Masters of the Air (TV Mini Series) Part Seven (2024) User Reviews

An episode of contrast

[jimjones-36840 · 8/10 · 2 March 2024]

Experiencing near death on a mission, and a few hours later being safe back at base, repeat. That's stressful.

Mind numbing boredom, poor food, cold, brooding threat day after day. That's stressful.

Escape requires continuing the daily spike in fear till you've done it 25 times, or increasing the brooding threat risk. That's stressful.

I don't know how they did it. Bravery of the highest kind, condensed into one hour episodes for our education.

Accuracy is good, effects excellent. Acting by leading characters consistent and meaningful.

I'm looking forward to D Day, more about P51s, and a final resolution .

Kept pace with story

[julieellen-85026 · 8/10 · 2 March 2024]

Maybe the story wasn't about an individual, that war isn't about an individual. But a collection of individuals having the combined courage to continue to band together to face the horror of WW II. The return of the flyers that escaped from France didn't get much of a story. But we knew they made it. And reference to protect the resistance fighters by not returning them to flights was made. Rosie's Riverters buzzing the tower, find joy when you can among the horror of war. Congratulations Rosie, but how did those other men continue to keep going up on missions. The POWS, Does anybody in the 60's remember getting a kit to build your own radio? And lastly, Crosby ?? .........

masters of the ground, occasionally of the air

[nerrdrage · 7/10 · 4 March 2024]

Did they burn through their CGI budget early on? Now we're getting air battle scenes only occasionally, and briefly. The one in this episode was good, especially since the ground-based plotline is half boring now.

The scenes at the UK base might as well not exist. We get it already! War is hell, the crews are tired and PTSD'd to the max.

When they switch over to the POW camp, it feels fresher with more dramatic tension. It's weird that sometimes it doesn't immediately register that they've made the switch because everything is shot in the same tones of greenish gray.

At least the plotline is headed for Big Events now. Bodes well for kicking this series out of the repetitive doldrums.

PART 7

[moviesfilmsreviewsinc · 9/10 · 28 April 2024]

Masters of the Air, a series of seven episodes, explores the dark missions and moments of the 100th Bomb Group. The series has seen the men of the 100th face numerous lethal missions, from Regensberg to Munster, and most recently, Berlin. However, the seventh episode skips over one mission, revealing even more of the bleak nature of the group. The 100th brings on replacements to take over the men lost in previous missions, with most of the original 100th having either been killed or captured as prisoners of war. The series continues to increase the danger of missions, with the 100th taking on Berlin in a mission called Black Monday. However, the episode does not reveal the previous battle, Black Thursday. Masters of the Air episode 5 depicts the Munster Raid in October 1943, followed by Major John Egan's capture as a POW and the impact on Lt. Col. Robert Rosenthal. The seventh episode jumps to March 1944, five months after the Raid, and highlights events like The Great Escape and Black Monday. However, it skips Black Thursday, a major battle the 100th fought in on October 14, 1943. Despite American efforts, German forces easily tracked and targeted the American bombers, resulting in the loss of 60 B-17s and the deaths of around 600 airmen. Masters of the Air may have skipped Black Thursday due to its similarity to other 100th Bomb Group losses during 1943. While Black Thursday is a notable example of the hard hits the 100th took, it does not stand out among other deadly missions they flew. The series could have included Black Thursday in episode 6, but it would have slowed everything down. Instead, it was important to focus on the cast's mental states and the fate of Major John Egan after the Munster Raid. A slower episode 6 added more to the story than another dangerous mission like Black Thursday.

Skipping Black Thursday is a good thing as it kept the story going and maintained some hope. The 100th Bomb Group's story is bleak, and including Black Thursday would have been an unnecessary addition to an already sad story. Masters of the Air should have avoided portraying Black Thursday, as it allowed the series to avoid getting too dark and used extra time wisely by exploring the emotionality of its characters. This helped audiences feel closer to the cast and set up for an intense ending. Black Thursday should be remembered.

"Part Seven"

[allmoviesfan · 8/10 · 22 April 2024]

There are two key storylines running through the seventh episode: the fate of those downed fliers who are German POWs deep behind enemy lines trying to get every little scrap of information about the progress of the war and when/if they might be rescued...and the men of the Bloody Hundredth who are still flying missions over Germany and especially over the heart of Nazism, Berlin.

Black Monday - March 6, 1944, three months before the D-Day invasions - is referenced early on, as a notably horrific day for American forces. The Hundredth is not spared.

Rosenthal's crew makes their twenty-fifth successful mission, which is the threshold to send them home. But there is news on that front that truly upsets the pilots, and Rosie himself makes a momentous decision.

Mixed bag

[kenstallings-65346 · 6/10 · 3 March 2024]

This episode was the weakest of the seven so far released, which is sad because some of the scenes are among the best of the series.

