Space Gen: Chandrayaan — Alert! A Crash Landing

A STORY LIKE THIS can be told only once. In 2023, India launched Chandrayaan-3, a lunar exploration carried out by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). A stupendous feat such as this could be measured in more tactile terms: the success made India the first country to soft-land on the Moon's south pole and the fourth nation to accomplish a lunar soft landing. A dramatised recreation of this was waiting to happen, and TVF’s new series, Space Gen: Chandrayaan, is the result of that.

Although timely, the five-episode show is a bafflingly underproduced outing that does a gross disservice to the accomplishment it chooses to showcase. Its approach is limiting, and the execution is woefully plain, making Space Gen: Chandrayaan resemble a tritely written school skit performed as a last-minute decision. Everything in the series, from writing to the performances, is an instance of drawing up a list of possibilities and zeroing in on the worst possible option. It might seem impossible, but Space Gen: Chandrayaan is nothing but an example of taking an almost foolproof premise and ruining it to bits.

The show begins with failure, a good but predictable move in the long run. Chandrayaan-2, the second lunar exploration by ISRO, was unsuccessful; the lander crashed and has piled more pressure on the ISRO team. This enrages the diplomat (Gopal Datt), who was certain of a positive result and, in its absence, has been left fuming. An immediate report is demanded, and a new team is formed. At the centre of the crisis are project director, Yamini Mudalair (Shriya Saran) and navigation system expert, Arjun Verma (Nakuul Mehta). As an unexpected pandemic hits in 2020, they are left floundering to prepare for the next exploration.

Although the premise is neat, the makers go about it like they are talking (down) to a group of elementary school kids. Matters are not underlined but spelt out. Granted, the intent is to make the subject matter more accessible, but writing cannot only be exposition. And surely there are better ways to arrive at a breakthrough than a random recurrence of a man refusing to stand in a circle during the pandemic.

When not explaining things, characters (chief among them being the one played by comic Danish Sait) surround the more important people and hype them up for no reason. Sample this: When Arjun tries to figure out if a supposed hacking has taken place and works towards it, he stands behind him and says, “Arjun ka idea military se bhi zyaada secure hain” (Arjun’s idea is more secure than that of the military).

The dialogues are worse. Here are some actual lines spoken by one character to another: “If we have to win over the world, we have to first win over ourselves”; “Now is the time to be realist, not scientists”. There is also an awful moment when the scientists are concerned about the craft being overweight, Datt’s character slyly looks at Saran and smirks, “wazan ghataiye” (lose the weight)

All of this only adds up to the characters, each written with the depth of a peanut. Saran’s Yamini is puzzlingly dry. The actor speaks like she is chewing on rocks, but it also has something to do with the fact that her role is relegated to mostly reaction shots. She is supposed to be the project director, and yet the show does little to nothing to offer any insight into her role. All she is shown doing is looking preoccupied as her daughter looks on with misgivings.

Then there is Nakuul Mehta, whose misplaced intensity makes it seem like he is in a different show. It is a terribly dense character with zero interiority. His father was an army officer and died in the Kargil war in 1999. Since then, he has desired to be a scientist. One gets that, but Arjun is frequently afflicted with paranoia; at some point, a senior calls him out for being an alcoholic and if he indeed is supposed to be the principal player, then Space Gen: Chandrayaan gives him the shortest end of the stick.

It never bodes well for a long-form show when the information on Wikipedia appears more detailed than its many episodes. Anant Singh’s new work, unfortunately, is an example of that. What is sadder is that the ingenuity of the premise is now lost, and stories like this can be told only once.

Watch Spece Gen: Chandrayaan here on JioHotstar, now available with your OTTplay Premium subscription.