense, public places virtually emptied as people all over the world glued themselves to their televisions. (PROSE: One Small Step...)

Half a billion people, (TV: Day of the Moon) or about one fifth of the world's population, (PROSE: The Time Traveller's Almanac) watched the footage of the Moon landing on television at the time it was originally broadcast. Due to the nature of the Silence, the footage the Doctor added was not remembered, but left as a subliminal message for present and future human generations. Following the landing, whenever an individual saw a Silent, they would attempt to kill it, unknowingly leading to the Silence's downfall. (TV: Day of the Moon)

Legacy

According to the Eleventh Doctor, every one of the billions of humans to come in the billions of years after 1969 would would watch the Moon landing at least once, to see mankind taking its first step on extraterrestrial soil. (TV: Day of the Moon)

Richard Lazarus estimated that his work with the Genetic Manipulation Device would prove as important to mankind as that achievement. (TV: The Lazarus Experiment)

The book The Secret Lives of Monsters theorised that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked as part of a "convoluted plan to expose alien activity". The book marked apparent "weird shadows", the lack of stars, the moving flag, and cross hairs in photographs of the moon mission. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters ^[+]Loading...["The Secret Lives of Monsters (short story)"])

Behind the scenes

Prior to the real actual touchdown on the Moon, Moon Landing in TV Comic had already (obviously inaccurately) shown it happening for the first time exactly one year later to the day, in 1970.

The photograph used in The Secret Lives of Monsters ^[+]Loading...["The Secret Lives of Monsters (short story)"] to represent Apollo 11 was actually of astronaut David Scott during Apollo 15.

In the real world, there are prominent conspiracy theories that claim the moon landing was faked, which note the shadows, apparent waving flag, and lack of stars, among other things. Such theories have been debunked. The Secret Lives of Monsters ^[+]Loading...["The Secret Lives of Monsters (short story)"] parodies these theories by presenting an in-universe theory that the Apollo 11 landings were faked to "expose alien activity".