The POW scenes are excellent at capturing the raw sense of fear and boredom, as you realize you live at pretty much the whim of mostly poorly trained camp guards, many of whom concluded that if they shot a prisoner, the odds of them suffering any disciplinary action for it were very low.

This stands in sharp contrast to the producers' inexplicable decision to depict Harry Crosby in a very negative light, which is entirely fictional, as it relates to his relationship in country with the same British officer he met at the Oxford University conference.

This negative character development operates in sharp contrast to Crosby's book, where he makes it clear his relationship with this British officer was platonic. This platonic relationship was quite well produced in episode six. So, for the producers to go down a fictional path in this episode seems cringingly out of place.

There were plenty of other characters in this series to choose from to make this sort of romantic depiction, and considering most of the aircrew were not married, if the series wished to focus on the reality of American airmen and British women hooking up, then that's how it should have been portrayed.

The other reason is that Crosby, for his part in his autobiography, was unflinching in criticizing himself. Prior episodes focused on his poor navigational performance flying his bomber from Greenland to Nazi occupied France, in a gross navigational error, as well has his chronic airsickness. These events were documented in detail in Crosby's book, and very well depicted in this series.

So, if someone like Crosby was willing to document his warts in so many ways, it seems uncalled for to sully his memory without a credible source to back up the negative portrayal.

The other glaring error in this episode is that the first operational flights of the B-17G models were in mid August of 1943. In this episode, the action takes place in early March of 1944, nearly seven months later.

By this point of the ETO air war, there were not any more B-17F models operating in ETO frontline service. Bombers in this theater simply didn't last long, due to combat damage and rapid engine overhaul requirements. It was easier to simply replace worn out bombers with the many new arrivals, vice waste precious maintenance time on reclamation projects.

This was especially true given the B-17G corrected the one major defensive flaw in the Flying Fortress -- lack of forward firing guns to defend against the level and slightly low attacks from 12 O'clock.

To fix this flaw, the B-17G's featured a twin 50 cal turret at the bottom of the bombardier's nose glazing. This would have been the right episode to show that update in use. The series teasers have shown the G model in use, but for some strange reason the producers chose not to show it at its proper time in this episode.

Proof this was the correct episode to debut the G model is an iconic oil painting by Nicholas Trudgian depicting the 6 March 1944 mission flown against Berlin by the 100th BG -- the first mission shown in this episode. That painting correctly showed all the 100th BG aircraft as B-17G's in their initial olive drab and grey paint schemes.

In fact, the 100th BG started to receive B-17G's as early as they could be shipped to England, again in August 1943. The unit did fly mixed formations for the remainder of 1943 using the those F models that remained airworthy, but those older bombers were gone long before March 1944.

Keep in mind, the B-17G was produced in by far the highest numbers, and so by this point of the air war, new bomber arrivals allowed the 8th Air Force to more than keep up with combat losses in planes.

In sum, the POW scenes are the highlights of this episode and are quite well done. It's unfortunate other unforced errors dulled the overall presentation.

The Calm Before the Storm? - Episode 7 - "Part Seven"

[xNanoks · 7/10 · 7 May 2024]

Episode 7 is similar to episode 6 in its pacing, although it tries to tell more in the same timespan as its predecessor. Because of that, episode 7 feels clunkier, more forced, a deliberate calm before an eventual storm. Directed by Dee Rees, who is probably not known by a bigger part of MotA's viewerbase, this one feels like it was given goals to tie up loose ends that would've otherwise been scrapped from the script alltogether. And as honorary as that might seem, it makes the episode feel rushed. Not even the narration by Crosby delivers a sense of being in the moment, something that most often than not connects storylines together the actual scenes in-show struggle to do.

Performances by leading actors and, more importantly so, supporting ones, remains to be strong. Given the material they had to work with during this episode, the actors save us from what would otherwise be bland and dull television. An additional argument for the show's success up until now were the aerial combat scenes, which episode 7 also features, albeit in a timed manner. The batallion's missions take an unexpected and, rightfully so, terrifying new direction, and I can't help but feel this new path would've done well with more of a backstory. To be more 'in the moment' when the news is brought upon our now, mostly, young pilots and soldiers.

Everything it tries to do, it does well enough to not be a bother. But a sense of rushness and inclarity persist within me when I reflect on Part Seven. Even now, when writing this review, I find myself grasping for meaningful words to put on digitalized paper. And while this can definitely be a welcome change in an otherwise hectic entertainment landscape, it seems to be lesser welcome here.

Hoping it's a deliberate and well-meant calm before the storm, episode 7 of Masters of the Air scores a just-as-well-meant 7.

This one didn't grab me.. EDIT... it's actually just a bad episode.

[vandykeu · 4/10 · 1 March 2024]

I've found this show to be outstanding up to this point, but Episode 7 I felt lacked attention to detail. It feels rushed, and is just not very good.

