Challenger: The Final Flight - Season 1

"Directors Daniel Junge and Steven Leckart serve up some answers with some never-before-seen footage and a swath of interviews, bundled in a generic package."

"Directors Steven Leckart and Daniel Junge don’t uncover startling new information about the lead-up to or aftermath of this tragic event. They do what good documentarians do: contextualize a major moment in a way that clarifies it for people who weren’t alive when it happened and makes it more vivid for those who were."

"Challenger: The Final Flight navigates a delicate path -- celebrating the lives of those lost in 1986, and the hubris, politics and pressure to deliver that became the anatomy of a failure."

"But the series does take a deep dive into the story, providing no small amount of drama and some eye-opening details."

"It's one thing to simply be aware that a failure of the O-ring in the solid rocket boosters was what doomed the Challenger. It's another to see one engineer after another from Morton-Thiokol, the contractor behind the SRBs, candidly go on-camera to discuss what they knew, when they knew it and the steps they took to fix something that everybody knew was a nightmare waiting to happen."

"In the end, a mission meant to turn America’s gaze towards the stars turned many away. “Challenger” has no real take on this but to balefully acknowledge it happened and commemorate those who were lost; it’s not the most ambitious of goals, but it’s enough."

"Could be a lot more focused. But Leckart and Junge ultimately have the goods, and they do deliver. Their final half-hour in particular is incredibly dramatic, echoing a lot of the discussions we’re still having—all about whether it’s better to be honest with the American people, or to preserve our myths and heroes."