The Good: The Stalag scenes are fantastic, and convey much of the environment exceedingly well. I liked too how it was circumspect in showing its impact on the men. We didn't see too much here, but everything we saw was important, from the radio, to the cat, to the impact captivity is having on the men- Egan especially.

Nate Mann continues to kill it as (now) captain Robert Rosenthal. Rosie is very well portrayed here. A legend of a man, and it is great to see him here stand up for what he believes. The scene where he re-ups is one of the best in the series.

The scenes of chaos when the bombers return was quite good.

The Bad: There was a pretty clear drop in the quality of the CGI on this episode. Likewise, one of the scenes where Rosie and his crew exits their plane shows how the prop model had aged- the panels on the plane appear flat and paper-mache'd. In general, the plane and flying parts of this episode just didn't look very good. Likewise, the 'action' is not really conveyed well, or long enough in this instance.

The downtime shown here isn't very compelling, I felt. After a few episodes that were heavy with emotion and nuance, this one just felt flat, or maybe raw, to me. I don't think Kidd would have let out that the mission requirements were going up from 25 to 30 in public as he does, and the reaction to it, although believable, felt staged for drama's sake. It is especially unnecessary because we get the same information conveyed much more effectively (and realistically) in the Rosie re-up scene. We don't need to be told things twice in the same episode, especially in a series we know from all accounts was very pressed for both budget and time.

The Ugly: As in episode 2, we again see them get a guy's rank wrong when a lieutenant is called a major by his C/O. That is inexcusable for a show of this kind of detail.

I knew from an interview it was coming, but having the bombers still be F models in 1944 is inaccurate. All of the new planes coming after later '43 would be Gs with the chin turret. This was a cost-saving measure, but it is a pretty huge oversight... again money is being spent on things the series doesn't need, but not being spent on things that would increase its accuracy. Bad choices.

Crosby, Crosby, Crosby. His book is quite discrete about what he may or may not have gotten up to with the women he met in England. To have his 'possible' affair portrayed as blatantly as shown here is a bit of an insult to him and his family, IMO. Although a reading of his book certainly suggests he was unfaithful, and I think we can sympathize with his reasons, I don't think we needed to see it to get the point across. Furthermore, why do we need TWO bedroom scenes to make the point? Again, it's redundant storytelling in a show that is already extremely pressed for time and funding.

This all is made a bit worse by the preview of episode 8, which portrays Westgate potentially as a spy... Let's be clear here, the woman Crosby names in his book is never fully identified. It is likely he used a pseudonym in the first place, and there is no clear evidence of who she was in any which way. For a show of this (so far) historical accuracy to delve into pure speculative fiction is quite annoying.

EDIT: I'm coming back to this after a day's thought because it occurred to me also that this episode has some major continuity errors both within itself and across the broader show: At the POW camp, which earlier in the episode HEARD the bombs just 1-2 days earlier, there's snow on the ground. In this scene over Berlin, there is no snow... likewise in Thorpe Abbotts in the same time (early March), the trees are fully leaved as in summer. Then, when the Great Escape happens (late March) there is again snow on the ground. Poor continuity.

Rosie's bombardier drops his own bombs on target, despite us being told several times through the series (including just 2 episodes ago) that the group drops their bombs when the lead plane drops. Again, some real poor continuity on display in this episode.

After the quality the show has shown up to this point, Episode 7 is a real letdown. Continuity errors. Historical accuracy errors. Speculative fiction and dramatization about its characters. Why such a drop?

Grounded..

[Broadsword90 · 3/10 · 1 March 2024]

This is the episode where I finally drew the line and decided the series was not for me.

They really didn't do themselves any favours by pegging this to the Band of Brothers series, which in my opinion was the best WW2 series to be made.

There is a significant lack of character depth. There's no attachment or sentiment for any of the characters portrayed...and after 7 episodes, I still couldn't name more than a few. The production quality is poor in some areas, especially with the excessive use of CGI. For example, in this episode, there seemed to be hundreds of fighter planes flying amongst each other, navigating through bomber formations and was ridiculously in accurate.

I'd recommend that people watch Memphis Belle instead. Considering it was a film made in 1990, it was far more immersive, realistic and had a brilliant storyline.

It is just BAD

[kamus_sfv · 2/10 · 7 March 2024]

This entire show has been a complete let-down, the story telling is awful and the character development in most cases is non existent, the few characters we do get to know a little more are not likable at all. The most important part of this show which is the missions is getting worse and worse, the special effects on the last episode were of such generic and low quality. There are so many ways this could have been done in a way that would do the real veterans justice. They could show more about the building of the planes, the formation of the air wing, the training, the escort fighters (what has been shown so far is just crap) overall this is a BAD show that is not even remotely close to the quality of Band of Brothers and people who claim it is most be smoking some pretty bad crack.